[| Contents | ]
Date: Childhood memories
Date: 14 Jul 2006
Time: 16:05:40 -0400
THIS IS JUST A CLIP FROM THE BOOK CAPT BRIAN IS WRITING. IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN A COPY, JUST DROP US A LINE AND WE WILL PUT YOU ON THE LIST WHEN THE BOOK IS FINISHED, HOPEFULLY EARLY NEXT YEAR! If air conditioning hadn’t been invented, Florida would be less populated than Wyoming. It would take just one August month without air conditioning to empty this state of most of the people in it. There would be a mass northern migration of dehydrated smelly people with stringy oily hair. Those who choose to stay behind and endure the heat would later become known as the ‘Asbestos Indians’ as the state reverted back to the wild. That crazy thought trickled through my mind as sweat trickled down the crack of my butt while standing on the oven rack called the deck of my boat last August praying for a puff off air. Then I reminisced of the hot summers growing up in Virginia Beach, Virginia. One memory sprang to mind when a neighbor took three of us young boys fishing on a pier. The recollection went something like this… The tires crackled over the sun bleached oyster shells that paved the parking lot. We could hear them crunch loudly because the four fifty five air conditioner completely stopped blowing when we turned in. Nowadays most folks have never heard of the antiquated four fifty five AC but back then it was what most all vehicles were equipped with. You see, for the air conditioner to work all four windows had to be rolled down and the car moving at fifty five miles per hour or better. It would even style your hair as you went along. Worn-out railroad ties delineated parking places in the oyster lot. The front of the lot was packed with trucks and cars. As we rode by I noticed many of the license plates were from out of state. I imagine those vehicles belonging to a small slice of the summer vacation crowd enjoying a day of fishing from the pier or head boats. The back lot had plenty of empty spaces. We inched towards the back as the summer heat poured in the open windows like an invisible wave pushing out the air and bringing the faint odor of creosote from the railroad ties. Mr. Sullivan pulled in the first available spot. We couldn’t wait to get out of that rolling oven. The sun reflected off the white shells blinding us when we got out of the shadow of the cars interior. Water beaded up on our skin within the first exposed minute. In the next minute it was running down our foreheads, the back of our necks and forming a growing stain under our arms and in the middle of our T shirts both front and back. It was a strangling heat. “Well boys let’s get unloaded” Mr. Sullivan said to Gilbert, his son, Johnny, a neighborhood friend and me. He unlocked the trunk of his well charactered five toned LTD and it popped open with an un-oiled creak. Inside the cavernous trunk were one small cooler, one large cooler, a five gallon bucket with tackle and towels and four small dirty fishing rods with round reels covered in greasy dust and grit. Mr. Sullivan grabbed all four poles, the five gallon bucket and started walking toward the front of the parking lot. He stopped, turned and said “Close the lid when you get the coolers out and hurry up.” Two of us were needed to lift the small cooler from the trunk. Gilbert and I sat it on the ground and opened it up. Inside were six half gallon milk cartons, a plastic gallon jug of tea, four Styrofoam cups and what looked like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches stacked in a bread bag. “What’s with the milk?” I asked Gilbert. “My dad saves the cartons and uses them to make blocks of ice in the garage freezer. He says it’s better than buying ice” Gilbert replied. I picked up one carton and said “they’re heavy”. “Yea, I weighed one using my fishing scales once and they weigh four pounds a piece” Gilbert said shyly. “That’s fifty pounds of ice” Johnny popped in. “Not quite but with the tea, sandwiches and the cooler, it’s pushing forty pounds” I said. “What’s in the big cooler?” Johnny asked. Gilbert and I heaved it out of the trunk and gravity took it to the ground in a hurry. We gave each other blank stares before raising the lid. Inside were two five pound boxes of frozen squid, two small plastic bags of frozen shrimp and twelve stacked milk cartons. Quick math brought the load to sixty five pounds. “Your dad wants us to carry all this on the pier?” Johnny asked in disbelief. “Why didn’t we drop it off up front?” I asked. “That’s the way my dad is” Gilbert replied. We formed a three boy chain with coolers in between us. We’d hump it towards the pier for as long as the guy in the middle could last then put down the load and shift one to the left and continued on with a new guy in the middle position. We were in sweat soaked agony by the time we made it up to the pier house where Mr. Sullivan waited. “What took you boys so long” he said turning away smiling. He handed the