We celebrate freedom this weekend, and better enjoy it while we can. When the media pushes an agenda, lying to make their prejudices happen, and are believed by many voters, the US and freedoms we enjoy can not survive.

If you read the opinion piece by Dick Polman on the June 24 Griffin Daily News editorial page, you saw the path we are on. I’m not sure who wrote the headline “In the war on American democracy, journalists can’t be neutral,” but that is the problem in a concise sentence.

Poleman writing an editorial is no more “journalism” than is this column. It is his biased opinion, as this is mine. A “journalist” can not write with bias – but that is where we are now. Since Poleman is liberal, making voters show an ID is a “war on democracy.” The “shall not be infringed” statement in the 2nd Amendment means it is ok for government to infringe on rights, as long as they meet his prejudices.

I get tickled, and a little mad, when I hear idiots babble about the new law in Georgia that stops political groups from giving stuff, including water, to voters in line to vote to buy their vote. In the little town I grew up in back in the 1950s and 60s, Mr. Bill handed out half pints of liquor at poling places to buy votes. But he was a democrat so it was ok, I guess.

The media has special protections in the US Constitution since a free and unbiased media is critical for freedom. But when the media overwhelmingly takes one side, covers up for wrong doing on their side but constantly harangues the other for made up transgressions, and is never unbiased, we are doomed.

With bias and prejudice on both sides being accepted as truth, and voters electing folks that will give them “free stuff” no matter what else they do, we better celebrate this July 4 Independence Day like it is the last one we will ever have, since it may be close.

In April 1974 Jim Berry invited me to join the
Spading County Sportsman Club and fish the April club tournament at Clarks Hill out of Mistletoe State
Park.  I joined and fished the tournament and fell in love with fishing club tournaments.

I have not missed many tournaments over the years since then, and the club has not missed many Aprils fishing Clarks Hill, including this past one.

I grew up in McDuffie County and went to Thomson High School only 12 miles from the lake.  My church group, the RAs, camped there every summer and I got to go fishing there a couple times a year.  My family started camping at the lake in the early 1960s, first in a tent then a pop-up camper.

When I was about ten years old I was wading and fishing around our favorite camping place, “The Cliffs” and caught a small bass on a Heddon Sonic lure. That was my first bass of many from the lake.

In 1966 daddy bought a 17-foot ski boat and we joined the Raysville Boat Club, keeping the boat under the boat docks and parking our pop-up camper right on the water nearby.  We moved up to a bigger camping trailer a few years later.  

Although I fished a good bit, I skied constantly.  We often left Thomson High after classes in the spring and skied until dark.  And I was on the lake almost every weekend.

College slowed that down some but I was only 90 miles from the lake in Athens at UGA. I took Linda skiing – and fishing – on our second date, in 1969! I think her enjoying fishing convinced me she was the right one for me, and 52 years later that is still true!!

In 1974 I got tied of trying to fish out of the old ski boat although I had made a seat up front and put a trolling motor on it. That boat had some good memories, like Linda catching an 8-pound, 10 ounce bass from it while trolling and the memories of thousands of crappie daddy, mama Linda and I brought over its sides in the spring.

Linda and I bought a bass boat in 1974 and I went to Clarks Hill every weekend I didn’t have a club tournament somewhere else.  Since I was a teacher then school administrator, I had two weeks at Christmas and two months during the summer to spend there.

I spent many hundreds of days and nights in the camper sleeping and eating when tired and hungry and fishing the rest of the time. I loved those days. My parents visited often, usually bringing food. 

Those days lasted until they died, and I inherited the mobile home at the lake.  That was a couple years before I retired and I planned on endless retirement days there, but the first time I went over by myself there were just too many ghosts at the boat club. I got depressed and came home after two days.  It was just not the same.

Twenty years later the memories have mellowed enough I enjoy staying there again, but it is just not the same, and never will be. I guess that’s life.

Clarks Hill dam construction was started in 1950, the year I was born. I often say they built the lake for me, but it will be there long after I am gone.  I want my ashes dumped into the lake so I will forever be part of it.

