A fish story

Born on Galveston Island, ten years in Houston, followed by another couple of years in Galveston -- then another three years in La Marque, then another year and a half years as a young man in Clute,Freeport and Lake Jackson, TX (right on the Gulf coast), I was around fish and fishermen a lot.

When I lived in La Marque, with my parents, my dad would occasionally go shrimping, and would return home with a couple of washtubs full of prawns. For those of you who do not 'fathom' (pun), prawns are larger than life shrimp! They are shrimp on steroids---huge, unlike the tiny, frail, sissy 'pinkie-finger' size cocktail shrimp you may be more familiar with, from your bold forays into deep sea fishing at the lobster tank at the Dead Lobster! We would carry the washtubs way back toward the back of our property, where the spare parts from shrimp that we would clean would not stink up the rest of our yard. Turning on the garden hose, dad and I and my brother George would de-vein shrimp for hours, then wash the prawns, drain the excess water and deliver them indoors to my Mom, who had all four burners going on the stove, boiling the prawns on three burners and deep-frying them on the other burner. She made huge containers of cocktail sauce, with lots of horseradish, and we would eat shrimp till we staggered! They were so, so wonderful! We ate them with French fries, cornbread, cole slaw, downing them with iced tea with lemon! The boiled shrimp were carefully drained and we then packed them into round white cardboard containers meant for ice cream. We filled our freezer in the garage with a couple hundred pounds of fresh shrimp, and they would last us until the next year.

Although I was around fish a lot while living on the coast, I never learned to fish. When I arrived at OCC, in the fall of 1964, I eventually --around 1967--became friends with my life-long buddy, Phil Johnson, who knew how to fish. Somewhere around 1968 or 1969, he volunteered to teach me the 'secrets' of successful fishing. Off we went to a local TG&Y store, then located at 15th and Broadway, in Edmond. They had a large quantity of fishing gear....one of everything ever made, it seemed. I was lost. I didn't know one thing about fishing.

The only fishing I had ever done, as a teenager, in the swampy areas around Texas City, Texas, next door to our hometown of La Marque, was flounder-gigging, at night, in the marshy areas, full of jackrabbits, snakes and, yes, flounder! This peculiar fish is flat. Its two eyes are on the top side of the flat fish, and the two eyes, and a faint outline of part of the fish are all that one can see when wading around in the marsh grass, with a flounder gig and a good Coleman lantern. The marsh grasses attract rabbits as well as frogs and the snakes are drawn to the frogs. There is an abundance of snakes in the marshes on the Gulf Coast -- cottonmouths, rattlesnakes, copper heads and coral snakes....all of them eagerly available to facilitate your speedy trips to the ER, if you are not cautious! I did okay with floundering. It's not rocket science. One just has to be careful -- and determined. Flounder-gigging was as close to fishing as I ever got, while growing up. With real fishing, however, I floundered badly!

Back to my buddy, Phil Johnson: He patiently walked me through the fishing gear area of the TG&Y store, and I walked out, some two hours later, with $140 worth of fishing gear...not fancy gear by a real fisherman's standards, but, to a novice, it was a real adventure. Understand, however, this was no Bass Pro Shop. I had lures and fishing line, a cheap rod and reel, waders and one of those fancy inner tubes with pockets to store your gear while you set forth across a farm pond on a mission to bring home the really big ones!

My entrance into the world of fishing was to go with Phil down to 'Vaughn's pond' -- a weed-filled pond full of runoff from the OCC campus. Battery acid and oil, along with fertilizer and pesticides and who knows what else -- made its way down to its eternal destination, into fish that resided in Vaughn's pond.

Phil showed me how to cast. I was dying to try my hand with an irresistible lure, then called 'The HULA POPPER'. It was bright yellow and was named after the hula skirt-looking device that modestly covered the business end of the lure. Man, that lure looked deadly! Before casting it into the pond, I was already envisioning one meal after another, from the huge, healthy fish I would soon be fairly ripping out of the water with my yellow Hula Popper! Wow! Does life get any better than this?
This is probably better than....well, no, not that good, I don't think, but still, very, very good!

