Reel History: Salmon Facts, Songs and Tall Tales

Al Asuncion/KMXT

Hello, I’m Al Asuncion, an intern at KMXT as part of the station’s summer archiving project. This week, I listened to the show “My Green Earth”, hosted by Stacy Studebaker, also known as Leila Liverwort.
“Hello nature fans and welcome to “My Green Earth,” a weekly radio shows about the natural wonders of our planet for kids and their parents. I’m your host, Leila Liverwort; and today’s show features one of the world’s most mysterious and beautiful fish, the Salmon.
This episode, titled “The Salmon” aired on KMXT in June of 1994. In the show, Leila tells some information about them that I found interesting.
“Salmon are kind of unusual among fishers because they live part of their lives in freshwater habitat like rivers and lakes; and the other part of their lives in the ocean. In late spring or early summer, like clockwork; the salmon begin to show up in vast numbers along the seashores of the Pacific Northwest, returning to the streams and rivers where they were born. A salmon may swim thousands of miles of its lifetime to complete its life cycle."

In this show, I discovered a song about salmon that caught my attention called, The River Song by The Banana Slugs String Bands. Here’s a piece of it for your enjoyment.
This week, I also listened to one of the many episodes of More Tall Tales for Short People by Jaime Rodriguez.
“We’re reading some Wilson Rawl’s books Where the Red Fern Grows. The story is two dogs and a boy. Billy Colman and his dogs, Old Dan and Little Ann, have witnessed a terrible event. Ruben and Rainie Pritchard has bet Billy two dollars that his dogs couldn’t catch a certain raccoon they call, the ghost coon.”
Just to recap of what happened in the story. Billy and his dogs finally treed the coon after many chases; however, the Pritchard’s hound, Old Blue, suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Ruben wrestled Billy to the ground as he wants his dog to kill the coon; shockingly, Ruben has fallen on an axe, resulting of his death.

Thanks for joining me this week, as I listened to some amazing reel history.