Mothers’ Day is always a bitter sweet time for me.

My mother died 19 years ago. She was my mentor for fishing and always encouraged me to go with her to farm ponds near our house, and she often did my chores so I could go even more often.

I have many memories of our trips. I caught my first bass on a trip with her to Usury’s Pond. That jumping 10-inch bass hooked me for life by the way it jumped and fought on my cane pole.

We spent many happy hours sitting on the bank fishing for anything that would bite. Side by side we filled our stringer with bream and catfish and enjoyed our time together. Later we fished from a small jon boat in those ponds, then from our big ski boat for crappie around bushes at Clarks Hill.

We fished many times from my bass boat when I got one in 1974. I would cast artificial baits for bass while she fished for bream and anything else that would hit her minnows or worms.

I miss fishing and talking with her.

Crossing the Georgia state line driving home from Lake Weiss last Sunday, I was reminded of crossing many state lines on my annual trip to northern Wisconsin.  For ten years I left Griffin on Labor Day and drug my boat 1100 miles north, taking about 18 hours to get to Rhinelander.

    I listened to audio books on those trips, they made the long drive better. But I also paid attention to scenery and the road.  When I crossed a state line each state displayed their “Welcome to __” sign and some had mottos or sayings with them. I started making up my own for each state based on my experiences in them.

    Crossing into Tennessee at Chattanooga and knowing the climb then downhill run of the mountains ahead, I looked for a “Welcome to Tennessee – Use Low Gear” sign.  My experiences on the interstates in Kentucky made me think there should be a sign “Welcome to Kentucky – Watch Out for Potholes!”  One I was unable to avoid on the interstate due to traffic I hit so hard it knocked my GPS off the dash.

    I usually got to Illinois and drove through much of it in the dark. It seemed there should be a sign “Welcome to Illinois – Stop, Smell Skunk.”  It may have been because it was nighttime, but it seemed there was a dead skunk every few miles. They replaced our dead possums.  At least hit possums don’t stink up the air for several miles after they are hit.

When I finally crossed into Wisconsin there should have been a sign Welcome to Wisconsin – Watch Out for Construction Barrels.”  Since it was the end of summer and it was still warm enough to work, it seemed every mile of road was lined with orange construction barrels.

My host, a lifelong Wisconsin resident, said they had four seasons there – Early Winter, Winter, Late Winter and Construction Season.  More than one year I was fishing the week after Labor Day in my snowmobile suit in the snow and sleet!  Another fisherman in our group said he wanted to invest in the construction barrel industry in Wisconsin.

Coming home, I was always very happy to see “Welcome to Georgia” but always wanted to add “Warp Speed, Scotty!” No matter how fast traffic was flying coming out of Chattanooga, everyone always sped up when they crossed the state line.

Now, on my trips to Alabama, I can only expect to see a sign “Welcome to Alabama – Stop, Become A Football Fanatic.”

  I miss cutting firewood.  A “memory” popped up on my Facebook page from just three years ago. A picture showed my pickup loaded with wood.  The comment from that day said, “not a bad hour’s work, especially since I had to gas up and change chains.”

    I had cut down a dead red oak, cut its trunk into sections about 26 inches long to fit into my wood burning insert, and loaded them in the truck. They were big enough that three filled the bed across, and there were about 21 pieces total.

    In 1981 when I moved into my current house it had a wood burning insert.  I bought a Sears chainsaw and learned to use it; I had never used one.  I also learned a lot about different kinds of wood, how much effort it took to split wood with a maul and the best way to load my insert and get a good fire that would last all night.

    The first five years here I did not even light the pilot light on my furnace.  We put a sheet over the stairwell to the unused upstairs and used a fan in the doorway to move warm air into the bedroom. Then one March while I was gone for six days to fish a Top Six tournament, Linda got pneumonia and could not get wood or build a fire.

    I lit the pilot light as soon as I got home.