The water in Vaughn's pond was murky, and filled with all sorts of sea-weedy things that looked, when one snagged them on a lure and reeled them in --- like great, long gobs of yellow-green cooked spinach. This pond spinach did NOT smell like spinach, however, or any other edible thing. I was a little wary of the pond, because, during my first year at OCC, 1964 to 1965, one of my roommates, a nice, but quiet guy who lived upstairs on the east end of "A" dorm, ran down to the pond one blistering hot day and plunged right into the pond. He drowned, after suffering a heart attack, if memory serves me correctly. Afterwards, I always shuddered a little when I thought of that pond. And now, here we are, tempting fate by venturing into those murderous waters, filled with who-knows how many dangers?

As soon as I cast my line, the Hula Popper landed with a splash and I began reeling it in. In my mind I was transferring images of a wounded bug, seductively scooting across the surface of the pond, in fits and starts -- sudden bursts of movement, followed by short periods of rest. Surely this is what a wounded bug would look and act like! Right? Wrong!

What happened was this: the entire surface of the pond erupted in bubbles! I was puzzled, as this scenario was repeated over and over, while my buddy, Phil, reeled them in, with a smug, self-satisfied look on his face. I finally gave up and just contented myself with 'organizing' my fishing tackle box. I was no good at fishing, and, to make matters worse, I had fouled my line on all the submerged tree limbs and pond spinach. I lost my best lure, the bright yellow Hula Popper, and a couple of other fake-bug-baits, but, by golly, I had an organized tackle box! Second to none! I had hooks from tiny little things that probably wouldn't have snagged a minnow, to monster hooks that would have made the Loch Ness monster become a vegetarian! I had bobbers and lures and lead weights and spinners and fish scalers -- even a fish scale. I even had a stringer to keep my trophy fish all tethered together in a sort of fishy chain gang, while still remaining in the water where they would remain alive and fresh until I took them out to prepare dinner! I had it all! Eventually, I thought, with patience and good observational skills, I too would master the manly art of fishing! I could imagine the newspaper articles, with photos, showing the world-record fish being pulled from the pond while I posed, straining under the weight of so many fish, wearing a decidedly 'no-big-deal-I've-done-this-a-thousand-times' look! Ahhh! Life was indeed sweet! And about to be even sweeter!

I went fishing with Phil several more times, and each time I tried my luck with one of my so-called 'tried and true' baits, I was again greeted with a pond-wide eruption of bubbles. In desperation I hired an icthiologist (fish expert) from NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration)-- a nice man named, Gill, I believe, who witnessed the extremely unusual event at Vaughn's pond when I took him there as a scientific observer. He saw the event with his own eyes and took measurements and samples of the bubbles every time I cast my lure into the water. He was very knowledgeable, exhibiting a vast experience. It did appear to me, however, that with his constant recitation of facts and figures, that he was fishing, as it were, for compliments. His conclusion, after days of testing and computer simulations, was that the curious phenomena -- which he had never seen in all his years as a trained icthiologist-- is that the air bubbles were caused by....mass, simultaneous laughter, among all the various species of fish in the ponds where I had attempted to fish. He advised me to discontinue my attempts at fishing, since the disharmony and wild 'waves' --gales, if you will, of unrestrained laughter among the fish population in these ponds would lead to a decimation of the fish population, as fish would 'scale back' (pardon the pun) --eating and reproductive activities as they eagerly anticipated the next hilarious casting of my line and lure into their watery world. He was not happy with the sight of exhausted fish floating on the surface of the water, near-dead from long and repeated peals of laughter. He further told me that, if I were not compliant in this firm request, that I would be issued a 'cease and defished' order by the local authorities.

I hope that by now I have 'reeled YOU in' with my deceit! While it is true that I am an incompetent fisherman, and have accepted this fact, I will continue to 'cast about', looking for other leisure activities. I am looking for a new diversion, one that will, hopefully, be a 'reel' winner for me and will keep me on the line-- at least as long as I have kept YOU perched on the line!

Please forgive me for the 'bait and switch' story....and the awful puns! As bad as they are, they are, after all, 'trout and true' ('tried and true', maybe?)...and people fall for them every time....hook, line and stinker! :)

Keepin' in touch...with the ONE!

