A great stretch of business. Big trips. We went early. That paid off. In the dead of summer, if you don’t, it usually isn’t good. Over the past month, only one day that wasn’t good. Mostly, above average action. It has been good. I can tell you: July here, I’m ready for November. The days will pass and it will be here. And it will be good. How many hurricanes first??
It’s official: No minor league baseball this year. I figured as much. Still, I also figure when it’s all over and examined this will have been the biggest overreaction on the history of Earth. 330 cases in my county. 330. Out of how many million people? And, if you are under 50, survival rate is huge. I don’t know. I don’t see it. First time since 1901 there is no minor league baseball. I wasn’t around that year.
I had a flashback. Fishing the White Mountains, particularly in Greer at Eager. The Little Colorado River. River Reservoir. Bunch. Took a baseball teammate (Jesse Avena) and our team manager Turbo up there and it snowed hard. Great times. Big brown trout in River. I used to crawl on my hands and knees so they wouldn’t see me coming down the bank. Odd geologic features on the north face of River. I would like to go back there someday.
These virus instructions. On TV just now, they were showing me how to wash my hands. Um, I don’t need any help with how to wash my hands. More evidence that I am unimpressed with this virus. I made a stop, a doctors office. Conducting business. At the end the kid says “Where’s your mask.” I said it was in the car. Then I said to him “I’m the only one here. You have a mask on and I don’t have the virus. There is zero chance I have the virus so why do I require a mask.” He said, “Good point.” I told him the masks were a good thing and wearing them is better than not wearing them. It is all a matter of risk. I left, went back home and locked the gate in my virus free Neildom.
Overall, I disagree with how it has been handled. Protect the elderly. Great. Keep the world open, if you catch it, your survival odds are good. And, you build an immunity. Of course, that’s if you don’t die. There is no easy answer. I’m just unimpressed. Only one person I personally know caught it and he wouldn’t have if he wasn’t in a special needs home. “People I know who know people”, the number is up to 15. 15 people out of 800,000. I’m not impressed. Let the criticism begin.
The Skyway Piers: Operating at 50%. Like the beaches: Why? It’s open air and water. I still don’t understand the restrictions.
Alabama students holding ‘coronavirus parties’ to see who can contract virus first, officials say.
Statistics, statistics. Increased community transmission. Population centers. Stay at home orders. Red Zones. We are in red and I don’t know a single person who has caught it (except one, that one from living in a special home). Enacting another order? Science, calculations, research. Path to mitigation. Slow the spread. A boat taking on water. Information. Hand sanitizer. Mask. OK.
Change the name of? The Washington Redskins. The syrup one was comical enough. But with both syrup and the football team, why weren’t we offended 50 years ago? Mount Rushmore: Protest that. Why? The American Indian is oppressed.
I have never seen this much disrespect for a president of the United States. The guy before him earned that but didn’t get it. Anyway, the guy got elected and he has done the job. The hatred people have for him doesn’t make sense to me. A guy that has things the best they have been in fifty years. A businessman, not a politician in a political position. It’s what the people wanted and I believe, he will easily be reelected. I might not like him if I met him. Or, we might get along smoothly. We will never know. But I have respect for the position of President of The United States. I became friends with George HW Bush. I met W but wouldn’t say we got very close. In my discussions with HW, I showed him who I am. He was amazed and interested when I told him I was just a little kid but I liked Jimmy Carter. He liked Jimmy. He told me, “Situationally, that guy got stuck with a bad rep for things out of his control.”
Similar disrespect. A different national anthem for white people and black people before football games? It’s getting there: I might stop watching the sport, joining all these other people who are already there. Those people who are “there” are among the most intelligent I know. I have to tip my hat to their decisions. Their principles.
A discussion I never shared before. But I believe pertinent to the whole topic. I actually yelled at Bill Clinton. Umpires will confirm it. It wasn’t good. I had to do it. After: People thanked me for doing it. But, I didn’t undercut the president of the country. My mother was an Eisenhower guy. I can see it. He was impressive. I have a degree in Finance and Accounting but minors in History and Geography. So, I’ve studied it. JFK, Johnson, Eisenhower: An interesting era. The Cuban missile crisis, Bay of Pigs. Very interesting times. My father: Lieutenant Colonel Leslie G Taylor, a Vietnam hero. My father might have worked on more kids than any doctor in Vietnam. He never said too much on these topics. A Conservative, he said things but usually not negative too far one way or another. Unless someone really deserved it.
The great toilet paper issue appears to be in the past. I still haven’t bought any.
Worst company in America. Easy. It’s Google. This web site, the ads have been broken for over a year. I have had zero people at Google help me with it. Zero. My friends who have tried to help: Strikeout. Their ads are running. They say the site is earning three dollars a day. My total hasn’t changed by fifty cents in four months. Not good.
The DMV: They have the same issue with my insurance. It was fixed six months ago. Another letter saying the same thing: My insurance is not right. My insurance has been the same for 35 years. Unreal. A call to fix it: Your wait time is one hour, four minutes. Hung up. I’ll get back to that one. They will probably tell me to come in there. Sitting there is one of the worst places on Earth to be.
Online orders: Two haven’t arrived. One is probably just delayed. The other, maybe it just didn’t go through. And that’s fine. If I wasn’t charged, I don’t care.
The things people don’t know: They make life simple right now. There is a day coming where all of that changes. An American: The Neil Taylor Story publishes at that time.
