🎣 Sundays Were for Fish, Fryers, and Stories That Got Bigger Every Time:

We used to say he was born with a tackle box in one hand and sweet tea in the other.

Didn’t matter what was going on—bad weather, tight bills, the kind of weeks that make other men crack—he always found a way to disappear down to the water.
Didn’t need much.
Just a line, a bobber, maybe a sandwich.

He said it helped him think.
Said the river always listened, even when nobody else could.

But the truth is, everybody listened to him.
Because he didn’t talk just to talk.

When he did speak, it meant something.
Advice you didn’t ask for but needed.
Jokes that hit so dry they came back around to funny.
Stories that started with, “Now don’t go tellin’ my wife…”
and ended with us howling ‘til the sun went down.

And Sundays?
They were sacred.

Not in a church kind of way—though he bowed his head before every meal.
But sacred in the way he’d fire up that old fryer, toss on his apron that said “Kiss the Cook (He Bites),” and feed half the block.

You didn’t even have to knock.
Just follow the smell of hushpuppies and the sound of laughter.

We lost him too fast.
And too quiet.

The kind of man that left behind a gap,
not just a memory.

I didn’t know how to keep him close—
not really—until I saw this.

A glass fish.
Simple. Solid.
Infused with his ashes.
But it ain’t just a keepsake.

It feels like him.

Like the way he’d stand with one foot on the dock and one on the boat, steady as the day is long.
Like the ripple of water at dusk.
Like the kind of peace only he could bring.

Now it sits on my mantle.
Right above the old photo of us holding up that monster catfish he swore weighed 50 pounds—
(closer to 18, but I never argued).

I look at it, and I don’t just remember him—
I feel like I’m still talking to him.

And one day, when it’s my time,
I hope they put me next to him again.
Two old dogs on a riverbank, lines in the water,
waiting to see who gets the bite first.

-Buddy C.