Want to know a great way to keep in touch...with your Creator?...when you occasionally feel a little bit strung out with a problem or with your job or some other matter that weighs 'heavy on your heart?' Here's are a couple of crazy, but, for me, sure-fire ways to bring things once more into sharp focus. I have two ways...

I am an atronomy buff, and nothing puts my troubles into perspective better than to read something new -- usually on the Internet -- about something new and wonderful and vast and beautiful--something that defies our ability to get our arms around it due to the unbelievable distances...and sizes and complexity...of an 'other worldly' galaxy or cluster of galaxies, billions of light years from earth. The same God who put all of that together such a long time ago, long before we had the ability to even gaze on it -- that same God did it that we might see it and realize what a great God He is. That we might look at it and KNOW that HE IS, and WAS and EVER WILL BE! Astronomy calms me and humbles me and fills me with awe at HIS GREATNESS, HIS MAJESTY, HIS POWER, HIS BEAUTY, and HIS LOVE FOR US!

From the vastness of the universe, to the unbelievably tiny and perfect -- all things sublime!

I sometimes like to stop, along a country road, usually east of Edmond, where there are rock outcroppings. I like to take my 20X power magnifying glass, and get down low over the rocks -- sometimes flat on the rocks -- and look for the tiniest living thing I can find. A tiny plant-- so tiny that I can't even see it without the magnifying glass. I realize, when I do this, that I am the only human likely to ever have seen this little plant, growing on this inhospitable rock. No one else is likely to ever see this one little plant again, and yet, as tiny as it is, and as anonymously as it lives out its brief life, it was made by a God who designed it and put together its inner workings. A tiny life form, brimming with chemical interactions that baffle the scientists of the world, who, with all of their knowledge, money and scientific equipment and skills, cannot make such a thing, tiny and uncomplicated as it at first appears. Only God can make such a thing.

I shudder with awe, even at the age of 64, at a God who can make a universe, some 15 billion light years across (as far as we can 'see' right now). I laugh -- out of sheer wonder and admiration and delight -- at a God who creates tiny things that weird people like me seek out, to further confirm the fact that this same God who created billions of galaxies like our own Milky Way galaxy--that houses billions of stars and likely untold numbers of planets, also constructs tiny living things of beauty for us to enjoy, often too tiny to be seen with the naked eye! Tiny life forms that have their own rhythms of life, and seasons where they come and go, on God's perfect schedule. As we enjoy His creations, and revel in their complexity and the beauty of their design, we simultaneously give HIM all the glory and all our love for these gifts to humanity. In these moments, my troubles melt away and I reflect on an even more unbelievable gift He left us...

The physicists of the world go on and on about their ideas of a 'singularity'...(the initial state of what became God's Universe before that imaginary event they call the BIG BANG). I reflect on the Singularity of MY world...not an imaginary singularity, but a reality--that being my Lord Jesus Christ...WHO Was, and IS, and EVER WILL BE. The realization of the eternal existence of that true Singularity is what calms my heart, gives me hope and makes my life worth living.

Our God...is truly..an AWESOME GOD!

You're being watched!

When I was in high school in La Marque, Texas, in 1960, I had a job at a local supermarket. It was located a little less than a mile from our home and only a few blocks away from the high school where I attended. I worked, stocking shelves, mopping floors, breaking down cardboard boxes (that were then compacted, bundled and trucked away). I also worked as a bag-boy, and since I hustled and was friendly to the stores' customers and remembered peoples' names and their vehicles, I made a lot of money in tips! It was a great job. I had no need for spending money, since I worked all the time, it seemed. I only rarely went out with a few friends from the La Marque church of Christ Wednesday and Sunday nights for a hamburger or a coke. Because of this, I had plenty of money to buy our families' groceries. Just like it had been at an earlier time when I had a paper route in Dallas, it felt really good to be a contributing member of our family, and not just another mouth to feed. I always enjoyed being a giver, not just a taker. It felt great! I loved it-- and felt needed and appreciated and vital to our family's well-being.

