Stephen Reos Lopez

I used to take my son out to fish with me. It was an old family tradition that just kind of died out in recent times. We used to catch all sorts of fish, 5 and 10 pounders occasionally. I liked to catch catfish the most, they were most elusive. We would fish for a while, talking about his day at school and how things were going, and it was a good thing we had for a while. One day, we had a falling out, right before his softball game at school. Me, being the adult in the family, decided to be spiteful and not come. He was visibly saddened by my absence, my pals later told me, at the game. When he came back, all we could do was look each other in the eye, gazing into the abyss of glassy entropy that told so much about the other person yet so little, and look away in an instant. I felt terrible, of course. Fortunately, I needed help loading up my equipment into my truck for a bit of a solo outing some time after that incident, so his solemn offer to help ended up in us going out again, like a family. I promised him we would get lunch at a McDonald's later. We went into our favorite pond, behinf our late neighbor Taylor's place. The thing about my son was that he didn't pull any punches when it came to fishing. He was particuarly quick to grab his rod this time, looking to catch something special today. I was equally enthusiastic, and we sat there for half an hour when a monster emerged. A large fish, what looked like a shark almost, had hooked onto my son's line. The kid had strength, and pretty soon, he got it all tuckered out. I helped him reel it in, only when we pulled it out, he had caught TWO of this big things! These suckers must've been hibernating in the bottom of the pond for weeks for me to have missed them! And even then, I would've needed a special kind of bait to get these guys, yet my son got it with his own little wooden one, carved my his own hand. He was a bonafide master! His baiting skill was unmatched, and far surpassed his own pops. We shared a lot of hugs that day. Yep, he was indeed a Master Baiter. And me and him, we went "master baiting" for a while after that. Happiest years of my life, just master baiting with my son next to me, while load after load of fish came onto us, onto our boat. Good times. 1984 is a very good book as well, very much recommend.