People have just bailed on their email addresses. The last newsletter I sent out: I got inundated with rejections. I use my email all the time. I like email. It appears to me this is a world where email isn’t anything to most people anymore. I’m perplexed by that. The text message seems to have replaced it. I’d rather have an email. Easily I like email way better than using the phone for communication.
The ecosystem of fishing: The problems are still there. With the closure of the main inshore species, that is helping with those species. But what about flounder? Silver trout? Whiting? Things have changed with so many species and are they even aware of it? Why listen to me, I’m only out there five days a week. So many guides with so much to offer and it isn’t used. That is a BAD system. They have announced some decent programs.
One I saw was a new artificial reef. The Sean Gucken Reef. That made me ask Leiza “what happened to Sean?” The three of us were on the board of directors of CCA back in the day. Sean was roughly my age. A great diver. Literally, the best diving skills of anyone around here. He had multiple aneurisms and it killed him. I was bummed. I hadn’t seen him in about ten years, but still.
A vodka drink. Watermelon vodka. I think it’s good. New Amsterdam. If I die, it’s poisonous. But on day 3 of drinking it, I figure I’m safe.
No question: So glad I didn’t have kids. What I see girls doing, I’d have to shoot myself if my own daughter was doing it. Hey, a lot of this stuff is entertainment for people: It makes me sick. I’m conservative. You want to be a slut, don’t be related to me.
On liquor, I wonder what my father would say if he saw my bar. Spent my spare change on it. 74 bottles now. If you ask me: It’s impressive. Moreso when then next 20 bottles are added. With $1200 in business in the next three days, I can continue with bar expansion at my leisure. Or. I can watch the bank account grow?
The house: Should have done it ten years earlier. Where would I have been if I bought then?? I do like my house. If I sell and move, I won’t sell it unless it is a person that is going to preserve what I have started here. Ryan Bell, here to work. Concrete. Leveling pavers. Dumping shell. Getting stuff done.
Drop the voting age to 16? Never heard that one before. Even me: Better than most, I shouldn’t have been voting yet. 18 is an adult age. I’m fine with making 18 the everything age. You are old enough to enlist. Let them drink. Maybe we have more responsible adults later if we do things a different way. I was drinking at 18. It was fine. I know some people that are 50 that shouldn’t be drinking. It goes both ways.
You’ve heard it before. One of my best friends is an African American guy. I’d never call him that. To him, I’d have to call him an American. I’ve talked to him regularly the past three months. He wants to talk to me. He wants my take on things. I pitched some ideas to him. For me to do it, I’m in the clear. He told me “The fellas would call you a racist.” I said, “I know. But. Why?” His response was that he didn’t know. Anyway, what it comes down to: It doesn’t matter. He and are good. We will always be good. All this other stuff, we both just watch. He has been treated very well by white people. He knows it. He acknowledges it. I have been treated very well by minorities. I know it. I have acknowledged it. I have seen some things in my life I wasn’t happy about. Generational, I didn’t overjudge people. I did speak out. Not popular when I did, I earned respect for doing it. I love my buddy. He loves me. Life is good.
Back to fishing. So, no one has been talking about it. What happened to silver trout. 26 years of catching them without even trying and now, you really have to search for them and even then, you might only catch a few of them. What happened? Closures are helping other species but not as much as I had hoped. It’s been a while and redfish still aren’t there. Snook, still recovering from a freeze over ten years ago. Trout didn’t need to be closed but whatever. There are too many people now. The pressures people are putting on things are amazing.
The Neil Blog just flows for me. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t have the following. To me, the following should be 20 times larger. All these people that have known me my whole life and they never read it. OK. That’s fine. They didn’t buy my books either. Don’t ever ask me for anything.
November 7th: The Kayak Fishing Academy. Already people signing up. A good thing. I used to fill this. For a while, I scheduled them but I didn’t get the participation. A three-and-a-half-hour crash course on fishing, you’d figure people who it fits their needs, they would take advantage of it. Lots of time between now and then, it should be pretty good.
The following week: Terrific Trout Tampa Bay. Come to the Academy and then use what you learn to win $500 (or whatever the payouts turn out to be).
Rain is restarting. Two weeks of dry conditions. In the rainy season. It is time for regular rains. Nineteen days without measurable rain at Tampa airport. We had it at my house a couple of times during that span. But not much. It hit twice today. It’s supposed to hit daily for a few days.
Spam email. Robo calls. The Robo calls aren’t as bad as a while ago. Now it’s solicitation calls more. Spam emails are still 30 to 40 a day. Where are they finding my email address?
The super-secret stuff, remains there. The people who know, very good at keeping their mouth shut. It is how it is supposed to be. One day, it won’t be a secret anymore. For now, what you don’t know won’t hurt you.
Ending on a more positive note: I haven’t killed anyone. In all my years, closest I came, when I pulled a trigger and shot a guy. I could have aimed differently and had a different result. It was a super quiet story that only a few of my friends knew about. If I didn’t do what I did, that guy might have shot five of us. I wasn’t charged. They handed me my firearm back 30 minutes after they arrived and interviewed everyone there. Life sometimes is fair. In my opinion, usually is when you are dealing with the police. The rest of the world hates the police. They’re my boys.
In the next Blog, I will tell you how to get a kid to eat vegetables.
- The Neil Blog… - July 26, 2023
- The Catfish - July 26, 2023
- update - July 22, 2023
