by Richard Seifried
Signal Hill Musings
April, 2003
I am writing April’s message in early March because I cannot think of any other reason to avoid doing our income taxes.
Since Christmas, this winter has been one of the hardest the Ozarks have seen for a long time. First came ice storms that kept us at home for days. Then the snows began, some of them five, six, or more inches deep. Not much if you are from the Northern Rockies or the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. For us here, in the upper South, our winter was quite impressive. Weeks with very little sunshine. Drabness. Light deficiency bringing on depression and lethargy.
By the time you read this, spring will be in the air. In fact, before the last cold spell, ten days ago, Jean called me out onto our uncovered portion of the elevated back porch. We stood in near total darkness, listening to a symphony of peeper frogs, sending their mating calls, telling us not to give up, warm weather is on its way.
In February, the few whooping cranes and the thousands of sandhill cranes were accumulating along the Platte River in Nebraska, thousands of the latter species crying, gossiping, and making a terrible din along the frozen riverbanks and snowdrifts.
Right now, as I write, March will be bringing warm spells to the Rockies. The black bears will stir in their dens, bellies rumbling from hunger. My majestic grizzlies will sniff the spring air and stir, and perhaps even venture out of their snow-covered, rocky dens to seek an early season snack of carrion left over from winterkill.
By the time you read this, they will all be outside, digging, sniffing, engorging nourishment, after four or five months of deep sleep.
February was always a thrill to me when I was a young man in Ohio. I would walk along the Great Miami River or into woods that held swampy pools of water. There it would be! My first harbinger of spring, the wonderful, deep, fresh, green of the skunk cabbage leaves, poking up out of the icy water. Sometimes I could smell the pungent odor that gives the plant its name.
Cardinals, too, fantastic bursts of scarlet, streaking across the landscape, sometimes the only bit of brilliance in an otherwise drab, dreary landscape of grays, browns, and ugly mists. We all looked for the first robin, the more conventional indication that spring had arrived.
Every season is a wonder. Spring is no exception. In the 1930s and 1940s, March and early April were when the crappies ran, spawned, and we’d line the banks of every inlet, cane poles dangling fat, juicy worms, or minnows in the murky waters along the shores of Lake Loramie or Grand Lake, called by us Lake St. Mary’s.
That meant that Grandma Carey once again would stoke up her huge wood-burning kitchen stove and aunts, uncles, Grandpa, Mom, and Dad would sit around the huge kitchen table, watching my gray-haired pioneer Grandmother cooking as she had done almost all of her very long life.
Crappies (pronounced “croppies”) were excellent eating. My Uncle Dwight would cut off their heads, scale them with the edge of his knife, and then gut them. Then he would wash the fish in very cold well water. Grandma would pat them with flour, then slip the fish into large frying pans, black, cast-iron skillets, sprinkling them liberally with salt and pepper.
Everything was cooked in lard. The word cholesterol had no meaning to us. In fact, I’m sure we didn’t even know it was a word.
Fried to a crisp, I loved to munch on the stiff, brittle tails, eating all the way up to where the spinal column began. We’d pull the back fins out with our fingers. Most of the bones came with it. The skin and meat on both sides was consumed with the aid of a table fork or, often, with our fingers alone.
Yes, there were loose bones, especially around the stomach area. They were tiny, curved needle-like bits of skeleton, and on occasion, one would momentarily stick onto the back of the mouth or throat of the consumer. That was why we ate lots of buttered bread. The baked product pulled the bones out of the mucus membranes and forced them down into the stomach where acid softened them for absorption.
We would laugh and talk about the latest fishing adventure. Most of us took part in such expeditions. Sometimes we talked about distant extended family members or whomever was not present to defend himself. I, a mere child, listened and learned.
Those were the Great Depression days. War Days. My one uncle served in North Africa, Sicily, and finally Italy.
But the Depression days were the best. My family stuck together, struggling to economically survive. We were a proud people. Honest. Generous in sharing what little we had.
The spring crappie run brought them all together to begin anew the yearlong series of dinners at Grandpa and Grandma Carey’s.
After crappies came the bluegill season. In June, bass season began and all fish were legal to catch. My Grandpa always got to eat all of the catfish he wanted. They didn’t have as many small bones, he claimed.
Catfish were hard to clean. When caught, they lived in the “minnow bucket” or on the stringer and were still gasping for air when we got home. We had to knock them in the head with the butt of our hunting knives or a hammer. Then, Uncle Dwight would cut around the body, just behind the head. The skin stuck stubbornly to the meat so one of us would hold the dead fish by the mouth, careful to avoid the needle sharp teeth and the barbs that stuck out on both sides of the head. My uncle would grasp an edge of skin with a pair of pliers and I’d hang on the best I could as he pulled the skin off, sort of like shucking corn or skinning wild game, only much more difficult.
Sometimes, not often, Grandma would “have us over” for a frog leg dinner. Obviously, Uncle Dwight had caught a mess of bullfrogs. Their legs were severed where they joined the lower back. Again, like with catfish, the frog legs were skinned out.
Grandma would cover them with flour and then throw them, one at a time, into the skillet. She had to move fast. Although dead for some time, the leg muscles would contract and we could hear them banging against the tin skillet lid. Once she hesitated too long and a frog leg leaped out and plopped around on the linoleum-covered kitchen floor. Kids nowadays would scream “Gross!”
Such feeds went on all summer.
September 15th, unless it fell on a Sunday, was opening day for squirrel season. Then, we feasted on fried squirrel until November ended and rabbit hunting began. Of all our wild game, the cottontail rabbit tasted less wild, less strong. They were tender, delicious.
Rabbit hunting lasted until New Year’s Day ended.
Uncle Dwight and his brother-in-law, Fritz Meyers, also ran a trap line during the harshest winter months. And, they ran their coon dogs from November until January.
So, just like when Grandma was a little girl living in her log cabin on Angel Street, we would occasionally feast on a strong-flavored raccoon or perhaps a more palatable opossum.
Strange, but the Careys never ate the numerous muskrats caught in the steel traps.
A black family lived adjacent to Grandma’s backyard. They were always very pleased to get the skinned and carefully cleaned muskrats. That seems peculiar to me because the rich people of the 1920s and 1930s would catch trains for Chicago to spend a weekend eating in the Windy City’s fine, gourmet hotel restaurants. One of the specialties was called “marsh rabbit,” a very delicious meat. Of course, their marsh rabbits were muskrats, likely caught in the badly polluted swamps of southeast Chicago.
Now, all of you animal rights people must realize that the world of the 1930s and 1940s was different. Fish and wild animals made up a significant part of our Depression day larder, perhaps as much as fifty percent.
When I came home from Korea I still hunted. But, the thrill was gone. Being in the woods was still wonderful, but I realized that the wild creatures had little chance against my rifle or shotgun. In the past fifty years, I have hunted only twice. Once was to put badly needed food on the table, and the other time I wanted to share a hunting experience with my son. He, and rightly so, thought hunting was very cruel.
I don’t even hunt with a camera anymore. Nature and I have evolved into a non-aggression relationship. I like life a lot better this way.
Still, I recall with strong emotion those wonderful dinners that Grandma Carey cooked on that giant, black, cast-iron stove. I can still see Grandpa smacking the skull of a cooked squirrel head with the butt of his table knife and picking the brains out of the chamber with his little finger, and the disgusting looks on the faces of his grown daughters.
They were the last of their kind. My Grandparents. The pioneers. I wonder how my grandchildren will remember me.
