soap

It was late July and the Rio Grande coming down off Slumgullion Pass was running slow and clear as Jesse and his grandfather headed out of Creede. They had stopped and picked up a bale of straw for bedding under the old army tent they would be living in for the next month. Jesse was only 14 yrs old at the time but he was driving the old '31 model A and pulling the old 2 wheel trailer that carried the tent and straw. On some of the steeper roads Jesse had to turn around and back up as those old fords did not have a fuel pump and the gas ran by gravity from the tank down to the engine so that if the road was too steep the engine was higher than the gas tank unless you went backwards.
As was their habit they had packed all the condiments and dry goods like soap powder, flour, salt, sugar and coffee in old Ball canning jars and stowed them in boxes under the tent.
Finally pulling into a seemingly unused area along side the Rio Grande to the north of Box Canyon, they unloaded the trailer and spread out the straw. While Jesse finished setting up the camp his grandfather headed down along the river with his fly rod and a can of grasshoppers he caught in the tall grass around the campsite. Although his grandfather has lost most of his left arm in a railroad accident in the early 30's he managed that old bamboo fly rod with skill usually having two hooks set with grasshoppers and not all them seldom catching two of those wily rainbows at once.
Jesse had made a cooler box out of pine planking and machine wire mesh across the bottom and a heavy wooden top. By moving some stones around in the river Jesse managed to set the box so that the mesh screen on the bottom was just above the rushing water which was cold enough being mostly snowmelt from the higher peaks that the milk, lard and eggs stayed cool.
On the tent floor above the straw Jesse spread out the homemade quilts that they would sleep on and under for the next month or so. He then gathered up some firewood and cleaned out the ashes from the old fire-ring and set up the kerosene stove. The cooking utensils consisted of a large old cast iron skillet, a caldron and a coffee pot along with an assortment of forks, knives spoons and related odds and ends. All the can goods he kept in a box that was placed under the camp trailer where the bears would have a hard time getting to it. Jesse then got out the kerosene lantern and set it on a hook on the tree beside the tent and sat down waiting for his grandfather to return.
Just shortly before sundown his grandfather came back and pulling off his waist high waders empted out his wicker creel of 5 nice rainbows all about 12" and fat. Jesse took the fish down to the stream and gutted them out ready to flour and fry in that skilled with some flour and a pat of lard. As Jesse walked back to the camp his grandfather was already heating up the skillet on some coals and the lard was spitting out hungry for those rainbows. Jesse walked over to the box of Jars and picked up the flour and brought it over to his grandfather to roll the fish in before throwing them on the fire. Now, on most occasions he would have used cormeal but in the dimming light he was not so easy to spot so grandfather went ahead with the flour, coated the fish real good and threw them in the skillet. And that's when a funny thing happened. The trout was a'bubbling and a'bubbling away in that skillet. Neither one of them said a word but just sat there watching those fish bubbling away and turning brown. After about 10 minutes of that Jesse forked them out of the skillet onto a couple of tin plates and they began to chow down on those fish..Something ain't right here they both thought but kept right on eating.
Jesse looked up at his grandfather only to see them same bubbles floating out of his mouth and a big grin on his face but nary a word was spoke by either of them. It wasn't long before grandfather starting laughing and still eating and laughing even harder. Now Jesse was a pretty bright kid and he knew something was wrong but he surely had no clue as to what it was, and he just kept on eating. After grandfather had picked all the bones out of the second trout and cleaned all the meat off, he sat his plate down on a rock and with a huge smile on his face, the bubbles still coming out. He told Jesse that he didn't think dry soap power made such a good coating for frying fish….