This week’s This American Life opens with a story about the legendary lawlessness of the River Bar — that stretch of the Eel River Banks between round about Fernbridge and Fortuna.
Or the legendary near-lawlessness, we should say. Because host Ira Glass’s interview with Terry Grosz — a former Eureka-based Fish & Game warden turned author, and no relation to the Terry Gross you’re used to hearing on NPR — shows that once upon a time, lawmen would go to extraordinary lengths to try to bring some order to the anarchy that the River Bar seems to encourage.
Extraordinary lengths? Um … yes. Not to spoil it for you, but Grosz tells the tale of going above and beyond the call of duty to bring organized salmon poachers to justice. The date isn’t specified, but it’s clearly some time in the past, judging from the description of the river at that time. Grosz says:
And in those days, we had salmon like you couldn’t believe in Northern California. They don’t so much anymore. An awful lot of the species have dwindled away due to a lot of environmental problems and illegal take. But, gosh, we had salmon everywhere. If you weren’t careful, when you drank a glass of water, you’d find a salmon in it. I mean they were really plentiful.
And it was part of my job to check the salmon fishermen because we had an awful lot of outlaws that would snag them, dynamite them, gillnet them, just people shooting them in the shallows when they were going up through the riffles. I mean it was just unbelievable.
How were localy fishermen taking salmon illegally at Singley Hole, just downstream from Fernbridge? How were they foiling the law? How did Grosz, in the name of the law, set out to foil them?
Listen to this week’s This American Life — titled “That’s One Way to Do It” — below, or read the transcript at this link:
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