Fishin' For Chubs

Copyrighted Material

Fishin’ for Chubs. Another memory that found its way out of the deep dark crevices of my childhood memory banks. My mom had two sisters who lived in California during the World War II years, and they and their families would come back to their hometown of Grace, Idaho during the summers to visit my grandparents. One of the activities during their summer visits was to go fishin’ for Chubs.

Remember Chubs; those silver colored fish about eight to ten inches long? Even though they are a non-game fish, I don’t know of a species that will give a kid more delight than Chubs. Simply because they are so easy to catch. It’s practically impossible to not catch ‘em. It seems they’ll snap at anything that passes by them, even a bare hook. If you find a spot where they are readily abundant, you’re guaranteed you’ll go home with a creel full of fish. I remember one pool where all we had to do was throw our hook into the water and we’d catch a fish. In fact, one of my cousins actually snagged one in the back.

And of course, following all that fun, you must take ‘em home. After all, you caught ‘em, so Mom is obligated to cook ‘em; and the family is expected to eat and enjoy ‘em in spite of the bones--of which there are many. I haven’t eaten Chubs since I was a kid, because I never raised any boys; and regrettably, for them and for me, I never got around to taking my girls Chub fishing. Actually, as I remember, Chubs weren’t all that bad. The meat was white and the flavor was tolerable.

Dad would load us cousins, along with all our fishin’ gear, in the back of his 1941 black Ford pickup and we’d head out for the Blackfoot River north of Soda Springs. A stunt for which he would likely be arrested today, because of the highly regulated and politically correct world in which we now live. According to today’s standards, hauling kids in the back of an open pickup is unconscionable. Why….it’s a wonder we ever lived to see adulthood.

The Blackfoot River was rife with Chubs in those days, but there was one particular spot Dad knew about that was especially plentiful with these little fishes. There was a patch of willows near by from which he would cut some good specimens, and fix us all up with a willow fishin’ pole. One of the cousins was somewhat younger than the rest of us, and was not quite up to our skill level of fishing. But in spite of this, he did okay. I remember one trip in particular. This cousin was having the time of his life. He had a pole that was somewhat long for his stature, which gave him plenty of leverage. He’d hook those little silver buggers, yank back on that pole, bring them out of the water and over his head to an altitude of about twenty-five feet, and land them onto the bank behind him with a thud. Members of PETA can take comfort that the fish this youngster caught didn’t suffer. The thump from when they hit the ground killed ‘em.

Another species for which we kids liked to fish, was Perch. You remember those. The little orange colored fish with the razor like dorsal fin. If you didn’t get your hand around this fin just right and hold it down flat against the fish’s back while you removed the hook, you might end up with a nasty gash in your hand. Like Chubs, they were also a non-game fish with no limit on the number one could take, and they were readily easy to catch as well.

Ah, but alas, the carefree days of youth ultimately pass into the night. It was fun while it lasted, though.

Will Edwinson is the author of two published novels. His latest, the two time award winning, "Buddy…His Trials and Treasures," can be purchased at amazon.com, barnes&noble.com, or by asking for it at your favorite bookstore.

The Duck Hunt

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Another saga in the exploits of my escapes from the Grim Reaper. This time it’s a duck hunting excursion. Some may perceive what I’m about to tell you to be a "tall tale," but it really did happen. A friend and I went hunting ducks one afternoon in late November some years back. There had been a light snow the night before, and when the sun came out the following day, it melted the snow and pulled what little frost there was out of the ground causing a greasy (muddy) surface.

