31/12/2024
This is a wonderful story.
Love it.
Happy New Year.
Heath
"If you water your lawn for an hour after dark, take a red flashlight and go back outside—you’ll be surprised how many worms you can pick. This is a memory that has stuck with me for years. My dad, who always fancied himself a hardcore fisherman, dreamed of owning a bait shop before he passed.
One night, when I was about eight years old, he woke me up late. "Hey, Matty, get up! We're going to pick worms. We're going fishing in the morning!" I jumped out of bed, excited beyond words. We spent hours in the dark, filling coffee cans with nightcrawlers. The next day, we went fishing and caught a whole slew of bullheads. Cleaning those fish took hours, and I got a couple of spines in my hands, but Dad said that was just part of learning.
After all that, we still had a can of worms left. Dad wasn’t about to let them go to waste. He headed to the basement and came back with an old cooler. "Come on, Matty," he said, "we're going to the compost pile." We filled the cooler with rich, black soil and dumped in the worms.
That became our routine. Every few nights, we’d pick worms and add them to the cooler. It got to be so much fun that even when Dad was sick with cancer, he came home one day with three more coolers. "If I can’t have a bait shop, it doesn’t mean I can’t sell worms," he said. "Matty, you wanna start a business? You can make the sign!"
I was thrilled. I found two old planks, nailed them together, and painted them blue with big white letters: "Worms 4 Sale." I even added an arrow pointing toward the house. For an eight-year-old, it was an awesome sign. I dragged it up the driveway in my little wagon and leaned it against a giant rock at the top of the hill.
It didn’t take long—maybe an hour—before someone showed up. Dad answered the door, looked back at me, and said, "Matty, these guys want a dozen worms. You wanna count them out?"
“Yes, sir!” I ran to the cooler, counted out 13 worms (I threw in an extra for good measure), and handed the can to the customer. "Here’s a bonus worm for you!" I said. The man smiled. "Thanks! If we need more, we’ll come back."
I rushed to tell Dad. "They said they might come back!" And sure enough, they did. Later that day, they bought another dozen worms. This time, I asked for 75 cents, and they handed me a dollar. "Keep the change," the man said. I couldn’t believe it!
By the end of the day, we’d made nearly two dollars. Dad was beaming. "Your mother hates that sign up there, but when we tell her how much we made today, she might change her mind!"
And she did. When we handed her the money and told her we’d sold almost a whole cooler’s worth of worms, she was thrilled. That summer, we sold worms together nearly every day. I’ll never forget one evening when three trucks pulled up, and six men ordered 12 dozen worms. I packed them into coffee cans, adding a bonus worm to each batch. Everyone laughed, and one of the men said, "You won’t find a tackle shop in the country giving away free worms like this!"
That summer was one of the best of my life. It wasn’t just about selling worms or even fishing—it was about the time I got to spend with my dad. As I got older, I learned the real reason behind his excitement: the money we made was going toward his funeral expenses. He wanted to do whatever he could to help my mom and me before he was gone.
Years have passed, but it still feels like yesterday. I miss him more than words can say. That summer wasn’t about starting a business; it was about making memories, and I’ll cherish them forever."
- By Matt Belmore