Wednesday was the 79th anniversary of D-Day, and to remind myself of the sacrifices so many men and women made so long ago I watched a couple of hours of footage that chronicled that important moment in history. Perhaps my interest was piqued because I had stumbled across some old photos of my dad, who was a kid in the Army at the time, in Italy and moving north, having been shipped there with his unit after serving in North Africa.
In the same bunch of photos were a few shots of my dad and mom on Gunflint Lake in northeast Minnesota, after the war. My dad was a good guy and as a kid I always took pride in knowing that growing up in Fargo he played pool and rode motorcycles. Also he fished, mostly in the Detroit Lakes, Minn., area, and I figure that's how he met my mom, a preacher's daughter from nearby Frazee.
Fishing was what connected these thoughts, and how it has run through our family, a common thread over many years. Dad died young, and I never did ask him what he was thinking, honeymooning on the Gunflint Trail after he and mom married following the war. They wouldn't have had much money, and the roads couldn't have been good. The adventure must have been the draw, and the fish.
