Metuchen Edison History Features

Recollections of

Boyhood Days

In Old Metuchen

By

David Trumbull Marshall

Published by The Case Publishing Co., Flushing NY 1930

(Second Edition)- (c) 1930

Catching Fish.

The impulse of every boy when tramping through the woods and fields is to catch or kill every living creature that swims or flys or crawls. The impulse to catch fish is irresistible.

The smaller the boy the smaller the fish which will satisfy his impulse. If a crowd of boys saunter along a brook and one starts a fish by poking under stones or other hiding places, then all his inventive genius is brought to bear to contrive some way to catch that fish. When I was a boy I usually wore a broad-brimmed straw hat in summer. Such a hat is useful for catching butterflies or mice or fish and for toting berries or apples or other plunder.

When a fish is started in a little brook what so obvious as a net to catch him as a straw hat?

Fill the hat with leaves and sink it in the brook and poke the fish until he hides in the leaves and then you have him.

I have often made fish spears of a stick sharpened to a blade like a chisel and then the chisel blade was cut V-shaped to prevent slipping. Sometimes we laboriously dammed the brook with sods and before the dam overflowed we caught fish below the dam in the shallow pools.

Of course when one goes fishing one is provided with lines and hooks or in small brooks with scoop nets with which to catch little fishes.

The fine spun rules and regulations of your real fisherman do not interest your small boy.

His aim is to catch the fish, and whether with hook and line or net or trap, so the fish is caught, he is satisfied.

When I was a boy we used to catch small fish and wrap them in clay and bake them.

They would probably have tasted better if broiled or fried in the usual way but that was too common for us. I remember once baking a crawfish wrapped in clay.

When I raked it out of the fire and broke the clay I thought for an instant that the fish was red hot.

The crawfish, like the lobster and the crab and that whole tribe, turns red on heating.

When I see troops of Boy Scouts tramping through the roads of Long Island I often say to myself, "If they think they are having a good time they are having a good time."

I only wish that more of the city boys could have the good times I had when I was a boy, tramping through the woods.

It is encouraging that so much is being done by the State and other agencies to provide places where boys may taste the delights and benefits of a sojourn in the country.