Everything is Everything...

Every now and then there is an event, you see something, hear something or you have a thought that draws everything together. That's what happens to me and if it happens to me, I'm no one special it, probably happens to you. The things I draw on today are nutria rats and the culture of Louisiana. 

Way back me and the three older kids went on a camp out/fishing trip/duck hunt. It was to Lake Sam Rayburn. Cathy might have stayed home pregnant with Mary. It was a cold camp out but the fish bit and I made this photo of nutria rats sitting on a log. 

Several years later the internet starts to be a big thing but it was before social media and all that and I think I have some pretty good photos that people should see so I start up a photo hosting web site. Sometime after posting this photo in an online album I had titled "The Great Outdoors" I check web site stats and discovered it had been viewed 6000 times. There was not much to do on the internet in those days since politics did not exist yet and I bet there is some math you could do that would prove what the exponential population production of offspring by this little family group of water rodents would be. Nutria Rats are an invasive species and unchecked they cause problems. 

The nutria is originally from South American where it was often overharvested for meat and fur which led to Nutria farm development around the world in various locations. From here they often escaped or were sprung from captivity by the hurricanes that strike the southern United States. In 1945 nutria imported by the McElhanney Tabasco Hot Sauce family were released on Avery Island in Louisiana. It was often thought that releasing them would produce an animal that could be hunted for meat or fur and would control aquatic vegetation since they are plant eaters. Although the fur was at one time popular for coats and hats they mostly caused problems burrowing and disrupting the environment for other species. 

For the full story on Nutria rats catch this movie on Amazon Prime called "Rodents of Unusual Size." 

The music from this movie is by a band called the Lost Bayou Ramblers. I saw them at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in 2018. They are taking Cajun music to new frontiers and at the same time promoting the traditional through fiddler Louis Michot's label Nouveau Electric Records

Also a good movie to check out for another sound track by The Lost Bayou Ramblers is "Lost Bayou." 

I still fish the same area where I took that nutria rat photo almost 30 years ago. There really does not seem to be a population explosion of these rodents but there is plenty of backwater where they may be thriving. I note several families of otters frolicking in the coves and off the sandbars every year and alligator sightings which have become more common in the old creek may have something to do with rodent population control. A nutria rat, being a vegetarian is reported to be quite tasty although I have never tried to eat one.  

I forget who said it but hopefully for you, like me, everything is everything.     

First Fishing Trip of 2021 and the 2020 Catfish total...

We got out for the first 2021 catfish trip today. Someone asked what took us so long. Oh just a little rain, snow, a case of covid, you know the usual stuff. It has taken a bit to get my energy level up but I thin I might be getting here. 

Cathy holds up lunch. Even though I don't think the weather could have been any better. It was not too cold, partly cloudy and the water surface was glassy. We tried deep and shallow with no fish in the shallows yet and only three in the deep holes but they were enough to feed us.    

I noticed the white pelicans were having a good feed over deep open water, so good in fact that a couple of hundred water turkeys horned in on the fun. 

That pile in front of Cathy is three catfish fried up nice and crisp. It was the perfect amount. I could not help but think about stopping on the way to the lake to put $17 of gas in the boat. I don't think I could buy two fish dinners in a restaurant for that price. I don't count the truck gas because I would have to drive to town for dinner. That $17 worth of gas will get us at least 5 fish dinners.  

Speaking of fish dinners the total count for fish caught in 2020 was 582. I did not count every bass or bream I have caught while on a canoe trip or the carp Wallace pulled out of Humboldt Park Pond in Chicago so we should be easily over 600 for the year. All catfish  have been eaten, some given to friends, and some traded to folks with gardens for fresh vegetables. There might be a 4 pound package in the freezer. That's a lot of fish eating and most were fresh never frozen. 

So the 2021 count starts with 3. That's nothing fancy but check back in about a year. 

 

I Like Warm Weather...

 I don't like the weather to be cold and it snowed here last week and then stuck to the ground for several days. That does not happen very often in these parts and actually the ice sheets on the roof, which brought to mind the fact that wooly mammoths froze with green salad still in their mouths, slid to the ground in my flower beds and stayed frozen in the shade for almost a week. In those flower beds I had a wandering Jew house plant (a name invented by someone else) that took root in the fertile soil. In our usually warm clime and the 40 days and nights that pass for winter here it sleeps undisturbed in piles of thick homemade mulch until warm weather comes and it's time to wander to other beds and pots. I look forward to such wandering action myself. 

 I had put some thought into cold weather this year. Not the thought that true northerners put into winter like how they are going to push snow piles out of the way to get the door open or the car out of the drive way or who they are going to call if the roof collapses from the weight of snow and ice. I just bought a thrift store set of insulated bib overalls. I had brief dreams of catfishing over deep holes stacked with large blue cat so warm on the bottom of the lake that they are as comfortable as U.S. Tico on BenJammin's porch down south in Costa Rica. I might have worn those coveralls once. I certainly did not need them on the short trek back and forth from the firewood pile last week. 

My preferred dress, given the coming of spring and summer is no shirt and no shoes. A headband, do rag or a hat is handy to mop sweat and give assist to thinning hair that does not give enough sun protection to a delicate scalp. Service won't be necessary. In fact in the early days of writing this blog and posting photos of my self online people often asked if I ever wore a shirt. These days I am kind of like that once handsome friend who often got away with murder until he aged and was not so handsome and started getting punched in the nose quite regularly. I might punch myself in the nose if I saw a picture of me online without a shirt but then there is that threshold you cross where you just don't care and when it's warm summertime I don't care. 

