The Minnows Would Not Eat

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This is one of 130 stories out my book "A Time And Place, The Making Of An Immigrant"  Check it out:      A Time And Place

Playing in the stream was fun. Our favorite spot was the one running behind the town’s soccer field. The same creek, just a little upstream, was dammed up to create a good-sized pond that was also the town’s public bathing spot. Part of the pond had a shallow concrete bottom wading pool. This provided a nice area to bring the children to play in the summer. Over the years, the bottom of that level spot had gotten covered with mud. This made for quite some murky water when a bunch of kids got to wallowing in it. Well, it was cooler in the water than sitting in the heat.

 In the branch below were minnows to catch. On occasion you could catch one barehanded by running it into a shallow corner, but most of the time we used a large white handkerchief. We’d hollow out a low spot in the creek, then stretch the cloth out, pinning it to the stream’s bottom with a few rocks on the corners. We then squatted on each side of the branch, hands ready at the water’s edge, waiting quietly and motionless until several minnows came to rest in the hollow spot on the kerchief. With a sudden snap of the corners, we pulled up the cloth. Most of the minnows would dart out, but often we caught one or two. The prized catch was quickly added to the jar filled with water. 

At full speed, we then carried our cache uptown where my friend had a bathtub in his house. We filled the tub half full of water and then dumped our catch in it. Now time came to hunt for food for those fish. If we were to see them grow to any edible size, we had to feed them. Well, down to the branch we went again to catch some morsels in the fish’s natural habitat. Worms, snails, bugs, flies, grasshoppers, and leeches were good to start with. The leeches were kind of hard to get. They were stuck on slippery algae under the water that ran over the dam. Those critters were kind of orange-red with a jagged sucking cup on the end of them. They would rather quickly stick themselves to your body if you let them. Well, the food we gathered for the minnows was enough to grow some good sized fish. All we had to do was dump the jar full of creepy things into the bathtub. 

While the project was still on our minds, we’d check on the minnows before the day was done. But after a few days, we found that most of the food had died in the tub or merely crawled out to greener pastures. A week or so later the report was that the minnows also had croaked. This gets me to wondering, with my now Americanized brain, why did that family have a tub when no one used it for over a week? As to the extent of our own washing, most days Mom just washed us with a coarse rag swiftly around the face and behind the ears. We had to wash our feet with a cursory inspection by Mom to make sure the rust was washed off.

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