Fishing, Ghosts, and My Mother's Gray Hair

About the Book

This is a book about fishing and some other stuff. I’ve been fishing most of my life, and since I turned sixty-five in 2011, I’m writing about some of my adventures, thus the title, Fishing, Ghosts, and My Mother’s Gray Hair. I recently read a book by another author that told of his fishing adventures, and I figured that if he can write about his, I should write about mine. I think mine are just as interesting, if not more, but everything I write about is not related to fishing. The book covers adventures from when I was a wee lad of about six to today. I moved from Wisconsin, where I was born, to Florida and then to California, and some of the adventures cover times when things were a lot different than they are today. Each place I lived had a direct effect on what I did and how the adventures developed. I’m going to talk about places that don’t exist any longer, and in doing so, I’ll try to give you a perspective of what the place looked like then and where it is in relation to that place today. With the advent of Google maps, I figure if you want to look up some of these places that I’m going to talk about, that is probably the best way to get a map view of the area and be able to follow along with the narration. I have a very good friend who lives in Missouri. He and I were best friends while we were growing up. We lived two doors away from each other and had all the usual fights that best friends have, and that’s what kept us best friends. Recently he made a comment that really brought our age (he’s six months older than I am) into focus. “If we hadn’t done what we did when we were younger, we wouldn’t feel like the way we do today.” Never a truer word has been spoken. So let me take you on a lifetime adventure across the span of time and across the country. Sit down in a comfortable chair, fasten your seatbelt, and be prepared to relive the sanity and insanity of a kid that survived growing up.

About the Author

Mark Kautz lives with his wife, Katherine, in the mountains of Northern California with their three cats. They live on five heavily wooded acres about an hour and a half southeast of Sacramento, California. Mark has been fishing since age six and, for the last sixty years, has amassed many amusing stories about fishing and some other stuff. He currently writes a blog called Northern California Trout (northerncaliforniatrout.com) that has a worldwide following about his adventures. As a freelance writer, he also contributes articles to the Amador Ledger Dispatch newspaper (http://www.ledger-dispatch.com/) in Jackson, California. He also contributes to their blog on the MYACHome.com Web site. His main interests are writing, reading, and trying to keep up with all the work involved in maintaining five acres of land. This is Mark’s first book.