It's Funny How Things Come To Mind...

when a person sees certain things. I read in an article about something or other that it is now believed that fresh water clams, mussels, are actually healthy for us. Evidently they contain Omega fats and oil and whatever else the Omegas are. So I guess I'll go to Modesto, put on my swimming trunks, cross to the other side of the Tuolumne River, my friend, and dig some up from along that bank. There's a zillion of them there!

When I was a kid growing up in Modesto, I spent most of my life on my Friend, the River. It was an every day thing for me to go to the River and stay all day.(This is not a picture of the Tuolumne River where it runs through the Modesto area; but it could be-it looks just like it)

Sometimes I would take a long pole with fishing line tied on the end and a fish hook attached to that and fish all day, or as long as I wanted to. Sometimes I dug worms which were always abundant in my Mother's garden to take and use as bait, mostly for Perch or Blue Gills. (I never knew the difference in these two fish-I called them all Perch-they look a lot alike except the Blue Gill has blue gills and is a bit fatter)

Anyhow, most of the time I didn't bother to dig worms. Instead I went to the River and swam across to a place upstream a ways where there was (and probably still is) a huge mussel bed. I dove down about five or six feet and felt around until I found a big one and brought it up and took it to the bank. There I pried it open with my pocket knife and cut pieces off it to use as fish bait.

My wife had never seen a mussel until I showed one to her right after we married.(No, dummy, not muscle,- it's mussel!-for shame)

Those mussels are really big! I know some of them weighed a pound or more, shell and all. One or two mussels were enough to keep me in bait for as long as I wanted to fish.

The only bad thing about fishing was, after I caught forty or fifty perch and blue gills, I had to take them home.(I'd rather stay at the River) They were mostly between three and six inches long. Mom would scale them and gut them and cut their heads off then fry 'em until they were crisp and we'd eat 'em, bones and all! Boy were they delicious!

But for the Mussels; I never ate one. Never wanted to.

I sure hope I don't read an article about cow oil being good for us, so I won't have to tell you the story about the two headed cow that was pastured along the River when I was a kid. Looking at that thing made me nervous and telling about it makes me nervouser!

Later...