I went fishing for a little while today and then got back home and had a cold piece of dew melon.

That's when I decided I would just sit down and type this out. I wiped my hands on a paper towel, but they still feel sticky. Dew melon is like watermelon mixed with cantelope. The green color inside really gives you a start when you haven't seen it in a while. It was on sale this week, so I decided to give it a try. I usually don't eat it because it costs so much compared to cantelope or watermelon, both of which I am fond. Oh, well. Enough about sticky fingers and dew melon. I was talking about my little fishing adventure I had earlier.

Let me begin by saying I don't think I have caught a decent fish in a few months, but I still try to sneak off and go every once in a while. It really isn't the fishing I go for, but that just gives me an excuse to catch up on my private time.

Everyone needs quiet time, time to think, time to relax or just time to be alone. Sometimes I even like to talk to myself. That's really hard to do with people around. Sometimes it is outside talking like I would do to someone else, just for the pure joy of making racket, as my mother used to complain. Sometimes I chide myself for a poor cast or give myself praise for a nice job.

Other times I hold entire conversations with myself inside my head. I've heard folks say that hearing voices is one of the first signs of losing it. But they never said anything about hearing your own voice. I don't really know what that may mean, but at least I have someone to talk to who knows where I'm coming from. I'm very understanding like that, you see.

Other times I just let the sounds around me do the talking, like the rustle of the leaves as a grey squirrel hopped across a dead limb and then climbed down the bank within 15 feet of me for a drink of water. I had never seen that happen before. They drink like mice, with their heads extended and their noses raised.

I found it odd that it didn't even act like it noticed me, let alone be scared. I watched it as it climbed back up a limb and disappeared from view.

As the silence settled back in, or what passes for silence these days, I started listening to the water.

There is something about the sound of water running that does something for me. I guess we have that feeling from a long time ago when people used streams for drinking, bathing and everything else. It would give you a feeling of peace to know that your water source was nearby. Now it just seems like serenity trickles over mossy rocks, unless of course you try to walk on said mossy rocks. That usually isn't a good idea without felt waders. It's a really bad idea in cowboy boots, as I found out as I tried to cross the stream.

I was doing those moves like a professional ice skater, but I kind of missed by double helix or whatever you call those things. I ended up wearing some serenity and moss and a bruise on my leg.

After looking around to see if anyone saw me (out here in the middle of this wooded stream), I just hung my shirt up on a branch and sat down in the sun, God's solar clothes dryer. In all seriousness, I heard about someone ordering a solar clothes dryer once for $49.99 and getting a piece of string and four clothes pins.

That's almost as bad as ordering those "get rich quick" schemes or "earn $5,000 per week stuffing envelopes at home." If it were that easy to make a living, we wouldn't need jobs. We'd all just sit around licking envelopes.

Back in the real world, I had to walk to a place on the creek bank where it bends to the west to find a sunny spot, just outside a little copse of laurel. They aren't too awful pretty this time of year, but that's alright, I like them anyway. I think they are just about the best privacy screen plant known to mankind. They never get too tall and they are green all year. Plus you can cut them off at the ground at any time after they are established and start over. Too bad everything doesn't work so well.

After awhile my poor old shirt had dried enough to put back on, but not enough to be anything other than damp. The only thing worse than wearing a damp shirt is carrying a damp shirt and trying to fish, so I did what had to be done.

I gathered up my fishing stuff and walked back to the creek, fairly well satisfied that I wasn't catching more fish there. Or any fish, rather. Up until that point, I had only hooked into a few pieces of bait any way.

I headed back upstream and found a little spot, fishing my way back to the car. I finally did manage to hook into one middle-sized fish. I turned it back into the current and watched it zip away, its fin protruding from the water like a little shark.

Get more tongue in cheek commentary this week's issue of the Alleghany News!

Email: allnews@ls.net