Fishful Thinking
Sunday, October 21, 2007 at 11:48PM When my sister and I were in grade school, our stepfather took us fishing a lot. Not because we wanted to go fishing, mind you. I can't speak for my sister but I am most definitely NOT the outdoorsy type. I like going outside and I sometimes go outside just to go outside, and I even take a long walk about five times a week -- outside -- but I don't care for the kind of stuff people normally think of when you bring up the subject of outdoor activities, such as hiking and sports. I'm not athletic, not adventurous, not coordinated, and I haven't got all that much stamina. I enjoy nature but I don't like getting hot and dirty and I have a strong aversion to bugs. My husband knows better than to suggest a family camping trip! Not gonna happen. So you can imagine how much I loved it when our stepfather would issue an order for us to round up the rods and tackle and something for lunch, and get ready to go fishing. Yuk. I knew every bit of what that meant! It would involve Cleaning What You Caught So You Could Eat It For Supper. Yuk.
Our "fishing hole" was really just a creek running under an overpass in the Idyllwild area of Fort Lauderdale. I thought "Idyllwild" was such a pretty word but it was ruined for me on account of its association with fish. We'd stop somewhere for bait (disgusting worms, if memory serves ... but then as now, I'm against thinking about it), get there, park the car down beside the creek or whatever it was, and get the rods and reels out. I had to bait my own hook and everything! At least I think I did, when I actually fished. Most of the time I made excuses to go back to the car and plunder our provisions, which usually consisted of a loaf of white bread, a package of Philadelphia Cream Cheese, and a quart of milk.
The cream cheese (which I hated then but learned to love later in life) and the milk were nestled on some ice in our Coleman camping cooler. The bread was in a bag on the seat. I loved the bread. I still love bread. Back then there was no such thing as "healthy" wheat bread at the store; it was all white. Pure white. I used to eat the crust from my piece of bread real slow, then wad up the center into a doughy ball in my palm, and eat that part like it was a rare delicacy. Or I took two pieces of bread and ate it like a sandwich, pretending I had remembered to put cream cheese in (which I hadn't). And of course I loved my milk. All white foods on fishing day! It was unique.
In the course of the day we'd catch a few dozen measly little old fish that had dared to swim as far as that puny creek, or who'd had neither the energy nor the inclination to leave it. My sister and I had to remove the bloody hooks from their blank staring faces before they were even dead! We had a separate (styrofoam, I think) cooler that served as a portable morgue for the silvery, scaly, smelly fish bodies. By the time we got home the fish cadavers had gone through rigor mortis and were out the other side again. Then it was time to clean them, and that's one job that won't wait. And it's one job our stepfather never did ... because he had us to do it! Yuk.
What we did first was, we dug a hole. That was for the fish guts, plus their heads and tails and fins and bones and skin. Everything you couldn't eat. Then we each grabbed a scaling tool, grasped the slimy things as best we could, and began scraping. I can still remember what it felt like when the fish scales hit your face. They'd land in your hair and on your nose and forehead, and if you were very unlucky, on your lip. They felt clammy and dry all at the same time, and wherever they landed (except your hair) it itched. You'd use your sleeve to try and get the scales off, but by the time you'd scaled five or six fish, there was no use fighting it. Their scales were becoming your scales! They didn't need them anymore and they wanted you to have them.
Next step, we took sharp knives and cut slits in the white fish bellies. At that point the fish looked like pockets. Inside was something I don't even want to think about, much less write about. It smelled just like you'd think fish entrails would smell ... only ten times worse. We'd rake out the contents of the fish into the hole. Then you had to cut off their heads and caudal fins and dorsal fins and whatever other fins they happened to have, and into the hole those went. The hole, because it contained what our stepfather called "fertilizer," was always near our "garden" (a few tomatoes). I avoided eating the tomatoes fertilized with fish guts. I just really had my doubts about how that would work out.
At some point what was left of the scaled and gutted and beheaded and de-finned fish (and believe me, it wasn't much) was brought into the house where we gently washed them and they got fileted (by our stepfather, using a really, really sharp knife). Then we had to gingerly remove the delicate grid of bones from the bifurcated fish and carefully help them out of their skin, which always looked to me like tinfoil. In the end you had about three square inches of edible flesh per fish! What a feast! So worth the investment of your time that day! A bite ... maybe two ... and of course you never got all the bones out ... but those bites had been something We Didn't Have To Pay For. The tiny filets would get dunked in beaten egg and dredged through some seasoned flour or cornmeal, and cooked up in the black iron skillet which was smoking with oil. We'd eat the fried fish pieces with waxy white hominy and white bread and milk. Our fish expected all accoutrement to be white, and who were we to argue? After all, they had given up everything so that we could have a free dinner.
Reader Comments (3)
So, do you still eat fish Jen? I had a similar experience with turkeys. We'd spend the summer making friends with a turkey on my aunt's farm, feeding it, chasing it, talking to it, playing fetch with it (yes, turkeys can imitate dogs) and then come November, it would appear at the front door, wrapped in a brown parcel and hung in the conservatory to ripen until Christmas, head, neck and all.
Did it put me off eating turkey? Not at all - maybe it's the Irish farmer in me, but food is food!
Oh my goodness Jenny, I think that's one memory I'd try really hard to forget. I knew I didn't want to fish and, thank goodness, I didn't have to!
Depps, LOL! I used to love to eat fish the way my Papaw prepared it, but he's long in Heaven, cooking for the angels, and I don't think I'll ever taste anything quite like that again so I avoid it! The turkey story .... so funny! You're right, though ... food is food!
Lyn, I'd forget it if I could ... honest I would ... but I can't! The curse of a good memory! At least about some things ...