Re: [Harp-L] was SPAH in Sacto?, now snakes, harps and an Elk RIver childhood

["Splash" <celtiac@xxxxxxxxx>]

Pretty interesting, Dave.

We had a guy down on Tamiami Trail who bought snakes and other wildlife we
used to sell him stuff.  But we did go after the vipers and other poisonous
critters.  He paid good.  $100 for a rattler, $75 for a cottonmouth or water
moccasin.  He kept asking us to get him some coral snakes but they were too
tough to catch and too deadly.  We stayed away from them.  $200 for Indigo's
(not poisonous) cuz they were pretty rare.  And depending on the type $50 or
up for scorpions and tarantulas.  Jones Zoo, the place was called.  He had a
snake pit full of all kinds of pisonous snakes and he would walk around in
there. Bill Haast and him were buddies, I think.  The Miami serpentarium
would get their venom and make anti-venom from his snakes.  It's a dam good
thing for me too cuz I got bit by a pygmy rattler in the palm of my hand in
1968 and got 5 vials of the anti-venom and it saved my arm.

And I remember those Blues Harps.  When they first came out they were a darn
good harp.  I got a full set of 12.  Now that I think about it, they cost
alot more than Marine Band and probably weren't really any better, just had
different covers.  I might still have one or two out of that set.  Up till
then I played mostly Marine Band and Old Standby.  They were pretty good
too.  Then Nixon came along and the tarrifs made the price jump to $2.75 for
MBs, IIRC.  I started buying up the old stock of Old Standby's at this music
shop downtown.  They had the dusty-est upstairs you ever saw.  Worse than
grandmaws attic.  But he had alot of cool old stuff up there from WWII days
and earlier.  And all marked with prices from that same era.  Shoemaker's, I
just remembered the name.  Shoemaker's Music.  Like a time machine in there.

You had the Elk river.  We had the Everglades, the River of Grass.  And a
rainy season June thru July when the lawns grew real high.  I got $10 to mow
a lawn back then and was saving up to buy a go-cart when Cassius Clay was
scheduled to fight Sonny Liston.  My Dad told me that he knew where we could
get $12 to 1 bettin on this Clay fellow and I put $10 into the family pot.
I got my go-cart!  And now, come to think of it, I probably got my first
really good guitar because of that Clay-Liston fight.  My dad got me a Dove
guitar for my birthday that year.

I didn't start playing harmonica till a year or two later.

And nobody ever told me that catching snakes was poaching.  We knew that
gators and wild hogs were, but they taste too good not to get one every now
and then.

Sounds like we have similar stories.  I think I drove everybody crazy
playing Train-Time after Wheels of Fire came out.  And I still don't have
that special vibratto down like Alan Wilson used to do on that first Canned
Heat album.  How the heck did he do that?


What good is a dream if it doesn't come true?
PEACE
Scott
Believe in Magic!
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Payne" <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Harp L Harp L" <harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, August 03, 2008 12:32 AM
Subject: Re: [Harp-L] was SPAH in Sacto?, now snakes,harps and an Elk RIver
childhood


> I'm pretty sure SPAH is gonna be near my hometown of Elkview West Virginia
next year at my alma mater, Herbert Hoover High School. It's the only place
on Elk River where you can put an event, that has an actual roof.
> Well, they oughta anyway... lol.
> When I was growing up, there was nothing for teenagers to do on the Elk
River except fish, play bluegrass music and smoke marijuana. Fishin' and
harmonica playin' kept me out of trouble. I was a good boy, didn't do any of
the bad stuff..The worst thing I did do was engage in what I later learned
was an illegal wildlife trade when I was at Elkview Junior High, 12 years
old around 1988. I used this ill-gained revenue to get, one by one, me a set
of harps.
> I was just a kid, didn't realize I selling wild, live snakes was
technically poaching and the pet store I sold them to never bothered to lift
the veil of my ignorance on this. I'd rummage through tin piles, etc. catch
little ringneck snakes and sell them. Ringneck snakes have no front teeth,
only rear teeth. While their saliva is mildy venomous, like a bee sting,
it's hard for them to get those rear teeth into your skin, although it is
possible. Other "non-venomous" snakes with a full set of teeth would simply
tear you up and you didn't mess with those too much, although I sold some
green snakes I'd pull out of trees. Garter snakes were too mean to catch,
although sometimes, you'd consider it. Black snakes were out of the
question, they act like real a..holes, biting and whatnot. Some of my
buddies ran into copperhead vipers on snake-catching expeditions. I don't
recall any close calls with the vipers while catching snakes, although I
consider
>  myself lucky to have emerged unscathed from a coiled, rattling
rattlesnake about two inches from my ankle in some weeds once on the
riverbank..
> I'd catch the ringneck snakes in the evening and take them to school the
next day. If you could sell the snake at school, usually to somebody who
wanted it to put in a teacher's desk, or turn loose in the girl's bathroom,
you could get $5 a snake. But I wasn't the only one doing this, there were
about five of us in the snake trade, so supply exceeded demand at school,
but the $5 a snake was a fixed price, because of a collusive agreement among
us snake sellers. Snakes unsold at the end of the school day could be taken
to this pet shop in the Elk Shopping Center with a guarenteed sale of $2.50
a snake. The pet store sold them for $15, but we didn't mind that, cause we
otherwise did not have access to their markets, only the school snake
market.
> This went on for an entire spring, summer and part of a fall, when the pet
shop went out of business, we lost the safety net. The collusive agreement
had to be negated, school snake-market forces took over and the price
dropped to $1 a snake and we all gave up. I learned a lot about economics as
a childhood snake poacher.
> Now the harp content, this isn't just obligatory, is what I did with the s
nake money. I got a good allowance, I think it was $10 a week, when I added
the snake money to that, I was a rich boy. I also mowed some grass for $5 a
yard. One lady had a particularly large yard and I demanded and got $6 to
mow that one.So, I could buy stuff,
> When I was selling snakes, I was buying harps. I was pulling about $10 a
week selling snakes,.
> Indeed. I remember at the time I had a G Old Standby.I got some Blues
Harps (the old handmade harp, you know, the one that was good) in G, C, A,
Bb, D, E and a Marine Band in F. Harps were more than $20 then, that's a lot
of money for a kid that age to invest in that many harps.All German.
> I traded something for that Marine Band, it may have even been a snake.
The boy that had it chewed these cinnamon toothpicks all the time and the
comb reeked of cinnamon. Every time I play an F harp, I think of how that
harp smelled and tasted.
> Dave
> ______________________________
> Dave Payne Sr.
> Elk River Harmonicas
> www.elkriverharmonicas.com
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Randy Sandoval <randyharps@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx
> Sent: Saturday, August 2, 2008 8:55:59 PM
> Subject: [Harp-L] SPAH in Sacto?
>
> Can someone verify this for me? Is SPAH really going to be in my backyard
next year?
> I was really depressed about not getting to SPAH this year as funds ( Or
lack thereof )
> wont allow it. If so , you will definately see my booth there next year.
> Randy
> http://www.genesisharmonicas.net
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