Month: October 2017

Gone fishin’ (for an explanation of what in the world you’re talking about)

Post author By Mike Gibbons
Post date October 29, 2017
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As a parent of two teenagers, I spent a good bit of my time asking, “What are you talking about?”

This can range anywhere from goings on at school to current pop culture to inside jokes that I probably don’t want to know what they are talking about.

But of late, the main cause of this line of questioning has been related to fishing.

Yes, fishing. My son got into fishing a few years ago, and he was content fishing the way I did as a kid: You had a pole and maybe some worms or two and you just did your thing. The point really wasn’t to catch fish, but rather enjoy some time at the water. If you caught a fish, bonus time!

What a difference a few years makes. Since that time, he has taken himself to the furthest corners of the online fishing universe. He follows fishing YouTubers and is constantly watching to learn new techniques. (From some of these YouTubers, I have learned there are a surprisingly high number of people who fish in urban sewers.)

And he studies up on various lures and fishing add ons. This is where we have found a great divide.

My fishing gear vocabulary consists of pretty much rod, reel, line, hook, weight, bobber and bait. And that has served me pretty well for most of my life.

Not Parker. He has amassed multiple rods and multiple tackle boxes for different occasions. Every month or so, he spends some time on the floor, rearranging his tackle boxes and working on his lures.

Speaking of lures, in my youth, there were, simply, lures. I was an unrefined fisherman. My son delights in telling me about all of the lures he has and their functions. And when he has saved up some money to go buy some, I stand utterly clueless as we are at the sporting goods store and he tells me is looking for, among other things, a lipless crank bait, a swim jig, a jerk bait, a senko, a rattletrap, a whopper plopper or a chatter bait. He will pace the aisles, and say, “Dad, I can’t find a buzz bait.” I am pretty much as helpful as a hologram at that point, because I can’t find something if I have no clue what it is.

We also got him something called Mystery Tackle Box for his birthday. This is something that arrives each month in the mail, and it contains a handful of “mystery” lures. This is pretty much the highlight of his month, and something I proudly lord over him.

ME: (Holding the box high in the air): Look what arrived today!

HIM: MYSTERY TACKLE BOX!!!

ME: (extending it a little higher)

HIM: I know. Homework and room cleaned…

One month, the box came, and once I finally stopped being mean making him do homework first he tore into it. He looked at the contents list and screamed, “OHMIGOD! A Project Z Shroomz Micro Finesse jig!!!”

I responded, “What are you talking about?”

He explained it to me, but was speaking at such a fast rate I have no idea what he said. As he searched the box, he found the packaging for this prized inclusion. And he saw it was empty. Somewhere along the way, the packaging had come open and Project Z Shroomz Micro Finesse jig had not made the journey. The look on his face was as if I had said, “Hey, by the way, Christmas, Star Wars and Alabama football have all been canceled forever. Also we sold the dogs.”

I assured him the folks at MTB would take care of this, and a quick email exchange confirmed just that. In no time they had righted the situation, and a package arrived a few days later. As my son was frantically tearing open the package, he again explained to me just what this exciting addition to his collection would be used for.

I responded, obviously, with, “What are you talking about?”

Mike Gibbons was born and raised in Aiken, S.C. A graduate of the University of Alabama, he now lives in Mt. Pleasant. You can e-mail him at scmgibbons@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @StandardMike.

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Ghosts and goblins and scaredy cats

Post author By Mike Gibbons
Post date October 20, 2017
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I love Halloween. As I write this column, my wife is wearing a witch’s hat and decorating the inside of our house with various Halloween themed knick-knacks. (Seriously. She’s hardcore with this stuff.)

We moved from my hometown about three years ago. Back at our old house, our neighborhood was the go-to place for trick-or-treating on Halloween. In fact, it was such a go-to place that we had to get the police involved to help with traffic control every Halloween.

Because of the perfect setting – flat streets, lots of street lights, and ample candy – folks would come from all over to go trick-or-treating in that neighborhood. And they came trick-or-treating one year to the point where we had a traffic backlog that would make Bangkok impressed.

The following year, we were proactive. Working with the local police, we had the entrances blocked off to cars, and those interested in coming to trick-or-treat had to park across the street at a nearby rec field parking lot. We kept count for a few years, and we had more than 1,000 trick-or-treaters each Halloween. And it was awesome.

Granted, some neighbors did not like the trick-or-treating onslaught. I respectfully disagree with them. I am all for anyone and everyone coming out for a nice night of trick-or-treating in a safe place and I’m happy to fill their treat bags with goodies. Like many neighbors, we would pull a table out to the front of the driveway and invite friends and family to pool candy resources together with us, so as not to break the bank on candy.