My friend owned a ‘50s model Dodge coupe with fluid drive. Those who are familiar with the Chrysler Company’s old fluid drive transmissions remember there was such a smooth flow of power to the rear wheels that spinning was nearly impossible. However, in spite of this, we slipped and slogged our way along the muddy trail into where we could park within two or three hundred yards of the pond we wanted to hunt. Later, after slogging on foot through snow mixed with mud, we found ample natural cover near the pond where we settled in and waited for the ducks. Not long after, a large flock came in for a landing. The sky was literally black with ducks. We both raised up and fired. As I recall, only a couple of ducks fell. My friend looked at me in wonderment. "What happened?" he asked. "Those ducks were so thick we could’ve knocked ‘em down with our gun barrels without firing a shot. We should have limited out in that first go around."

I glanced over at his shotgun and knew immediately why we hadn’t knocked down more ducks. Out near the end of his barrel, there was an eight inch slit in the side. It kinda reminded me of the Bugs Bunny cartoons where Elmer Fudd’s gun barrel was shredded when he fired at Bugs after he (Bugs) had shoved a carrot into the end of it. The only difference was, my friends face wasn’t blackened with gunpowder. Apparently when we were walking to the pond and crawled through a fence, he must have inadvertently touched his gun barrel to the ground, shoving some mud into the end, which neither of us noticed. By that time of day, the barrel was cold enough that the mud must have frozen.

I was standing about six feet to his left and a little behind him when he fired. I didn’t see where the shot from his gun went, but judging from size of that split, some of it would have had to come in my direction directly in front of me. Good thing I was standing a few feet to the rear. Another one of those times when the Good Lord snatched me, and some of my friends, from the clutches of the Grim Reaper. It did clean the mud from my friend’s gun barrel, however.

Best Show in Town

Mr. Orr—Best Show in Town

Copyrighted material

Remember when movie tickets were a dime
and cokes were a nickel? When I was a young
boy growing up in Grace, Idaho during the
1940s, that was the case. We kids could buy a
ticket to a movie, a box of popcorn, a coke,
and have moneyleft over from a quarter. Our
movie ticket was a dime, (I believe our par-
ents tickets were fifteen cents) the coke and
popcorn were a nickel each.

The gentleman who owned the movie theater,
was a man named Burt Orr. The theater at
that time was called the Grace Opera House,
I can still see Mr. Orr in my mind’s eye today,
standing out on the street corner with his meg-
aphone in hand like the carnival barkers at the
midway used to do. His refrain was: "come on
in folks, best show in town, best show in
town. Kids only a dime, parents fifteen cents,
best show in town." Of course with Grace being
a town of only 500 people, give or take ten, it
was the only show in town.


As I recall, however, he usually had a full house.
This was probably due to him showing the movie
News Reels which he would change once a week.
Twenty four hour seven days a week visual news
coverage wasn’t available in those days, as it is
today; and those News Reels gave the folks back
home a small glimpse of how the war was going
"over seas." I remember Mr. Orr had snow-white
hair and was most always dressed in a business
suit and tie. He was rarely ever seen in any other
attire except the times when he worked in his
yard or garden.


He and Mrs. Orr lived just two houses down on
the same street from where we lived. I remember
he had a beautiful rock garden in the back yard,
and I mean it was huge. It was a small mountain.
It was the kind of rock garden you wandered
through in order to grasp its full beauty.

Mr. and Mrs. Orr had a granddaughter about my
age who would come from Idaho Falls every
summer to visit. She usually stayed with her
grandparents about two weeks. She and I used
to play Tarzan and Jane in the rock garden; a
garden alive with a large variety of different
flowers and plants that we imagined to be
jungle plants. During that time period, the
Johnny Weismuller Tarzan movies were
popular with the kid set. Atop this imagin-
ary jungle was a little gazebo where we took
pleasure eating lunch that Mrs. Orr often
prepared for us.

However, there was one incident where
I fell out of grace with the Orrs for a short
period of time. Mr. Orr had planted some
young sappling trees along the front of his
yard. One day while walking down the side-
walk on my way to Grandma’s house, I
casually snapped the top half off these
young trees.

