Lumberjack Barbie Goes Fish'in....July 2003

My soon-to-be-ex-husband was born and raised in the Thousand Islands. All of his family still lives there and being married to him caused me to spend a lot of time in a little place on the St.Lawerence River called Cape Vincent.
"How wonderful!" You say, "Most people pay a fortune for crappy little trailers up there to "summer" in and you had a place to stay with family for free!"
Yeah. Wow.
We went up there A LOT!!! And I'm here to tell you - It wasn't no vacation.
We had two choices of accommodations. His Mom and Dad had moved out of the family farmhouse and into a 2 bedroom trailer. Yes, That's SIX people crammed into a trailer where you can't drink the water and Tuesday was the only "Hot water showering day." Of course, there was only enough hot water for one person to take a shower and it was NEVER me.
Our other choice, and where we usually ended up because it had more space, was the farmhouse.
Mom and Dad had bought their little trailer in order to let Cary's sister and brother-in-law and their FIVE kids live at the house.
Let's do the math, shall we???
That's eight kids...four adults...Cary's little sister Holly who was in highschool at the time and his brother Michael on the weekends that he came home from college...Plus all their various friends who were "spending the night."
Ok, I lost count...But at the very least, there was ALWAYS a minimum of twelve people staying in this house.
May I reiterate....Wow...
Now, you are probably envisioning a great big, quaint old farmhouse...and you would be dead wrong. The house was just of medium size and (This is the God's honest truth) was built for one of the guys that was under Napoleon when he came down the St.Lawerence River WELL OVER a hundred years ago. Of course, you couldn't drink the water but even worse was the fact that VERY LITTLE had been done to maintain this house over the last century.
The floors sagged so much, you had to start at a dead run from the living room to climb the hill into the kitchen. The toilet NEVER worked and NO ONE was allowed to flush it except my brother-in-law who had a special relationship with it. I found out eventually that all the pipes were no good and when the toilet was flushed...It just emptied into the old stone basement and filled it with sewage. Sometimes someone had to go down and shovel it all out.
All the years we went there, I NEVER took a shower once or allowed my kids to get in that tub. It was literally hanging by a thread, so sunk down into the rotting floorboards that it bounced up and down when someone was standing in it. I had no intention of being the one to crash through the floor and land in the sewage filled basement - No matter how much B.O. I might be emanating.
Live wires hung out of the walls and the woodstove that someone had stuck in the kitchen (It was the only source of heat) was NOT up to code and regularly started fires in the walls. Not a smoke detector in sight I might add.
Again, I say, Wow...
Cary knew I loathed going up there. Not because of the people, but because of the living conditions, dragging all my babies up there and the chaos.
So, Knowing I had never been fishing before, he decided to take me out in a rowboat on the lake and teach me.
It was April, 45 degrees outside and pouring rain. The fact that I jumped at the chance shows how much I wanted to get out of that house, especially when you consider I was five months pregnant at the time. Besides, I figured that cold rain was better than a cold and deadly shower at the farm.
We drove to a friends cabin to borrow his rowboat and launched out into a little bay area that led into the lake. Cary baited my hook and showed me what to do. In about five minutes, we had caught four fish!! This was great!!
We rowed out to the very edge of the Lake and dropped anchor. Man, were the fish biting that day. We soon filled up the bottom of the boat and I was baiting my own hook after the first five minutes. I LOVED IT!!
Cary was facing the shore and I had a beautiful view out onto the lake. In a while, I noticed a huge ship out there but I paid no attention, I was busy fishing. A few minutes later, it was closer...and closer. I watched it with disinterest until it was practically on top of us then I became concerned for the occupants of the giant vessel.
"Hey Ray?" I said, "That giant boat isn't going to try coming into this shallow bay is it?? They'll never make it."
Cary's head whipped around and when he saw who was behind us he screamed,
"Get rid of the fish!!! NOW!!!"
I had no idea what he was talking about but the panicked and sick look on his face made me join him in chucking them over the side as fast as I could.
The water around our little boat was positively littered with dead floating fish. Evidence of our guilt. Once we emptied the boat, Cary started rowing for the shallow waters of the bay for all he was worth!! Man, those oars were flying!!!
The ship came within twenty yards of us and I noticed all the dead fish were STILL floating around our boat. A loud speaker was turned on and we were told to:
"REMAIN WHERE YOU ARE. DO NOT TRY TO ENTER THE BAY. PUT DOWN THE OARS."
Cary was purple with exertion and I had been screaming to him over and over but with the wind and the loud speaker booming he couldn't hear me. Humiliated, he finally gave up and the big boat pulled up next to us.
After receiving our tickets for fishing without a license, we rowed in silence back to the shore. Finally, I could stand it no longer and I erupted into laughter. I Kept picturing his face as he was frantically rowing towards escape.
"You could have told me." He said.
I couldn't stop laughing,
"What did you think I was yelling my head off about?" I choked out. "It's not my fault you couldn't hear me. I really liked fishing though...When can we go again?"
He Shot me a deadly look...
The anchor had been down....