Our neighborhood now is still a fine place to trick-or-treat, although we don’t get nearly the same volume. Plus, my kids have aged out of the whole process, so they are more content with giving out candy, or, in some cases, just standing around and Snap Chatting.

So, Halloween, good. We all agree? Well now I have to say, “Halloween” bad. And I add quotes because I am referring to the movie. And I am not making a commentary on the merits of the movie itself, but rather as it is representative of the one movie genre I simply cannot watch.

Now, I know there are plenty of horror movie junkies out there who find this to be blasphemy. Let’s be clear: If you like ‘em, go watch ‘em. But I’ll pass.

I’m 44 years old and I know full well that a movie is just people pretending to be someone they aren’t in real life. And I also know that asleep Mike does not know that.

I know precisely the origins of my horror movie issues. It was the early 80s, and we received a free weekend of Cinemax, as the cable channels would periodically do. Unlike the other cable channels, Cinemax showed R-rated movies during the day. My mom told me that I was absolutely not to watch any R-rated movies. So naturally, I watched an R-rated movie during the day, specifically, “The Shining.” And I am pretty sure I did not sleep for about the next 14 months.

Having learned my lesson from that movie, I had a pretty good drought of horror movies until somewhere around 1996, when I watched “Scream.” At that point, I was in my mid 20s, and I was of course fully aware that it was just a movie and surely nothing that would creep into my subconscious late at night. And cue viciously horrific nightmares that kept me up for the next few nights.

I have not watched a horror movie in more than 20 years, and I plan to keep that streak going. As everyone enjoys Halloween in their own special ways, I hope that those who love horror movies will keep enjoying them. I, however, will not be partaking. I’ll stick to what I know. Which is handing out candy and wondering just how long my wife will wear the witch hat around.

Adventures Family

More Russells, please.

The world needs more Russells.

More on Russell in a moment, but first some backstory.

I had picked up my son from school, and we were stopped at a light on our way home. The guy behind me began honking and waving out of his driver’s side window. I stuck my head out my window and looked back. The guy said, “Hey, man, you’re leaking something pretty bad under your car!” I gave him a thumbs up, and then said to myself, “Great. Just make it home…”

I would not make it home. I made it another mile or so, and the temperature gauge began to spike. And steam began pouring out from under the hood.

I pulled over at the first place I could, a parking lot about a mile from my house.

My son and I got out of the car and began to assess the situation. And that’s when we met Russell.

Russell is a silver-haired gentleman with a cool and easy disposition. He told me to pop the hood. He said he’d call his sons-in-law, who live next door, as they’d be able to help out. They were there in about two minutes.

During that two-minute wait, Russell told us that he lived on the property a bit behind the lot, and that he was waiting for his granddaughter at her bus stop. The younger guys showed up in short order, and quickly diagnosed the problem. It was evident my car was not going to be driven anywhere any time soon. I said that I would call a tow truck and figure it out from there. Russell said that they could probably replace it pretty easily, as his sons-in-law knew their way around car engine.

Now, normally, I wouldn’t have taken him up on this offer. First off, you don’t generally just find the guy who knows cars who happens to be in proximity to where your car breaks down. But there was something genuine about Russell and his in laws that assured me we would not be harvested for organs later in the day.

They suggested I head up to the auto parts store around the corner and get the part, and they would tow my car down the block to their house.

Russell said, “Come on. I’ll take you up there.” So there we were, on a routine Friday afternoon, crammed three across in the front of a Ford Ranger, heading up to buy a part for my car with an older gentleman I had just met. We spent the bulk of the ride talking fishing, with him telling my son some of his favorite spots to go. Just a typical Friday for Team Gibbons.

We had the part in about 10 minutes, and we headed back to the house. They had the part put back in after about 30 minutes, and the car was up and running again in no time. I didn’t have any cash on me, but I wanted to give them something for their efforts. I headed off and grabbed some money from the bank. When I returned to the house, Russell came out, a smile on his face. I extended him my hand and said, “I wanted to give y’all something for your troubles.”

“Nope,” Russell said. “Keep it.”

In our short trip to the auto parts store, Russell had mentioned that he liked a particular restaurant, so I went back the next day and took them a gift card, so they could at least have a nice dinner as thanks from a very grateful family.

What could have been a really bad day instead turned into a really good day. All because Russell happened to be there, and his awesome sons-in-laws helped me out when I was in need of a hand. So as you go through this life, let Russell be one of your guiding forces. Because the world needs more Russells.