In the Spring of 1970 I felt sufficiently threatened and otherwise
motivated to see what life at Tundra Tech might have been like, had I
not chosen Rinky Dink U. out of some odd teenage longing for anonymity.
  In a borrowed car...damned if I know why anyone would loan me a
car...I crossed Northern Iowa and the southern two-thirds of Minnesota.
  Coming up into Duluth and Superior from the south one climbs up a long
high ridge.   A Connecticut boy can smell that much water from twenty
miles off.  Its a hell of a view when you get to the last ridge and see
the lake and the harbor below.  But this is not about views or boys,
its about wiggling fishies.

I took the campus tour and was probably appropriately impressed.  Then
I was to spend the weekend in the dorm.  They put me up in the dorm
with the upper class men, far from the trivial pursuits of the
underclassmen, closer to the comforts of campus.  A bunch of guys
announced that the smelt were running and took me along for a night of
in beer drinking, freezing water, driftwood fires, frying pans and
batter.

At the start of the evening, things were kind of reasonable.  There
were nice little fires.  The batter was mixed up in a respectable
manner.  Nets were used to scoop the fish.  The fish were slit with a
knife, heads and guts are popped off, and the little fillets were fried
in the pan.

When the enough beer had been consumed and the numbers of participants
increased, things got a little different.  I vaguely remember not much
caring whether the fish was cleaned with a knife, or a finger, not much
caring that they were well dipped in batter either, nor if a net, hat
or shirt was used to catch the fishies.  It takes a fair bit of beer to
overlook the chill of the water.

It was 33 years ago.  Certainly still ranks among the best nights of my
life.  Who sayz drinking doesn't lead to good decisions?  Or maybe its
more critical where and when and with whom.

I learned recently that the smelt runs of the early 1970's were the
result of an emballance in the lake.  I don't remember the details now,
but either the smelt were a foreign species who had no predators at the
time, or some other event had killed off the smelt's predators.
Ripples along a line within the time space continuum.

Smelt fries got organized over the next couple of years.  Fraternities
and the Veterans used them as fundraisers and the smelt were caught
somewhere else and shipped in for the event.  I only went to one of
them.  I know some remember them fondly.  I'm happy for them.


-jc

On Sunday, July 6, 2003, at 03:46  AM, [log in to unmask] wrote:

> In a message dated 7/6/2003 2:00:58 AM Central Daylight Time, Ken wrote
> about sea turtle....
>
> << as it was incredibly bland and
>  uninteresting. It did not taste terrible, it simply did not taste
> very much
> at all. >>
>
> Ken;how could you?  I mean it could be Fluffy ......this happened to
> me when
> I was in college when I ate the gold fish....try the Tabasco or the
> little
> devils will be doing flips for a week.....:which reminds me my wife
> was on a "see
> food diet" and gained 15 lbs
> go figure......or is it forget figure.....
> .<                                               Pyrate
>
> --
> To terminate puerile preservation prattling among pals and the
> uncoffee-ed, or to change your settings, go to:
> <http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/bullamanka-pinheads.html>
>