By JOHN L. SLOAN
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Sometimes on blustery winter days, I tend to think of warm days and pleasant associations with persons of wit and interest. Mr.Halliburton was just such a person.

He sat back in the bent and twisted Adirondack chair, made from some kind of thick vines. I figured he made it himself. I didn’t ask, it just looked like something he would make.

“As a journal rule we like to start them young, bout the time they is good weaned.” He leaned forward and spit well past the porch rail. I’ve always admired a man that could do that. I’ve been chewing and dipping for 50-plus years (nasty habit don’t take it up) and can’t spit past my feet. As a journal rule.

We were talking about women fishing and started with what in the hillbilly hell you call a woman angler. I just always called them fishermen but you can easily see how that might arouse ire in some of them. I don’t like the term angler, sounds too high falootin. We never did settle it but it doesn’t really matter.

There were six or eight female-lady-women types scattered around the pond and if you wanted, you could call it a lake. Anything you can put a boat on, to me is a lake. Some fished for bream, some fished for bass and some just fished to get away from their husbands. Having met a couple of the husbands, I could fully understand.I was sitting with Mr. Halliburton, a gentleman of several years and that is just an estimate. He was sipping some Jack along with his baccer and I was sipping an Alabama martini. That is vodka over ice. Obviously this was back when I was still drinking. Later I discovered that a hangover is the wrath of grapes and quit. The shadows were lengthening but most of the pond was still in full sunlight, a great spring afternoon. You can call it afternoon or early evening, whatever suits you tickles me plumb to death. The long porch afforded us a view of the entire lake…pond.