09/08/2026
A great memory from my childhood, and my Mamaw & Papaw...
One last summertime memory: I was absolutely obsessed with bass fishing when I was a kid, and when I would stay at my Pap's house, he would always take me. I had a great Uncle Weldon, that was a fishing guide on Toledo Bend, and between him and his buddies, they came up with a grocery sack full of lures for me. Pap bought me a huge, three tray metal tackle box to put all of the lures in, and we spent one whole afternoon and evening untangling the sack-o-lures, and organizing them in my new tackle box. This the mid 60's, so there were tons of wooden Heddons, Bass Orenos, etc...probably worth a fortune today. Even though I wanted to, we couldn't fish every hour of every day, and when we weren't fishing, I had my tackle box open, reorganizing, sometimes by color, sometimes by size, & sometimes by the number of hooks each lure had. One afternoon, I had to go to the bathroom ( #2). Their bathroom was set up with the toilet facing the side of the tub, and the side of the tub was just wide enough for my giant tackle box to sit on. Perfect, I'm not going to let time spent in the bathroom, heeding nature's call, keep me from looking at & touching all my lures. So there I sat, little shorts at my ankles, feet not touching the ground, playing like I was Homer Circle. As in any #2 session, the end comes, and it's time to clean up, and get off the throne; when I turned to get the toilet paper, my elbow bumped the tackle box, and into the tub it went, spilling the entire, incredibly organized contents into one big tangled heap. I'm sure, from outside the bathroom, it sounded as if I had smashed through the wall, and my Mamaw burst through the door to find me bent over the tub, pants still at my ankles, gathering and scooping...We got my pants up, and she told me to go into the kitchen while she picked up my mess...I worked feverishly, but was able to get the "new" grocery sack full of tangled lures back into the tackle box before Pap got home from work. If I remember correctly, I went with the "lures stuffed in the tackle box" method of organization, you know, to expedite the process...