    Splitting wood was always my least favorite part of the process.  After I turned 60, using a hand maul hurt!  A gas splitter solved that problem and made it go much faster.

    I liked red oak wood since it cut cleanly, split evenly and burned down to good coals that lasted a long time.  White oak was similar but the grain was not quite as clean. Hickory was great but I did not have many hickory trees I could cut, and I saved them for grilling.  I mostly cut trees that had died in the past year, the wood was still good and I did not remove live trees from my land.

    I liked burning pine and popular during the day since I didn’t need to produce good coals.  Both split easily, were light weight to carry and easy to light and get burning fast.  The smell of burning pine is my second favorite burning wood smell.  And the “pop“ of burning popular was not a problem in my enclosed fireplace insert.

    I never cut down a cedar tree on my land, but after having some timber clearcut there were a dozen big cedars that were damaged.  I cut them and used some trunks for posts, but cut most of it up into two-foot-long sections.  I would add one to the fire during the day and make the yard and house smell wonderful!

    Sweetgum was just about impossible to split by hand but my gas splitter handled it fine.  Sweetgum really doesn’t split, its twisting grains just tear apart with enough pressure.  It burned without producing coals, but it was the most plentiful type of tree on my land and was pretty useless for wildlife.  So I cut and burned a lot of it during the day to produce fast, hot first that warmed the house quickly..

    I haven’t been able to cut wood for two years now and have not had a fire for the past two winters.  Maybe again someday.

Do any kids still play in sandboxes?  I see plastic sand boxes advertised online, and they even come with bags of sand.  My sandbox was different.

    Daddy nailed four six-foot long 2x6s into a square, put a lip on top with 1x4s and filled it with sand.  To get the sand we drove to a sand road a few miles south of the house and filled the bed of the pickup with sand from the ditch.

    I spent hours making sandcastles. Many times they were made for toad frogs.  Tunnels were dug big enough for a toad and sometimes I would put a quart jar at the end so they had “windows.”  We caught toads and put them in the castles and tunnels and watched them move around.

    The most amazing sand structures I have ever seen were on the Baja Peninsular on a trip to the Sea of Cortez.  We stayed overnight in Loreto Mexico on the sea.  There was a big festival and part of it was a contest making sand statues on the beach.  Everything from forms of people that were very lifelike to airplanes, cars and buildings had amazing detail.

    A pier there was closed off and people were grilling different kinds of food to sell.  Across the entrance to the pier was yellow police tape with the words “Caution, Men Grilling!”

    I lived on Iron Hill Road, so named for the red clay and rocks everywhere.  Our farm was near the fall line where Georgia’s topography changes from rolling hills with lots of clay and rocks to flat sand lands.

    On the farm we never bought anything we could get for free. “Free” meant no money, much of that free stuff, like sand, required a lot of work.  Many times I helped shovel sand into the pickup to take to the farm for everything from making cement for chicken houses to filling in depressions in the yard.

    The difference between the farm and the area a few miles south is amazing. Sand Hill road is only a short drive from Iron Hill Road in McDuffie County. We never saw rattlesnakes on the farm but they were common in the sandy areas a few miles from us.

    What brought all this to my mind was seeing “white dirt” for sale in a local store.  Growing up, some of my friends at school from the sandy area brought chunks of this white dirt to school to eat.  It is a form of chalk and many very poor people ate it just to fill their stomachs. And it helped stop diarrhea.

    In the early 1960s mining companies came to my area and dug pit mines to get the seams of white dirt. We found out it is kaolin and is used for everything from making medicines and cosmetics to making the slick covering for magazine pages.

    Many of those mines were very deep. When they stopped the mining, the pits filled with water. I have never seen water that clear anywhere else.  It was a very light blue and seeped in so there was no sediment. You could see the bottom 25 feet deep.

    Unfortunately, with the steep sides, they were very dangerous.  Every year it seemed someone drowned in them on a swimming trip when they could not get back out of the water.  

    Its almost scary the memories seeing something as simple as white dirt for sale can bring.