hurleyjd
Well-known member
When you get old and in your twilight years you get to thinking about your youth. In 1950 I was 9 years old. My cousin lived about 300 yards down the road from me. Even at the young age we would prowl the banks of Little Caney Creek which is now in Lake Fork. Nothing to leave out with the dogs and be in the woods all day long our folks I quess did not worry about us. If they did they did not let on. For fishing tackle we had some string from a laying mash sack you could find string because my mother kept all of it. Then a cork out of my grandmothers snuff bottle. A hook or two with some lead we removed from the roofing nails on the barn. No pole as we would cut a green switch cane for pole. We always had a pocket knife and some times a hatchet. To use that tackle you would cut a slit in the snuff bottle cork to slid it on the line. You would find anything you could for bait find a nice pool of water with a mossy bank and start fishing. Cherry bream and large as your hand, a goggle eye every now and then. We were sport fishermen back then as we did not keep any of the fish. We could catch the top water minnows with nothing but a pole and some more of the laying mash string. Just rub the string about an inch from the end with a fat pork rind and lay the string on the water where the minnows were and they would swallow the string and you could pull them out. We also knew where every good huckleberry trees were and every hickory tree with good hickory nuts. Here I am going on eighty two year old and James one year behind. I retired as an aircraft engineer and James an Air Force three star general. Both of us get together and talk and agree we grew up in the best of times. What both of us would give to have a week as young lads on Little Caney Creek. Just wish my great grand kids could experience my child hood.
