Holts win TNJ; dogs appreciate German history Under the Linden tree, over the Berlin Wall
Man of the Woods Experience By PDN Sports Editor Tom Firme
The third Thursday Night Jackpot of the summer was last week on Wister Lake.
Bryce and Ryker Holt won with 10.77 pounds, taking a $330 prize.
Sean Morrison and Justin Treat were second with 9.24 pounds, earning $200.
Misty Riley and Eldon Dugan were third with 6.67 pounds, garnering $135.
Dugan took home another $220 by catching the 5.31-pound big bass.
Joe and Jarrod Cruse were fourth with 6.12 pounds. Mark Wiles and Gunner Blaylock were fifth with 5.2 pounds.
A total of 19 fish were caught. Four teams caught the limit.
The next Thursday Night Jackpot will be July 14 from 6-9 p.m., launching from Ward’s Landing on Wister Lake.
The next LeFlore County Bass Club open tournament will be Saturday at Ward’s Landing on Wister Lake. This is the last open tournament until Sept. 17.
I was in Germany from last Wednesday to this Monday for my first intercontinental trip.
One of the key things that I learned is the deep appreciation that dogs possess for the country’s history.
Last Thursday, I thought it would be possible to walk from Checkpoint Charlie (the memorialized place where people were cleared to pass from West Berlin to East Berlin during the Cold War) to the Berlin Wall Memorial for a brief stop before meeting someone for dinner.
My traveling partner wasn’t so sure, but I thought the Berlin Wall Memorial was only a few blocks north of the Spree River, which runs through the center of Berlin.
If I were on four legs like a dog, I wouldn’t have terribly overestimated my walking speed. It was suggested later that we could have taken the subway from Checkpoint Charlie to the Berlin Wall Memorial (On an unrelated note, the Berlin subway allows dogs up to 1.5 meters — about 4.6 feet — and I conceived the possibility of curling a big dog in one’s arms so that it measures that length on the subway).
I awoke at 4:30 a.m. Friday, providing the amount of time truly needed to absorb everything at the wall after the seven-block walk from the hostel. For an early morning, plenty of people and dogs were roaming the memorial grounds.
Dogs were running around past the wall commemorating the 135 people who died trying to cross from the east to west side and the eight guards who died patrolling it. A couple of dogs sat nicely in front of the preserved wall sections.
One dog sat patiently watching its owner do triceps dips on a bench near remnants of a barrier between the the wall and a cemetery that it cut through.
I discovered that instead of being built in a straight line, the Berlin Wall zigzagged in some parts, cutting through the cemetery (which still exists), hitting a church that was destroyed because the wall separated most of its congregation from the pastor, running along part of the Spree River and going in front of the Brandenburg Gate.
Iron strips on sidewalks mark where the wall went, including where there was an inner wall to make it more difficult to cross.
I was struck by the variance in age of people who died trying to cross the wall, reflecting on how old East Germans didn’t give up on the idea of risking their lives for freedom.
Near Brandenburg Gate is Groser Tiergarten, a large park that I explored with statues, a zoo, so many different trees and a few beer gardens.
On the opposite end of Groser Tiergarten from Brandenburg Gate stands the Victory Column, which took nine years to build and was completed in 1873.
However, the chocolate replica of the Victory Column in Rausch Chocolate Cafe took 300 hours to craft.
The shop in the cafe displays detailed chocolate versions of several German places and things, like Brandenburg Gate, the memorial church replicated near the Berlin Wall Memorial, a German airplane and a MercedesBenz sports car.
On Saturday, I drove to the town of Wiehe in southwest Germany to see the home where some of my ancestors lived in the early 1800s. Behind the house is a pond with geese and beyond the pond is a castle. I climbed the steps by the pond to see laborers working on the castle.
The house appeared to be unoccupied. I also visited a bar in the town that is 300 years old.
Tell me about your outdoors related travels and send any photos from them by emailing sports@ poteaudailynews.com.
Recycle. Save the world. Find me a trail. Have a great weekend.