Happy Thanksgiving!

For those not familiar with "Dandy Don," Don Long (of LSU fame) maintains a blog about team happenings and news, and every Thanksgiving sends along a really heartwarming bunch of anecdotes from his childhood in rural Louisiana. The following "fish story" is from this year's missive. The whole message is available at www.dandydon.com, and is well worth giving it the full read, but here's the teaser:

Another memory I'll never forget is of another event that took place when I was about 10 years old. My Dad loved to fish and money was tight, to say the least. One day, my Dad was able to come up with 75 cents by digging in drawers and other places and went to Winnfield to buy an artificial bait called a Water Scout. He showed the bait to us boys and put it on top of the dresser before going to bed. My brother Tom and I made plans to get up very early the following Saturday morning and run down to the river to try to catch a big bass that we had seen turnover a few days earlier. We did not have rod and reels to fish with back then, so we used a long cane pole with a line half as long as the pole and would flip the bait into the water and pull it to the bank. The first throw I made, the big bass hit the lure. As I was pulling him in, the line came untied and I lost the fish and Dad's Water Scout. My brother Tom and I knew that we were in big trouble. As we were walking back home through the field we saw Dad walking our way as fast as he could. When Dad got to us he saw that there was no Water Scout on the end of the line. With tears in his eyes and quivering lips he asked if we boys had lost his new bait. We told Dad what happened and were depressed the entire weekend. Tom and I managed to come up with 75 cents and on Monday skipped class to go to Matt Milam's department store to buy another Water Scout for Dad. When we got home that afternoon and gave Dad the lure, he went back to the same spot on the river and threw the bait by the same log. He hooked a big bass, got it on the bank and saw that it was the same fish we had hooked. The Water Scout was still in its mouth and I was one happy 10-year old.