My husband took our two oldest kids (and my dad) fishing yesterday, something which he's waited to do until they were both calm enough that the possibility of one of them accidentally falling into the water out of sheer enthusiasm was MORE remote.
So he drove them up to a long-remembered fishing lake from his childhood, one that was so full of fish that he remembered casting in a line without a lure and pulling up fish after fish, this lush abundance. The kids were set up with their rods and lures and waited patiently all afternoon.. for nothing.
The lake is dead now. Crystal clear all the way to the bottom, my husband said.
My husband's grandfather is quite the guy. He lives two hours and change from us, and we go see him a few times a year in his small house lined with wooden bowls that he's made, the walls covered in clocks that he's fixing. And like clockwork, he's always the same, bald and impish and apparently immune to age, 90 years ticking by without altering him in any substantial way.
My grandfather-in-law lives in a village - and it's barely a village, really - and in this village, there is a general store which is now closed, I believe, but which used to sell basic groceries and candy and booze and hunting and fishing licenses and fireworks. This store is part of a larger house, with a tire swing hanging from the ancient tree in the yard and a white picket fence and to say that we wanted to buy it would be an understatement. And even sitting here, I can easily imagine that being shopkeeper in a general store in a village full of old people would be QUITE the life.
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