Page 2 - The Freshwater Mussels of Oklahoma

INTRODUCTION

My first realization that freshwater mussels even existed came about as a
consequence of my Great Aunt Genie. She lived in Greene, Iowa near the banks of the
Shellrock River. On her gnarled, wrinkled, arthritic hand she wore a pearl ring. She told
me that the pearl had come from a local river clam collected many years ago. She also
told me that the pearl was imperfect, that it had a flaw on the unexposed surface.
However, to me, it was beautiful, it was perfect and it was worth at least a fortune, or as
much as the price of ten comic books. My Aunt Genie’s brother-in-law was my Grandpa.
Grandpa Dayton (Dayton Webster Mather) recognized my interest and in 1951 took me
“musseling” on the Shellrock River. My recollections of the event includes wading in
shallow water below a low water dam pulling out large mussels, taking them into
Grandma Gertrude’s kitchen and cooking them out to look for pearls. I can’t imagine
what trouble my Grandpa stirred up by stinking up the house but that part of the memory
evades me. We also didn’t find any pearls. That probably disappointed Grandpa but I
recall the beautiful lustrous nacre we found on the insides of those extremely ugly, black
shells.
In 1957, while in the eighth grade in Crockett, Texas, I hooked up with a
character named Jerry Wayne Davis. Jerry and I thought that hunting and fishing were
the only reasons for existence (we hadn’t discovered girls at that time). One of our
favorite hangouts was the Big Slough area of the Neches River. We occasionally
stumbled across a live mussel and it was always quickly converted to catfish bait. Who
needed a mussel? The important things were catfish, black bass, deer and squirrels.
In 1959, my Uncle Dick Pletka died. It was suicide. He never recovered from his
experiences in the Pacific Theater of World War II. He had shared my passion for
fishing. A few months after his death, Aunt Doris brought me his tackle box. She said
that he would want me to have it. During the past 45 years, most of the treasures in that
box have been lost to fish, snags, stolen, or that well known phenomenon “tackle box
melt down.” The two items I still have are the tackle box itself and a marvelous lure
made into a spoon from a freshwater mussel shell. For some reason, I thought that it was
too precious to ever be thrown into a body of murky water on the end of a tiny line.
In 1970, while in the U. S. Navy, and stationed in San Diego, California, I made
the acquaintance of a fellow Texan, Joseph Anthony Michael Bergmann. He made the
mistake of showing me a box of beautiful shells found at La Jolla Beach. He was excited
about the variety of species he had found and so was I. For the next three years, we
scoured the beaches, mudflats and rocky shorelines of Southern California in an effort to
learn every species that existed there. But all good things must come to an end. The U.
S. got out of Viet Nam and Joe and I both went home to Texas. He went to San Antonio
and I went to Texas A & M to pursue my other passion, lizards. Eventually we got our
families together for a picnic at Lake Somerville. We naturally went back to our old
habit of beachcombing. Among our findings were an assortment of mussel shells. That
was all it took. I was finally hooked. Even though I continued to chase lizards for the
next several years, I eventually attained a position where I could continue my interest in
the clam world.

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