“Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

“Jesus was a carpenter. And a fisherman. He was a carpenter by trade, and a fisherman by the grace of his Father.

“Only, he didn’t angle for fish. No, Jesus was after souls.

“When I came home from rehab, my dad didn’t know what to say to me. And I was too embarrassed to say anything. Even my mom, saint she was, couldn’t get either one of us to talk to the other.

“Until one Saturday my dad got me up at an absolutely unholy hour of the morning and told me we were going fishing.

“Well, when we got to the lake, I wasn’t catching anything, but my dad was landing them left and right.

“Finally I broke down and asked him what he secret was. He held up this weird looking lure. It was a spinnerbait he’d made himself after decades of learning what fish would bite on and what they wouldn’t.

“‘The best things are those you make for yourself, son.’ He’d told me.

“And that’s what we’re going to do here.

“We’re going to give you another chance to make the best thing for yourself, free of addiction”

Memphis Note
My grandfather, my father, and nearly every male on that side of the family, has made their own spinnerbaits as far back as any of them can remember. It’s not that there aren’t perfectly good ones on the market, it’s just that the Whitten men are down right particular when it comes to their fishing equipment. They’re like surgeons demanding the finest tools for their trade.