One time when I did care I put some thought into what I was going to wear one summer. There were some pastel checked cotton shorts in a light color that all the other guys were wearing and they looked like they might be comfortable and stylish for summer. When one of my kids saw me wearing those shorts she said "That light color is not going to work for you because you get so sweaty and dirty." 

Now this had not really occurred to me because sweaty and dirty is my optimal operating mode. I really don't think I ever got those shorts dirty because one day as I performed the bending, scooting twisting, crab walk side step that is necessary for a large man to seat himself in a small car the backside of those pastel checked cotton shorts were torn asunder like the temple veil signifying that my body would never inhabit such the sanctuary of such a garment again. 

Now I give my thoughts to the coming warm summer, short shorts and swimming. I know there will still be cold days before then but I have firewood and I will use it. I might even try those blue cats. 

 

Working All Right...

In this photo dated May, 1959 my dad works on a car. This was standard Saturday morning activity if a hunting or fishing trip was not on the agenda. Given the fact that I was about 16 months old at the time which is old enough to show some interest but not old enough to effectively participate you can easily see that I am no where near the action in this photo. Later on as I became old enough to assist in these projects, to a teen with plans and pursuits of his own these weekend work days seemed unending. I did learn some of the basics of auto mechanics which as a young man enabled me to do simple maintenance projects and occasionally bigger chores such as changing water pumps, starters and once a transmission. 

When I had kids I am not sure I was able to pass these things along as well as I should. For one thing cars became harder to work on. I have a mechanic I have used for 30 plus years and sometimes I have a problem and I take it to him he says "can't fix it, only the dealer can." Also as I became more affluent I had better cars and modern cars lasted better, ran better and you had info available to help you pick the  most trouble free. I do recall one incident where me and my son Morgan, who must have been about 4 at the time worked on a car. 

I have often written about the Oldsmobile Delta ""Rocket 88"" I owned. It was a 1984 model and that year was one of the last for great long American iron cars. Something I bought as a single man, a last gasp of independence and the next thing I knew I was driving a washing machine. That's another story though and if Morgan was 4 I am going to guess the year as 1992. 

Seems something had gone wrong under the dashboard of this great machine. I don't remember exactly what. Maybe the cassette player had become disconnected or the cigarette lighter had shorted out, things that just could not be allowed to fall into disrepair. I was on my back in the floorboard of the drivers side, plenty of room to lay down and ponder an upside down world of what's what when my son asked, "Are we working, dad?" 

My reply to this was, and I don't think I can convey the appropriate tone on the printed page, Yes, we are working all right." I continued to lay on my back and I heard Morgan's sisters, Rose and Katherine approach. They said "What are ya'll doing?" Morgan answered for us. "We working all right!" 

I don't recall the outcome of this work, if the problem was fixed, made worse of if I was forced, in these old dark days before google and YouTube to seek professional help of some sort. I do know that in the eyes of a child the work was "All right."  

 

Brooms, Neck Tattoos, the Economy...

 I was pondering whether to get my $600 tattoo on my back or my neck and I thought about something I heard someone say. 

"It's a good economy for a man that does not mind pushing a broom." 

I think what he really meant was that it's a good economy for a man or a woman for that matter, who does not mind getting their hands dirty and I thought about broom pushing in my own life.  

I got my first real job, an adult job, in an economy where huge warehouses were often needed to hold all the product pouring from the great furnace of American endlessness. These were warehouses roughly the size of a downtown block in the city of Lufkin, Tx. The Keltys warehouse that had once been part of the old Angelina County Lumber Company and occasionally used for offsite storage was the size of several city blocks. These warehouses required sweeping. 

To sweep the warehouse a couple of guys were issued brooms about 18" in width and a one gallon tin bucket full of an oily, pink sawdust mixture called floor sweep. The floor sweep was scattered at random by the handful and caused dust and dirt to stick together for easy sweeping. This took awhile but it was an economy that paid by the hour and time and a half when you went over eight hours. 

As time went on and it was discovered that making money often means workforce reductions the company found that the number of employees and time required to sweep a warehouse could be reduced by having a mechanical sweeper. The last warehouse sweeping I did was sitting on one of these. A comfortable seat, propane powered to contribute to a clean low emission indoor atmosphere with whirling brushes and vacuum suction it was a dirt Zamboni and I probably received 30 minutes of instruction to qualify for a certificate to proclaim my operational prowess.  

So my view here is that the economy, at this point in time is not going to let a man get his hands on a broom. Those big warehouses I mentioned stand on empty ground that few recall the original purpose of. I retired from a second career that came after the sweeping and I checked in on the 401k associated with this work. It had made as much money as one could expect from something like this, on what I do not know and all without me hitting a lick at a snake for the last eight months. Unless you call blog writing, banjo strumming and tuba playing, things which I sometimes do get paid for hitting a lick at a snake. 

Now understand this idle wealth, made with clean hands, is not like legacy money. It could be burned through pretty quick with the purchase of top of the line bass boats, neck tattoos, Gibson guitars and trips to see U.S. Tico in Costa Rica. It will be enough money for the economy I create here on out for myself. 

A neck tattoo of a man with dirty hands pushing a broom, maybe a skeleton pushing a broom, a dolphin pushing a broom, a unicorn pushing a broom, help me, I'm brainstorming here.