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"A Fish Basket"
(Alabama)
A History of Dale County Alabama
STORIES AS TOLD BY MY GRANDMOTHER, A LADY OF THE DEEP SOUTH
I am a little girl and live in Ozark,
Alabama, and am fourteen years old. I go to school and am in Junior High
School. My mother is dead, my father living and I have an older brother.
We live with my grand-mother, who is a widow, and she is very sick at this
time in a hospital. She has told me lots of tales about the things which
happened long time ago when she was a little girl living down on the river
plantation near Clayhatches, which is in Dale County, down below
Daleville. She is over seventy-two years of age, and I think she is a
wonderful woman. My mother died when I was six years old, so she has
sorter raised me ever since. She is very nice to me, and we live in a nice
old house in Ozark where there are plenty of trees and ground around the
house where we will have lots of room to run around and play in.
She was one of the younger girls in her family, and while her father, my
great-grandfather had good eyes, he couldn't hear very well, so he would
carry her with him most of the time on his hunting and fishing trips. She
must have been his favorite among his girl children for he would always
call on her for lots of things to help him with.
She told me they lived way down in the country in an old log house; and
that while it was made of logs it was a large and rambling kind of a
house. I have seen it, but most of the old trees have either died or been
cut down. They had lots of barns, and cribs, and smoke-houses, and other
out-houses. She said this was the old river plantation that my grandfather
went back to after he had a big fire at Daleville and lost almost
everything he had; he and my grnadmother rent back there together. She
said her life down there was a very happy one when she was a little girl.
They didn't have much opportunity to go to school, as the nearest one was
four miles away, and they had to walk, but she was just naturally liked to
live down there; everything was so pleasant and the family was such a
happy one. She said she used to go fishing and hunting with grandfather,
and I am going to tell you the tale she told me about going to the fish
basket.
When she was a little girl, such a long time ago, her father would call
her very early in the morning, even before day-break, and tell her to get
up and put on her clothes and shoes, that they were going to get their
fish from baskets down at the river. They wouldn't even eat any breakfast
before they started out; they would go out of doors and the early morning
star would be shining so brightly, and the dew would be all over the
grass, and it would be kinder cool; they would call "Ruler", who was the
old hound dog that they all loved so well, and who always went with them
on their trips; sometimes he would be away when they started out, and when
they got back old "Ruler" would look like he had been insulted. Anyway,
they would start off towards the swamp and the river, which was about a
mile and a half from their house.
It would be just beginning to get
light; and the chickens and the birds would begin to get up and cackle and
sing, and the crickets would begin to "Sputter", and away off they could
hear the cattle low. They would go off down to the swamp thrrough the
lane, and the fields, with the dew on the grass; they would finally come
to the swamp, and would go down a little part and finally come to a little
stream of water, and it was very marshy all around it; and it was mushy
too; it was too wide to jump, although it was not very deep, but she had
her shoes on so she couldn't wade it; anywat she was always afraid of
snakes. So they had to cross this little stream by walking a foor-log
across it; old "Ruler, would always go ahead and scare away the snakes.
They would go on down through the swamp and finally would come to the
river, which was named the Choctawhatchee river; she said back in those
days this was a very large river, and wasn't muddy at all, but just as
clear; they had a boat hidden back under some brush hanging over the
river, tied to a tree; it was just an ordinary kind of boat, made of wood,
with home-made paddles, and had only one seat across the middle of it, and
a seat across the back of it. Grandfather would get into the back end of
the boat, and she would get into the front end, and they would push off
and start to paddling down the river, and finally they would come to where
the fish baskets were placed. They had fish baskets in those days, and not
fish traps.
These baskets were made out of white oak whites which were long slivers of
wood from a white oak tree, and were enterwined just like you do in
knitting, except they were not placed so close together. There were two of
them, the small one on the top and the large one on the bottom; the upper
one had a little kind of trap like a swinging door, and the bait was in
the large basket on the bottom. The fish would smell or see the bait in
the large basket and run or swim all around them until it finally found
the hole in the small basket and come down through the small basket
through the trap into the large basket where the bait was, and then they
couldn't get out.
She said that Grandfather would catch the limbs of an over-hanging trees,
to which the baskets were attached, and pull up the baskets, and pour out
the fish into a bucket. These fish were usually river trout or cat-fish,
and sometimes what they called brim. She said she always took off her
shoes before getting into the boat, because there was always some water in
the bottom of it, and sometimes the fish would fall out of the bucket and
she didn't it for those slimy fish to get on her bare feet, and anyway she
didn't like fish nohow. Back in those days, she said there were always
some fish in some of the baskets. Grandfather would then bait the baskets
again, and put them back into the water, and they would go back to the
baskets two or three times a week, whenever he thought the family needed
fresh fish, instead of eating hog meat all the time. But she said
sometimes they had fresh beef, and that there was always some kind of wild
game, like squirrel's and in the fall plenty of birds, like dove and
quail, and sometimes ducks and wild turkey to eat.
Well, anyway, they finally paddled back up the river to where they kept
the boat, and hid it again, and tied it up, and put the fish in a sack and
started back home. On the way they found the old alligator wallow, which
had been there some time, at least a few months, and it smelled awful, and
the place this alligator went down to the river from his wallow looked
like a broad path -- it was just as smooth through the underbrush of the
swamp --, but they didn't stay around to find the alligator that morning.
However another morning they all went down there to try to kill the
alligator, that is, all the men did, but she went along. But I will tell
about that some other time. They carried the fish on home, and put them
into barrels of fresh water, and ate them whenever they got ready, but,
grandmother said they were always ready to eat fresh fish, so they didn't
last very long.
Whenever they got home it was just after day-break, and great-grandmother
was cooking breakfast of pan-cakes and ham and eggs. They were very hungry
and sat down and ate lots.
Well, sometime, if you want me to I will tell you about the 'Coon hunt,
and when the Red Bird got into Uncle John's pants and bit him on the
belly, and when the rattle snake got after him, and lots of tales like
that which grandmother has told me of what happened when she was a little
girl a long, long time ago.
X
December 8, 1938. George S Barnard.
The above and foregoing six pages is a
true story as told me by a little girl named Carolyn Elizabeth B________,
which her grandmother, Mrs. Laura D. B__________, who lives Ozark, Alabama
told her, so Caolyn Elizabeth says. All parties and their true names are
known to me, and I have a record of same.
X
December 8, 1938 George S. Barnard
Text from: Library of
Congress, Manuscript Division, WPA Federal Writers' Project Collection
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