https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKyGOOzXsOA
I’ve traveled all over this country
Prospecting and digging for gold
I’ve tunneled, hydraulicked and cradled
And I have been frequently sold
For each man who got rich by mining
Perceiving that hundreds grew poor
I made up my mind to try farming
The only pursuit that was sure
So, rolling my grub in my blanket
I left all my tools on the ground
I started one morning to shank it
For the country they call Puget Sound
Arriving flat broke in midwinter
I found it enveloped in fog
And covered all over with timber
Thick as hair on the back of a dog
When I looked on the prospects so gloomy
The tears trickled over my face
And I thought that my travels had brought me
To the end of the jumping-off place
I staked me a claim in the forest
And sat myself down to hard toil
For two years I chopped and I struggled
But I never got down to the soil
I tried to get out of the country
But poverty forced me to stay
Until I became an old settler
Then nothing could drive me away
And now that I’m used to the climate
I think that if a man ever found
A place to live easy and happy
That Eden is on Puget Sound
No longer the slave of ambition
I laugh at the world and its shams
As I think of my pleasant condition
Surrounded by acres of clams
http://www.balladofamerica.com/music/indexes/songs/oldsettlerssong/index.htm
Born in Olympia, one weekend my Grandma took me to help her to some part of the bay that was exposed because the tide was out. We picked several limits of something called oysters. You could not walk except that you were standing on them.
We took them home and I helped her shuck them and can them. She also ate may straight out of the shell. I was looking for pearls but never found one.
This would have been in 1953. (Or there abouts)
Yes, Puget Sound was teaming with shell fish and the other kind of fish. But the weather always rained.