Volunteer contributors have long played an important role in the production of this newspaper and they still do but times change and what people voluntarily submit changes. For example, we used to devote two or more pages each week to reporting on weddings, engagements and other social activities like club meetings and birthday parties. We are still willing to print those items without charge but the number received is a fraction of what it once was.
I remember when this newspaper had more than 20 community correspondent volunteers who faithfully submitted community news each week. They were our eyes and ears in this newspaper’s multi-county circulation area. The week after a major holiday meant long hours for the production crew as we turned the correspondents’ reports into type. It wasn’t unusual for the more prolific writers to fill all the available space on a newspaper page in their attempt to report on their community’s happenings,
Now most of those stories go to social media sites. Those sites were populated on Mother’s Day with pictures of mothers and tributes to the submitters’ mothers.
Monday Rita asked if I had any special Mother’s Day memories.
My first one, involved a fishing trip to the Republican River and my attempt to provide my mother with a bouquet of wild flowers.
I’m not sure of my age but I was certainly in the lower grades. I had gone with my father and another man on the fishing adventure. I soon grew tired of sitting still, keeping quiet and staring at my fishing line hoping for a fish to bite. Dad believed noise and movement would scare the fish away from his line and required me to sit motionless and speechless.
I soon abandoned my fishing pole and went exploring the nearby pasture. Wild flowers were blooming and I decided my mother would appreciate a Mother’s Day bouquet. As I roamed the pasture collecting flowers, I failed to keep track of my position relative to where my father was fishing.
Fortunately, I got my bearings and returned to the fishing site before he was ready to leave. I don’t remember if my mother liked the flowers but I remember how happy I was to find my father.
My mother and her siblings liked to be with their mother on Mother’s Day and that meant the noon meal would be eaten in a cafe.
I much preferred eating in a home, but grandfather didn’t believe grandmother and her daughters should have to prepare a big Sunday dinner on Mother’s Day and he was wasn’t willing to take on the task.
The cafes were always packed and I thought a lot of time I could have been playing with my cousins was wasted going to a cafe on Mother’s Day.
One year, the Sunday meal was to be eaten at the Bon Ton Cafe, a popular cafe located in an old hotel building where the Cowboy Corner Museum is now located. To a little boy who wanted to go play, it seemed like we stood outside in a line for hours waiting for a table in the cafe.
I’m sure we didn’t have a fish dinner but this spring a joint project between the game departments of Kansas and South Dakota, will probably result in fish dinners being served in some homes on a future Mother’s Day.
Kansas is trading gizzard shad caught at Lovewell Lake to South Dakota for walleye fry.
When the my family had a bait shop, we sold many pint jars of shad bait. I never used what I considered to be “nasty” bait but many customers did. I don’t know where the shad came from but the jars were packed and sealed in a factory somewhere and then shipped to us by the unrefrigerated case. When received the shad was “ripe” and immediately placed in the freezer. The shop had two freezers, one reserved for things like ice and ice cream that would be consumed by humans. The other contained frozen fish bait.
Also had special refrigerators. Some contained soft drinks, eggs and milk. One in an open air shed was reserved for fish bait. It was stocked with nightcrawlers along with two kinds of shad. We had shad sides and shad gizzards.
I know fish down’t have gizzards but but shad gizzrds were a kind of fermented (that’s a polite word for rotten) shad sides and particularly the fish’s gizzard like stomach.
I never used any of the shad bait. I preferred less messy things like Catfish Charley or the locally sourced salamanders, minnows, worms, crawdads and sand toads.
Unused prepared baits like Catfish Charley could be and used for multiple fishing trips. I never thought I would use and entire pint of shad bait on a fishing trip and I sure didn’t want to save a partial jar for another trip.
Do you suppose any of the empty shad jars were recycled and used for jelly or pickles? In the days before recycling, I suspect many were probably abandoned near the fishing hole. I can’t imagine a mother or wife willing to store a partial jar of rotten shad in her refrigerator or freezer.
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