A Day on Beaver Lake:
The Summer of `56
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It was a lake to us. Actually, it was an irrigation reservoir that fed a canal. To three nine-year-old boys it was a lake. It covered no more than an acre and a half but it was an ocean to us. It could have hidden away in its depths treasure chests from sunken pirate ships. It could have huge fish as had never been caught. It could have been the last stronghold of some aquatic monster. Mostly though, it had frogs. As an oasis in the desert; it was scarce water surrounded by even scarcer trees. In North Central Montana where little towns popped up with a normal ten miles between them in a hilly but otherwise featureless landscape trees and water were scarce. We had discovered a paradise known only to us.
Jerry was the son of
the owner of the hardware store.
James's dad worked at one of the grain elevators and my dad
worked at the local furniture store.
Jerry's dad was the one that helped us the most.
One time we brought him a worn out tire inner tube and each of us
found the perfect forked branch for slingshots.
Within an hour we had our slingshots.
The hardware store hardly ever had customers that I can remember.
I remember the odor as we entered the store.
Jerry's dad smoked huge green cigars and the store reeked with
the smell of cigars. Jerry
always had the latest in sporting equipment and popular items of the
day; which brings us back to the frogs.
We named our little
ocean Beaver Lake. The
cottonwood trees that surrounded it were plentiful and the sign of
beavers was everywhere.
There were many young trees cut down by in the prime of their youth by
engineering beavers. The
farmer that owned the little reservoir probably spent hours destroying
beaver dams all summer long.
After our initial
discovery and exploration of Beaver Lake; we decided we needed to
collect frogs. We didn't
know for what exactly. A
lot of times when a plentiful resource is at hand you exploit it now and
figure out what can be done with it later.
We knew they could be used for something; maybe frogs legs for
the restaurants. None of us had personally tried frog's legs but we had
heard that they were delicacies.
We talked it over and decided that we would bring samples home to
our mothers to cook and `sort of' test the market.
Now we had to figure
out how to catch them. The
water was too deep and the mud was a trap (we remembered the perils of
quicksand from the cowboy shows) so we couldn't wade for the frogs and
expect to catch them. Truth be
known, we tried the sling shots in our back pockets.
After expending great amounts of time and effort and loosing fine
stones in the water without bounty, we put our heads together for
another solution.
The little town that
we lived in was inhabited by 1500 people and probably twice that in cats
and dogs. It was a farming
community and farmers fields started on the very edge of town.
Beaver lake was what seemed like a long distance to three
nine-year-old boys, but was probably only a mile from the city limits at
the most. In Jerry's dad's store there was a fine chemistry set in the
display window. Although it
had probably been there for years and had a fine cover of dust; it
looked to us to be the perfect solution to catching frogs.
The white metal container with the young man gazing intently at
the test tube in his hand with the smoke curling slowly out of the tube
was sure to be our answer.
Poison darts. That was it,
poison darts.
There was a huge empty
lot across the street from my house.
At the eastern edge of that lot there were several old
dilapidated buildings that belonged to a plumber whose name was Doc
Jordan. I never did know
why they called him Doc. He
was old. At least he was
older than our parents, I thought.
He always wore a tan fedora that was circled with a two-inch band
of dirt and sweat. He
walked with a stiff leg. We
speculated that it was a wooden leg; but we didn't know for sure.
What we did know though was that he stored all kinds of plumbing
parts, pipes and fixtures in those old buildings.
All of the fun things you could do with stuff were beyond our
realm of calculation.
Right now though, we
needed three pieces of pipe about six inches long and a half-inch in
diameter, give or take. The problem we had was that old Doc Jordan was
always around somewhere. On
previous occasions he had chased us away from his treasures, with what
looked to us to be a double tree.
I suspect though, that it was just a stick.
He waved his stick in the air and hopped like Chester Goode in
Gun Smoke; however he yelled obscenities that I'm sure Chester had never
heard.
James and I acted as
decoys and distracted Doc Jordan and provoked a chase (we delighted in
watching him hop after us) while Jerry purloined three fine pieces of
galvanized pipe.
Now we had the blow
tubes for the darts. But
where do we find the darts?
One of our resourceful mothers had the solution.
These days no mother would have thought of it; and even if she
did she would not have divulged the plans; but this was the fifty's, the
carefree years when boys could be boys.
We used toothpicks as the shaft of the dart. Notebook paper cut
to be folded to the shape of a cone and glued with model airplane glue
on one end and a pin held firmly to the tooth pick wrapped with white
thread at the other end. We
had functional blowguns, accurate to at least five feet.
Creating the poison
for the darts was the most rewarding part of the frog hunt.
The chemistry set held some twenty small jars that held crystals
and powders of different chemicals.
The set had a book with directions for the performance of
scientific experiments. We
never read it. We mixed
different chemicals with water until we had a color that was
satisfactorily poison looking.
We put the poison concoction in an empty Vicks jar that still had
remnants of that clouded clear grease that cleared your nostrils and
made your eyes water. If
memory serves me, the poison was a turquoise color when we had the final
product. We were certain
that once pierced by the poison dart the frog would be immediately
paralyzed, flop over on its back and stay motionless until collected and
stored in a coffee can.
Well, it sort of worked that way.
We all had five darts.
Before we left Jerry's back yard for our trip to Beaver Lake, we
decided to practice a few times with our new weapons.
After a few tries and determining which end of the blow guns the
darts should be inserted, and that you should never inhale before you
exhale, we put a few darts into the grass.
They seemed to work satisfactorily; we retrieved our darts and
set out for the lake.
After we arrived we
got sidetracked by some fish that were visible in a small pool that had
formed at the closed head gate of the irrigation ditch.
In those days any small fish was a minnow; it didn't matter the
species. We burned the
better part of an hour trying to catch the little fish by hand and then
by scooping the coffee can through the water until we remembered our
mission.
On the shore of the
lake we pushed and flattened an area in the cattails and rushes to sit
and prepare our darts with the deadly poison.
We dipped all fifteen darts in that smelly concoction and went on
to hunt. An hour and a half
passed and we had exhausted our supply of darts without a single
connection. We were
determined not to be skunked though; and by pure surprise and dedication
Jerry made an awesome belly flop dive into the edge of the lake with his
coffee can extended and connected.
He was dripping with mud and water as he stood and looked into
the can. A huge smile
confirmed for us that he had that unlucky frog.
We walked well away
from the water with our game so that there was no chance for it to
return to safety. We had
the live frog, no darts; but we still had the poison. After a brief
confab the consensus was that we pry the frog's mouth open and pour in
the poison. We did that;
and sure enough the frog flopped over on its back and succumbed.
The once green frog turned the bluest blue imaginable----bluer
than Peter Sellers in his 1967 movie "The Bobo."
We had our bounty now
it was back to town for our mothers to cook a special fog leg meal.
Wet, dirty, and weary; the frog cook- out never took place.
The frog was flushed down the toilet, the coffee can went in the
garbage and we all ended up in the tub---what a terrible way to finish a
day on Beaver Lake.
After reading this, my
wife's only comment was--"You murdered a frog."
I had to remind her that it was just a story.
Sans Peur
Terry
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