All I Hear Are Crickets

I could have been a mover and a shaker

I spent most of this day cleaning junk out of my file cabinet. A lot of what I removed is now useless and I needed to make room for other papers that might actually be worth keeping. As I was doing so, a tattered check fell out of a folder. It brought a smile to my face along with a few long-forgotten memories.

Back in the 1970s, I was rabid about fishing. A lot of people were back then. Living near the Chesapeake Bay and the large reservoirs around Baltimore certainly helped. I was also reaching the age when girls were becoming more important, and that meant earning money had suddenly risen in priority. And my job at the motorcycle shop wasn’t exactly making me rich.

With no prospects of a better job in sight, I wondered if there was a way to lower the costs of my piscatory pursuits and maybe save a few bucks to spend on as entirely different sort of passion. Although I had nowhere near enough money (or business acumen) to open a tackle shop, the thought of somehow providing a service to those who enjoyed fishing crept into my brain.

That’s when I heard of this fellow down in Georgia who was offering advice to those who wanted to raise their own bait. And if you were successful enough, you could sell the excess to local tackle shops. This guy had written a…