David and Rachel (and Jared) were at the house in Casco from about August 1 through, I think it was, 5. Millie and Joel joined them there on the 3rd, I think, and we went up on Friday the 4th.
David and Rachel were impressed with how much Jared remembered about the place. When it was time to eat, he said, “Want fish! Fish!!” There was no fish on the menu, but there were goldfish pictures on the placemats, which was what he was talking about.
They had brought a fabric playhouse which took up a significant fraction of the living room, a Thomas the Tank Engine that you (if you were Jared) could sit in and pretend to drive. It turned out to be big enough for me to crawl into. At some point you could find me inside it.
On Saturday afternoon we went over to the association beach. I took the kayak over rather than walk, and kayaked around the little islands to the north of the beach. Past the first island was one farther out which I headed for. There was a couple sitting on their dock who greeted me, so I chatted for a while. A family of ducks, I thought common mergansers but now I think more likely red-breasted mergs, was puttering around a little ways down the shore from them. They (the humans, I mean!) come from Ohio, but used to live in Connecticut and at that time came up to the lake most weekends.
On Sunday we put the canoe on the car and headed out to Parker Pond, where Millie and Joel took the canoe out and Arlene and I tried fishing. I caught a small bass, then another one. The second wasn’t really hooked — I don’t know if the line got caught in its gill, or what. In any event, when I tried to get it off the line the hook was swinging around on four inches of line above the back of the fish. In flopping around, the fish slapped the hook into the side of my thumb. Ouch, and rats! Joel (as driver) and I spent the rest of the afternoon in the Bridgton Hospital emergency room. It was nowhere near as spectacular as three years ago when I had a hook through my ear, and didn’t really hurt much at all, but I couldn’t get the barb out by myself, and didn’t think I could hold anything with the shank of the hook sticking out of my thumb.
The same doctor who had taken the hook out of my ear in 2003 treated me. This is the Bridgton emergency room — he brought in a little plastic bin labeled “Fish hook removal stuff”. “All set. That was less challenging than I expected. See you in three years,” he said.