As kids, Tim, Len, and I used to go fishing most everyday during the summer (when we didn’t get snagged to help with farm work). The 2 main places we fished were “Tennant Road Bridge” and “Garwood’s Bridge.” We spent most of our time at “Tennant Road Bridge” because we could hide under the road and sit on the old footers under the bridge. The old flat-topped wide concrete footers were coated with big areas of tar, and we would stick to it after sitting on hot summer days. Although a little thing like having tar on the rear of our jeans never bothered any of us in the least, one time we finally wised up and brought some empty burlap feed bags to sit on. The bags were permanently embedded in the tar and lasted for many years. We would spend many summer afternoons fishing under the bridge for Suckers and an occasional Bluegill. Our main objective, however, was to catch Painted Turtles. Tim was very adept at catching them. The best method was to lay our bicycles along the tall-grassed berm beside Tennant Road about 15 feet from the bridge, then quietly sneak up to the bridge. As we approached the bridge, we would slowly get in a prone position on the pavement and look between the road and the bridge guardrail. On sunny hot days, there was sure to be 2 or 3 painted turtles basking in the sun on top of the few large rocks that projected out of the water. Tim would then stealthily sneak down the water line along the bank then quickly lunge at them, and usually caught one! Our other method of catching them was to drop our worm-laden fishhooks in the water and wait. We could always tell when we “had a turtle” because the line would slowly move as opposed to quickly jerk when we had a fish “bite”. When the line would show the tell tale slow movement, one of us would yell, “I’ve got a turtle!” Then we would give the line a quick jerk and if we were fortunate, there would be a turtle dangling from the hook. The “catcher” would pull the hook out and the turtle would always “hiss” at us starting with a clicking sound, then “SSSSSSSSS” with its mouth wide open. This was BEFORE the time that I was later to have a terrorizing experience with a “Snapper”! When I had to list all my known phobias for my latest Psychiatrist some years ago, the LONG list contained turtles. When I answered her query as to why I had this rather unusual phobia, she laughed harder than I’ve ever heard any lady laugh before! She agreed that I had a very rational reason for at least that one! (CLICK HERE if you have heretofore not read my most “INFAMOUS” kid experience, resulting in my life-long fear of turtles!) When any of us caught a painted turtle, Tim would always take it home to keep as a pet. He kept them in an old double square connected washtub set behind the woodshed and beside our massive rabbit hutches. The tubs used to be used by our mother when she did laundry with an old ringer washer, which resided at the north annex of the house. When “all was said and done,” between the “Tennant Road Bridge” and “Garwood’s Bridge,” Tim had a total of 42 painted turtles in those 2 washtubs! Since those were the days before such specialty foods such as “Purina Turtle Chow,” or whatever, we would go out and dig countless worms and night crawlers for them to eat. Once and a while we would grab one from the washtubs and play with it. We usually poked a stick at its mouth to listen to it hiss at us and we always wondered how they could hiss with their mouths wide open. Our mother always worried about us getting “Turtle Fever” and told us to always wash our hands after handling them, which, of course, we NEVER did. Among my MANY Obsessive-compulsive actions, repeated hand washing never was one of them. The Paxil and other medications cut down on some of them, but not all since as I always say, “It’s not an exact science!”  Everything went smoothly with all the turtles until winter started to approach that year. We knew that turtles hibernated by burying themselves in the mud, so in lieu of mud, we just drained the water out of both wash tubs and filled both of them with straw over all the turtles. On a nice warm sunny Saturday the following spring, we decided it was time for the turtles to “come out of hibernation.” We went out, removed all the straw from the washtubs, and planned on seeing 42 bright-eyed turtles ready to hiss at us. Instead, much to our surprise and horror, we found all of them had died! They were all “freeze dried”! Looking back, I realized we should have put a layer of straw on the bottom of the washtubs first, and then cover them between 2 layers of straw! I guess we had the first General MacArthur turtles, “I “shell” return”! The following summer, whenever we caught any painted turtles, we just made them hiss at us, and then threw them back into the water. We then moved on to our next phase of collecting pigeons, but that’s “another story…”