I loved fishing back in those days. The first six years of my life was spend in Cadillac, MI where we lived a couple of blocks away from the lake. Many evenings, our Dad would take us down to fish for bluegills from shore. When work moved the family to Big Rapids, I became a river rat, and three to four miles of the Muskegon River was my escape.
Like you, a cane pole was #1. A few hooks, real sinkers when we had them, a nut when we didn't. There was an old bowl factory that made wooden bowls in town. Fifteen minutes spent digging through an old sawdust pile got you all the fresh worms you ever needed. The day after Mom cooked chicken, we would take the pilfered liver down to the creek where inside an old soup can, we could collect leeches for a day of walleye fishing.
Some days collecting old beer bottles netted us enough cash to buy more hooks and sinkers, and sometimes live minnows to use in "The Pike Hole". We didn't watch the bobber so much as we waited for the pole get jerked right into the river. Then we would swim out to get our pole, swimming back to shore and fighting the fish at the same time.
The spring sucker run always meant that we had to load up a gunny sack full of white suckers for the Johnson family. Canned sucker meat helped a family of 14 make ends meet.
We learned that part of our chores not only included mowing our lawn, or shoveling the snow out of our driveways, but it also included going down the street to do the same at the widow's home too. And while Mom told us to never accept any money for it, she always had fresh cookies.
My first BB gun came as a Christmas present too. The neighbors bought me it. The next day I repaid their generosity by shooting the chickadee out of the large willow tree in their front yard. One of the shots that missed put a really nice chip in their picture window! Wow, was my Dad ever mad at me, but not the neighbor. They only had girls, and it was almost like he was happy to see it!
They were simpler times!
