Pine Knot News - A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news

I got a fishing merit badge as a Boy Scout, not because I loved to fish and had grown up fishing. No, I precisely got the merit badge in spite of growing up without fishing, and having little idea of what fishing actually was all about.

My city-slicker father, Tony, wasn’t too into outdoor sports. He taught me how to shoot a cue ball and mix a Manhattan, but building a fire was beyond him. His idea of roughing it was staying at a hotel without room service. My mother loved him for those reasons and more, I presume, as she also was not a big outdoors person.

So I was lucky that one of my b...