Unfortunately for me, a neighbor across
the street saw what I had done and report-
ed it to Mr. Orr, who later brought this to
the attention of Dad. Needless to say,
there were consequences. I had been
saving some of my allowance for some-
thing I had wanted, and I had a cache of
about $2.50 saved.

Dad and Mr. Orr agreed on the amount
it would take to replace the trees for
which it was determined I would pay.
There went my cache plus a portion of
my allowance for several weeks until
the debt was paid. The Orrs did event-
ually forgive my transgression and I was
later able to work my way back into their
good graces.

Spring Adventure

Copyright (c) 2006 Will Edwinson

Remember the days
when a coke from a
machine cost a nickel,
the price of a Hershey
bar was a nickel, and
a dime would buy a
twin scoop ice cream
cone? When as a kid
you could get into a
movie for a dime, and
fifteen cents would buy
your parents a ticket?
These are memories of mine about life while
growing up in a small rural farming community
in Southeast Idaho during the 1940s.

Dad was a farmer and restaurateur. He and
Mom operated a cafe' in the days before I was
born. When they decided to open the restaurant
Dad sold his livestock, so there really wasn't that
much need for them to live out on the farm any-
more. Dad commuteed to the farm every day
and Mom ran the restaurant. I remember one of
the first trips when Dad took me with him for a
day at the farm. I was six years old and very
excited about going; and was looking forward to
riding on the big tractor.

The "big tractor" was a McCormick Deering
W-30, that sported a whopping 30 horsepower
engine. At best, by today's standards, it would
almost be considered a garden tractor; but to a
six yearold boy who stood not much more than
three feet tall, it was a monster. The starter for
this monster tractor was a hand crank. The
engine had no muffler. Instead, a short exhaust
pipe with a 45 degree elbow extended about
four inches above the hood and pointed forward
to deflect the sound away from the operator.
The tractor had taken on the name Bertha
because a neighbor said it sounded just like the
bellow of one of his milk cows he had named
Bertha.

I stood shivering in the early chill of that May
morning in 1941 as I watched Dad service the
tractor. When he finished, he told me to stand
over by the pickup while he pushed the crank
through the radiator base, locked it into the
crankshaft and whipped the old girl's engine
about four revolutions before she roared to life.

After Bertha had warmed up, Dad lifted me
up to my perch on one of the fenders that cover-
ed the rear tires. This put me out of the way so as
not to encumber his operation of the tractor, and
we started for the field. Dad was breaking out a
patch of alfalfa to plant to sugar beets. We drove
down the corner of the field to where he had left
off plowing the day before, and he dropped the
plow into the ground. He said we were getting
a good early start that morning, "So we should
be able to easily get twelve acres plowed today."
Nowdays, ten to twelve acres per hour are not
uncommon

Soon after we started plowing, an entourage
of seagulls discovered us, and the field behind
the tractor and plow became a white plain
of birds swooping down for their morning feed-
ing of worms, bugs, moles, and field mice being
turned up by the plow. Yes, seagulls do
eat field mice and moles. They swallow them
whole. I listened to the loud purr of the
tractor's engine as it responded under load;
my nostrils sucked in the sweet smell of the
soil as the plow rolled it over burying the
alfalfa plants beneath.

By lunch-time I had tired of riding the
tractor. There was an irrigation ditch running
along the edge of the field and I asked Dad if I
could go wading after lunch. He was ambivalent
about my request, but finally acquiesced. I
removed my shoes and socks and was wading in
the ditch when something grabbed one of my toes.
I hauled my foot out of the water and saw an ugly
menacing creature hanging there .

It was the first time I had ever seen a crawfish
--or crawdaddy--as I would later learn they were
called, and it scared the bejeepers out of me. I
shook it off,and after a quick examination, deter-
mined I had suffered no appreciable damage.
By that time, my curiosity began to get the better
of me, and I wondered if there were any more of
those "monsters" lurking in the depths below.

