Dad's Worming Tongs!

In my tribute to my Dad, in "Happy Father's Day, Dad",  I wrote about  special electronic worming tongs that he used..  They need further explanation, as Dad and I used to have fun with them.

I have done a bit of research on the making of these tongs, and from what I can understand, they were powered by a car battery.  All I can really remember, as I was fairly young, was that Dad had made them, and they had block wooden handles with metal sticks/prongs inserted into the wood.  From the metal area near the wooden handle there were wires, which I am assuming must have connected to perhaps the electronic source, (ie: car battery).

Anyway, all I knew was that they were fun, and I always looked forward to the dusk evenings when Dad would bring them out for worming.  He would normally do this on a Friday night, especially if we had just had a good rain, as the soil in the back yard would be moist and a good conductor for zapping those ornery worms!

That usually meant that the following Saturday would be a fishing day!

Sometimes Dad would water the lawn to create the moisture, and then I would know that there was a strong possibility that the worming tongs would make an appearance.  I loved them for some reason!  Call me strange!

When it was just Dad and I , we would sometimes play with them, and he would chase me playfully around the back yard, threatening to zap my legs.  (He got me sometimes, and there was a zap!  Not a dangerous one - but a zap all the same!)  While he was doing this, our next door neighbour, Bud, would sit on his back step, and watch us, occasionally displaying his pocket knife, which he always threatened to use to cut off my ears - so no escape there (What a wonderful neighbourhood I lived in!  A zapping Dad, and a ear lopping neighbour!!)

Sometimes, for distraction, I would tell the neighbourhood kids that Dad would be worm zapping, so after Dinner they would appear, and wait for Dad to set up.  We all had worm gathering tins - filled with moist soil, so that when a worm jumped out of the ground we could gather them.  Sometimes Dad would threaten all of us with a zapping, and Bud would just watch, grinning, while he polished his ear lopping pocket knife.

It was fun, and usually meant that a good fishing day was going the occur the next day - sometimes Mum and their friends all came, and we went to Lake Geode- for a picnic and fishing.

I love those memories - much better than the computer games the kids play with today!