man behind the counter a ten dollar bill. The man gave him back four bucks and some change. I noticed the fare was a buck a head for us kids. I also noticed the wall of fishing tackle, the stacks of bait buckets, shelves randomly stocked with sun block, cheese and peanut butter crackers, T-shirts, cases of Vienna sausages, dusty bottles of hot sauce, big straw hats, cigars, candy bars and other stuff. Everything looked like it had been hanging there for a long time. The dust was a dead give away. Along one wall was a good sized refrigerated case with a small section of soft drinks and a big section of beer; mostly Budweiser in a can. One of the bottom shelves had empty beer flats filled with plastic bags labeled ‘blood worms’. You could see the red worms through the clear plastic wadded up in creepy ball. Every free space on the walls, posts, shelves and counters had a faded photograph of people with fish taped or thumb tacked to it. I kept going from one photo to the next until I was interrupted. “Brian, the man needs to stamp your hand with a pier pass” blurted Mr. Sullivan. The man had stamped the back of everyone else’s left hand with a smiley face symbol. When I raised my hand to get stamped by the unshaven apishly hairy fat man in a skin tight used to be white tank top, I was shook by the smell of body odor, strong cigarette and stale beer. I looked at him as he was stamping my hand. His mouth was agape. What teeth were there hung down from his gums like dried kernels of rotten corn. Strings of elastic spittle connected the top and lower jaw in the corners of his mouth. “There you go kid.” I took off for the door. Gilbert and Johnny were already on the outside post of the cooler train. I was happy to get the middle position and leave the pier house. We could see Mr. Sullivan well ahead of us when we started out on the pier. Each of us boys gazed down what had to be the longest pier in the world. “How far we got to go?” Johnny asked. “He usually starts fishing near the end” said Gilbert. Somehow I knew that was going to be the answer, that’s why I didn’t want to ask the question. Fortunately, a good sea breeze blew across us when we were just a short ways out on the open pier. It felt like a cool fan thick with the smell of salt water. It felt great. We stopped to reposition. I was loving that breeze as we weaved in and around people, trash cans, light poles, coolers, gobs of tackle and other miscellaneous stuff one finds on a fishing pier. It was my first time on a fishing pier and everything was new to me and fun to watch. We stopped to reposition. I quickly learned to hold my breath when down wind of pier trash cans. People throw their unused bait in those cans instead of tossing it in the water and letting the fish eat for free. The surprise odor of hot rotten shrimp, squid, fish or a blended smell of any of which will garner a gag reflex. We stopped to reposition. The weight of those coolers was wearing us out. They must have been gaining weight with each step of the way. Mr. Sullivan stopped just short of the end of the pier on the left hand side. We were so thankful he stopped. We dropped the coolers down next to the wooden bench we were going to be fishing by. Johnny and I flopped down on the bench. “You boys tired already?” Mr. Sullivan asked as he smiled and turned away. “You guys want some tea?” Gilbert asked. “Sure” said Mr. Sullivan. Johnny and I gave Gilbert the ‘good call’ look and hopped up to help him. Gilbert handed his dad the first cup of cold tea. We three kids gulped down two quick cups. I noticed the jug was half empty when Gilbert put it back in the cooler. “Mr. Sullivan, what are the guys fishing for at the end of the pier with those long fishing poles?” I asked. “Kingfish and sharks” responded Mr. Sullivan. I wanted to ask more about it but he seemed to have an agenda that didn’t have anything to do with kingfish or sharks. Nevertheless, those cluster of fellows concentrating on what lay beyond the end of the pier stuck in my mind. Mr. Sullivan was asked the first question to start an obsession. “Boys, here’s how it works” Mr. Sullivan said boldly before going on to explain how to fish from the pier. All four rods and reels were identical. He picked out one, grabbed a rag from the bucket and began to wipe the dusty grit from the rod and reel. The rod was a white forty two inch long stiff solid fiberglass stick about the diameter of a pencil from the tip to where it joined a metal pistol grip reel seat that ended in a short cork handle. The rod had a tip and two small metal eyes tied to the pole with red and white thread. The reel was a Penn No. 77. The body of the reel was made of dark brown plastic. Light green plastic handle knobs adorned the crank. Metal tubes spanned across the spool fitting the two sides of the reel together. The reel foot was made of metal. The fancy part of the reel was a small round metal button on the left hand side of the reel that if pushed forward would make a clicking