By Some Guy:
Most of my favorite memories growing up are of the weekend fishing trips my dad would take with me and my three older brothers to the small lakes in the prairie pothole region of northern Iowa. Later on my younger brother would accompany us also. We would normally leave right after dad got off work on Friday and not return until Sunday evening. We would spend the weekend camping on the shore of the lake and fishing. The quarry on these trips was usually bullheads. I know, many anglers turn their noses up at bullheads. They are viewed by many as generally undesirable, uneatable and such. But let me tell you from experience, there is nothing better served in any restaurant than a bullhead fresh caught out of cold water and put right into the frying pan over a campfire.
I remember on one of these trips our uncle Henry joined us. Uncle Henry was more “refined” than we were. He was kind of a “gentleman” so to say. He was one of those anglers who had a dim view of bullheads. I think he always referred to them as “lizard fish”. But he came along anyway for the fellowship and the chance to get in some “fancy” fishing for walleye or northern pike. I don’t think the lake we were going to had anything in it but bullheads, but Uncle Henry didn’t know this. He was going to find this out himself, along with a couple other things he didn’t know. All he brought with him was his fishing gear. Dad assured him that everything else needed we would bring. Stuff like tents and cooking equipment.
The bullheads were biting great! The walleye and northerns, not so great. Uncle Henry didn’t catch any of these and became convinced this lake was void of “real” fish. Late Friday night my older brother who always served as the “camp chef” was frying up some bullheads for supper. They smelled great. Uncle Henry was getting pretty hungry by this time, but was not going to lower himself to eating those “lizard fish“. He was looking around for something else to eat and realized that we hadn’t brought anything else! This was the second thing my uncle learned on this trip, when going on a bullhead fishing trip, and you don’t want to eat those things, bring your own food. Our plans were to eat fish! So why bring other stuff?
Uncle Henry was a man of “advanced stature”. He was never one to pass up a meal. He was also a very picky eater. Meals had to be certain things cooked a certain way. This bacteria laden caveman smorgasbord the rest of us were engaged in was far from his liking. Eventually hunger got the best of Uncle Henry and he joined us. After all, it had been almost eight hours since he last ate. He soon found out what we already knew, these things taste good right out of the water and into the pan. Uncle Henry quickly developed such a liking for campfire bullheads that he dang near ate the pan!
The next morning we kids were up early, as usual. It’s next to impossible for a kid to sleep anyway with fish to catch and a lake to explore right outside their tent. The morning fishing was real slow so one of my brothers and I did one thing kids do best, poke around the area looking for strange and interesting things. We rummaged around and found an old coffee can and proceeded to fill it with salamanders that we were finding among the shoreline rocks. We thought that our uncle would want these to use as bait to do his fancy fishing.
In the mean time, my brother the chef had started frying some more bullheads for breakfast. The rest of us smelled this and charged the camp stove to get our bellies full. The can of salamanders? We did another thing kids do best, just left our stuff sit right where we decided to change tasks. This time the “spot” happened to be right next to the stove.
Uncle Henry got a whiff of the frying fish and came rolling out of the tent like a bear awakening from hibernation. His wits were not all with him yet, and he was delirious with hunger. After all, it had been almost eight hours since he last ate. Uncle Henry staggered over to the stove and saw the frying fish out of one eye. The other eye simultaneously focused on the salamanders. His face turned white as a ghost! His weak constitution and imagination couldn’t get past the thought that these punk kid nephews of his were actually feeding him salamanders!
Uncle Henry just stood there for the longest time staring at those salamanders squirming around in that old rusty can. Eventually the color came back into his face. And it was red! He was hot! The leaves singed off the trees! The water in the lake began to boil! Uncle Henry cut loose with a barrage of cursing unheard by mankind before. He was using words we hadn’t heard since we had started the fire in the chicken coop the year before. I think he had actually invented some new cuss words for the occasion. Because some of them he used I have never heard since. After his tirade Uncle Henry never spoke a word or ate so much as a crumb the rest of the trip.
When we got home we asked Uncle Henry if he had fun and if he was going with us again next weekend. He yelled something like, “Your miserable lizard cooking brats!” “It will be a cold day in hell before I go anywhere with the likes of you again!” I guess that meant no. Dad said that we had probably ruined our Uncle Henry for good.
I found out later in life that Uncle Henry had actually lost about thirty pounds due to that camping trip. It seems it took about three or four weeks of my aunts’ gourmet cooking to coax him back into eating regular again. He really never spoke much for quite a while either.
But Uncle Henry did go camping with us again. It took several years, but he did go. We were getting our gear loaded one time when he showed up at the house. I asked, “Gee Uncle Henry, you’re going with us?” “I was starting to think you would never go camping again.” “Why’d you change your mind?” Uncle Henry mumbled, “Your aunt made me come.” “She said I needed to lose weight again.” This time he did have a huge cooler of food we needed to load for him. I guess he didn’t like bullheads after all.
To this day I don’t believe my aunt knows the “real” reason for Uncle Henry’s sudden weight loss due to that trip. At least the doctors couldn’t find any medical reasons for it. The loss of appetite was a mystery also. To my knowledge Uncle Henry never spoke to anyone about the salamander ordeal. Possibly post traumatic stress syndrome? I truly believe my aunt really thinks that camping is just that strenuous. Come to think of it, I’ll bet that chasing four kids around a lake screaming at the top of your lungs while trying to kill them with a frying pan is a great cardiovascular workout!
