Fishing with my father

My Godchild wrote on her blog today about her husband taking their little girl fishing with a "real" fishing pole. It reminded me of my father taking my sister and me fishing with him. There were no cute fishing poles for children in those days so my father would cut a stalk of cane, add a long piece of kite string to it, tie a huge safety pin to it and ... now if you have a delicate system you might not want to read this part... hook a horned toad to it. (Actually we called them "horny toads".) My father had figured out that if he kept us busy then he could fish in peace... for awhile. We never caught anything but we were amazed at how quickly the horned toad went to horned toad heaven. I was probably five and my sister was four. Glad our two brother came along later so my father had some fishing buddies.