Editor’s note: This is another column in Bill Boyd’s new series, “The Way It Was,” about growing up in Marysville. Bill continues to work with the Union County Historical Society to obtain information for his stories.
–––
When you are a little kid, maybe six or seven years old, you see adults doing a lot of things that just don’t make sense. You might ask them why they are doing some of those things, but usually you just accept their strange behavior. Maybe you will understand when you get older.
Let me give you an example. When I was a kid, my dad did a lot of fishing. In the summer, he often came directly home from work, changed clothes and grabbed his fishing rod. Then he took off for a creek or maybe a farm pond. My mother would delay dinner until he came back, maybe an hour or two later.
When he returned from fishing, he went into the bathroom to wash his hands, and then we would eat. There were a few times, however, when he not only washed his hands, but also washed his hair before we ate. I thought that was odd, but I never asked him why he did it. I just chalked it up as another one of those strange things that adults sometimes do.
It wasn’t until I was 11 or 12 years old that I figured out the hair wash thing. It was after I went along with him on one of his after-work fishing trips. You see, my dad was a dyed-in-the-wool fly fisherman. Occasionally, he fished with live bait, maybe earthworms or soft craws. I guess for those who don’t fish, I should explain what soft craws are.
They are crawdads, which look a lot like miniature lobsters. During most of the year, their surface is hard as a rock. But once a year, usually in late spring or early summer, they shed that iron like surface, and a new surface which is soft as jelly, is exposed. That’s when they are a favorite food of bass, especially the big lunkers.
So my dad carried a seine in the trunk of our car. He could quickly run it through one of the many small streams that emptied into the creek. That’s where the soft craws loved to wallow in the water, until their protective shell became hard. A few passes through one of those tiny streams could produce several soft craws. My dad put them in a wire mesh container that had a handle on top.
He always fished with a light weight, split-bamboo fly rod, which he had purchased years earlier when he lived in Pennsylvania. Although that rod was made specifically for fly fishing, he also used it on those occasions when he was using live bait, maybe earthworms or soft craws. It was a great fishing rod, but it took two hands to operate. His right hand controlled the rod itself, while his left hand handled the fishing line. He could strip the line from the reel as it was needed.
This created a problem at times. You see, when my dad fished along a creek, he constantly moved from one spot to another. He often walked a quarter of a mile or more as he fished. So it was really inconvenient to carry that wire container with the soft craws. Both of his hands were tied up, operating the rod itself and the line.
That’s when my dad used a little creativity. He always wore a wide brimmed fishing hat which he removed and dropped a few soft craws into it. Then he put the hat on his head, and he was ready to go after the big ones. The bait was in his hat, and both hands were free to operate his fishing rod.
Needless to say, some of the mud on those little critters rubbed off on my dad’s hair, as they crawled about on top of his head. That’s why he went directly to the bathroom and washed his hair, before we ate dinner. Case closed. I don’t think it was his idea. I think my mother just didn’t want to eat dinner with someone with muddy hair.
-Those wishing to contact Bill Boyd can e-mail him at williamboyd514@gmail.com