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.
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During the late 1930s and early ‘40s when I was nine or 10 years old, I loved to go fishing with my dad. We usually went on a Sunday afternoon, but the fun for me started the night before, when we got the bait that I would use.
You see, I always fished with night crawlers as bait. I walked around our yard at night with a flashlight, and when I saw a night crawler I picked it up and put it in a tin can. In the process, I learned a few things about night crawlers.
For example, I learned that, although they don’t have eyes, they are sensitive to bright light. I had a very bright flashlight, and when that light hit them, they scurried right back into their holes in the ground. So I used an old flashlight my dad had in France during World War I. It had a really soft light, which made it perfect for hunting night crawlers.
I also learned that if it hadn’t rained for a while, there were hardly any night crawlers. When that happened, we got our bait at a bait shop on East 4th Street. It was directly behind the monument store on the northeast corner of Main and Fourth Streets.
The owner not only sold night crawlers, but also other baits as well, like minnows. It was always fun to look at the minnows. They were in a large steel tank, about three feet tall and six or seven feet long. I could stand beside that tank and watch all those little fish.
My dad often fished with minnows, so he might buy a dozen of them. The man who owned the place had a little net, and he sometimes let me catch them and put them in my dad’s minnow bucket.
One day, Bill Porter and I were riding our bikes down Fourth Street, and we stopped to take a look at the minnows. While we were looking at them, the man who owned the place showed us a new kind of bait. He said they were the larvae of some kind of butterfly or moth. He said they were the best bait for catching bass. They were really pretty, about an inch long, and they were covered with short black and yellow hairs.
The man told us the place to find them was on the leaves of catalpa trees. He said if we could find any, he would buy them from us. Oh boy, wouldn’t that be great. Bill said there was a catalpa tree in front of Mr. Huber’s house on West Sixth Street. But that tree was so large there was no way we could get them there.
But we had two catalpa trees in front of our house on Court Street, between the sidewalk and the curb. They had been pruned every year for many years, so their foliage was in a compact ball only 15 feet or so in height.
Bill and I rode our bikes to our house. We got a ladder out of the garage and took turns picking those black and yellow grubs off the leaves of the two trees.
We took them to the bait store, and the owner bought them from us. I don’t remember how much he paid us, but it must have been quite a bit, because we bought ice cream cones at Doc Foster’s drug store on Main Street. In fact, we made enough so that we both got two dips.
Those wishing to contact Bill Boyd can e-mail him at williamboyd514@gmail.com