I have the impression that my father was a very capable person when he was young. In addition to being able to grow vegetables and cook as mentioned in the previous article, there are many skills.
For example, fishing for "foot fish" with pork liver.
The foot fish is actually a soft-shelled turtle, a turtle, also known as the king eight. In the area of Hubei Lake District, Hunan, it is a famous dish for entertaining distinguished guests.
When I was about four or five years old, one day, my father got a piece of pork liver from ** (because he often helps others as a chef, so occasionally ask the person who holds the banquet to ask for a little "corner cutting", there is still a way). I asked my mother for a dozen embroidery needles and some thick threads for sewing quilts, and some fine twine from the toolbox (this kind of thread is mainly used to sew sacks). My father first tied the thread of the quilt to the handle of the needle**, and then connected the thread of the quilt with the twine, which was about ten meters long. Then put the pork liver through the two ends of the needle, so that a simple hook for fishing for footfish is ready.
That day, my father took me to have an addiction. I fished in the "red light pond" outside the mountain. The pond was very large, and there was a lot of grass on the edge of the pond, but there were shallows in many places. The father walked along the shallows of the pond to knee-deep, threw the hook into the grass, and then slowly pulled the line to the shore, or tied it to a branch, or broke a branch, tied the line and inserted it in the aquatic weed.
After doing this, my father began to mow the grass around the horse while I played on the sidelines. After about an hour or two, I suddenly noticed that there was a water weed stirring. I hurriedly shouted: Daddy, Daddy, come on, the grass is moving in that place. The father hurried over, pulled up the fishing line, and sure enough, he caught a foot fish. The father put his foot on the footfish, pointed to the neck of the footfish, and said, "Look, the needles have pierced the neck of the footfish." As he spoke, he took out the pliers from the basket, clamped the eye of the needle, pulled out the needle vigorously, and then put the foot fish into the "snakeskin bag".
This is the first time I've ever seen fishing with a straight hook. When I grew up, when I learned that "Jiang Taigong fishes, those who wish to take the bait", I always can't help but want to say: does he use "no hook", or straight hook?
I had a lot of harvest that day, and I caught 6 of them, and the big ones were five or six catties. The father killed the footfish, kept some for himself, and gave the rest to the neighbors to eat, but kept all the shells of the footfish. Because after the shell of the foot fish turtle is dried, it can be sold at the scrap collection station, and it can be sold for seven cents and eight cents per catty. The ** that sells the shells of the foot fish is far larger than the ** that eats the meat of the foot fish.
In addition to fishing for footfish, my father also fished for yellow eels. That would require a hook from a wire on a scrap bicycle wheel. This kind of hook is more troublesome to make, first sharpen the steel wire at one end, then bake it red on the fire, and then clamp it with pliers and slowly bend it into a hook.
The reason why I say this is to prove that my father likes to use his brain and figure out how to find a solution. In addition to these, he will also do others, such as catching yellow eels and loaches with electric lights at night in summer, fishing for frogs with cotton, touching fish, drying ponds, etc., these are also done by others, so they are not considered specialty.
But there is one thing, it is his "specialty", not whether others will do it, it is that ordinary people are not as diligent as him. That is: harpooning rabbits in the snow.
This is a job that requires both diligence and skill. First of all, choose the morning after the blizzard the night before, when some rabbits will not have time to find their holes and will have to stay in the snow temporarily. Secondly, a person should take a harpoon to look slowly along the edge of the ridge, and the sound of talking will scare away the rabbit when there are more people, and not too close to the ridge, and the sound of footsteps will also scare away the rabbit. The third and most important thing is to find the rabbit's hiding place in time. My father said that rabbits would usually find a place with a small nest by the ridge as a temporary nest and stay there to hide from the snow. Heavy snow will bury rabbits, and rabbits buried in the snow will find a place to vent, and that place will turn blue. When you see the blue outlet, throw the harpoon there at the right distance (the harpoon should be tied with a rope, otherwise, if the fork hits the rabbit's vital point, the rabbit will drag the harpoon away), *not far from ten.
I didn't see my father forking the rabbits, but I do remember a few times when my father came back with a few rabbits before I could get out of bed.
Mother said: Flying spotted (turtle dove) rabbit is the best thing to eat except ginseng bird's nest.
I believe that what my mother said is true, because the rabbit meat that my father forked is so delicious!