"We caught real salmon in the mountain streams," John remarked. "They
weighed from 3 to 25 pounds, and kind of favored a jack fish, only jack
fishes have duck bills, and these salmon had saw teeth. They were
powerful jumpers and when you hooked one you had a fight on your hands
to get it to the bank no matter whether it weighed 3 or 25 pounds. The
gamest of all the fish in those mountain streams were red horses. When I
was about 9 or 10 years old I took my brother's fish gig and went off
down to the river. I saw what looked like the shadow of a stick in the
clear water and when I thrust the gig at it I found mighty quick I had
gigged a red horse. I did my best to land it but it was too strong for
me and pulled loose from my gig and darted out into deep water. I ran
fast as I could up the river bank to the horseshoe bend where a flat
bottom boat belonging to our family was tied. I got in that boat and
chased that fish 'til I got him. It weighed 6 pounds and was 2 feet and
6 inches long. There was plenty of excitement created around that
plantation when the news got around that a boy, as little as I was then,
had landed such a big old fighting fish."

"Suckers were plentiful and easy to catch but they did not give you the
battle that a salmon or a red horse could put up and that was what it
took to make fishing fun. We had canoes, but we used a plain old flat
boat, a good deal like a small ferry boat, most of the time. There was
about the same difference in a canoe and a flat boat that there is in a
nice passenger automobile and a truck."

When asked if he remembered any of the tunes and words of the songs he
sang as a child, John was silent for a few moments and then began to
sing:

"A frog went courtin'