A Slice of Life
Bill Lites
DiVoran never will forget the day, while we were there in Fort Bragg, that Ivan took me out fishing on his commercial fishing boat. He had a ship-to-shore radio on his boat for communications. He decided to call it a day when the seas became too choppy. He showed me how to use the radio and we called Dora, to let her know we were heading in. DiVoran remembers that, “Both men could hear mother and me, and we could hear them. They were complaining about how rough the seas were getting, and how it was making Ivan feel sick.”
“Suddenly I seized the moment to treat him as he had treated me when I got car-sick as a child. Growing up, we lived in a valley surrounded by mountains, and the mountain roads were full of ‘S’ curves which made me car-sick. Often Ivan would have to stop the car and let me out to throw-up. When I got back in the car he would give me a dose of some awful tasting liquid, telling me it would help me not to be sick any more. It might have worked for the moment, but was it worth it?”
“So when Bill told me the water was getting wild, and the boat was slipping and sliding over the waves, and that it was making Ivan sick, Oh-Ho, my chance to get even with Ivan. So I picked up the handset and started talking about the greasy pork chops I was making for our dinner. Suddenly Ivan broke in and said, ‘TEN-FOUR’ and the radio went dead. For us landlubbers ‘ten-four’ means signing-off. I had won the only battle I think I had ever won with my dad, and I never was sorry about it.”
DiVoran told me that she also remembered, “While the men were fishing, mom and I took the children for walks on the beach, which was full of driftwood and all kinds of other things which had been washed up on the sand by the tide. One of the most interesting things we found on the beach were smooth, round rocks that seemed to be heavier than most rocks. Mother told me that they were ‘Jade’ rocks that had been smoothed by many years of erosion by the actions of the sea and sand. On one walk my mother came across a dead fish and told me it was the kind of fish from which some people extracted the kind of oil that, after being processed, was the best oil there was for delicate uses such as oiling the parts of a gun.”
We stayed in Fort Bragg long enough to watch the fireworks on the 4th of July, before packing up our camper for the second half of our cross-country camping trip back to Florida. There were no fishing trips with Ivan on the return trip, so I will spare you the details of that part of our trip for another time. However, as a side note; during the first half of this cross-country trip, among many other interesting things, we managed to cross ten rivers (not all of them well known, and some with more than one name). They were the St. Johns River and the Apalachicola River in Florida, the Perdido River and the Mobile River in Alabama, the Pascagoula River and the Pearl River in Mississippi, the Mississippi River and the Red River in Louisiana, the Rio Grande River in New Mexico and the Colorado River in Arizona.
Photo: https://riverboattwilight.com/riverboat-twilight-cruises-on-the-mississippi-river/
I do hope you will join me for another episode of ‘Fishing with Ivan’ next week. Until then, stay safe.
—–To Be Continued—–
Bill is a retired Mechanical engineer living with his wonderful artist/writer wife, DiVoran, of 63 years in Titusville, Florida. He was born and raised in the Southwest, did a tour of duty with the U.S. Navy, attended Northrop University in Southern California and ended up working on America’s Manned Space Program for 35 years. He currently is retired and spends most of his time building and flying R/C model airplanes, traveling, writing blogs about his travels for Word Press and supporting his wife’s hobbies with framing, editing and marketing. He also volunteers with a local church Car Care Ministry and as a tour guide at the Valiant Air Command Warbird Museum there in Titusville. Bill has two wonderful children, two outstanding grandchildren, and a loving sister and her husband, all of whom also live in Central Florida, so he and DiVoran are rewarded by having family close to spend lots of quality time with.
One of Bill’s favorite Scriptures is: John 10:10
Old Things R New 
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