Its only been 43 years since I’ve been to the Base lake in Nebraska I’m probably    old enough now to revisit the memory. In 1962 my Dad was assigned to Offutt AFB, Omaha Nebraska. Offutt (or Awful) AFB was the home of Strategic Air Command.  In case your too young to remember SAC’s mission was to keep a fleet of B-52 bombers in the air loaded with nuclear weapons twenty four seven in case the Soviet’s decided to try a first strike: the doctrine of mutual destruction. You might also remember that October 1962 was the height of Cuban missile crisis, I was 10 my brother Gary was 8, interesting times.

            None of this made much difference to Gary or myself we were just kids; school was enough to sweat out. In the summer we had it made, just lying in the cool basement watching a little black and white TV with our psycho dachshund, Han’s. The dog was full size pure breed Dachshund about 35 pounds of terror, he would hide soup bones in the sofa and growl like a Doberman if you happened to sit down, a wiener dog with a bad attitude. Horrifying.

            Outside the basement the summer Midwest temps were over a hundred with as much humidly. One thing my Dad the old Chief couldn’t stand was to see his boys relaxing, he had lots of yard jobs to keep us busy, sometimes not even our yard.

 Then one day he had an epiphany “ You two are going to the Base Lake tomorrow and your taking the Dog”. Fishing was always a part of his life and he passed it on to us like a family business. The next morning early we made a lunch, ate some eggs, found the dogs chain and the Chief took us to the Base lake.

            The lake was five acres of sludgy still water sitting in the middle of a cow pasture. After unloading our fishing gear, lunch and the Dog, Dad drove off leaving us stranded in this sweltering prairie landscape. The lake supposedly had some bass in it but we just sat sweating, catching sunfish by the thousands no bait needed. I’ve never heard the expression: smart as a sunfish.

            Of course the first thing the Dog would do is run off a couple miles and start digging up a varmint or a snake. This added some anxiety to the adventure because if we lost the Dog there would be big trouble when the Chief returned. I must say by the end of summer we didn’t really care if the dog ever came back.

             In hindsight realize that Dad was not trying to torture us at the base lake, he really thought that was a great place for us to be. Nobody’s perfect, after all it was his one and only shot at parenting.

 To this day I never fly fish in lakes, although I know the trout are usually larger and the fishing is easier.