I waited for the mud I had stirred up to clear,
then lay down on my belly to see what I could
see. Sure enough, my suspicions were confirmed;
he did have more companions down there with
him. I found a suitalbe stick small enough for the
crawdaddies to get their pinchers around, and
strong enough to lift them out of the pool.

I spent the better part of the next hour taunt-
ing these creatures into grabbing the stick. I
hauled them out of the water, flipped them into
the air, and watched with glee as they fell back
into the ditch. Such was a day in the life of a six-
year old boy on a spring adventure with his dad.
Read the full story about this adventure in
Buddy...His Trials and Treasures, available at
amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, or by ask-
for it at your favorite bookstore.

Swimming in the 23

Copyright (c) 2008 Will Edwinson

Swimming in the 23; those were the days. There's
a stretch of the Bear River about one mile west of
Grace, Idaho that flows through what is known as
the Black Canyon. I'm assuming the canyon got its
name from the fact that in many areas there are
fiord-like walls formed from lava rock (basalt) that
line the river on both sides.

In the particular stretch where the 23 swimming hole
is located, the ancient molten lava also hardened to
form flat patio like surfaces along the canyon bottom.
Scattered among these flat surfaces are large pools of
water, some of which serve as ideal swimming holes.
They range from 20 to 30 feet across, and are 20 or
more feet in depth. These different pools slow the
river flow to the point that the sun is able to heat the
water to a tepid state. The rocks, too, absorb heat from
the sun which aids in the heating of the water. They also
provide a perfect venue for stretching out to obtain that
"all over" full body summer suntan.

Legend has it the 23 got its name many years ago when
someone tied a rock to the end of a rope and dropped it
into the pool. When the rock stopped its decent, the rope
was marked, hauled up and measured. It was 23 feet to
the mark; hence the pool was dubbed the "23." It's sixty
plus years since I was last there, but the 23, as I remember,
was about thirty feet across. Of all the pools in this partic-
ular area of the Bear River, the 23 was our favorite swim-
ming hole.

The second most favored was a pool just below the 23 we
called the "60." I don't believe it got its name from being
sixty feet deep, but rather because it was about sixty feet
across. The 60 was the second choice for swimming
because the water never did quite reach the tepid warmth
of the 23. However, it was large enough that we could dive
into it, so we fashioned ourselves a diving board.

We wrangled one particularly large rectangular rock over
near the edge of the pool. We placed a couple planks
(double layered) on top of this rock to provide some eleva-
tion above the water. On the other end, we piled rocks for
ballast to hold down the back end of the boards. This wasn't
always successful, however, as some boys were quite
heavy, and coupled with their exurberance out on the end
of the diving board, they flipped the ballast from the other
end dumping the surprised and hapless divers into the
river. We solved that problem by adding more weight, but
then in their continued exurberance, these same boys broke
the planks. As a result, our diving board was short lived.

I spent many happy summer days at the 23 in my early
youth. That's where I learned to swim. I spent weeks one
summer mastering the "doggy" paddle, but never quite got
up the courage on my own to swim clear across. Finally,
some of the older guys decided I needed help in making
that decision. Next thing I knew, I landed out in the middle.
To my amazent, I discovered I really was ready to venture
beyond a few safe feet from the edge. When I got home
that late afternoon my mother asked me how my day went.
I told her I was finally able to swim across the 23 today.
However, I decided if I wanted to continue swimming there,
prudence would dictate that I not fill her in on all the details
of how that accomplishment was achieved.

You can read the full story about this adventure in
Buddy...His Trials and Treasures, available at
amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, or by asking for
it at your favorite bookstore.

