Downsville 2002

Yet another fun filled trip to Downsville occurred on April 18^th to the 21^st. It started off as it always does. Ken and Ed fished the entire day on Thursday with zero fish to show for it. Ralph and Bill fished for about an hour Thursday evening. Ralph caught six (small) fish and Bill caught one quality three and one-half pound beauty.

The evening’s festivities continued with the customary game of richard your buddy. Suspiciously, a number of the new comers did surprisingly well, taking the soup can quite naturally, and really appearing to enjoy it. There was some speculation that they may have done it before although perhaps without the cards.

Ken, sufficiently sedated, but still excited by the rumors of Al’s death, slumbered heavily while dreaming of becoming the owner of Al’s and living among his own kind.

On Friday, Ralph, the self-proclaimed best fisherman among us, gave everyone a demonstration on how to fish. We all learned that when you’re a jackass, saltwater or fresh water, it don’t matter. While demonstrating the simple act of casting a spinning rod in a large open clearing, Ralph managed to hook himself square in the back of the head. His hook set was so good that Mr. Knoll (during those brief moments when he and I could keep from laughing) was unable to pull the hook from Ralph’s head despite the use of remarkable pressure and a pair of needle nose pliers. That is one thick skull. So we had to clip the lure and head for the Walton ER. At the ER, the nurse was laughing so hard that she could barely fill out the forms while Captain Hook looked sat there with a pissed off look on his face. The laughing nurse was eventually able to remove the hook from his head by numbing the numb skull and ripping that baby out (click here for hospital report – really funny).

As if Ralph hooking himself in the head were not amusing enough (I now know there is a God), a couple of the locals who had a “Tattooed White Trash” sticker on their truck told us some very amusing stories. One gentleman was in the ER because his friend had cut his hand open with a truck fender. The friend laughingly told us that the injured man deserved it because the injured man’s son had shot him in the stomach when the son’s bullet ricocheted off the “shootn car.” Not to be outdone by Ralph’s puny injury, the pair told us that the friend had once accidentally hit his buddy in the head with a 20-pound sledgehammer while working at the asphalt plant. Remarkably, the recipient of the blow was unconscious for only 5 minutes (while his friends stood laughing) and recovered without incident. Their boss from the auto shop was not as lucky. After their boss rejected their advice to tighten the bolts on the flywheel that they were working on, the flywheel broke lose, striking their boss in the mouth and knocking both the boss, and his teeth, out. Clearly we had to fold. One shootn car, a 20-pound sledgehammer and a flyin flywheel beats the tar out of one jackass with a hook in his head.

The fun and fishing continued the next day and the trip ended by attending a hoedown at Duke’s (You boys ain’t from around here, are you?). Many thanks to Joe, Ralph and all who attended for making the 11^th Annual Trout Fest a trip to remember.