Everybody Has a Story: Bucket of worms paid hard-earned 67 cents

A long ago time, long before the boyish Brad Pitt made that lovely movie about fly fishing and changed a culture forever, worms reigned supreme as preferred trout-fishing bait in the valleys of western Montana.

My big brother could ride his bike a couple of miles to the mountains, carrying a pocket Prince Albert tobacco tin with a couple of worms dug from the garden, and bring home our supper. Yes, true purists could visit Dan Bailey’s fly shop over in Livingston for mosquitoes made of fluff. Some chose to invest in lures to flash through the rapids and imitate minnows. But unless you had no shovel, no garden, or were just plain lazy, why pay when you could have worms for free?

Our corner of Gallatin Valley was prime worm habitat. Our street had its own creek, or as we liked to say, crick, along the neighbors’ garden behind their house. Once long ago, long before Lewis and Clark had ventured through the valley, that crick must have been home to beavers who layered organic soil over the old gravel at the bottom of their ponds. With many feet of rich black dirt, the wormy inhabitants of ancient beaver ponds weren’t just any old worms, but long, fat night crawlers.

Night crawlers were a commodity, a resource. Gas stations, sporting goods and grocery stores all had their coolers handy with tidy white cartons filled with shredded newspaper and night crawlers. Entrepreneur farmers along highways advertised with beautiful, hand-lettered signs: “Eggs, Worms.” Fifty cents retail wasn’t too much to pay for a day’s fishing.

Of course, workers are needed to bring in any resource. Pete’s worm packaging and distribution facility on Sourdough Road, upstream along that neighborhood crick, paid good hard cash for anyone who wanted to sell them worms. The going pre-wholesale rate wasn’t 25 cents a dozen, or even 10 cents a dozen. No, the pay for bringing in high-quality, live worms was by the pound. In a harsh climate with no berry fields or orchards, kids and housebound mothers had no way of earning money by picking anything humanly edible, so worms had to do. You only had to wait for a perfect night for worm picking — one with a warm spring rain that wouldn’t turn to snow before midnight.

By age 7 or 8, I’d heard plenty of talk around the kitchen table about big money for picking worms. My desire to join the wage-earners was clinched when my best friends from crickside made extra money for ice cream. I had to convince Mother that if I wore my overshoes, hosed all the mud off, and my best friend and I went together in their sprawling garden, I too could be gainfully employed. So, one pouring night in late May, before the garden was planted, I pulled a bucket out of the basement and borrowed my Dad’s flashlight, and off we went.

Worms are wily. And they’re faster than the eye can follow or the hand can grab when they’ve come out of the ground in the warm night rain. As soon as my flashlight lit the ground, they were gone — usually back into their wormholes. We tried pointing the light to the side and just using intuition to reach and grab. But worms could slime themselves completely away from a firm grip. You couldn’t pull or pinch or hold too hard — after all, these were to be live bait. Mud and rain made everything slippery to begin with. But bless those ancient beavers, the ground was so rich, it seemed to be one wriggling mass of fat worms. Nature made it hard for two fumbling kids to miss all of them.

My bucket got heavy. We went back to my house and proudly washed off and set the bucket inside the back door. Horror! In the light we could see that Mother’s scrub bucket soap residue had reacted with mud and worms to create a sudsy froth. Pete’s worm place would never accept my bucket! Nothing to do but dump the whole bucket into the lawn, rinse it out and start again.

Finally, at probably the latest hour I’d ever been up and awake, I brought another bucket home. My father had agreed to support my effort by taking the results to Pete’s. I went to bed. I couldn’t wait for the morning news: Yes, Dad had to wait in line with all the other sellers, some of whom had multiple buckets. Everything was weighed carefully. And here was 67 cents on the table for me! Dad proudly noted, “67 cents! You worked hard for your money.” Yes, I had! My first cash earned by myself, and not just allowance money.

Yet despite my success, I did not pursue a career as a worm picker. And today, if “A River Runs Through It,” sadly, its trout no longer have the fine flavor of hand-picked night crawlers.

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