Crawfish And Frogs

A lot of the things we do when we are very young stay with us all of our lives. Here’s one of my memories of my Dad from when I was 5 years old.

Crawfish and Frogs

 

When I was 5 years old, we lived at Philview Camp west of Borger near Bunevista. We had a crawdad hole about 500 feet behind our house. My dad would get me and our bird dog Freckles and we would head for the crawdad hole. Our fishing equipment was a ball of string, two bent nails, and a couple of slices of raw bacon. When we got there, we picked a spot on the Rocky bluff above the deepest part of the hole. He rolled off two pieces of string about 12 feet long and tied a bent nail to the end of each string and then cut two pieces of bacon about 1 inch long. We stuck the piece of bacon on the nails and threw them into the hole. In a minute or so, the strings began to move slowly. When that occurred, you simply slowly pulled the string up out of the water and there would be a large crawfish holding onto the bacon with his claws. They would not let go when they came out of the water, so you could just lift them onto the bank. We had a bucket on the bank we put them into.

 

We fished until we had about a bucket full and we would head back to the house. We pulled the tails off of each one and peeled off the shell and removed the veins. my Mom would roll them in some kind of Cajun dough concoction, and deep fry them. They were very tasty and we ate all of them each time we went.

 

Occasionally my dad would take a frog gig with him and bring a few bull frogs home also. He would cut the legs off, remove the feet, and peel them, but my mother wouldn’t cook them because they continued to kick while they were being cooked. My dad would fry them up and they weren’t so good. In fact, he was the only one who ate them.

 

I knew each time we got back from crawdad fishing that it was going to be bath time because all the tumble weeds, grass, and brush near the pond was covered with carbon black that had settled on them from the nearby Carbon Black Plant.

 

We moved to Phillips. Texas, before I turned 6 years old and I started grade school there.

 

 

 

 

A Crawfish being lifted out of the water holding onto the bait.

 Cajun style crawfish tails deep fried to perfection like Mom used to do.

Frog legs being fried up in the style of dear old Dad. I thought I saw one kick a little.

Thanks for reading Crawfish And Frogs,
Hawg Jaw Bill