Even years after my grandfather passed, certain moments we shared seem very new. For whatever reason, something triggered a favorite memory.<\/p>\n
Grandpa loved fishing. Whenever he was able, for as long as he was able, he grabbed the gear and headed to his favorite spot in Missouri. If I was in town, he took me along. Since his favorite spot was a 1000 acre lake, having some way to move between points quickly made sense. There was one wrinkle: Every trip meant hauling a 57 pound motor and gas tank down to the dock.<\/p>\n
One time we started unloading the car in the parking lot. I grabbed a tackle box, a homemade anchor and half the rods.<\/p>\n
“Hey Grandpa,” I said. “Have you ever thought about buying a bass boat? That way we can just launch and go.”
\n“Well, I looked at a few.” Grandpa nodded, a wistful look in his eye.
\n“Are you going to buy one?”
\nTo the end, Grandpa had a way of relating his logic in a such a way that made it feel like a conversation instead of a monologue. And so his answer began plainly enough. “If I buy a boat, I need a slip and somewhere to store the boat in the winter. Also I’ll have to have a trailer to haul it, which brings me to another problem: I need another car to attach to the trailer. Something with four wheel drive.”
\n“That sounds expensive,” I said.
\n“It’s something to consider.”
\n“You know if you had a boat though it would be easier to get out to the lake. And we could fish longer because we wouldn’t have to return the rental.”
\n“I suppose we could. You know your grandmother gets awfully lonely if we’re not back by five.”
\nWe finished the first trip between the car and the dock. I caught my breath.
\n“Hey, what if we rented a boat that had a motor attached? I’ve seem them at the dock. That way you don’t need to get a boat, a slip, trailer or a new car.” This I said, very certain that I made a few points with my own logic.
\nGrandpa unlocked the trunk. He smiled.
\n“Get the gas tank, son.”<\/p>\n
Memories like those make it feel like he never really left. But he is gone now. And wherever he is, I hope he’s got the throttle wide open on a shiny new bass boat, before he has to head home for dinner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Even years after my grandfather passed, certain moments we shared seem very new. For whatever reason, something triggered a favorite memory. Grandpa loved fishing. Whenever he was able, for as long as he was able, he grabbed the gear and headed to his favorite spot in Missouri. If I was in town, he took me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-introspection"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12672"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12675,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12672\/revisions\/12675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.samhilliard.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}