When Dad Went Fishin’

No one seemed to know when it would take place except Dad and those few who went with him. It was a ritualized process that occurred four or five times each summer, and followed the same pattern. Once things were set in motion, the mystery was over, and the events would unfold with a logical progression that was no less fascinating for being so regular.

Dad would first call Bill Patsell in Philadelphia, to determine when it would be a good time to rent the boat. She was rather small, a 40 footer, but well-built. She could take Bill, a one-man crew, and about five fishermen. Once the terms of the rental were established and the date of the trip was arranged, the first trip of the season was set. Dad would then call his friends.

All were eager for the trip, but the work schedule reigned supreme. There wasn’t any welfare in those days, so working men had to stay on the job to put meat on the table. There was an exception in Bellmawr Park, but more on that later. From amongst his friends, Dad would find three or four who could make the trip, and the planning was on.

The fishing rod and reel came out of the closet. This wasn’t one of those tiny, nine or ten ounce fly fishing rods that the trout boys liked, this was a Penn rod and reel, the dream of every boy in the neighborhood for future ownership. It was as big around as a grown man’s thumb by the reel mount, and more than six feet long. The reel alone was about four inches in diameter.

Hooks were in the tackle box, along with the heavy sinkers needed to put the baited hook on the sea bottom. Dad used bobbers, like the other men he fished with, red and white buoy-shaped devices with an extension at each end. The rod/reel combination was clean, rinsed of ocean salt from the last trip before it was put away, and no dust was on it, because Dad made sure to keep it clean. He kept a small jar of Vaseline in the tackle box, to put on the metal portions on each rod section, a thin coat to make final assembly at sea quick and easy. The was a knife in the box tool, kept razor sharp by the old black guy that sharpened knives for a living and came through the neighborhood each spring. Perhaps more on the traveling craftsman later.

The trip started at three A.M., but Dad was up at two, loading the old Buick Roadmaster with sandwiches, soda, and the fishing pole and tackle box. The others would arrive between two and two-thirty, and the cars would be parked in the driveway, while Dad’s was out in front of the house. My brother and I would watch, sleepy-eyed and dreaming of the day when we would be old enough to go, when the car, finally loaded, would pull away from the house, headed for the highway and Wildwood, New Jersey.

Bill’s boat was kept at Otten’s Harbor, tied to the dock behind the house. Otten’s Harbor was a man-made, eighty foot deep, anchorage for commercial fishing boats. Bill Patsell was lucky enough to hold a piece of land where it was built, and he wisely kept the property. Back then, eminent domain was not as widely used, so they built around him.

Now came the waiting. The boys in the neighbor hood would be out playing baseball, exploring the woods, going to the matinee at the little movie theater, or doing any of the hundreds of other things that boys do in the summer. The mysteries of what was going on a mile or more off the New Jersey coast, opposite Wildwood, was something that was buried in the back of our minds. We never knew when we would make that rite of passage, by the way, but the first hint was always the same. It was getting a Penn rod and reel for Christmas. It was a sign that the next summer would be one of new adventure and discovery.

Flounder. That was what they brought back. A flat, ugly fish, with both eyes on one side of its body. Not a fighter, flounder was an eating fish, captured to be filleted, fried, and served on a platter, not mounted on a wall somewhere. They would return at night, jammed in the car with equipment, empty lunch pails, and baskets of fish. The first step was to rig the lights in the back yard. Then saw horses were set up, and plywood planks became tables for the next part of the operation. The man, together with the gathered
wives, would go to work. Each fish was scaled and rinsed, and passed on to the fillet experts, who would get four steaks from each fish. The fillets were wrapped in butcher paper, about five pounds of fillets in a pack, taped shut, and dated, and the pile of packages at the end of the assembly line grew quickly.

The neighborhood cats were in evidence, waiting patiently in the gathering darkness for the surfeit that was to come their way. We children were watching, too, and listening to the stories that were being told, including the fisherman’s favorite, “The One That Got Away”. I think it’s a story told all over the world, wherever men gather to fish or to talk about fishing, that can be anything from a monster minnow to a whale. Cold beer was available, although the men didn’t drink much.

You could smell the sea. There was something about the freshness of the fish that carried in the night air, as much a part of the odor of summer as hamburgers on a grill or the scent of fresh cut grass. The salt smell of the Atlantic, transferred to Bellmawr Park, more that sixty miles traveled in a Buick Roadmaster from the waters edge to the backyard of Spruce Place, behind the house built during the second War to End All Wars.

The women picked packages of flounder to take home. These were placed in coolers, stowed in cars for the trip home. The impromptu tables were washed and leaned against the back of the house to dry in the sun that would come with the next summer morning. And the packages of flounder left over were surveyed. “Bob Jones’ family likes flounder“, one would say, and a half dozen packages would disappear, food for a man down on his luck. No one was offered charity. The fish was always presented with complaint. “The darned things wouldn’t stop biting, we caught too much to use, you would sure do me a favor, Bob, if you’d take some off my hands!” We didn’t have government handouts then, so people took care of people. The flounder would grace the tables of six to ten families in the neighborhood, four or five meals each. No one thought anything of it. It was something you just did. And we children dreamed of the day, that Christmas morning, when the unmistakable shape of a wrapped Penn rod and reel would be under the tree. A symbol of growing up, of becoming one of the fishermen, and of all that the experience implied.

Including the helping hand to the parents of the kids we played with, the parents of our friends.

NOTE: Copyright 12/07/05 by Dave Hoffman

Use granted to all who identify author.

Beneficium accipere libertatem est vendere.