I wonder if anyone remembers when Hap Anders and his sweet wife Jo Ann ran the diner by the Paper Mill...I went to Haps place a lot when I was younger and he took me hunting and fishing a lot..I have some great memories of those times. He was on the top of the mountain with me and three friends from high school when I came tumbling down out of a tall tree trying to get a big coon to look down at the light Hap was holding..twenty feet and a somersault...
One night I and my wife's cousin Garr Moore sneaked into the fishing ponds out past Seven Stars, I believe it was Harpster's farm where they kept trout, both big breeders and younger fish they stocked Spruce Creek with..We would thread on a worm and cast by moonlight into one of the three ponds and soon had a couple big black garbage bags filled with BIG Brown trout...
We sneaked out like ninjas down the driveway and across a the field where we left the car, dumped the fish, bags and all, into the back seat, drove without lights for a couple hundred yards and drove like fools back to town..I walked up to the back door of the railroad car/caboose? Hap looked out and seeing us came outside and asked, "Nork, what are you two up to?" I said, "Hap, you want some really nice trout?"
He looked in the bags, got a big grin on his face and said, "Go around and come in the front door." Hap went in the back door and dumped all those big Browns into the sink..Garr and I walked in the front door and sat down.. He said to Jo Ann, "Give Nork and Gary anything they want honey, on us."
A little later we sat eating a hamburger and fries with cold pop and people started coming in after a shift change or the end of a ball game, I can't really remember what..
There were probably 10 or 12 people in there then besides us and one guy yelled ."Hey Hap, what's the special tomorrow?"
Hap looked around from the sink, elbows deep in fish and fish innards and with a big grin said..."Trout."
Everyone nodded and said that sounds good while Garr and I nearly choked to death trying to keep from laughing...
We never did go fishing there again although I continued to sneak into Spruce Creek a couple times each summer. I'd walk across the fields with a gun case slung over my shoulder, like I was going ground hog hunting, which I did a lot back then. "I'd walk down off the bank and take my fishing tackle out of my gun case , go fishing for a couple hours, transfer my fish and rod to the gun case, walk back out, waving to the guy haying the field and head home..
One day I fished up a little farther than usual, getting a couple hundred yards from the clubhouse and ran into a couple or three guys walking down the bank of the creek wearing suits. I nodded nonchalantly and turned and walked slowly back the way I came. I knew instinctively what happened.....They were secret service and were walking ahead of President Carter as he was flyfishing his way down stream..Harpster always released a bunch of those Big Browns right before a president came to visit and fish..If I remember correctly, Reagan did the same thing a few times...
Now, I would have stuck around and took the chance of talking them into allowing me to see President Reagan. That would have been something to tell my kids and grand kids about..
I wouldn't have walked ten feet to see Carter though... Never cared for the man and nothing he has done since he was voted out has made we wish anything different had happened...
And you all think you had full childhoods......
:fogey:
Leep: