We just had completed another 8-hour event in the Dewey Mullins Memorial Bass Tourney Series, and after being up since 2 a.m., I pretty much was "running on fumes" as I cleaned up my boat near the door to my storage building at the marina. Suddenly, I looked up to see two young Marines who had fished the tourney with us coming toward me in their pickup.
As they drew near, I could tell they wanted access to the tent next door, which houses their boat. So I backed my rig partly inside the storage building to give them the necessary clearance. Minutes later, they had finished hooking their boat to the pickup and was headed toward the ramp.
Later, while talking to a member of the marina staff, I asked him if those boys indeed had gone fishing again, and he quickly assured me they had. After running an errand off the marina premises, they had come back for Round 2.
All I could do was shake my head, but then I remembered another time several years ago when my role was reversed. The operative phrase that simultaneously sprang to mind Saturday was, "What goes around comes around."
My folks still were alive at the time, and I had made a trip home in the late fall to help them get ready for another Kansas winter. One of the things Dad had wanted done was to have me help him move and stack some wood closer to the house to keep Mom and him cozy all winter. We used Dad's ol' pickup for the operation, but even with that, I've never been able to forget how painstakingly slow the job became.
Dad would toss four or five pieces of wood in the bed of the pickup, then would want to rest for 5 or 10 minutes. And he wanted me to join him for that rest each time. "Come on, Son, sit a while, so you don't wear yourself out," he would say. So, we'd sit and jaw about old times, politics and you-name-it for a spell, which ultimately turned what should have been a two- or three-hour job into a two-day operation.
The thing I was having a hard time with was remembering the fact the dad I had known as a kid was a man who knew no limits on his energy levels. He would work sunup to sundown, and I only rarely ever saw him take a break, except for a drink of water or to grab a quick lunch, and then he was right back on the job. He constantly preached "an honest day's work for an honest day's wage," and he practiced what he preached.
Working with Dad on jobs during my summer breaks in high school was a lesson in toughness. He wouldn't tolerate slackers among those people who worked for him, and that included his sons. Of course, that upbringing served me well once I joined the Navy, and I many times thanked him in the years that followed.
The point here simply is that we all have our "day in the sun," and we'd best enjoy it while we can, because those hands of time eventually catch up to everyone. And even though the folks around us most times don't mean to be serving reminders that we're past our prime, that's the way some of us tend to interpret things.
It currently takes me about two days to recuperate from one of our tournaments, and here were two Marines who had the energy to fish the same tournament, run an errand, and then go back for a few more hours--just for the fun of it. I truly envy anyone with that kind of energy levels.
No comments:
Post a Comment