Backwater

I dreamed about the backwater last night and I woke up smiling. I'm not sure where that came from, but it was as vivid as an I-Max movie. The backwater is a natural lake down below Old Dora, that comes off the Black Warrior River.
It was an ecosystem that had acres of lily pads, and all manner or waterfowl, fish, frogs, lazy turtles and cottonmouth moccasins as big as small gators. When I learned to ride bicycle, my friends and I spent countless hours down there fishing, exploring and swimming.
We used to camp out on the banks of that lake and fight off mosquitoes as big as small choppers. I leaned to play guitar down at the backwater.
I went fishing with my brother down there one time and he had less patience than me. I could fish all day without catching anything and I was fine, but he wanted some fish on his stringer or he got in a fowl mood. We had fished all day and were tired, hungry and we had not had a bite. Discouraged, we decided to head home. We had to climb up about a sixty foot embankment to get back to his car and once we were up there, we decided to walk back over the railroad trestle to have one last look at the water. From up there, we spotted a huge bass frolicking around in the lily pads. Neil was so aggravated, he took his cane pole in his had and threw it like a spear toward the water. The fishing pole sailed straight and true and speared that fish right through the back. He looked at me and howled and we both scrambled back down the embankment. He pulled off his pants and shirt and went in after the fish and the pole.
That story is one reason that whenever I think of the backwater, I always get a smile on my face.