When you are young, you find yourself looking forward to new and exciting things — many of which become a ritual as you mature.

As you grow older, you often find yourself looking forward to many of those same things, like Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving, as some things become less important, such as your birthday, which, after age 25, often seems to come around too often.

However, to each of us there are also other special days, many of which remain important for our entire lives, like the first day of deer, turkey or fishing season.

I know to this day, my brother, Ron, and I always talk on those days even though we live 1,500 miles apart. We have even talked when neither of us were in a position to actually be hunting or fishing at that time. We touch base and reminisce about the special days long gone by.

When you are young, having someone simply mention special upcoming events is enough to raise your excitement to an almost unbearable level. That is why parents know enough not to tell a 4-year-old on the Fourth of July that Christmas is coming. They will spend the next five months answering the same question four times each day: “Is it Christmas yet?”

Anticipating an upcoming special day is all it takes to get excited when you are young. As you mature and grow older, it is more about the events of past special days and the memories they generate that become increasingly more important. That is exactly what triggered this month’s column.

When my brother and I chatted recently, he said, “The first day of trout season should be coming up soon. Boy, I remember those first days of fishing season when we were kids.”

Not only did I remember the first day of those long-ago trout season opening days, I also remember how much they have changed.

Today, fishing starts at

8 a.m. on the first day. When my brother and I were growing up, the first day opener started at

5 a.m. (the starting time was changed to 8 a.m. in 1969).

A trout stream ran within 100 yards of our home, so just after 4 a.m., my brother and I made our way to the stream bank and staked out our favorite spots. Our rods were simple cane poles without reels with several feet of line tied to the end and were complete with leader, hook and heavy sinker. We strongly resembled Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

Five a.m. in the middle of April was often quite cold and snow flakes were common. I remember our mother referring to that early morning snow at that time of the year as “onion snow,” although I never knew exactly what that meant.

At that early hour, it was also as dark as the inside of a witch’s hat at midnight.

My brother and I had no flashlight or watch. You have heard of poor children being referred to as from the other side of the tracks. We were so poor we didn’t even have tracks, we were simply on the other side of nowhere.

Hunkered in the cold morning darkness, we baited our hooks with freshly dug worms and waited for the opening hour. Now, you might wonder how we knew when to start fishing if it was dark and we had no watches.

We used our ears.

In the 1940s and ’50s, smoking was extremely common. In the morning darkness, it was easy to see the bright red glow of a lit cigarette across the narrow stream. As the starting hour edged closer, we all waited for the first “plunk” caused by a sinker hitting the water, which was soon followed by “plunk,” “plunk,” “plunk” up and down the stream, signaling the start of the season. We never really knew if it was the official time or not, or if anyone around us even had a watch, but we did know that everyone around us was fishing.

I always wondered why a fish warden didn’t just sneak down to the stream edge in the darkness and toss a small rock in the water about 15 minutes ahead of time and then arrest the entire stream bank as everyone started to fish ahead of time.

I intend to be standing along a stream edge in a few weeks as the opening hour for the trout season approaches. However, just before the start time is official, I will close my eyes and listen intently for the first “plunk.”

At times, memories can make the present even more complete.

John Kasun writes from his home in Duncansville, where he is counting down the days until April 3.