Wonder and a hole not wide enough to fall into. Or dive, as some would. Brine freezes at 29, and the taste of salt and other admixtures is curiously a reminder of warmth, as if the proverbial salt of sanity assures by its actual substance on the mouth. A wetsuit used to be the actual protection for clammers, but we were always at sea in the winter, consumed except for the point of focus behind our foreheads. Comparing ice fishing to that is like comparing a picnic to survival hunting, but when the adventures were done for the day, we hauled onion sacks of what once served as wampum, money, into the wholesale market, and hot showers never, ever felt better than afterwards.
It's like an object lesson. Where does money really come from? Banks? No. It's made. And all that is made begins with real stuff taken from nature.
These kids didn't fish any money through the hole. But they caught some pickerel. Not one of them would harbor any misgiving against money, either, so long as it's real and not fabricated. Not that wampum serves any purpose today other than symbolic, but that symbol is better than nothing at all, and debt is less than zero.
I'd rather work a bay in sub-freezing temperatures and earn money than pretend.
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