Skiing The Barrow Pits

Copyrighted Mateial

As I look back on life, I have to wonder if the good
Lord hasn't had his hands full keeping me alive.
A few of us were standing around talking after
church one Sunday, and the subject of some of the
dumb things we did as youngsters came up. This
brought to mind the times when I and my teen age
colleagues would tie a forty foot rope to a pickup
truck and ski the barrow pits along the country roads
north of Soda Springs, Idaho at 40 miles per hour.
Well...maybe not quite 40, but even if we weren't
doing a full 40, it seemed like 40 miles per hour. It
was darned fast at any rate, and probably a bit
dangerous due to the fact that there were obstacles
(large boulders) along the right of way in which we
were skiing, not to mention the hard packed wind
blown snow drifts that put us air borne and caused
many a spill. At the speed we were traveling--and
often without goggles--with snow blowing in our faces
causing watery eyes, it's a wonder we were able see the
various hazards well enough to dodge them. But the fool-
ishness of youth never gave such things a second thought.

I remember another time when we were tobogganing.
A bunch of us pulled a large toboggan to the top of a
long slope near Conda, Idaho, a little mining commu-
nity that used to exist north of Soda Springs. As I
recall there were about five or six of us who mounted
the sled for our journey down the hill. I drew the short
straw, which meant I sat in front and was to be the
steer man. Down the hill we started. It had been
blanketed the night before with a light powder snow;
which translates into a lot of fluff. About twenty seconds
into the trip I sensed we might be in a bit of trouble. We
had built up considerable speed by that time, and for
any of us to stick his leg out to try to slow our momen-
tum, would have undoubtedly resulted in one or more
borken legs. At that point it was do or die; maybe both.

The light fluffy snow was whipping up over the front of
the toboggan blinding me to the point that we were
literally flying blind and by the seat of our pants. I
prayed and held on. Speed continued to build up to
an even higher degree, and the snow shower increased
in intensity. We were riding in our own self-made
blizzard. We reached the bottom of the hill with about
seven years growth scared out of each of us, but thank-
ful to have arrived in tact. Because of the soft snow,
the toboggan left a distinguishable track. As we looked
up to see from where we had come, we saw that we had
missed a utility pole by no more that four feet. Another
of the many times during my foolish youth the good
Lord snatched me from the clutches of the Grim Reaper.

The Bicycle

Copyrighted Material

In the previous tale, I talked about the frustrations
we kids had with waiting for the items ordered from
catalogs. Another thing I remember about those
days during the 1940s, is that very few toys were on
display in the stores except during the holiday shop-
ping season. I suppose the same was true in the
larger cities as well. The toys were put out the day
afterThanksgiving, and were available from then until
Christmas, after which time, they were put away. The
same was true for the catalogs. As I remember it,
there were generally two catalogs per year; spring/
summer, and fall/winter. Toys were only displayed
in the fall/winter versions; or there may have been
a special Christmas catalog where toys were
featured. My memory is a bit hazy on this point.
Anyway, this limited marketing of toys greatly
enhanced our anticipation of the holiday season. And
of course, during the war years, toys were even more
scarce.

I remember after the war ended, there was still a
shortage of certain items for a while--bicycles for one.
I was in my tenth year at war's end, just the right age
for my first bike. Even though the war officially ended
in August, it took a while for companies to tool up for
mass production. Due to this limited production, our
name was put on a waiting list. There were two stores
in Grace, Idaho that sold bikes. I had my name on the
list in both places. There was little choice about the bike
you got. You pretty much took what came in, or you
traded places with someone else on the list. I remember
my name finally reached the top, and the bike the store
had gotten in was just what I wanted, a Schwinn. But this
was late October! Too early for Christmas.

When Dad came in from the field that night I asked him
if could have that bike. He told me Christmas was nearly
two months away. I reminded him that if I didn't take
this bike, I'd lose my place on the list, and who knows how
long it would be before another one would come in, and
besides, it might not be what I want; this one was. So he
agreed to let me have it if I would agree to wait until
Christmas to receive it. How cruel to make a kid wait until
the dead of winter in a country where there would be two
feet of snow on the ground by the time he got his bicycle,
but that's what happened. Just like the catalog shopping,
it was another of those long harried waits in the life of a
young boy before he could use his new bike.