Chicken livers as bait

I was sitting on my screened porch, watching the sun set and doing some thinking. Down below my wooded ridgetop at the fringe of the field, a bobwhite was whistling away. Except for him, there wasn’t a sound.  I was thinking about catching catfish, as just a night or so before, the Vanderputten brothers and I had caught five on a hastily-set trotline down at the lake.
We set the line in mid-afternoon, and baited it with chicken livers while we went about catching sunfish to bait it with at dark.  The two neighbor boys, Marcel and Matthew, 16 and 14 years old, are country boys out to learn everything they can about the outdoors.  Marcel even ran a trapline last year, a throw-back to kids in the early half of last century.  I am going to teach them about the fine art of old-fashioned trotlining.  I explained to them however that using chicken livers for bait is not the old-fashioned way. 
A grizzled old veteran outdoorsman like me doesn’t use chicken livers.  To catch a big flathead catfish you need live bait.  But chicken livers will produce blue cat and channel cat, and I am desperate right now, needing to find a way to feed catfish to a couple hundred people at the outdoorsman’s swap meet we are putting on in a month.  I was a little surprised to find that chicken livers are only about a dollar per box at the local grocery store, and I was sitting there thinking how I had bought three boxes, and it only took about one box to bait 25 hooks.
The Vanderputten brothers and I caught enough sunfish to rebait the line at dark, and when we did we had caught three nice channel catfish on the chicken livers.  At daylight the next morning, we went out and caught one small flathead and one hefty channel cat, about ten pounds or so.   We hurried back and put our catfish in a big aerated tank and I quickly changed clothes and jumped in my car heading out to a book-signing I had committed to.  I left my old pick-up and boat sitting in the yard. 
And as I sat there on the porch last night thinking about what a good investment those three boxes of chicken livers had been, I realized that I had used a box and half of the three boxes, and had another box and a half leftover to use again.  Then I got to wondering where I might find those leftover chicken livers, and I realized they had been in a little styrofoam box, and I had told Marcel to put my tackle box and that Styrofoam box behind the seat in my club-cab pickup!  And sitting there on the back porch, relaxing in the calm, peaceful atmosphere the beneath giant oaks, listening to that bobwhite, it came to me that I had a box and a half of chicken livers in the cab of my pick-up and they had been there for two full days in 90 degree heat!  Suddenly the evening was ruined!
I know some people enjoy hearing about the difficulties of others, but even so, if you can imagine what my pick-up smells like this morning, you are not at all smiling at this.  It is raining right now, and I have the windows rolled down anyway. What my truck smells like, even with the chicken livers gone, could not possibly be described by writers with much more talent than I have. 
My old Dodge is a 1999 model and has 240 thousand miles on it, because I did a lot of hunting and fishing all over the country before gas got so high last year.  It made so many trips to Canada I cannot count them.  Don’t be thinking it will ever be traded in as a “clunker”.  That pick-up is a classic.   When I bought it, it cost 22,000 dollars.   If I took it in and got another one, and got my 4,500 dollar clunker allotment from the government I would still pay more for a new one than that original amount.  That don’t seem like such a super deal to me, even if a new one would at this time smell a great deal better.  By the end of the upcoming duck season, a new one would smell pretty bad too, something like a wet Labrador.
I have an old four-wheel drive Chevy pick-up, a 1989 model, which runs really good and smells o.k.  Back in the early summer a field mouse got into the fan and was killed by the blades.  Eventually, the local mechanic removed what remained of the mouse, as much because of the noise of the blades hitting his carcass as the smell.  By now, you can scarcely tell I ever had a dead mouse in the fan.  That old pick-up is indeed a clunker, and would qualify me for the 4500 dollar government handout, but then again, I’d still have to come up with about 25,000 dollars to swing the deal for a new one.  Then I’d have to go back to work, eliminating much needed trotlining time, and making it hard to sit on the porch as often, relaxing.  It is just an endless circle!   And I use my old pickup for rough jobs... to go down in the woods and cut and haul firewood, to haul my canoes and johnboats down old roads to the river where you wouldn’t even think of driving a new one.   I see all kinds of outdoorsmen with new trucks they won’t get off the pavement because of the fear getting a scratch on it.
The clunkers program won’t work for many of us grizzled old outdoor veterans because we have an aversion to borrowing money, knowing you always pay back more than you borrow. Some of those traded-in clunkers are really pretty nice vehicles; much better ones than many poor people in the Ozarks drive.  Instead of crushing them, why don’t they use some of them to replace older, more clunkerized versions, the ones so many country people have to use?  Sometimes it seems there is no common sense left in America.
I like my old Chevy clunker, meant for the brush and abuse.  Even the clock works in it and some of it ain’t even rusted, especially inside.  And that Dodge pick-up is a beauty, with a good radio and soft seats and a pretty deep green color, sort of the color of left-over chicken livers.

I hope you are planning to attend our big get-together on Saturday Sept. 5.  I will detail some of the things which will be there at our swap meet for grizzled old outdoor veterans, and the fish fry we are planning. You can reserve a free table if you have something to trade or sell. We have fliers to send out if you would like more information.  Send a post card requesting one, to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613 or e-mail your request to lightninridge@windstream.net.  You can even call the office and request my executive secretary, Ms. Wiggins to send you a flier.  That number is 417 777 5227.  With Ms. Wiggins, you must speak slowly and clearly and be patient.  But she is looking forward to this event, thinking there may be some prospective husbands there. 
I am looking forward to meeting with folks who read this outdoor column, and I intend to give away lots of copies of the summer issue of the Lightnin’ Ridge Outdoor Magazine.  Let me know if you are coming.  I need to know how many catfish me and Marcel and Matthew and Uncle Norten need to catch and how many more cartons of chicken livers I need to buy.
My website has all the details of the swap meet too. www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com