finally fixed.

One summer, when I was somewhere around ten years old, my brother and I stayed at my grandparents’ house in Maryland. My parents were on a trip. I can’t remember where.

My grandparents’ house had a long dock stretching out from the edge of their property into the Wye River. Like this:

We spent a lot of time on that dock fishing and crabbing throughout my childhood. And it was no different over the course of that week. I have no doubt we caught some sunfish and perch, and probably brought some in for my grandparents to have for breakfast.

But at one point, I had a rat’s nest in my spool. More accurately, I had a rat’s nest in my dad’s spool, as I had borrowed his fishing rod. I disassembled the reel to work on unknotting it. I removed the threaded piece that both adjusted the drag tension and held the spool on the reel—and then I dropped it into the Wye River.

I was crushed, and my grandmother knew it. She took us to local fishing and sports shops to see if we could procure a new one, but to no avail. We never found that piece, and that Shimano reel never spun again.

Looking back now, it was probably a small moment for my parents, part of the subscription cost of children. But I never forgot it.

This summer, my son Calder caught the fishing bug. It’s all he wants to do. Knowing I was trying to gear up again—I was literally starting from zero in building a new kit—my dad.took me into his basement and gave me some old reels.

And there it was. The broken Shimano.

Between then and now, the Internet happened. I was able to source a new part, and that reel spins again.

What a feeling.