Talkin' Shit About A Pretty Sunset

My old friend Pete just wrote a very nice story about the time he was tripping his balls off when I showed up at his house with a giant catfish I'd just caught while on a date with a girl named Serenity.

"He dragged us out to stinging daylight to show us, thankfully parked on our lawn for easy access. He was on a date (really), fishing, and caught a big-as-frig catfish on the Wicomico river about 4 blocks away. He pulled it out and aimed its face at me and the fish gasped at me. I could almost hear it say, 'Dude, Dude.'"

That story is 100% true. On several occasions, I took different people fishing with me at that spot. The gay guy from work who had a crush on me kept asking to go fishing, so I finally obliged. I told him he wouldn't like it, but he insisted. When we got down to the water, he proceeded to squeal and complain that there were too many spiders everywhere, and he couldn't stomach the smell of the bait (chicken livers), so we left early. When I got to the car to leave, I noticed that he had written my name in the dirt over and over. I pretended not to notice, but he never got any more "dates" out of me.

The place where I caught the giant catfish was the same spot where I'd caught an eel a few weeks before. (Incidentally, eels wrap themselves around your arm while you're trying to wrangle the hook out). I took it to the roadside barbeque restaurant where I worked as a dish washer and cooked it on their outdoor smoker (chuckwagon). That eel was one of the worst tasting things I've ever put in my mouth. It tasted like the Wicomico river, which was located near a Perdue chicken processing plant. That night, Pete and I drove to Rehoboth, but on the way, I got so sick that we had to pull over for me to throw up in a cornfield on the side of the road.

Ah, summer memories ...