Mac would have enjoyed the attention.
At his beachside camper, grownups drank beer and retold stories — of his beloved dog, cheating ex-wife, and grown children who’d abandoned him.
On the pier, we kids remembered “Uncle Mac” as the fatherly ex-Marine who untangled our lines and grabbed flopping fish.
He spent afternoons mostly watching the horizon, rarely casting out.
“Don’t you fish, Uncle Mac?” I asked once.
“Every day, girl.”
They had found Mac, dead of heart failure, sitting upright on a bench at the pier. Some wondered why he hadn’t been fishing.
But he was.
He was fishing for memories.
At his beachside camper, grownups drank beer and retold stories — of his beloved dog, cheating ex-wife, and grown children who’d abandoned him.
On the pier, we kids remembered “Uncle Mac” as the fatherly ex-Marine who untangled our lines and grabbed flopping fish.
He spent afternoons mostly watching the horizon, rarely casting out.
“Don’t you fish, Uncle Mac?” I asked once.
“Every day, girl.”
They had found Mac, dead of heart failure, sitting upright on a bench at the pier. Some wondered why he hadn’t been fishing.
But he was.
He was fishing for memories.