Over time, I became known at the grocery store as someone who was honest and dependable. I was given a tougher job, and I felt a little (no, make that a LOT) like a detective, or a private eye! Theft was a big problem at Evans Grocery--theft-- and there was a need for 'surveillance' of the customers and even a few of the employees. There was a catwalk around the store, up high around the perimeter of the interior of the store. There were one-way mirrors every few feet, and my job, after my 'promotion', was to walk the catwalk for my entire shift each day, back and forth, all around the store, watching customers. It was a lonely job. I was up there, in the semi-darkened corridor all day each day. It wasn't hard work, although it required a lot of walking.

It was surprising to me how many people were shoplifters. The thieves who frequented Evans Grocery Store were from all races, all ages and included men and women, boys and girls. The items stolen ranged from needles and thread to large packaged hams! I saw many items disappear into pockets and purses, shirts and blouses...even into socks and hats!

Most of the shoplifters were easily 'profiled', as they would look around, tentative about their intentions. Their body language, however, was, after a short time on the job, easy for me to predict. They gave it away, by their demeanor. They 'telegraphed their intentions.' Most of them didn't have the presence of mind to act naturally. If they had acted naturally, most would have gotten away with theft, unless randomly chosen as someone of interest to watch.

My job was to watch-- to 'catch people in the act', follow them to the front of the store, without losing sight of them (so they didn't return the items to the store shelves and make the store guilty of falsely accusing them). I would then then press a button to alert the store manager, so he could head toward the front doors while I hurriedly came down the stairs to join him at the front door and point out the shoplifter.

I enjoyed this job, a lot, even though I had to do it alone, up on the catwalk. I could see the customers but they couldn't see me. I became very good at this work, and did not make mistakes. My 'busts' were 'righteous busts', and I didn't get the store manager into trouble by falsely accusing people. Not one time.

The ones who really surprised me were the old people -- men and women, who looked like anybody's little old grandma or grandpa. Some of them had the sweetest countenances. Often the items stolen were not expensive items, but were items most easily concealed. Sometimes, before an item was snatched, the thief would make 'dry runs', looking at the items and then circling back, like a shark, before committing himself or herself to the act of theft.

The biggest 'bust' of my career in surveillance at Evans Grocery was a huge woman of indeterminate race, who waddled behind her grocery cart, right into the stockroom where there were public bathrooms. I made a mental note of the items in her basket, which included a large packaged ham. When she went into the stockroom area, I watched her disappear into the ladies' bathroom-- with the ham. Why would someone take a packaged ham into a dirty bathroom, if theft was not on the agenda? When she came out, she was not carrying the ham. She waddled back out of the stockroom area with her basket, heading for the front door. I flew down the stairs and then checked the ladies bathroom. No ham! I then ran to the front door, pausing to alert the manager. He and I walked to the front door, keeping an eye on our
'HAM-STER'.

She checked out at Mrs. Meisetschlager's cash register and headed for the front door. The manager took over, since I was just a kid, and not about to confront the woman. Besides, she was four times my size! A real whopper! She could've cleaned my plow!

The manager had to wait until she left the store to accost her. When he did, she became indignant, and took a swing at him with her purse. When she did, the ham fell from her skirt to the pavement! That was unbelievable! That ham was the size of a 8 or 9-lb. baby and it skidded a little on the concrete when it hit. She had held that ham between her massive thighs from the back of the store to the front door! The police came for that lady, and we all went back to work. We made a lot of ham jokes for a long time after that colorful event! I'll never forget it!

I didn't feel bad for her, since she was so angry at having been accused of theft. With some of the others who were caught, I felt bad, because they looked poor, or like they couldn't help themselves. I nearly always felt bad when it was a very young or very old person.

I had this cushy job until I was a senior in high school, in the fall of 1961, when Hurricane Carla wiped us out and we moved to Dallas. I learned a good bit about human nature in that job, and I learned how to excel at something through diligence and careful observation.

In today's world, we are all subject to scrutiny, if not in a manner quite as direct. Our comings and goings are scrutinized by electronic devices -- in stores, at toll gates, via our credit card purchases and the GPS devices in our automobiles...not to mention our buddies the IRS! People we do not know and never will know, have access to our medical records, the choices we make in our purchases or entertainment, our banking records and much more. It's a scary time we live in. How can we protect ourselves? These days you don't have to spiriting a ham from a grocery store to be under surveillance!

