Mom went down to the Fish Store at Christmastime and got oysters. Every Christmas Eve she made oyster stew, with milk and butter, and we ate it with oyster crackers.

        The oysters came from the river, so they were really fresh. The man at the Fish Store said that they were bigger and tastier than oysters from anywhere else, and that nearly every one had a pearl as big as the end of this thumb.

        He said the pearls were sent to the Queen of France, so he couldn't show us any. He was French, so he gave the Queen the pearls as gifts and that was why he ran a Fish Store and wasn't rich. He said that the Queen was happy and so he was happy.

        Tony, Ted, Martha and I thought it would be nice to give a big pearl to Mom for Christmas. We asked the man for one but he said that they were only found in months with a "C" in their name and all of those for October and December had already been sent to France.

        We obviously couldn't wait until March, because that would not make the pearl a Christmas present. We knew we'd have to find our own pearls.

        Pearls, we knew, came from oysters. Oysters were gray, wet things that were used in making stew and they came out of the water. As best we could figure, the pearls were made inside the oyster, like an egg. Since oysters were soft we should be able to tell lquickly which had pearls, since we could feel the hard pearls inside the soft oyster. We could get the pearls and even leave the oysters to make more pearls after we'd squeezed the pearls out of them.

        I occurred to us that if we didn't tell anyone where our oysters were we could sell the pearls we didn't give to Mom and become rich. Also, we didn'w want to have to give the pearls to some Queen we didn't even know.

        Cedar Creek was the obvious place for oysters. It was wide and deep and we'd never seen anyone looking for oysters there.

        It was a cold, cloudy Saturday in early December when we went out to get the pearls. We were dressed warmly and were wearing our rubber boot (we only had one, so we took turns wearing it, hopping along to keep our other foot out of the snow).

        North we trod and hopped, past the stadium, past the cemetery. It got colder and colder the farther North we went, and when we got to the Big Deep Pool at Cedar Creek we found it covered with ice.

        "Good thing we brought a hatchet," said Tony, and in a once (which is faster than a trice) we were at work chopping a hole through the ice.

        We didn't get anywhere, although we did get there quickly. The ice refroze as fast as we chopped the hole open. It was chop - freeze, chop - freeze for about a half an hour.

        Ted found the solution. He found an old peice of pipe about a foot across the middle, and as we chopped he put the pipe into the hole. This prevented the water from rushing into the hole and turning back into ice.

        Finally we had to use an old railroad spike as a chisel to get through the last of the ice, but we at last cut through to the water!

        Tony stuck a stick into the water to see how deep it was. He pushed the stick all the way down and it never touched the bottom. Since the stick was at ten feet long we decided that Cedar Creek was probably deep enough there to catch oysters.

        Unfortunately, none of use had looked up what kind of bait was used for oysters. Fortunately, we had some peanut butter and cheese sandwiches (with pickles), so we used those for bait. Of course, we mushed it up in our hands because we knew that no fish — not even eels — had hands so they could eat sandwiches as sandwiches are made. Besides, how would they stay on the hook?

        We used big hooks, because we knew that the bigger the hook was the bigger the fish would be. And we wanted to catch BIG oysters, as it stood to reason that they would have the biggest pearls.

        Time — COLD time — passed. We caught a sturgeon, two halibut, a paddlefish, and a blue catfish, but nary an oyster. We were becoming, well, we were becoming frustrated.

        Tony said, "Well, so far all we're going to take home is chilblains and frostbite. Why did you (he asked me) look up the right bait for oysters?"

        "Because last night I washed the dishes, remember?" I replied. "Why didn't YOU?"

        "Let's not fight right now," said Martha.

        "Lets! It'll warm us up," said Ted. And he laid down his fishing pole and made a snowball which he threw at Tony.

        Before you could say "Jack Robinson" (always assuming that, for some reason, you wanted to say that) all four of us were throwing snowballs at each other!

        Tony threw at me, I threw at Martha, Martha threw at Tony, and we all threw snowballs at Ted. Even Ted threw snowballs at himself and pretty soon he was just a pile of snowballs, but with eyes.

        After a little while we all collapsed in the snow. We had warmed up so much that we had melted the snow for meters in every direction. "Whew!" said I, "that was exciting."

        And a BIG VOICE said, "WHAT ARE YOU KIDS DOING?"
        We scrambled to our feet and looked up on the bank, where stood a real, live, deputy sheriff!

        "I repeat, what are you doing?" He said.

        "Laying in the snow," I answered.

        "Before that."

        "Having a snowball fight to warm up."

        "Before that."

        "Fishing for oysters. But we only caught some catfish and sturgeon and stuff and we let them go."

        "We don't seem to have the right bait for oysters," Ted added.

        "Oysters don't like peanut butter and cheese sandwiches with pickles all mushed together," added Martha.

        "We're sure there are lots of oysters here because we've never seen anyone fishing in Cedar Creek for oysters, so they're probably real big, too," added Tony.

        "Oysters?" the deputy said, weakly.

        "Yeah. But we only want the pearls to give to Mom for Christmas so we'll release any oysters we catch," I explained.

        "The Queen of France has enough, we're sure," Tony explained.

        "We may keep one or two for Christmas Eve, but we'll the rest loose," Ted explained.

        "Oysters are gray, soft, wet things," Martha explained. "They have pearls."

        "Kids," said the deputy, shaking his head, "you've got it all wrong. Haven't you ever heard of....oyster shells?"

        We looked at each other, puzzled. The I exclaimed, "Oyster SHELLS! Of course!"

        "Yeah!" agreed Tony and Ted. "Oyster SHELLS!"

        "No wonder!" said Martha. "Oyster SHELLS!"

        And the deputy nodded and said, "Oyster SHELLS."
        "No wonder we didn't get any," exclaimed Tony. "We're going about this all wrong!"

        "That's right," said the deputy. "You are."

        "Boy!" said Ted. "How big of a gun do you think we need?"

        "Gun?" asked the deputy.

        "To shoot oyster shells," I explained. "They're sort of like shotgun shells or cannon shells, huh?"

        The deputy laughed and said, "Oyster shells come in lots of sizes. I've seen them as much as six and eight inches across."

        "Six or eight INCHES?" Martha asked, amazed. "Those are real big shells!"

        "To tell us," I asked the deputy. "Our Uncle Gene goes duck hunting. Do you think he'll take us oyster hunting if we get the shells?"

        "Ah, you'll have to ask him, I guess. I've got to go now. You kids be careful — and no more snowball fights!" And the deputy walked away, smiling and sort of shaking his head.

        Ted turned to us and said, "I'm glad we didn't catch any oysters! Can you imagine what an oyster to big it would take a six or eight inch shell to shoot it could do to us?"

        We agreed with Ted. So we picked up our stuff and pulled the pipe out of the ice so that the creek could refreeze and started home. We went though the Swamp, of course, to see how things were, and we found everything okay. We did put some more dried grass and leaves around the archeopteryx nest to help keep them warm.

        On the way home we talked about oysters, of course. We decided that they must be awfully nasty creatures, since they needed special shells, and maybe the Queen of France ddidn't appreciate the pearls enough.

        We told Mom all about it when we got home and she miled and said that the deputy had dropped by to tell her all about it. And we had okra omelets and onions and olive and ortolans and oranges for supper and the ozmazome was terrific! We didn't get Mom pearls that Christmas, but we did chip in and buy her a big bottle of "Evening in Kansas City" perfume.