My younger brother, Bryan, and I would regularly go fishing when we lived on Camp Pendleton. Bryan is two years younger than me and we did and do a lot of things together. Camp Pendleton had basically three places you could go to fish: Lake O'Neil by the military hospital, Casey Springs up in the high country, or Pulgas Lake. This story is going to take place at Pulgas Lake.
When we went fishing at Pulgas Lake is was necessary to call first to verify that the Marines weren't playing War that day. You could call the command center and they would tell if the area was closed due to training exercises. On this day, however, nobody answered the phone. They always said yes before, so we decided to go anyway. We got on bikes with fishing gear in tow and headed out to Lake Pulgas which was located about five miles down the road.
It was a nice day. When we arrived at the lake we were pleasantly surprised to find we had the whole lake to ourselves. Nice, we could fish any spot we wanted to. Well, we fished for about half an hour, before we started hearing....."boom".....""boom".....and finally..... "BOOM". Then we were treated to a light show just a few feet above our heads. Which, to find out later were live tracer rounds.
A few moments later a Military Police truck came rushing down to where we fishing. They seemed shocked to see us there for some reason. We quickly got loaded in the back of the truck with our bikes and brought home. The MPs dropped us off and talked to our Mom for a few minutes about our fishing adventure. Looking back I am always amazed how calm my Mom could be no matter what my brother and I did and we did a lot. I am not saying she wasn't mad, just calm considered we were just fishing in a firing zone.
Next, another fishing story.
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