Being Poor

I have told this story several times.  Most don’t believe it.  Even cousins don’t believe it.  Though I think they don’t because they don’t want to remember.  But every word is true.

After papaw and mamaw moved to town, mamaw needed a way to earn “egg money”. The house they rented didn’t have room for chickens so she came up with selling fish bait.  So she had papaw build some traps and place them around town.  Every couple nights papaw or her son would collect the traps and mamaw would empty them in a bin.  She would sell the bait for, I think, 20 for a dime.  Over the years she built up a reliable customer base and kept this up until the early 70’s when she was put out of business by changes in the fish bait business. 

What was the bait she caught and sold?  Cockroaches.  That’s right for years mamaw ran a tiny business catching and selling cockroaches for fishing bait. 

Now when I came along and was old enough to remember anything papaw and mamaw had moved to a different house. This house had a storage and coal shed.  In those days mamaw kept the cockroaches in barrels filled with shredded newspaper in the coal shed.  I remember going out to the shed with her and a customer and watching her fill an order.  She would go to a barrel and quick as lighting catch the designated number of roaches. I also remember sound of all those roaches crawling on the newspaper and that smell.  I shoveled my share of stalls as a kid and have used toilets all over the world, but nothing compares to the sweet, sickly odor in that coal shed.  For thirty years she trapped and sold roaches and today many don’t believe it possible that someone would do such work to earn a few cents.

Don’t see many roaches out here, but last time I smashed one, the smell brought back memories of that long gone coal shed and that long gone woman earning her egg money. I think a cousin might have a couple of those traps left.  Have to see if I can have one.