Spring, Friends & Neighbors, and Kentucky Derby Day in Eaton!!!

The year has been a bummer for me personally and there seems to be no let up to it…LOL. But in the scheme of things memories have will have to suffice to raise me up and keep me going. 

Yesterday I thought about having a Derby Party like we used to have in Eaton. When I first moved here I became acquainted with my neighbors who were wonderful people who enjoyed Soring and each other’s company…we would plan get-togethers and my favorite was “Derby Day”!

Pauline Brown would clean the fresh fish Mike and Emily Curtis would fish for (Bullhead and such)… then we would do chicken and salads with Nellie Wooten’s unbelievable Pecan Pie to finish… the Pecan Pie of which we all went into sugar shock over, and my specialty was….Mint Julep’s… both alcoholic and non-alcoholic.  Spring had sprung!

We also had Party Mutual tickets for $1… that was our wager of the day on whatever horse we would like the name of.  Sometimes my craft friends would come from Syracuse.  One year Grandpa Black won on a ticket picked for him by someone else… He laughed and laughed. 

Grandpa Black was blind and had been a postman who climbed Hamilton Hill on his route…on snowshoes sometimes in the winter.  He said he and the Hamilton postman would meet at the top of the hill.  Our personal joke was I would ask him what color ashtray he wanted…he would say “Green”… and I would hand him a different color and someone would say…”That’s not green!”...He would answer...”They are all green to me!”… And we would laugh!

One time Pauline got into the Juleps before getting the chicken ready…I can still see Judy Cramphin coming out of the kitchen accusing me of getting her mother drunk. 

One time Nellie who never drank brought “Hard Sauce” for the Pecan Pie…It was so “Hard” I decided to investigate the whiskey she had used… She turned the old bottle over to me, when I looked in the back of it… the phone number of the liquor store had only 4 or 5 digits…yikes…aged for real!

Many times people showed up with hats on…cowboy or bonnet…but always ready to eat, smile, and enjoy each other’s company for a while after a long cold winter and usually…. a cold April.

As I look at my Facebook friends today I still see a number of familiar young faces that have replaced the many older faces that have passed over the threshold…I miss them all… and our many “Good Times”!  Happy Spring to all…

Here is one of the kids that came back for a visit...this day to "Jack Ass Hill!"

For Pauline...Bullhead fishing...Bob Rollins...and the good times in Eaton..Think Spring!

My good fishing buddy Pauline Brown...miss her!

With all the snow that fell everywhere but here in Eaton. (Thank God) I thought about Spring and how I wished we were coming on to it instead of Winter.  I got and email today from someone from the area and this story popped into my head...so for Harold.

One year my good friend Pauline and I went up to Jack Ass and were frustrated at catch- ing no bullhead; as a matter of fact we had few bites. Pauline had talked to our neighbor Bob Rollins, and he said we should use crabs. Well, this particular night when we didn‟t even get one bite we were camping on the hill where Pauline had a trailer. The next morning over a cup of coffee she ordered me to town to find her daughter Judy in order to get her to get us some crabs (crayfish) to fish with that night.

So I drove back to town and got Judy, telling her of her mother‟s request. I had a pail and asked her if we needed cans or a net to catch the crabs with. Judy laughed at me with that city slicker type of laugh of hers and said, “You just reach down and grab them”. So, reinforced with that information, I followed her across the cow pasture behind the house to the place where she and her friend Cindy used to catch them. There were these “crabs”. I yelled, “You mean crayfish are your crabs?” She looked at me and said, “Yes, why?” “I eat these things, I do not fish with them!”

Judy reached down and tried to grab one, and it bit her. She dropped it and looked at me. After losing a bunch of them that way I took my baseball cap off, and we used that as a scoop! My poor hat! This ball cap was my prize possession since it was bought the day the Liverpool Library became the first library in the United States to bar- code, and it had a barcode on the front for Liverpool! It worked well, but unfortunately the hat never recovered!

That night I took the “crabs” up to Pauline, and we fished. While being novices at fishing with crabs, we did not know we were supposed to break the poor thing‟s legs or it would crawl under a rock. Well, to say the least, we were not successful, and that week I had to go out and buy hooks and sinkers to replace the ones that were under what must have been every rock in the Eatonbrook Reservoir in our casting area!
After some thought on this I wrote the poem “Crabbin‟ .

 

Crabbin ’
(For the bullheads)

On a hot day in May,
Thought of going fishin’ at the end of the day. 
So I asked my neighbor what bait he’d use, 
If he were fishin’ in my shoes.
He said t’wer crabs they would bite best, 
Not knowing crabbin’ would be a test, 

With pail and helper I shuffled along, 
Across the cow pasture and further beyond.
Just as the creek went ‘round the bend,
They were spotted by my crabbin’ friend.

It seems in her youth she had caught them by hand, 
As they scooted backwards across the sand.
But now as adults we found it quite clear, 
‘Twas more than a hand that was needed here. 

So using my ball cap as a net,
Up to the crabs we slowly crept.
Two hours of crabbin’ and soaked to the skin, 
We made it back to my lawn again.


That evening, exhausted, I went to fish, 
Picturing them fried, lying on my dish.
But each time I threw a crab in the lake, 
A quick walk under a rock it would take.

Now with reticence I sit and think,
With not a fish to clean in my sink; 
‘Though they wiggle, and they do squirm, 
There’s nothing’ like fishin’ with a worm. 

A video of Jack Ass...