1st QUARTER REPORT BANNER YEAR 2008

Well, well, well.
Hopefully the next three quarters will be better than average and bring the prospectus back into the black.

There has been an extraordinary amount of sickness that just seems to get passed back and forth between the three of us. Many trips to the doctor's office( not me of course!) rounds of antibiotics, cough suppressants, decongestants and chicken soup.

The job situation could be better. Many of us are being sent home early due to lack of work. Hopefully this won't last long.

On the bright side, Sharla is finishing up her Spring semester of student teaching and only has one more class this Fall to graduate, and of course...Catlettsburg Little League opening day is April 12. Carson is gearing up for T-Ball and is looking forward to playing for the Cub's. He said he is going to hit the ball over the fence and hit the CSX train! That is gonna be some kinda homer!

He got to meet Brandon Webb; his baseball idol last month.( yes..we do have some pics of him with his eyes open...just happened to find this one first) He is also ready to play soccer but we haven't been contacted about which team he is going to be on. He has also starred in a couple of YouTube videos demonstrating his athletic and comedic abilities.

The fish are biting, the Trillium and Bloodroot are poking through the leaf litter, grass is greening up and turkey's are strutting and with some warm days and a little rain in April, the morel's will be ripe for the pickin'.....it's definitely Springtime in Kentucky!

BOY SCOUT ROAD CAMP VERITY

Boy Scout Road.
With a name like that, you can only imagine that it would be running rampant with wild-eyed boys full of vim and vigor.
It was! Once upon a time.
Now the land seems sterile, gone is the big hand hewn cabin, trees, creek. Replaced with millions of dollars of homes and green manicured lawns devoid of the sounds of restless youth. The hills we roamed as kids, now are fenced and protected by silent alarm systems daring you to tread backward to those days gone by.
The two story cabin only sat about fifty feet off the road, but to us kids it was in a wilderness, miles from civilization. We unrolled our sleeping bags on the floor upstairs and then set about gathering firewood to burn throughout the night in the great stone fireplace. We traversed the hills behind the cabin as if they were the Sange de Christo mountains and we were beginning an adventure at Philmont. We practiced our woodsmen skills with knives and axes. We built bridges and towers of saplings, lashing them together with rope and honeysuckle vines. We hunted the very elusive snipe at midnight with the new scouts that joined our troop. All in all, we slept very little when we went camping at Camp Verity. There was just so much to do and so little time to do it in.
We tried to squeeze a week of activities into a weekend.
The big cabin is still alive and well. It has a new home near Yatesville Lake in Lawrence County Kentucky, and it has a new name: Camp Cherokee. While it kind of looks the same, it will never be the same. It just doesn’t get the attention it did 30 years ago, when it was occupied by happy throngs of boisterous scouts.
In September 1999, six of us old guys got together and spent the night in the cabin. We didn’t sleep. We sat on the porch in chairs and reminisced the entire night. The propane lantern softly hissed as it lit up the front of the cabin. We all took turns with a memory and everyone added to it. Before we knew it, the sky was beginning to glow a soft yellow and was soon peeking through the pines. Where had the night gone? Once again we squeezed a lot into a little. This time it was twenty five years into about ten hours. We parted ways that morning, only two of us still live in Catlettsburg and the other four headed back to California, Texas, Florida and Ohio, ensuring each other we would try it again soon.
As for Boy Scout Rd…I think it needs a name change.

Camp Arrowhead...I'll save that for later.

MIDDLE BASS ISLAND CIRCA 1975

The decade of the 70's was the decade of catching White Bass in Lake Erie. The Walleye weren't the featured fish and we didn't have the means to reach them on the offshore reefs anyway, seeing that we fished around Middle Bass in a small green boat with a 7.5 Sears Ted Williams motor.
Pop Pop and I, sometimes Dad and Herman always stayed at Beer's Cottages right on the shore on the island's east end. We usually stayed in the first cottage beside the road. It was probably 30 feet from the waters edge and 20 from the fish cleaning table. The aroma was something you got used to very quick. The cottages were sparse, concrete floor, drapes for doors on the bedrooms, a table, four chairs, penciled tallies of daily catches on the door frame beside the fridge, a screen door complete with holes and a layer of dead flying bugs at least an inch thick in every window sill. Just perfect for guys that only came there to fish.

The days were spent following the flocks of gulls that fed on the baitfish chased to the surface by the great schools of White Bass. Find the birds find the fish. We would cast white Shyster spinners and double rigged white doll flies on a three-way swivel into the schools. The action was fast and furious, we shook the fish loose and let them flop in the floor of the boat. We often stood ankle deep in fish, waiting to put them into a bucket when the school disappeared.

Evenings were filled with camaraderie around the fish-cleaning table. Rapala fillet knives gleamed beneath the glaring light of the street lamp. We all were coated in a glistening layer of OFF as the swarms of bugs hovered between us and the light. The water streamed constantly across the table cascading onto the granite rocks and back into the lake. My job was to cut out the belly bones and occasionally swipe the knives across the old concave Arkansas oilstone to keep the work going smoothly. The fillet's were bagged and wrapped in paper and deposited into the freezer at the office.

This was the routine. Day in day out, but that was why we were there. Having fun and anticipating the great meals of fried fish to come later in the year.

Sometimes in the late evenings, we would drive to the other end of the island to the abandoned Lonz Winery dock. A massive concrete structure, broken down and kinda spooky. We would set up at the end of the dock and put nightcrawlers on the bottom and catch Channel Catfish. I remember nights of 30 to 40 fish, all around two pounds each.

One particular night at the dock was very memorable...and still haunts me to this day.

I was around twelve years old and I had a brand new EverReady flashlight. It was at least a foot long and shiny. That night the fishing was slow and we sat there listening to the Red's on the radio. The lights of Put-In-Bay were visible several miles across the lake and the towering Perry's Monument was ablaze with white light. My new flashlight had a button that let me flash signals much like 'Morse code.' Probably a mile away I saw the running lights of a boat heading toward South Bass. I pointed my light and began blinking some kind of unknown message. To my surprise which soon turned to outright fear; the boat started turning and headed straight for us. It was running full speed and kept getting larger and larger, and I kept getting smaller and smaller. A giant searchlight came on and blinded us just as the first big wave washed over the dock sending our gear and my tackle box over the other side.(luckily it floated and I retrieved it later) As the boat turned sideways, it was then we saw the markings...Coast Guard! Must have been a fifty footer! The loudspeaker boomed with the voice of the Captain asking if we needed help? Pop Pop yelled back "NO! we're just fishing". The Captain said he saw a flashing light and thought we were in trouble. "We didn't flash any lights" was the reply.

I tried to hide!

The boat left and we gathered our wet belongings. Pop Pop said "someone probably walked in front of the Coleman lantern."


I never fessed-up. Until now.

There were other trips back to Middle Bass, but none ever topped the night I signaled the Coast Guard Cutter.