“People of Harpers Slough” series continues: “Cote”

by Joan Leschensky Grosshuesch

“In the 1930’s my parents bought a building lot from Happy Nipper, and my father, with the help of several friends and relatives, built a simple summer cottage on the banks of Harpers Slough. Our family spent a part of 10 or 12 summers there. Dad commuted to work in Waukon every day. There were some interesting people who made their homes in the area and lived there year-round. Some of them became good friends of our family. Their children were our playmates. These sketches are a compilation of memories of several of us who lived through those ten years together. It was during the Great Depression and times were hard.”

Old Cote probably wasn't old, at least by today's standards he wasn't, but to a child, anyone over the age of thirty is ancient, and to us he was "Old Cote." He lived alone in a tar paper shack, about a half mile upriver from us.

Clementine, the cat, was his only companion. His ex-wife had prudently removed herself and their two daughters from his reach and moved to Prairie du Chien, WI. Like everyone else on that stretch of river, he grubbed out a living any way he could.

We saw him most often as he labored over the clam hooks, which dangled over the side of his boat. They dragged through the soft mud of the river bottom, as the current carried the boat slowly downstream. When his hooks were full, Cote would lift them into the boat, pry the clams loose and begin the whole operation again. It was wet, dirty, heavy work; but usually Cote was feeling no pain. He drifted down the river, singing and talking to the cat.

Taking the clams from the river was only the first step in the clamming business. His feeble one-horse motor carried him back upstream. We knew by the distinctive sound that it was his boat and no other. Once on shore, the clams were transported by pail to the cooker. This was a metal trough, not unlike those used by masons to mix cement. It was set into the ground where a fire could be built beneath it. Once cooked, the clams opened and the meat could be separated from the shells. A chest high sorting table was the next stop. Here the meat was carefully fingered to see if any pearls or irregular shaped, pearl-like pieces were present. The imperfect pearls were called slugs.

The thin-shelled clams were not wanted at the button factory in Lansing, so they were discarded. The thicker shells could be sold, and sometimes the meat could also be sold, to feed as tankage, to hog farmers.

The county paid a fifty-cent bounty for rattlesnakes. One inch of the tail, with rattles attached was redeemable at the court house. Cote hunted and killed a lot of them. One day he entered a tavern at Harpers Ferry carrying a gunny sack, which he put on the floor beside the bar. Curious, the other patrons asked what he had in the sack. "Do you want to see?" he asked. Assured that they did, he turned the sack upside down and out tumbled a number of live rattlers. The bar cleared in a hurry. Then taking a forked stick, he proceeded to recapture the snakes and stuff them once more into the gunny sack. Cote was reputed to have collected bounty on over 200 snakes.

Some of the more imaginative bounty hunters conceived the idea of going into snake ranching. Since a rattler grew a new rattle each time it shed its skin, why not gather the one-inch tail piece plus the rattles and release the snake? In the next year or two the snakes could again be rounded up and the newly formed rattles and another inch of tail could be harvested. It was a grand scheme, but unfortunately it didn't work. The end portions of the tail were necessary for regrowth of rattles. Soon there were quite a lot of rattle-less snakes crawling through north east Iowa.

Doctors reported treating a number of people for snake bite. The strange thing was, the snakes had given no warning and in fact had no rattles on their tails. They couldn't be rattlesnakes. Yet the seriousness of the poisoning and the obvious fang marks indicated that they must be. A new variety perhaps. The authorities figured it out and the proof required to claim bounty was changed to include the head of the reptile. The scheme, or scam, was over.

It was not all work and no play for Old Cote. He loved to play his fiddle, and frequently he could be found singing, playing and dancing around at a local watering spot. When he got tired he'd sample the wares.

There weren't very many pearls to be found in the clams, but over the years Old Cote accumulated a bag full. This was his nest egg, his retirement, his meager fortune. For safekeeping he buried it behind his shack. Alas, it was uprooted and destroyed by a woodchuck. The river people say that after this happened Cote "went strange." We thought him strange before. He certainly was unique. Toward the end of his life, he roamed the streets of Harpers Ferry, picking up bottles, cans, bits of metal, anything that could be scavenged and sold. He was part of the atmosphere.

(About the Author: Joan Leschensky Grosshuesch grew up in Waukon. Her maternal great grandparents were early homesteaders in the area. Grosshuesch has made her home in Wisconsin for the last 47 years with her husband Ruben, who is a retired clergyman, in Sheboygan, WI. They are the parents of four adult children. Grosshuesch is the sister of John Leschensky of Waukon. Her parents were Emil and Clarice Dillenberg Leschensky.)