Let us go fishing

Let us go fishing

There are good people here in southwestern Nebraska! Just this past Saturday Grannie Annie and I gathered up two of our grandchildren and the three great-grandsons and took them to a “Hooked for Life” event at Harry Strunk Lake near Cambridge. It was a tad windy, typical Nebraska weather, but a sheltered cove was selected and fishing from the shaded bank they all enjoyed. The star of the show was our eleven year old granddaughter who reeled in a four pound catfish. Yew yuck she couldn’t touch it but later enjoyed a catfish steak all fried up and coated with crispy goodness.

The Hooked for Live venture is a love of youth project championed by George Huff and his band of volunteers. The idea is to get young people out into Mother Nature’s outdoors and enjoy a day of fishing. All tackle is furnished and the kids are “helped” to get the worms on hooks and cast out. Even lunch is furnished to all the moms and dads that help out. Me thinks that the origin of the idea is suggested in our Holy Bible in Proverbs which boils down to “Give a Man a Fish, and You Feed Him for a Day. Teach a Man To Fish, and You Feed Him for a Lifetime.” A highlight is a Christian messaged by local ministers.

Now few in this area will eventually fish for an occupation but just maybe some of our youth will finding fishing a great hobby that gets them away from their computer screens and into our great outdoors. The cost is minimal and thanks to several area lakes and many local sandpits close by the commute is minimal. Thanks to George and his crew it is all free to children under the age of sixteen and all that needs to happen to make it better is for more kids to participate. Stay tuned for the next event this summer and bring your kids, grandkids, or neighbor kids out to enjoy the fun. You too will be glad that you did. I recently visited with a local working mom who just raved about the swimming pool in Oberlin and how much her family enjoyed the fun there. For her the trip there was worth it and they plan on going back nearly every weekend this summer. Locally Ronda Graff has been pushing to get such a welcoming facility built here in McCook but evidently has run into quite a lot of resistance and nothing gets done. Fifteen years of no progress. Check the website on line to see a summary of the inaction.

Yes we have an outdoor City run swimming pool here in McCook built by the WPA back in 1937. Incidentally that is the year this old columnist was born and we both have considerable creaks and groans. Normally our pool opens the day after Memorial Day but this year is delayed to June 8th, the day that you will probably read this. The delay comes courtesy of HHS who certifies the pool manager and her staff each year. The excuse is “the pandemic” which put them behind in paperwork for some reason. Isn’t bureaucracy wonderful; they make the rules and then cause the delay in enforcing? Nobody wins in that game!

I made a quick tour of the McCook pool and it looks great, all freshly painted, spiffed up and ready to go. Even the weather gods are cooperating and the promise is sunshine and light winds with a tolerable temperature of 90 degrees.

The certified operator of the pool explained current operational problems with the 1950’s era filtering system to constantly clean the 500,000 gallons of water. Basically the water drains through a 12 foot deep bed of sand that over the years has degraded to about 25% of its original capacity. Rest assured though the water is tested frequently and meets purity standards for a public pool. A large effort of sealing cracks in the concrete walls and floor of the pool has greatly diminished leaks and the continued use of chlorine (like goes into our drinking water) to meet purity standards.

The good news. This summer, July 17th, some 1200 Nebraska youth will descend on our pool for a statewide swimming meet. The staff is planning bleachers and even shade for spectators so it should be an exciting fresh air event. Plan on attending and enjoy.

It looks like our current liberal progressive Democrat government is having quite a time justifying their “Lord” Fauci giving millions of dollars to the Wuhan Virology Lab in China to conduct ”gain of function” research. Research that is forbidden to be done in the United States. The Chinese Communist Military of course has their finger in it and this old veteran has no doubt that the end purpose of the research is to create a bioweapon. I have no facts to back that supposition but such seems a reasonable conclusion. For bioweapon look at the history books when during WWI the German Army used chlorine gas against our allied troops in the trenches. Those veterans are all gone now but in my youth I remember many stories of my folk’s friends that had been on the receiving end and their lingering maladies from being gassed in France. Evan more recently Syrian President Bashar Assad is facing criticism of using poison gas on his enemies.

Poison gas is a weapon of war and is outlawed the world over. A bioweapon, one like the Covid 19 virus would be even more effective because as we saw it is passed from person throughout the whole population. Just look at the massive disruption to the economy of our country and the huge number of deaths to a reported “lab leak” that a bioengineered virus caused in creating a world-wide pandemic. It is a wonderful world that we live in today.

That is how I saw it.

Dick Trail