A BASS LURE MADE A LITTLE BOY'S HEART BEAT FASTER!
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In the 1940's during World War II, a fishing trip to the Pecos River started in what would seem to you a strange place. There in Clovis, a block or two south of first street, at the end of Axtell or Wallace, there was an old caliche gravel road running parallel to the railroad tracks, and not much north of them. Now the thing was, something leaked water in that area and in the ditch alongside the road was a block-long damp, wet, grassy area.
Where the water leaked from---I'll never know---but my dad, a West Texas farm boy, used to fishing in old lakes and creeks for catfish---with worms---had spotted this area and recognized it as a great worm-producing spot... great big, fat, juicy worms at that!
Going over there after work, and taking a couple of old gallon cans or buckets, in a little while
we had enough worms to fish ourselves to the mouth of the Pecos River! Those big old worms
in our cans (in the dirt) would curl up together in a big ball, as if for warmth, or who knows what, and you had to disentangle them carefully to find your candidate---a tempting morsel for some old "bottom-feeding-scum sucker.!"
Let me digress here just a moment to explain the times in which we lived. It was WWII and we were barely out of the depression. My dad ran the Magic Steam Laundry down on West Grand there in Clovis, single-handedly---that is, he had no assistant. With the Air Base personnel needing laundry done constantly, we took in enough clothes by noon on Monday, for the whole week. The laundry turned out a beautifully laundered, starched, pressed, folded dress shirt for fifteen cents, as well as everything else.
Up at five a.m. every day, lighting the steam boiler, wearing rubber boots and khakis, washing
clothes all morning, (he put on dry khakis at noon), six days a week and no vacations---he'd take every holiday he could to slip away on a fishing trip! Alamogordo Lake was about twenty miles north of Ft. Sumner, and that's where we went, and then five miles farther on up the west side of the Pecos River to our favorite fishing spot.
Affluent folks of today, with their Airstreams, Motor Homes, or older pickup campers, might have little concept of what times were like then. We had no such transport. Like most people, we "had what we had" on December 7, 1941. Our car was a 1941 Chevrolet Two-Door Master Deluxe dark blue sedan. It was a rather small car for a family of five and all the food, bedding, and supplies necessary for a weekend fishing trip!
Mother would get all the food ready and Dad would get a pretty good-sized galvanized wash tub, fill it with a 50 lb. chunk of ice. Into that tub would go the bacon, milk, eggs, hamburger meat, a case of fruit sodas---orange, grape, cherry, lemon, lime, punch, and a couple of colas. You see, farm boys of my dad's generation had a strong preference for flavored drinks.
The full tub, two cots, the grub box, Dad's fishing box, an old tarpaulin, plus quilts, pillows,
emergency clothes, a suitcase, and the fishing poles would all go into the trunk or backseat
of the car. One side of the backseat was, of necessity, devoted to a pile of quilts.
The "grub box" was a nicely-built plywood and dark-stained box filled with skillet, pans, plates, knives, forks, spoons; it had salt, pepper, coffee, sugar, flour, and a jar of corn meal for frying catfish. (I built one just like it for myself many years later---as a fond memory---and it contains all our old cast-off early-marriage kitchen stuff. It is a beauty. I took shop from Mr. Elms!)
Dad's "fishing box" was a small box with an old scavenged wooden cheese box inside which he made a nice divider. He made that box himself, using pieces of an old belt for hinges; then he stained it very nicely! Let me tell you, that was am interesting box. It had bass lures in their boxes which never had been used. Those lures would makes a boy's heart beat faster!
We were finally fully loaded, down at he rear of the car, and ready to go; we headed out to Ft. Summer. Keyed up like a bunch of kids just before recess, we were the inventors of the expression: "Are we there yet?"
Going into the town of Ft. Sumner, there was a two mile stretch of highway that had a number of old-timey filling stations with Coca-Cola, John Ruskin Cigars, and Spark Plug Chewing Tobacco signs all over the outside. Complimenting these were homemade hand-lettered signs advertising "MINNOWS---50 cents a dozen;" "WORMS," "SHRIMP." We always bought three or four dozen minnows for Dad's old minnow bucket, and a couple of pounds of the stinkiest shrimp you can imagine; catfish loved shrimp.
And the fish ate it before I did. I never knew shrimp was for people until I was a freshman in college. All I ever remembered before then was that stinky fishing shrimp! (I am now a voracious shrimp eater!)
We drove north of Ft. Sumner to the dam at Alamogordo Lake, where we were stopped by military police who had guard-houses on each side of the dam. They were getting our license number, and generally checking us out, and after their taking away our .22 rifle until we returned, we crossed the dam and drove the five miles upriver to our fishing place. This required our negotiating some rough, steep, sandy little ravines, where if we'd got stuck, we wouldn't have been found 'til spring.
We finally reached this plateau area and crossed it down to the river. There was a lot of water
in the state in those days, and it had backed up to where the river was over two hundred yards wide at our regular fishing place. It looked like a lake and not a river! There was a wall of rocks immediately across from us...a big cliff.
We kids fished, got tired of that; then we ran and explored and got tired of that. We found a safe, shallow place and soaked our feet and waded. Then we threw rocks! Oh, the simple joy
of rock-throwing! That area where we fished was about cleaned out of throwable rocks!
Dad was a serious no-nonsense fisherman; he had a lot of recreation to pack into a few precious hours. He set trot lines, he helped us fish. We always pretty near caught our limit.
Once he yelled out: "I got a channel catfish!" (A channel cat was a beautiful light blue fish---
more of the Cadillacs of catfish, I guess. Its head was more streamlined and not so ugly.)
The sleeping arrangement was kind of interesting. One kid slept in the back seat, one in the front, and my little baby sister was short enough to take the floor and miss the hump. The parents had the two cots there by the car, and covered themselves over with the waterproof tarp.
Before our trip was over, Mother had fried up a "big mess" of catfish for us there at our campfire.
All good things finally come to an end, as they say, and it was time for us to head for home.
So we tidied up the camp, picking up trash, pop bottles, and made sure the fire was out. I poured water over it. Dad cleaned all the hooks off the poles and we stowed them. We loaded the car, putting our limit-in-possession of cleaned catfish on the rapidly diminishing block of ice remaining in the tub and covering it with an old bedspread. If we needed to, we could pick up 20 pounds of ice in Ft. Sumner. Alas, it was time to head for home.
Pulling into the driveway, at 1100 Reid, after an eighty-five mile drive, was a tired, dirty, and happy bunch of little kids, though not as happy as when LEAVING on the trip.
Adults are always happy to be getting home---from anywhere.
So ended a simple, inexpensive, and wonderful old-fashioned fishing trip...in the forties.
Channel Catfish
1941 Chevrolet
******30******BY MIL
2/17/13
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