#5 in the top ten asswhippings of my life

When I was about 14, we spent a week on Kentucky Lake, mostly making the fishing good for the folks who came before us. (You shoulda been here last week, the fish was a jumpin outa the water into the boat) (You know the drill)

Anyway, as fishing was mostly an excuse for Dad to drink beer, which he didn’t get to do that often, we mostly sat around trying not to get sunburned.
One day, about the middle of the week, dad and I took a rented wooden jonboat out to an island not far away from the cottage we were renting. We were casting into the short, and taking a few crappie here and there, nice fishing. Anyway, we are sitting there, and a snake fals out of a tree, right into the boat. I’m not sure what kind of snake it is, but not being overfond of snakes, it didn’t matter much to me.

Dad, on the other hand, not afraid of any man, is terrified of snakes. And has a right to be, he’s alergic enough that almost any snakebite is a death sentence for him.

I had, previous to this moment, thought that Jesus was the only person who could walk on water. Dad changed my mind at once, as he did an almost cartoon like paddle and splash from the boat to the island.

I flipped the snake out of the boat with my fishing pole.

The snake headed toward dad.

Dad ran inland.

I trolled around the island for a moment or two, calling for him, and then realized:

I had the boat. I had the gas. I had dad’s smokes, his beer, and a coolerful of sammiches.

So I went fishing.

When the boat and I drifted lazily back to the shore some hours later, Dad had already been rescued by the innkeeper, who had gone to the island to feed his hogs, I was red all over from laying drunk in the sun with no shirt on, the bottom of the boat was full of vomit from me trying to smoke, and the vomit consisted entirely of beer, sammiches, and a few of the fish we’d caught earlier.

An asswhiping over a sunburn is no fun, but an asswhipping and sunburn superimposed on my very first hangover may have been what put me off drinking to begin with.