Carl Bishop: The Storm of 1931

I come down through it. Trees were falling in front of me and behind me. It was sleet that fell on the trees, and it pulled trees down that were that big around. I had daddy’s old shotgun. I come down there at the creek. It was out. I throwed the gun across the creek. It hit the ice across the trees. Came back and stuck up in the mud in the water. I crawled on across a foot log and I got my feet wet going across and I hit it and went on across, and I pulled this much of the stock sticking out; reached down got hold of it and picked it up. And my brother Denver has still got that old shotgun I pulled out of the mud.

U.S. Census -- Acworth, Cobb Co., 1930

Carl Bishop: Fishing and Swimming in the Tallapoosa

We used canes to fish. We’d cut ‘em off the bank of the creek. We used a line, some kind of a line. We dug our worms. Earth worms, mostly. There were no red wigglers at that time. We’d fish for mud cats or whatever kind was in the river. The first creek I ever fished in was the Tallapoosa.
And, oh yeah, we swam in that creek. We frog gigged and we’d turtle hunt. We’d make a three-pronged frog gig and we’d go along the bank and see their eyes and take that frog gig and gig it. We’d eat the frog legs. We’d cut ‘em off the frog, get the skin off of them and wash them real good. Mother would wash them real good, skin ‘em, then batter them in flour and drop them in hot grease. Next.

Carl Bishop: "We'd Play Mostly at the River"

We moved back to Haralson County in 1931.
We’d play mostly at the river. That was our playground. Oh, Good Lord! We fished. We played in the water. We had an old boat, any old boat we could find. Anything we could find to get in the water with, that's what we done.
One day out there we was under the bridge, about four or five of us on an old boat, standing up, holding onto the bridge. It was in March. And Ralston Wheeler, one of the boys, he went and messed around and fell off into the water. All you could see was his hat, lying there on top of the water! He climbed up, and we had to build a fire to get him warm. We done that a lot of times, built a fire to get warm with, when we went in the creek or something or other where we'd have to get some heat. Next.

Oscar and Annie Bishop

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