Pcp, your grandpaw was probably mighty proud every time he caught a big catfish because he knew he had put off starvation for one more week. There used to be some tough times. We are a bit spoiled these days.
You better believe those were tough times. He raised 4 kids off a Mechanic's salary, and it wasn't very much. But my mother's family had it better than my father's family. My grandfather on that side didn't have the mechanical ability that the other one had, and he struggled to make a living most of his life.
Neither one of them went past 6th grade in school. It wasn't a priority in 1910 to 1920 when they were school age. One of them told me he was put in after school detention in 4th grade and he climbed out the window and never went back. I don't guess this has anything to do with the thread, except that both of them loved catfish and you can be dang sure that they would have eaten every bit of the one in the picture.
And you can also be sure that neither one of them would have ever allowed me to clean fish with an electric knife. They would have had a fit over wasting that much of the fish.