Joe Lamy

June Hog Salmon Joe Lamy

This period piece recalls the days before the dams on the Columbia River that put an end to the June Hog Salmon, a species of six-foot, hundred pound fish that produced far more offspring than our current species. These June Hog Salmon were so plentiful that June marked the only time of year a kid could walk across the Columbia and not even get wet! In this dramatic poem, you'll hear the wailing cries of the curious grandson about his grampa who seems isolated by sorrow on a moonlit June night, absorbed in old black and white photos of skinny kids with huge fish beside a raging river. You'll see Native Americans kissing the first fish of the season and setting it free to swim on into the future. You'll witness the Fish Wheel, flinging salmon up and out of the river with mechanical nets supplying canneries with an abundance of salmon before depleting reserves so badly that it was outlawed to save the fish. You'll meet the spirit of Henry Kaiser, the great American industrialist who became the father of the Health Maintenance Organization, a plan to protect workers with health insurance for themselves and family, but who built Bonneville without fish ladders, wiping out the June Hog. You'll see the tragic display of consequences to short-sighted actions. The starving grizzlies and absent June Hog testify to man's need to engage our brains before goofing up paradise. This tale brings home the heartache of our ecological blunders as it showcases our need to appreciate this planet and its critters, like the June Hog Salmon.