My dad actually had a fishing boat for a little while. Nothing fancy. Just kind of a – I don’t know how many people could have even fit in it, you know, maybe four at the most but probably more like two. Uh, I don’t remember ever going out fishing with him, but I remember it sitting by the house when he used to go and he used to have fishing poles and tackle boxes and, and all of that in, in the garage.
Um, but I do remember – my grandpa was also a fisherman, my mom’s dad. And he used to go on fishing trips up in the UP. And my dad went on a couple of those trips, and even my mom when she was in high school and college, she would go with him sometimes on those trips. I don’t know if she actually fished or if she just went along, uh, on the trip. I sh-, I should ask her if she actually fished. But I never went on any of those trips with him.
But my grandparents rented a cottage, um, on Stevens Lake every summer for at least a week. And usually sometime around the Cherry Festival, uh, in, in Traverse City because it was always a time when everybody was trying to avoid all the crowds and the traffic and the – just so many people coming to the city. So they would – they live right – they lived right downtown. So they would notice the influx of people a lot more than, than we did living, you know, six miles out of town and kind of in, in the country. But they would rent this cottage, and it was a no wake lake – small lake up in, up in northern Michigan and the lake – I don’t rem- – I’m pretty sure – I don’t remember if we had to bring –? I don’t think we had to bring a canoe or a boat. I think they had them there that we could use.
So we would sometimes go out fishing on the lake and I remember – and this was when I had already become a vegetarian. And I remember thinking as I was out there fishing – I would never keep any of the fish, but at some point I sort of got the, the idea that – how, how not real pleasant it would be to have a hook through your lip and to be out of the water flappin’ around and then to be thrown back into the water. Like, that just did not seem like a nice thing to happen. So I, I quickly stopped fishing. And again, I, I never really ate the fish, so I never wanted to keep the fish, so it seemed sort of like a pointless activity and sort of a cruel activity at that point.
So, um, so yeah, I, I sometimes did still go out in the boat or in the canoe with my cousins or my, my grandpa, but I never – I, I did not fish for very long, because again, after thinking about it, it just did not seem like the thing that needed to happen. So – and that was the last time I’ve come anywhere close to, to fishing or hunting. Neither one. Again, being a vegetarian sort of maybe nixes that from, from something that I would do.