Seven Different Kinds of Meat

By Michael Evans Snyder

They all come from the same critter—it has a guillotine-like beak and can shear off your finger in one bite.  Its rapier pointed claws add to its armament—all together more than I’d ever think of tackling barehanded.  

In the post WWII years our next door neighbor in Clarksburg, Bill Milstead, a steel worker, could do just that, and he did it while wading the muddy creeks of Harrison County and neighboring locales.  His quarry was Cheldydra serpentina, the common snapping turtle.  The average snapper has a top carapace (shell) about a foot long and  weighs close to 15 pounds.  But they can get much larger, as “big as a washtub,” a remark sometimes heard among those familiar with them. 

They lay a double handful of eggs on the streamside that closely resemble ping pong balls in size and are off-white in color.  Their life can reportedly span several decades.  The snapping turtle is not a picky eater.  It is an omnivore and feeds on aquatic vegetation, crayfish, worms, snakes, fish and frogs, birds, and various small mammals—alive or dead 

Mr. Milstead was a true outdoorsman, an old-school hunter and fisherman.  In his basement was a wooden trough full of running water in which he kept minnows year-round for live fishing bait.

Around 1950, the first deer I ever saw was hanging in his garage which he shot with a “punkin ball” from his Model 12 Winchester shotgun which I later hunted with for a time.  My own dad hunted birds, quail and grouse with his English setters.

“There were four kids following him that day, his own, Billy and Susie, plus me and my younger brother, Habie.  Our feet were clad in high top sneakers with dungarees to protect our young legs from snags and thorns.”

At various times I saw some of the snapping turtles that Bill Milstead  brought home to eat.  I believe, although I’m not sure, he kept them alive for a few days for them to clean themselves internally.  They often eat decaying fish or animal remains as well as killing live prey like ducklings, fish, crustations, mussels, aquatic plants—whatever it comes upon, it’s not particular. 

One of the most memorable times for me as a fledgling outdoorsman was a sunny summer’s day when we were in grade school and all was green and lovely. Our excitement bubbled over because our intrepid neighbor was taking us turtle hunting out in the country.  It likely was Elk Creek, a muddy feeder stream of the West Fork River. 

There were four kids following him that day, his own, Billy and Susie, plus me and my younger brother, Habie.  Our feet were clad in high top sneakers with dungarees to protect our young legs from snags and thorns.  Mr. Milstead wore his khaki work clothes.  We toted gunny sacks to put our catch in. 

Years later I was to spend countless hours flyfishing for trout, always in the stream, not from the bank, but this was my first time immersed in a stream—an adventure beyond words.  We were just as excited as the mythical youngsters of Hamlin following the Pied Piper on that long ago day.  Mr. Milstead would spot a likely looking large hole in the bank at the water’s edge.  Then he stuck his bare hand and arm all the way up the hole and if a turtle was there, he’d pull it out.  The turtles emerged with their necks stuck out, beaks open and arms and claws fully extended.  Fearsome things, something malevolently prehistoric. I regret I never asked him how he felt the turtle without ever getting bit.

I’ve forgotten how many we caught on that wondrous day but it was several.  Attached to the underside of their legs were tan leaches, an inch or so long, yet another aquatic mystery creature for us kids to gleek over.  After we got them home there was even more fascination in store for us.

We discovered that when the turtles’ heads were cut off, their formidable beaks could still bite halfway through a broomstick. To our delight, the heads remained “alive” just as their detached beating hearts did. We believed they would keep right on beating until sundown, just like a killed snake still squirmed until sundown—didn’t everybody know that?  And when the turtle was cut up, we were told there were seven different kinds of meat to savor.  It was usually fried as I remember. And I recall this vividly from my own family, fried in the big black iron skillet of my Aunt Etty, my Mamaw Snyder’s sister.  I loved her savory fried turtle and remember it being the favorite meat of all in my early boyhood.

   Going to Aunt Etty and Uncle Bobby Hooton’s in the Marion County coal camp of Jordan on the lower West Fork was a different sort of adventure for us.  My dad had bought a blue Studebaker from a neighbor after World War II when  no civilian cars were made and gasoline was so strictly rationed that many citizens either rode buses, the streetcar, or walked to work as my dad did.  Jordan was a pretty sorry coal camp with unpainted wooden duplex houses and privys out back. Its streets were unpaved and there were large potholes with water in them.  Aunt Etty’s fried turtle (caught by a grandson) along with her home cooked trappings was pure Nirvana to me.

 Aunt Etty (Mary Etta) was my dad’s favorite aunt and he, her favorite nephew.  Her sister, my Mamaw Ida Snyder died the year before my birth.  They grew up in river towns in southern Ohio because their grandfather had been a riverboater and saltmaker who lived both there and across the river in Mason County.  His name was Thomas Dryden Harris and was born and labored in Kanawha Salines salt works at Malden.  In 1850 the Kanawha Valley was the largest salt producer in the United States.  Booker T. Washington lived there at the same time and in his classic autobiography Up From Slavery, he describes life in Kanawha Salines as a dog-eat-dog hardscrabble struggle. 

My Mamaw “Idy” and Aunt Etty’s father Nate Vance was a coal miner in the big Monongah mines in Marion County, located at the mouth of Booth’s Creek where it meets the West Fork, I know they caught fish with nets and certainly had plenty of opportunity for snapping turtles as well.  The town was booming and offered mining jobs in abundance. Rivers and streams provided a ready food supply ever since the Indian days

I not only remember my great aunt for her fried turtle and baked goodies, her braided rag rugs and homemade lye soap, and also the love we shared after Jill and I married.  She was short, and pert with lively brown eyes. “Watch out for “Old Scratch,” she warned me one time when leaving the nice Romines Mills house their son built for his parents, “Who?” I asked, “Why the Devil, of course!”  It was where I caught my first fish, mostly mud cats, fishing through a missing plank in the Elk Creek covered bridge. Charlie, the Hooton’s son and my dad’s cousin had a small farm there which we loved to visit.

Bill Milstead and Aunt Etty never knew each other but I inherited their high regard for the snapping turtle. They loomed large in my youth–Maybe, I just might come up with one this summer and get to taste it one more time after all these years.