The children can be replaced

In the ensuing decades Eddyville would nurse its wounds, contemplating success in ways that also exacted revenge.  After all, what is the fun of winning if you can’t kick ‘em when they’re down.  Sometime in the 1880’s the idea of Eddyville becoming a fishing resort town gained currency among the afternoon imbibers.  Shad fish were already famous visitors on the Esopus Creek a few miles north.  A project was then proposed to domesticate the shad and teach them to prefer Eddyville.  A few did indeed come but not enough to support a fishing resort.  The problem may have been the contributions upwater backsides were making to the flow.  The water was getting murky.

Fast-forward some twenty years.  A group of Eddyville’s happy children, swimming in the questionable creek during the summer of ought six - are accosted by a beast of epic proportions, a veritable Moby Dick.  The town, still smarting from the decline in barge traffic and the railroad snub, was not about to see their reputation further trashed.  The children could be replaced but the smirch on Eddyville’s good name would be enduring.  Something would have to be done.

After examination and consultation it was concluded that the fish was between 3 and 20 feet long, weighing somewhere between a traveling bag and an elephant.  They who believed the fish to be large encouraged those who thought it small to offer them selves as bait.  “Can’t do no harm if you’re right.”   Someone suggested putting a chicken on a hook that was tied by a rope to the town dock.  Come morning the chicken, hook and rope were gone and one support for the dock pulled away.  Overnight the fish grew in popular perception.