Most exciting thing to happen in these part of the woods for years. We actually had an audience of onlookers that had heard about the big day involving the move of this massive beast ( AKA...The Blue Bomber.... ) from one farm to another, and then trying to work it in a tight spot to replace the wooden one that had been built in place years before with wood by our Amish neighbors, who have since moved away but may have been some of the best neighbors we have had in our entire lives. Anyway, folks arrived from all over, most of whom I have never seen before, or even heard their name mentioned in seven years! They brought beer, sandwiches, lawn chairs, etc, ( and KIDS, OMG.. I guess one thing I am finding out is that us country folk can do one thing extremely well
I guess it does not take to much to entertain us folks holed up in the woods all the time huh?
Now in fairness I have to say here that sometimes on a slow day ( Monday thru Sunday ) many around here have been know to show up on the day you have decided to do your normal "burn" of the trash/branch/leaves, etc pile that we all have. Seems that if we let it go a bit to long, when we finally light er up...well, it can be entertainment, enough so to grab a six pack, lawn chairs ( I am not sure anyone goes anywhere without those two items in this neck of the woods
and help "supervise" the burn-down...
The gentleman I referred to earlier is of the nature than loves to make things much more complicated and larger/overkill than necessary, but who was I to tell someone another 26 years my senior how to build a bridge when I have trouble changing flashlight batteries? He loves a very old quote ( German he thinks ) he often will say to us...." Why make it simple....When it is so easy to make it complicated"?..Occasionally I remind him that maybe that is partly why they lost the war when he gets so deep into a project he can't even figure out what the original goal was
We were actually able to have this nearly 30 foot, all steel bridge, painted with many coats of rust proof paint as well as the oak planks treated 4 times with waterproof sealer constructed for 600 dollars worth of material, and it takes a LOT of hands just to budge it! Of course, that is because over the years we have ( in his mind ) been so good to them he continues to refuse to take a nickle for labor, a whole summer of labor at that! We just treated them as well as we would hope anyone would for sick/old folks, we are not that far from that checkpoint ourselves!
Here are a few shots of it a bit closer, perhaps overkill for such a small pond....but we are not gonna sink into Snapperville this time anyway!
By the way, my bass guy appeared yesterday to visit his ( kinda like ) father in law, who is the 86 year old neighbor I have been speaking of and he was also one of the people that helped move the bridge into place. I asked him for help in removing more ( as many as possible in fact ) of the same size bass he caught earlier. He lives about 50 miles from us ( EVERYONE LIVES 50 MILES FROM US
but he will try and also give a shot at getting out Moby and Darth Vader AGAIN, a few of the really large cats you folks suggested we get outta there, and although he managed to hook up to them on a few occasions in the past with his bass rig and 12# test, it was a very short lived battle, line snapped a few minutes into the fight despite actually knowing what he was doing, as he is a very good CC fisherman also.
Additionally, I am gonna try my best to get one of those tiny minnows and get a pic for you folks to identify, I took him to the pond edge where he also saw them explode in all directions but he is does not THINK they are bass spawn either ( although we did see some 6" bass like always, no matter what time of the year it seems, lurking on the surface doing their assigned bug patrol while checking out the shoreline ) and he also said they are so tiny he felt they could not be over a day or two old whatever they were, most likely he felt BG or possibly FHM, although he, like myself, have no idea what a one day old FHM would look like. I know there are posts that help with that, I will catch one if I can and take some shots, try to identify. Whatever they are, they are not much bigger than a water flea, and there are scads of em!
PS....I know I have made fun of us as a whole out here, its my nature, those that know me realize I don't have a mean bone in my body, and the truth is, although I was born in MO, it was 60 years ago, ( left it when I was only 1 or 2 and only returned to visit my sick mother and father several times in the 80's until finally moving here in 2005 ) and I have lived in so many different countries and states it would be nearly impossible to list them all. I find the people out here for the most part to be extremely helpful and friendly, with a much more " whatever I have you can use" type attitude than I have seen in most places. Its unfortunate that I am injured to the point that I am unable to get out and mingle with them and offer some of them the opportunity to hunt/fish on our land. By and large, mid west hospitality is exactly what I had been led to believe over the years, I was not disappointed at all!
