John Twist Discusses Poverty and Hunger (1993)

Okay. Okay. You can tell me. There was a fish in the rivers, called the alligator gar, was such an ugly, tough, inedible fish that people wouldn't eat the gar normally. I remember one summer when the river fell suddenly overnight and a large number of immense six and seven foot long gars were trapped in a spur of the river because they couldn't swim out and were found there in the, just in the mud flat of the spur. And people in the 30s were so desperate for food, for meat, that as the story got around that there were these immense ugly gars lying in that mud flat dying, that people came from all around and walked out in the mud flat

to hack off pieces of these gars, although they would normally not eat that fish. They were so hungry. They were so desperate that the sight of seeing all these people walking around, competing with each other to find a gar that wasn't dead yet, to cut up, to hack off some of his flesh to carry home to cook. And it was just, it was a pitiful sight to see the people eating the alligator gar. Can you tell me about your job as a water boy for the Twist Farm and what you did,