Can you believe this is the same bunch. Three of us have passed on, one or two could not attend the reunion…for the most part that is us…just a tad older…ok, I have been asked to name the little rascals…I hope I am not getting myself in trouble…Here goes: Back row, from the left, kid with the ball, Larry, Harold, Sandra, Norma, Cecil, Pete, Virgil, (skip to the short one) Gene (deceased), Douglas, Errol, Kenneth (deceased), bottom row, Elaine, Scott, Shelby (deceased), Martha, Maxine, Betty Anne, Billy Ray…We miss Gene, Kenneth and Shelby McCool, all from the same family leaving only Sandra..We were next door neighbors throughout our growing up years..At the last reunion we hugged for a long time, kind’a letting the love flow between us, filling the void that we both had been feeling, as she had just lost a precious granddaughter in an auto accident…Since I have lost all my family and she has lost all of hers makes her all the more precious to me now…Don’t misunderstand, I love all my cousins and they know what it is I am trying to say…We are talking about another reunion for 2011…I hope we can..Things change so quickly

I bought me a new rod and reel….open face…light weight…fits in the car trunk easily…Now if I can find me a fishing buddy and a good place to fish….I remember my Uncle Buck Young fishing on Coal Fire Creek…He lived way off down yonder a few miles from the city of, er, the town of, er, that spot in the road called Coal Fire…He would walk off from his house a ways ’til he came to Coal Fire Creek, then he would fish all the way up past our house there in Coal Fire….bass fishing..he caught a bunch….and he was very good at it…Uncle Shorty Bonner fished Coal Fire also, but he liked set hook fishing. He caught a lot of catfish, eel and grinnell…and he cooked the grinnell, too. Said it was good…Pop wouldn’t fix grinnell cause he said it taste like cotton..well, I never ate either one, cotton or grinnell, so I don’t know. A lot of folks say it taste great but you have to fix it just right and not get the fish wet before you fry it and fry it the same day you catch it…Uncle Dee, now he was a crappie man..I think he called them white perch. He was a fishing dude and my Pop fished with him quite a bit. They may have had a few swigs from the jug from time to time, but they were a lot of fun to be with…and they caught a lot of fish. They did some set hook fishing from time to time as well….One day Uncle Dee Bonner, Pop (Webb Hester), Cousin Cecil and me were out seining for bait minnows and Uncle Dee being taller than Pop took the deep swing out into the water while Pop anchored one end of the seine. Cec and I was splashing the water, hopefully running the minnows up toward the net. I never will forget…Uncle Dee was wearing a hat and had a cigarette in his mouth carrying that seine. Suddenly he disappeared, his hat floated moving in the direction he had been moving. Seconds later he came back up, right back into his hat and the cigarette still in his mouth and he never missed a step..We all had a good laugh over that, including Uncle Dee….He never turned loose of that seine and we got plenty of bait…I can’t tell you today if we caught any fish or not that day, but the fond memories were about being together and having fun, but all those guys have passed on and a bunch of us still miss them. Cec and I renew the stories from time to time…..A fishing buddy like one of those guys is what I am looking for today….No 2 son and I have been doing a lot of talking….Maybe one of these days he and I can make some memories for us…we’ll see, huh son…..