A Gourmet Lunch
One of the great joys of my childhood was fishing with my father. Dad always included me, if I was not in school. All my father’s fishing buddies knew I was included and they accepted me as part of the group. My father had a bunch of interesting fishing buddies. They were a lot of fun, yet also very dedicated fishermen. When you went fishing with my father you always arrived at the lake or river near sunrise. So, we started early. Two of my father’s friends – Howard Sherwin and Jeff Smith joined my father and me on this day. We went to Saline Bayou, rented boats and headed out. We went about an hour – not that far because we only had five horse-power motors on the boats. We were doing well fishing, but about noon, when we became hungry, we realized we had left the food in the car. Well, my father was not about to go back for food when the fish were biting, so we fished on and on and on. We finally got back to the car about 2:00PM and since we had started about 5:00AM we were all famished. Dad got out a paper sack and tore it opened and placed it on the front fender of our old 1946 ford. The fender of the old ford was flat on top and as big as a table. He poured two cans of pork and beans onto the sack. With the same knife he had used all day fishing, he cut up two cans of sardines and they fell on to the pile of pork and beans. Dad cut up Vienna sausage and added them to the pile. Once again, Dad used the same knife to stir this mixture. We had an onion and Dad cut a wedge of onion for each person. We opened a fresh box of saltine crackers and began to scoop the stuff up with the crackers and eat it. After a few minutes Jeff Smith looked over at my father and said, “Gee Bud, I wish Hazel could cook like this.”
Grady Hinton 