Paw...could you put this story on Thousand and one nights? I don't seem to have the skill to do it. Gail Sure can, daughter. I will also send it to the KyClay roots webSee below folks. Jess Wilson HOW TO CATCH A CRAWDAD Directions for catching a crawdad: Go to the creek. Take off your shoes. Roll up your pant leg. It helps to be about nine years old-easier to bend and closer to the water-wade in and look for a flat rock about the size of a plate. Flip it over but be ready to jump back in case you see a snake. Bend over and look - there, he is! Slowly move your hand down until it is just over the back of his neck behind his pinchers, leading with your thumb and forefinger. Get in real close-and grab him! But it is not that easy anymore. A few years ago, my father and I went back to Huckleberry, a hollow in Clay County, to chase a few memories. We stopped, parked and walked to the creek. At the edge of the bank, I smelled the rancid water. We did not need to walk down the bank to see the piles of trash, broken glass and dead vegetation. We did not look for minnows or crawdads-nothing could live in that filth. I returned to the car and asked to go home. On the short drive back to my parent's home on Possum Trot, I thought about the summer days 50 years or so ago. My parents, aunts and uncles visited Grandmother. The cousins, like a pack of puppies, headed up Huckleberry. We might be gone for half a day. Nobody worried-they figured we would come home when we got hungry and besides, the house was quieter without the racket. While catching crawdads was high on the agenda, other entertainment was readily available. Some days we would go to my grandpa's stave mill and crawl up the huge piles of sawdust, marvel at the heat under the surface, and slide down the other side. We might jump out of the hay mound on the second level of the barn or peal sassafras and soak it in creek water-tasted all right with enough thirst. We might go to adjoining Sexton Creek and if we had a string and a hook, catch suckers. One section of the creek had many large rocks on the bank. If we turned them over, a sleepy snake might crawl out. We could scream, run and come back to turn over another rock. After dinner, we spent our time rolling down a little hill and giggling. And in the evening, we caught fire-flies. I ended the trip home thinking about billboards and public service announcements. One said, "We don't own the land, we borrow it from our children." Another is the picture of an elderly Native American looking at a pile of litter while a tear flows down his cheek. I suppose today's children will have pleasant memories of playing computer games, watching TV or playing organized sports. They might as well-they can't catch crawdads.

Jess and Gail, I want to thank you for the story. However be sure that there are still a few places in our world where children still can catch a crawdad. We have been blessed with a farm where there is no TV, telephone, not even the cell phone will work or electricity. So no computer games or TV. Grandsons do play sports but the also hunt and fish with their grandfather and father, grandmother too at times. Cook on an old wood cook stove like my Grandmother Downey did. Even have a warming oven like she had. We do have an Ice Box..Just no one to bring that big block of ice to us. We have a small 4 room house on the farm with a sleeping loft. We have 125 acres of deer, turkey, squirrel and raccoons etc. Big woods and streams. Snake Hollow is just the most beautiful place in the world. Just think we should change its name. Kay Goforth Adams

I can remember many times, as a child, going to catch crawdads so we could go fishing. We would have been up the night before with a couple of coffee cans with some dirt in them, into which we put the night crawlers which were reckless enough to be out in the open. We did a lot of "yuck" and "ooohh", particularly the girls, while our brothers and male cousins spen their time trying to creep us out. Back in the house, we would all have a pallet on the floor, maybe eight to twenty of us, and grandad would stay up late with us, telling us Rawhead and Bloody Bones stories. Then he'd wish us a yawning good night and go off to sleep, while our wide open eye lay there and comtemplated the monsters waiting in the dark. Jesus help you if you had to go to the bathroom, which was outside and around the hill. Next morning we'd go crawdadding early. There would be bait buckets and some plastic pails and a piece of old sheet or pillowcase. Granddad and the one good seine and some of us with the sheet would be downstream. The rest of us would be upstream. We'd carefully turn over rocks, dreading snakes and hoping for crawdads. We'd do this aways down the stream, until the bait bucket was full, and grandad was tired of the splashing and accidental falling in. Back home, we'd gather our cane poles, which grandad had made, our "bobbets", sinkers and a fish stringer, and the sandwiches grandma had made and go off to a deep spot in the river, near the limestone quarry, and fish. If we were really lucky, grandma would send a plastic jug of Koolaid with us. It seldom lasted until we got to our fishing hole. We always caught something. Chigger bites, mosquito bites, sunburn, a million laughs and enough good memories to last a lifetime. Granddad pasted away many years ago, but we all, first cousins, remember him as the greatest man and our fishing trips as the greatest moments in our lives. And, Mr. Wilson, my Granddad was a cousin of the Bond's you knew. They were all good people. My granddaddy Otis, was the best. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com