Yes, there are several specific stories that are close to my heart that I have never shared, but later in life, after my mother passed, every memory of my mother was special to me. Here is one that I particularly love to look back on:
As I mentioned in my last blog about my mother, she was the one who made sure that my teammates and I always had a ride to my ballgames. Years of being the team mom, my teammates loved her as a mom and enjoyed her company. She loved them as well. The older we got and as our family planned summer vacations, my mother would let each one of us kids invite a friend to go with us. It was usually the same ones each time, and now I realize being away from my grandkids for several days, it would be like leaving her kids behind while the family was gone. It grew to every time we went anywhere; our suburban was filled with kids.
Growing up, all of us kids loved to fish. We had a bayou one block from our house that we loved to go fishing at– nothing big, just a small perch and some catfish. My mother asked one day if she could go fishing with us, and I told her she needed to get a rod and reel, because I didn’t have an extra one, and I really didn’t want to share mine. I didn’t really believe she would go and get one, but she did. She came back with a deep-sea fishing rod– a reel, big enough to catch Moby Dick. We all laughed and told her what she had bought, and her reply was “Load it up guys, we’re going to Galveston saltwater fishing.”
The following day, we prepared all day for our fishing trip, which included giving my mom a crash course on how to cast her new reel. Also, it included me showing her the button on the side of the reel that if you turn it on while waiting for a fish, it will make a clicking noise to let you know you caught the fish. Once this noise is heard, then you would turn off that button and real in your fish. She seemed to understand and was ready to catch some fish. We headed out that evening to fish because the fishing at night was better than during the heat of the day. We all loaded up in the suburban: All eight of us kids, fishing poles, tackle boxes, and an ice chest. We were loaded down and ready to head to Galveston to go fishing!
We arrived in Galveston, unloaded the car at the fishing pier, got bait, and by the time we all get on the pier, it was late, around 10:00 pm. Walking out to the end of the pier, which was about 150 yards, we stepped over people that were laid out sleeping, with their drags on (button set on side of the reel) waiting for the sound of a fish to take their line. The others that were up and fishing were wondering if school just let out, and what are all these kids were doing here. We all set up our poles, put our bait on, and cast out into the water, hoping we would be the first one to catch Moby Dick, or at least the big one that all of us talked about on the way to Galveston. In the meantime, my mom set up her rod, put on her bait and you can see her going over her techniques of how to position herself when casting to make that perfect cast. She’s was trying to do this without disturbing different ones around her sleeping and waiting for their drag (clicking noise) to go off. She reared back and let her line go. There was one thing that she had forgotten to do: Turn off her drag. As her line is being casted out, a continuous LOUD clicking noise continued until her line hit the water. There was one huge problem with this. The people all around her sleeping jumped to their feet thinking that their line had a big fish on it, and started reeling in. All of us kids laughed, and never let her forget it.
From that day forward, when I go fishing and hear my drag going off, it’s a call from my mother saying: L
-Gregory Armstrong
