The Toolbox

Recently I was asked to write about a nostalgic moment as a nod to "Throwback Thursday". 

When I was younger, I would spend a lot of my summers with my grandparents in Oklahoma.  They lived in a small rural town.  If you stood at one end of town and spit...you would probably hit the other side of it~

There was no glamour in my grandparent's old run-down property but it was filled with old treasures sealed behind cobwebs and rust just waiting to be discovered.

The thing my grandfather loved to do the most was go night fishing and when he went he always asked me to go with him. 

My grandfather would set out a container of chicken livers for days until it was completely covered in flies, because other than roadkill, it made the best bait for catfish'n. 

After the sun retired for the night, we would slip into his old ford pickup and head for his "favorite" fishing holes.  He didn't believe in wearing seatbelts and I remember holding on for dear life as the truck bounced across craters in the red dirt.

We would fish in the darkness of the night with only the moon and the occasional lightning bug illuminating the pond, We would sit in total silence for hours waiting for the catfish to bite.  Above all things, my grandfather taught me patience~and how to clean a catfish of course...

Before my grandfather passed, he gave me an old rusty red toolbox that he used as a tackle box,  For me,  when I think about my past...that toolbox is the thing that makes my heart smile the most~