justnorth posted on April 18, 2007 07:51 :: 1902 Views
It was called the Brick Barn and served as the local farm shop for the Green Giant Company in Le Sueur. It was where Green Giant mechanics, combine operators, viner workers and the like came to get parts and equipment for their machinery.
My father supervised the place, back in a time when pop came only in bottles that had to be opened with a bottle opener (or by someone with especially hard teeth and little sense.) Every so often Dad would bring me down to the Barn to sweep floors. My pay was a frosty bottle or two of pop from the machine.
You don't see bottle caps much anymore but every time I do I'm taken back in time. I recall how, in the hands of a practiced kid, those caps made pretty effective projectiles when flicked just right with two fingers. A fellow Boy Scout demonstrated this one night at Camp Norseland when he managed to shatter two light bulbs before one of the counselors came charging in to restore order.
There was another good use for bottle caps back in those days. Nail a few to a small board and you had a handy tool for scaling fish. There was an endless supply of caps at the Brick Barn so, after an afternoon of fishing, that is where we'd go. As we kids scaled, the men would sit in the shade, popping caps off a different kind of bottle.
We learned how to fish at the knees of our fathers but as we got older we began to venture off on our own. We'd hop on our bikes with a sandwich, canteen of water and tub of nightcrawlers collected the night before. Sometimes we were gone all day but never once do I recall my mother calling the authorities to search for us when we were a little late getting home.
Between then and now, however, it seems the world has gotten a little whacked out. And one of the repercussions of it all is that young people don't go fishing as often as they used to. Blame it on busy lives, more violence (real or imagined), technology or whatever. But the result is that while in the 1970s about 40 percent of Minnesota's population age 16 and over held a fishing license, it is down to 29 percent today. That is a concern to many who recognize the value of participating in outdoor recreation.
Certainly it is a concern to the Minnesota DNR. The sale of hunting and fishing licenses provides the fuel that allows the DNR to manage fish and wildlife populations. If revenues continue to decline, the level of fish and wildlife management will also drop.
It's not that younger folks wouldn't like to go fishing. Rather, it's that many of them simply don't get the opportunity. And so instead of spending an evening angling off a dock for sunfish or trolling in a boat for walleye, you can find many of them living life vicariously through a video game or DVD.
For these and other reasons, the DNR is asking adult anglers in Minnesota to sign a pledge - a pledge to introduce at least one acquaintance to fishing each year. Called the Anglers' Legacy pledge, it was kicked off at the recent Northwest Sportshow in Minneapolis and in short order some 1,500 anglers had signed up. Angling notables such as Gary "Mr. Walleye" Roach, outdoor media personalities Ron Schara and Billy Hildebrand, and DNR Commissioner Mark Holsten were among the first to sign on.
For more information about the pledge and how to sign on, visit the Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation web site at
www.anglerslegacy.org.
And after you sign the pledge to take someone fishing this spring or summer, let me know if you would like a few bottle caps. I think I know where I can find some.
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