We are now in the dog days of summer. Daytime highs around 90 and lows at night around 70 are typical. When I am outside at dusk, and the lightning bugs flicker in the fading light, I always think back to my childhood. One of the things we loved to do as children was go fishing, and we got to do that plenty of times, but the best fishing for me was when we set hooks.
Setting hooks was primitive fishing. It involved cutting some green sticks 4-5 feet long, tieing the fishing line to them, and putting a hook and maybe a weight on the other end of the line. As it was about to get dark, we would find places on Walnut Creek that look like suitable fishing holes. We baited the hook with nightcrawlers and jabbed the stick into the creek bank with the baited hook hanging down in the water a foot or two. If there were enough of us out there, we would have several dozen hooks in the water. You could just head to the house and check on them the following morning, but there wasn’t enough fun in that. To really do it right, you had to stay in the woods all night.
The time I remember most, my daddy had driven his truck down near the creek. We had a campfire, food, and drinks. We would check the hooks every 2-3 hours. On one break, I remember sleeping under the stars in the back of the truck. I could do that back then without needing a trip to the chiropractor the next day. As I got older, we would take the motorcycles down to the creek and sneak some midnight rides on the dirt roads (which were all the roads between Jonesboro and Jodeco roads). It was a quintessential example of boys being boys. Somehow we survived, and we loved it.
P.S. Do you know where the expression “dog days of summer” comes from? It actually refers to a precise timeframe from July 3rd until August 11th. If you know your stars, you know the brightest star is Sirius, also known as the Dog Star. It is in the constellation Canis Major, also known as The Greater Dog. So, the expression refers to the fact that, during this time, the sun occupies the same region of the sky as Sirius. So, Sirius rises and sets with the sun. Ancient Romans believed Sirius gave off heat and added to the sun’s warmth, accounting for the extra hot days.