When I was a teen we used to go fishing to Canada a few weeks every summer. It was my dad and a few of his buddies, WWII vets or that age group at least, and about as many of their male kids like me. This was in the 60s and 70s so they weren't that old yet. The group would usually be 15 - 25 people and two or three boats and three or four campers. One year my dad invited his friend Ken, and that guy was a jerk. He was bitching before we got to the first town 50 miles North of home, Lusk, and bitched all the rest of the way too. We kinda had a tradition of swapping around passengers in the trucks so everybody got new people to talk to for a while. By the time we had stopped half a dozen times nobody wanted Ken in their ride anymore. My dad got stuck with him, not me I was car hopping to all the other rides.

Poor ol' Ken, he had it figured down to the penny what fuel was gonna cost, he didn't approve of playing cards for money. He knew who got the best deal and who got screwed at each restaurant when everybody just chipped in, he didn't think any joke was funny, and he knew the order from those of us who cussed the most to the least, he not only didn't approve of alcohol or cigarettes, but would even bitch when he saw someone take a chew. I guess he figured someone was gonna add tobacco and booze to his end of the expense.

We all thought my dad was going to have the longest drive ever to Lake La Ronge, but we pulled into some little bitty town near the border in North Dakota and my dad and Ken were having a heated discussion. My dad kicked him out and told him to take a bus home or call his wife or adult kids to come get him. We all left him there, looking mad, but he was used to it, he had been mad since he left home, and probably was for years before that. The rest of us went on, told jokes, played poker, caught fish, had a few drinks, and had a good ol' time. Best joke of the trip was still the look on Ken's face when we left him at the gas station. We were still laughing about that one 30 years later.

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