The Wild Shiners

Wild Shiners is good bait. If you have spent any time driving through the rural areas of Florida, you surely have come across a sign on the side of the road, likely made from the upturned, spraypainted hood of a ’75 Ford Maverick with the words and an arrow pointing you to a roadside hovel selling turnip greens, sugar-cane syrup, and in the belly of a disemboweled washing machine with an aquarium aerator providing life support – a heap of dashing, darting silver shiners. This sign is used to enable feral Floridians and jocund journeyers from out of state, as they pass in mellifluous motor-vehicled pursuit of that which will assure their jubilant jocularity as the sun passes through the pines, to secure the surety of a day of relaxing revelry known to most as “bass fishin”. The Wild Shiners are a multiform multitude of swaggering songsters often found at such an aforementioned hovel, reveling in musical mirth. Also, they occasionally will set foot in civilized society to provide entertainment to the general public.