Whizzer Time and Fishing Time (219)

Just found this picture that relates I guess in a way to yesterdays story about two Whizzers...I see this picture was taken during my Whizzer ONE days...so it was the first vacation so far of my young life...taken on my 15th Birthday on a lake in Wisconsin on Aug. 25th 1953..My mother wrote on the bottom, (Phil, Jack and Ralph getting ready to go fishing)...So when it was taken I had enjoyed my Whizzer getting to work all summer in that first job...but prior to returning to school and then my not so hot encounter with the intoxicated gentlemen turning into the Dayton Cemetery in Oct. of 1953...

The handsome dude riging a fishing pole is Ralph Hengst, my brother in law and also his daughter Phyllis, mother of Rick and Kirk Callahan, and Roxy Winnings...A very fine lady who passed a few years ago from breast cancer. Matter of fact of all the people who were in this party my Parents, Sister Frances and Ralph and Phyllis, gosh they are all gone, all passed away. My dad just did not care for fishing at all, I don't think I ever seen him with a pole..I did see him shoot some carp once with a .32 calibur rifle in the stream in our farm...he liked shooting them instead of catching them...And come to think of it I saw him jump once into the steam with a pitch fork and spear some carp...he had his ways to get fish just not legally with a pole...Thank God he was not into dynomite.....

Anyway my love for fishing and maybe then passing that to some of my kids all came down from this man, Ralph Hengst, the best fisherman I ever knew, I think I said at Ralph's Funeral, "the best part about fishing with Ralph was watching Ralph Fish"...You just knew something was about to happen, he just knew where fish were and how to attract them...I picked it up a little as time when on and my son John has picked it up also, maybe better than I, but he also was trained by the master shown here...Not me so much, but Ralph...he was the best....This day and age he would have made good money as a fishing guide...His personality would have carried him even on the days the fish were not biting...I still think of the days not a lot but a few that he and my sister would stop by not too many years ago to fish in my pond, even then, things were about to happen when he picked up a pole....