Crawdads as headwear
One of my strongest memories of my maternal grandfather was of him fishing. He loved to fish, mostly with rapalas, and to this day I could probably pick out for you what he considered the best rapala for rainbow and german brown trout. I of course learned to fish, though I haven’t used the skill in years – which is OK, since trout is not one of my favorite dishes. However, most of his visits to see us included long afternoons by a river or lake, complete with one cooler filled with sandwiches and drinks, and the other empty and waiting for the fish that almost always filled the cooler. Like all fishermen, his stories grew with time, although the photographs did his skills justice at least in number of fish caught, if not in size of each fish.
Bragging about catching fish is normal, but he had one skill while engaged in fishing that my brother and I found decidely NOT normal. One of his favorite spots near my parents’ place was a lake regularly stocked with fish due to its proximity to a fish hatchery. 
The lake wasn’t particularly interesting to kids, but it did have crawdads. Crawdads, as the smaller, blue collar version of lobster, were not worth good fishermens’ time to bring them home and fix them for dinner. But my brother and I could poke at them with sticks in the shallow water at least, with their claws swiping hazily at our efforts. But when my grandfather would discover one, he would scoop it up without a word, toss it in his trucker style hat, and plop the hat back on his head. He’d look at us and say, “What? That’s what you do with crawdads!”
Shocked and a little awed at the man who exposed his scalp (for his hair was starting to thin in his 70s) to the pinchers of the small beast, we’d tug on our mom’s shirt, to get her to explain this behavior. More than half the time, she hadn’t seen it, and so didn’t understand our confused looks. The crawdad would be kept under the hat for a while, and returned to the water soon after.
I still don’t know why he’d do that – other than to stop the fussing of his grandkids for a good half hour. And when I see crawdads now, I have a tendency to believe their first use is as something to keep under one’s hat, at least long enough to confuse children.
4 comments Sunday 14 Jun 2009 | m. | Personal
I LIKE that man’s style! The next crawdad I meet will certainly adorn my head. Yep, it will.
Wow. That is so awesome I hardly have words. When I’m a grandpa I’ll do that every chance I get.
He’s an inspiration to parents everywhere!
Hey! You’re alive! Fill us in on the 21st birthday shenanigans at some point.
And yes, it is a pretty good grandpa trait. He also could wiggle his ears, as can all the men on that side of the family. I think my brother can do it now too.
My father could wiggle his ears, AND raise eyebrows independently. The eyebrow raising (when he extended one above his rimless glasses), would send the six of us kids running for cover. His grandsons share many of his traits, even though they never knew him. I felt Sam move for the first time (in utero) the day after my father died. What is passed from one entity to another (and when) may never be confirmed, but I’m convinced it happens. Just DNA doesn’t explain it all.