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Catfish, Fireflies And Red Rover

   It was a warm night tonight, after several days of unseasonably cool weather. There were a few light showers in the area but it didn't rain anywhere that I happened to be.
      I went night fishing and was trying to catch some catfish. I don't eat fish and I have almost totally quit fishing. There have been a few times when I caught  fish with a big growth on them. It makes you wonder about eating things from our rivers. I used to be an avid fisherman. As with most things I was totally into boating and fishing for several years and then cast the hobby aside like used Kleenex.
     When I night fish, I like to use raw chicken livers and drop them down to the bottom of the river. It doesn't hurt if you let them sit in the hot sun a while so they stink. Catfish are not too particular about their cuisine.  It's sort of cool out on the river at night, all by yourself. It's quiet, for the most part. You have to be alert for barges because people get run over by one every now and then and I can hardly think of a more terrifying scenario than to be run down by a barge in the dark of night. You'll hear a fish break water nearby and an owl in the woods a little way off. Tonight I wasn't too far from an airport and I could  hear a big plane over there that kinda disturbed the tranquility for a while. It sounded like it was taxiing and had those big propellors raising dust by the sound of it. Most assuredly this was not a jet. It brought to mind some trips I've made on C-130s. I remembered one in particular, sitting in the coldness of a cargo hold on those little web jump seats with an M-16 across my knees. On a night when it wasn't so pleasant as tonight, when we had to take off and land at a little airstrip on a mountain. The field was closely encircled with tall timber and I swear I thought our landing gear touched the tree tops on landing and takeoff.
      As I drove home late tonight there was a full moon trying to break through thick alto-cumulus clouds and since it was so pretty I opened the moon-roof as I cruised along. It's funny how you can smell everything so easy when your roof is open. At one point during the drive home I could smell flowers very strong and tried to pinpoint what type they were. They almost smelled like wild roses but had a bit of a mediciney smell with them.
    I saw at least 3 or 4 big fires burning on the way home tonight. I guess everybody decided at the same time to burn the stumps and limbs from the trees that the tornadoes destroyed. It was a melancholy reminder of the grim and not-so distant past. I passed two cops sitting in their cars, facing opposite directions so they could chat. They were sharing their lonely vigil on a night that seemed different somehow. It seemed that I noticed everything more, like things were happening all around me. Of course it's a different sub-culture at night. Different types of creatures prowl at night, both animal and human.
    As I drove home I thought about summer nights as a kid, chasing lightning bugs with other children and putting them in Mason jars. The lightning bugs, not the children. Ha, ha. Days of playing "Red Rover, Red Rover, send Danny right over" then watching a kid try to break through your line of clasped hands. How did we find anything to do without video games? Trust me, there was fun to be had.
    When I got home tonight and stepped from the car, I heard a baying from the west. It didn't really sound like a hound, though. I think it may have been a wolf, though I've never heard one here at the house before. I'm surprised that every dog within miles wasn't raising a racket but maybe they were scared.
    That's what tonight was like, here in the green retreat.
I'm CE Wills.

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