My maternal grandfather “Gus” was an avid boater and fisherman. His tackle box was about the size of a cedar chest! (At least it was to our “kid perception”). He had a nice boat, which was docked, at Hayes Marina every summer along with the cottage he had there too. We kids spent many summers swimming and “messing around” the beach and cottage there.  Every time I go past Hayes Marina (or whatever it’s called now, on Rt 6, many good memories flash before my eyes. Once and a while he would take Tim and I out in his boat to fish. He had a “secret spot” off Ruggles beach that as I recall would be where the lighthouse and a tower were lined up. Rats! I can’t recall all the details, but this system worked pretty good before the days of handheld GPS navigation because we would always catch seemingly hundreds of Perch in the days before there was a limit. To this day I have a liking for fried Perch! He taught us how to clean fish, bait a line, and remove hooks that the fish would swallow from time to time. He would even make his own sinkers at home from lead he got at the Rotary Printing Co. where he worked. We used to help him melt and pour the molten lead in the sinker molds. Other then an occasional few ponds and creeks, neither Tim nor I fished that much, but we had 100’s of home made sinkers! Our grandfather was a genius with inventing practical things. One of the most interesting of his gadgets was an “electric worm catcher” which we assumed he “invented”. (See sketch below). It consisted of two steel rods about ½ inch in diameter, which were bent at a 90-degree angle, and an extension cord was split and each end was connected to each rod. The gadget was pushed into the ground about one foot in his back yard and then plugged in. In a short time the surge of electricity in the ground resulted in hundreds of worms coming to the surface of the ground! When we asked our grandfather why this worked, he said, “They think it’s raining so they come up to the ground surface so they won’t drown”. This theory had credibility since worms actually do this during heavy rain. Ever noticed all the wormholes in bare ground the morning after a night rain? If the ground was wet and we were in our bare feet, we would get a minor “poke” if we stepped on a bare spot on the ground. As a result of this “invention”, we always had more than enough worms for our fishing expeditions. This sure beat our system of going out at night with a flashlight and trying to grab night crawlers before they instantly receded into their holes! Now if he only had an invention that would have worked for minnows when we went Bass fishing! As a matter of fact, when we were kids’ Tim and I discovered 2 other methods to catch worms also without digging. We discovered if we left the lawnmower running for a few minutes parked on the lawn, that this would also cause worms to come to the surface too! We figured the vibrations caused them to also think it was raining. Hmmm, I wonder how many worms we didn’t pick up drowned in their holes under the ground when they assumed it wasn’t actually raining when it actually was!  I guess it’s better we never know J.  The other method was to stick a pitchfork into the ground as far as it would go then repeatedly pull back the handle and let it go. The resulting “vibrations” also caused worms to come to the surface due to  a “mock rain”. Our Uncle Gerald (Our grandfather’s brother-in-law) was also very talented in inventing a lot of neat things. When we were kids, he was one of the many “cool” grown up guys that taught us how to swear, cuss, tell dirty jokes, fish, hunt, shoot, clean game, and play a mean game of Poker. Unfortunately, Tim was always much better at cards than I ever was. When I was in the Navy I got kicked out of more than one Pinochle game by my partners for incompetent playing! I was usually all right for regular Pinochle, but the Navy always played double deck Pinochle! I could never keep track of all those cards much less hold all of them easily! One day, Ooops, that’s another subject for another story! If you just cannot contain the excitement of waiting for another story, then check out the previous “card” story “The Ultimate Hand”.