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

Bull Frogs.

In 1877 I knew a big, handsome Irishman with a full red beard who worked as coachman for Mr. C. O. Poole.

This Irishman married one of the prettiest girls in Metuchen.

I think few people realize what an effect beauty has on a child.

I was at that time about ten years old, yet even at that time I would go a long way out of my way just for the pleasure of looking at her. When I was seven years old I went for one year to the Public School at Metuchen.

For a short time a very pretty young woman taught the lA class in which I was. I used to spend literally hours just gazing at that girl.

When I was twelve a girl came to my father's school.

She was very pretty. I spent a great deal of time just looking at her.

She rarely noticed me and I seldom said anything to her.

Of course men fall in love with pretty girls; that is to be expected, but that infants become infatuated with beauty I suppose most of us do not realize.

But to get back from female beauty to frogs.

This Irishman used to delight in shooting bull frogs in Mr. Poole's pond. He never would eat frog's legs though at that time they were said to be selling in the New York market for a very high price per pound.

Mr. Whiskers used to save the frogs' legs and keep them on the ice and give them to my brother Trumbull.

There were people in Metuchen at that time who actually considered the Marshalls no better than cannibals because we ate bull frogs legs. We should worry about them.

As one travels about one sees people who are just as well bred as ourselves and just as discriminating, eating food that to the ordinary ignorant countryman is simply too disgusting to be eaten.

I have eaten cuttle fish and snails bought on Elizabeth Street in New York, every conceivable kind of dried mushrooms in the Yiddish quarters and the most uncanny looking dried fish, birds and meats in the Chinese quarters. Some of the sausage one sees in the Syrian quarter in New York certainly look most uninviting.

The only animal I ever balked on was a porcupine which I killed in the White Mountains. I think I could have eaten that if I had not had to prepare it for cooking.

A skunk smells bad but he is good stuff compared with a porcupine.

I couldn't go the porcupine.