I copied this image from https://pixabay.com/images/search/toy%20store/
This is my post for #freewriters Wednesday prompt toy store hosted by @mariannewest
I worried and looked forward to Christmas when my kids were small. Worried because buying for 5 kids on a commercial fisherman salary was not an easy task. But God always provided. They never had what I would call a bad Christmas. I spent several Christmas's shopping at a toy store the last week before Christmas, I can even remember a couple of times shopping 2 days before Christmas. I did not like this because the shelves were bare. But they were happy with the items that I found.
The reason that I shopped this late was the fish did not "move" until then. We caught mullet when they were ready to go spawn. Chinese bought the roe (their eggs) and they paid a good price for them. They believed that they were an aphrodisiac. The mullet spawn in the ocean but stayed up the creek until they were ready to spawn. It was illegal for us to catch them up the creek. We waited just outside of it for them to head to the ocean.
My husband had figured out what conditions made them move, and we would be there before daylight. It always seemed to be right before Christmas and we would set our nets and have a 2 to 3 thousand dollar paycheck from one set. The best set that we had was for a little over 10 thousand dollars.
When we got there 3 out of town boats were there, but they were all sleeping. They had been trying to sneak up the creek and catch them illegally but the Marine Patrol showed up and kept them out.
One guy was supposed to stay awake and watch for the fish to move but he fell asleep. When we arrived we saw one pelican dive and catch a big mullet, my husband said that he would set south and for me to go just north of him and set my net. I have always wished for a video of this. There were hundreds of fish in the air. It was an amazing sight.
With all of the noise going on, we woke the 3 sleeping boats. One guy said that he thought someone was shooting at him. It was the sound of our leadlines hitting the stern of our boats as the nets ran out.
My sister was crossing the bridge and saw what was going on, she parked her car and walked down to the shoreline, she waved me to come in, so I picked her up and she helped me get my net back.
This year all of the kids got new bicycles. And on New Year's Eve, some kids stole all 5 bikes. I had taken pictures of them with their bikes and took these pictures with me and knocked on every door in our housing development. A few days later a man called me and said he knew where the bikes were at. His son was one of the thieves. I told him that as long as he would handle his son and we got the bikes back, we would not involve the law. He told me that not only his son would be handled but he had talked to the fathers of the others, this was the way that I felt it should be handled.....
We only caught 4 pompano today, (I caught 3 of them) hehehehe, (did I laugh?) they weighed 8 pounds.
the picture was taken by me