Just like out of a Hollywood script!

Tenth grade at LaMarque High School, just outside Galveston, TX., was not an especially fun time for me. I was 6 ft. tall and 145, and I got picked on pretty regularly...by a number of people who maybe just didn't like my looks. I was gawky and had, as I admitted to in an earlier blog, a ferocious set of buck teeth. I looked funny... squirrelly. I didn't have a girl friend, and except for a handful of friends from church, I was sort of a misfit.

One day, on a Monday morning, I arrived a little bit early for my first class of the day -- shop class. I had been making a mahogany bookcase -- it was nothing to write home about, but I was proud of it. I still have it. I won a first place ribbon at the Industrial Arts Fair, and was more proud of the ribbon than I was of the bookcase.

On this particular Monday morning, some of the guys in the class whose projects were further along than my own project, had left their wooden creations in the well-ventilated room where things were lacquered and left to dry. Someone had broken in over the weekend and had defaced a lot of the projects in this 'finishing room.'

The shop teacher, Burl Clayton, had not yet arrived, and, since my project had not been in the finishing room and had therefore not been vandalized, I was running some of my mahogany lumber over a machine called a jointer, which smoothes and cleans up the edges of wood boards. I am normally left-handed, and, as I was running the wood from my right to my left, holding the wood safely with both hands with a huge push-block(to keep hands and fingers away from spinning blades), I caught movement coming from my left.

It seems that some of the guys were sitting on tables in the finishing room, which was located near the entrance to the shop room. A hot-headed guy had come into the building and had gone to the finishing room to see his project. It had been gouged with a sharp instrument and was ruined. He flew into a rage and wanted to know who had done it. One of the guys who was sitting on one of the benches,looking around for someone to deflect the hothead's temper, piped up with: "Shoemake did it!" The other guys, seing the possibility of a fight, chimed right in: "Yeah, Shoemake did it."

The hot-head looked around and saw me working on the jointer, across the room. He grabbed a half-finished baseball bat and ran at me across the room, weaving among the work tables as he headed toward the open area. I caught side of him as he ran directly at me, with the baseball bat cocked over his right shoulder. He had rage in his eyes and on his face as he started swinging the bat directly at my head! In a self-protective reflex, I jerked the push block up with my left hand, to try and block the bat. He swung the bat and my push block caught the bat, not far from where his hands gripped the bat. Almost simultaneously, he slammed into me. The bat was leveraged from his grip, due to the push block's point of impact with the bat. As he plowed into me, and we both flew backward, I did something -- without having time to think about it -- that might have saved my life. At the very least it changed my life at that school!

As we flew backwards, I grabbed onto his shirt collar with my right hand. We were falling, with me about to be on the bottom of the pile! I pushed my right leg up and into him, not wanting to have him solidly on me. What happened next was pure luck --- a serendipity---something that could have been scripted for a movie.

As I held his shirt and then pushed outward with my leg into his body, I hit the concrete floor on my back. An amazing thing happened! He was catapulted over me as I hit the floor. He continued on -- now upside down --- and slammed into the wall behind us. He fell from the wall onto his head and was knocked out cold! I thought he was dead!

Although I knew nothing at all about self-defense in the tenth grade, and did nothing 'on purpose' to protect myself other than just react to a threat, like anyone would do, the guys who had seen what had happened, told the story all over school. In one day, I went from the skinny kid with buck teeth that the high school jocks loved to pick on and taunt, to the kid that nobody wanted to mess with! I was, in one day, thought to be 'BAD'...and that was GOOD...REALLY GOOD! I had no knowledge about protecting myself, but, as long as no one else knew that, I guess that was okay. Life got easier after that day in shop class. My attacker got in trouble, but I didn't, since I was on the receiving end of the trouble.

After that chance event, I decided to take self-defense training. Over several years, I learned a lot of helpful things -- among them, how to take a fall. That later saved my life, when I fell through the window at OCC years later. When you practice something for a long, long time, whatever you have learned can become a reflex---something you may be able to do without thinking about it.

It's often seemed odd to me how a chance occurrence can change ones' life....again, just like in a Hollywood script!