sound when the spool turned forward or backwards. “That’s the clicker” Mr. Sullivan pointed out then told us to never use it. There was no lever to take the spool in or out of gear. It was direct drive. The handle spun backwards when line was played out. When you wanted to reel in, you turned the handle forward. It was as simple as it gets. It looked like a toy. “This is a bottom rig…” Mr. Sullivan explained pulling one from the bucket. It was a store bought gizmo about eighteen inches long. It started with a barrel swivel and ended with a snap swivel. The two were connected by a thin plastic coated wire. Two light twisted wire arms about six inches in length dangled out from the main plastic coated wire. One was fixed with beads and crimps to stay at the top and other beaded and crimped to hang at the bottom. The two little arms could spin around on the main wire. “Where are the hooks Mr. Sullivan?” Johnny asked. “I’m getting to that part, give me a minute Johnny” Mr. Sullivan shot back. With that said, Mr. Sullivan pulled a long plastic sleeve from the bucket. It looked like a see through envelope with a piece of heavy construction paper inside. Mr. Sullivan flipped it around to show us. A line up of leadered hooks was on the side with the writing. He carefully pulled one out so not to tangle with the rest of the hooks. I’d seen hooks like that in stores but never bought any. Dad told me it was a lot cheaper to make our own leadered hooks. The leadered hook was medium sized with a long shank and had a loop tied at the other end. Mr. Sullivan pushed that loop through the loop at the end of the little wire arm on the bottom of the rig. Then he slipped the hook through the fishing line loop and pulled on the hook. The leadered hook was looped to the loop at the end of the little wire arm. I called it the ‘loop to loop knot’ for lack of anything better. He did the same thing for the top wire arm. I noticed the store bought leadered hooks were cut to size for use on the bottom rig. They fit just right so they didn’t tangle. Next Mr. Sullivan pulled a two ounce triangle sinker from the bucket and linked it on the bottom snap swivel. “That sinker is called a pyramid sinker for obvious reasons boys. It is made to hold bottom in some strong current” Mr. Sullivan informed us. “Gilbert, get me that box of squid from the cooler.” Gilbert handed his father the box of squid. Mr. Sullivan took the frozen squid over to the fish cleaning sink set up on the pier banister to the left of the bench. “I like fishing here because it is close to the sink. You can stay cleaned up a bit” Mr. Sullivan told us. Then he said “don’t drink it, it’s saltwater pumped up from below the pier.” There was a reason he picked here to fish. He ran water over the frozen squid to thaw out the top layer. The squid were of uniform length approximately eight inches and stacked tightly in the box like cord word. “Gather around the cutting board, I’ll show you guys how to do this.” We three kids were around him like a litter of puppies. Mr. Sullivan explained as he went along. He first pulled the head from the body. He set that aside. Next he ran his short fillet knife inside the body cavity all the way to the pointy part of the squid’s tail and pushed the point of the knife through. In one motion, he sliced through one side of the tubular body from top to bottom and the body unfurled flat on the cutting board. He scrapped what little guts were there away with the blade of his knife and flipped them in the ocean. A triangled piece of flesh lay before him. With the knife he cut half inch strips the whole length of the squid. He pulled twelve more squid from the box and put them on the cutting board. “Put the box of squid back in the cooler, Johnny.” He laid down his knife on the cutting board with the squid. “Ya’ll cut these up and rig your poles and I’ll show you how to hook the bait when you’re ready” he said grabbing the head and one squid strip. Gilbert and Johnny started snatching the heads off and cleaning the squid. I watched Mr. Sullivan. He walked over to the bench and laid the squid strip on the top of the pier banister. The squid head he held in his right hand. The bottom hook was inserted in the back of the head and directed out the front in the middle. The tiny tentacles dangled down below the bend of the hook hiding it in the baits. The top hook was punched through the end of the squid strip turned around and stuck back in the bait for a double hook up. The squid strip hung straight on the hook like a rubber worm. Mr. Sullivan held the rod over the banister and lowered the rig into the sea. The little green knobs back wound for a long time. The bait must have just hit the bottom when he jerked and commenced spinning the tiny handle round and round. It wasn’t long before he swung two fish back over the railing. They were twelve to fourteen inches long and silver. “What are those Mr. Sullivan?” I asked. He had the top fish in his left hand working the hook free “they are croaker.” “Brian, open the big cooler lid for me.” I did as told and the first of many croakers was tossed in the cooler. The second fish made its flight into the cooler and I went to close the lid. “Son, don’t worry about closing the lid.” That statement set me in go mode. I had my rod and reel wiped down and rigged up in a hurry. Gilbert and Johnny were horsing around with the squid so I took the liberty to break into the bag of shrimp. I busted a shrimp in half and put a chunk on each of the two hooks. By the time I had all that done Mr. Sullivan had tossed four more fish in the box. I slid the small cooler over to the railing so I could stand on it and lean over the top of the banister like Mr. Sullivan. Pole in hand leaning over the banister watching the waves far down below I took my thumb off the spool and let the rig plummet down to the water. When the rig hit the water a snarl of fishing line billowed out of my reel. “Put your thumb on it, put your thumb on it, Brian!” yelled Mr. Sullivan. I was a statue when a big thumb pressed against the spool stopping the accident from getting any worse. I felt stupid. “Reel this one up and then we’ll work out this birds nest” Mr. Sullivan said gruffly. His rod had two fish on it when he handed it to me. I reeled them up but didn’t feel too good about it. The two croakers I took off and put in the cooler before walking over to Mr. Sullivan. He was picking and pulling on the fishing line. In a few long minutes he had the line smoothed out. “Remember you have to keep light pressure on the spool with your thumb so you won’t get a bird’s nest” he warned me. “Thanks for the help, Mr. Sullivan” I quietly said. I looked over at Gilbert and Johnny and they were gesturing me the silent monkey dance. I felt like a dumb monkey. My rig still had the shrimp on the hooks, so I stepped back up on the cooler and cautiously lowered my rig into the ocean. A salty blow of air climbed in my face as I watched the rig go in the water. As soon I felt it hit the bottom I put my right hand on the handle. As soon as I did that I could feel the fish popping the bait. I set the hook and sped reeled the fish all the way to the tip of the rod and flung them over the banister onto the pier. I laid the rod down on the deck and squatted over the flopping fish like a rice farmer. The fish went in the cooler. My bait was gone so I went for another shrimp when I heard “use the squid it will last longer.” Those words came from Mr. Sullivan who had been watching me the entire time. Gilbert and Johnny had laid a gob of squid on the bench end and laid a small wet towel over it. I wondered why they put the bait where we might end up sitting on it. So I asked Johnny. “Mr. Sullivan told us to put it there because if we left it on the cutting board or up on the banister the sea gulls would carry it off and eat it” Johnny said. I looked around the pier and saw dozens of sea gulls perched up around the sinks, trash cans and those fishing. They were sitting, waiting for a fast food opportunity. The skies have eyes. The wet towel was to keep the food hidden as well as, to keep the sun from baking it dry; I guessed; I learned. I took two strips and pinned them on my hooks. Mr. Sullivan was steady putting fish in the box and Gilbert and Johnny were just getting started. Up on the cooler I went and down went my bottom rig. Again when the bait hit the bottom it was instantly picked up by two croakers. It went on like that for an hour. Gilbert and Johnny tried to go to the other side of the pier but Mr. Sullivan called them back. “Why can’t we fish on the other side Mr. Sullivan?” Johnny asked. “Son, the tide has just started coming in.” “So” quipped Johnny. “On the other side your baits will get washed up under the pier and get hung up.” I thought things aren’t as random as they first seemed. For that hour we all were picking up fish as fast as we could get the bait to the bottom. I’d never experienced anything like it. It didn’t even feel like fishing. If you had enough skill to get bait to the bottom without making a mess, you could catch a fish. I found myself totally in the moment. The heat was gone. There was no wind. There were no odors. I was alone amongst many. The bounty of fish had reduced my world to the tiny area between the banister and the fish cooler on a big pier propped out over an endless ocean. Once Mr. Sullivan asks us to pull the bait out of the fish box and put it in the food cooler and shift the ice blocks over on top of the fish. We had to shift the ice blocks on top of the fish a second time, before the action began to trickle off until it stopped all together. We moved camp down the pier toward the beach and … Thanks for taking your time to read a memory. Drink lots of water when you’re on the water. Take care of yourself and your tackle. Capt B The contentment which fills the mind of the angler at the close of his day’s sport is one of the chiefest charms in his life. WILLIAM COWPER PRIME (1873)