Читать книгу Reeling In Time with Fish Tales - Brian E. Smith - Страница 12

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 standard on most all vehicles. You see, for the air conditioner to work, you had to roll down all four windows and have 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 shell lot. Trucks and cars packed the front of the lot. As we rode by, I noticed many of the license plates were from out of state. I imagined 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 of the lot had plenty of empty spaces. We inched toward 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 car’s interior. Sweat 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; the kind that puts those wavy lines in your eyes.

“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-broken in, five-tone LTD. 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.”

It took two of us 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.”

“Yeah, I weighed one using my fishing scales once, and they weigh four pounds apiece,” 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 toward 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 continue 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 giveaway. 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 cans. One of the bottom shelves had empty beer flats filled with plastic bags labeled, Bloodworms. You could see the red worms through the clear plastic, wadded up in a creepy ball. Every free space on the walls, posts, shelves, and counters had faded photographs 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 be stamped by the unshaven, apishly hairy, fat man in a skintight, used-to-be white tank top, I was shook by the smell of body odor, strong cigarettes, and stale beer. I looked at him as he was stamping my hand; his mouth was agape. The teeth he had left 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 way out on the open pier. It felt like a cool fan, but thick with the smell of salt water. It felt great. We stopped to reposition. I loved that breeze as we weaved in and around people, trashcans, 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 and fun for me to watch. We stopped again to reposition. I quickly learned to hold my breath when down-wind of pier trashcans. People threw unused bait in those cans instead of tossing it in the water and letting the fish eat free. The surprise odors of hot, rotten shrimp, squid, fish, or a blended smell will garner a gag reflex. We stopped to reposition once more. The weight of those coolers was wearing us out. They must have been gaining weight with each step we took.

Mr. Sullivan stopped just short of the end of the pier on the left side. We were so thankful he stopped. We dropped the coolers down next to the wooden bench we were going to fish 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 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. That question I’d asked Mr. Sullivan about, the activity on the end of the pier, was the beginning, soon to become an obsession for me.

“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 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 never to 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. A thin plastic coated wire connected the two. 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 the 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, which looked like a see through envelope with a piece of heavy construction paper inside from the bucket. Mr. Sullivan flipped it around showing us. A line up of leadered hooks was on the side with writing. He carefully pulled one out so as not to tangle it 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.

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 slipped the hook through the fishing line loop and pulled on the hook. The leadered hook was looped to 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 the 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 long, and stacked tightly in the box like cord wood.

“Gather around the cutting board, I’ll show you guys how to do this.” We three kids stood around him like a litter of puppies. Mr. Sullivan explained as he went along. He first pulled the head from the body and 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 then scrapped what little guts were there away with the blade of his knife and flipped them in the ocean. A triangle 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, saying, “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. He held the squid head 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 bait. He punched the top hook through the end of the squid strip, turned it around, and stuck it 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 reel’s little green knobs back-wound for a long time. The bait must have just hit the bottom when he jerked it, commencing to spin the tiny handle round and round. In seconds, 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 went 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 fish 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 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 so stupid.

“Reel this one up and then we’ll work out this bird’s 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. I took off the two croakers and put them 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 gust 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 speed-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, getting them off the hooks and 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 laid a gob of squid on the bench end and put a small wet towel over the bait strips. 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, trashcans, and those fishing. They were sitting, waiting for a fast food opportunity. The sky had 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 while 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, two croakers instantly picked it up. 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 bait 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 were all picking up fish as fast as we could get the bait to the bottom. I’d never experienced fishing like that. It didn’t even feel like fishing. If you had enough skill to get bait to the bottom, without making a mess, you could always catch a fish. I found myself totally in the moment. The heat was gone. There was no wind. There were no odors. I was entirely 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 asked us to pull the bait out of the fish box and put it in the food cooler, shifting 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 and it stopped all together.

“Boys, let me see your fishing poles,” said Mr. Sullivan. He had already gotten his gear ready to travel. He took Gilbert’s first, pushed the clicker button forward, slipped the bottom hook over the top bar on the reel, and wound the fishing line tight. It made several loud clicks before snugging up. After tightening each pole, he picked up the five-gallon bucket and headed down the pier. “Ya’ll get the coolers and find me about half-way down the pier,” he said, walking off.

We three boys stood in silence, looking at one another before Johnny looked into the fish cooler and said, “This ain’t cool.”

The fish cooler lacked but few inches from the top of being full. The fish weren’t big, but it doesn’t take long when four people are putting fish in the box at a quick and steady pace.

“Now what?” Johnny asked exasperated.

“Pull the plug on the cooler and let’s drain the water off,” Gilbert said. He had been here before. About a gallon and a half of water and slime fell between the slits in the pier before becoming slow drips. Gilbert put the plug back in the cooler. Then he opened both coolers up and began to put some blocks of ice in the food cooler to reduce weight from the fish box.

“We need to get rid of this tea and let’s eat the sandwiches, too,” I suggested.

We took a minute to wash up in the sink before eating the sandwiches and tea.

“Man, these sandwiches are all mashed up,” Johnny exclaimed, pulling them out of the bread bag. He was right, for the blocks of ice slid around in the cooler and pressed the sandwiches into some unique shapes, none of which resembled a sandwich. We ate three modern art, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and passed the tea jug around until Johnny noticed a string of PBJ awash in the tea jug. Each of us blamed the other for the backwash. We dumped the rest of the tea between the slits in the pier boards, and the jug was tossed in the closest trashcan.

“We better hurry up and get down the pier, my dad will be waiting,” Gilbert blurted out.

“We ain’t going to be hurrying nowhere,” I responded. We put Johnny in the middle of the cooler train and started down the pier. Making it less than ten feet, a gravity storm hit the fish box, sucking it down to the pier.

“Maybe three of us can carry the fish box and come back for the food cooler,” Gilbert suggested.

“Where is the third guy going to grab the cooler?” I asked.

“Hey, kids!” a man’s voice came from the other side of the pier. In retrospect, the voice may have come from above. “You can use my pier cart to haul those coolers down the pier if you promise to bring it back,” said a middle-aged man we had never seen before.

A collective “Thanks, mister!” came from us. He emptied his stuff out of the pier cart onto a bench. The pier cart was a forever-borrowed rusty shopping cart with six short sections of galvanized pipe sized and staggered so the top of the pipes were always at the height of the basket top. The man helped us lift and position the big cooler across the cart toward the rear and the small cooler on the front of the basket. He loaned us a piece of quarter-inch line to tie down the coolers. Working together, we formed a web with the line by running the line through the basket and over the coolers so they couldn’t move, much, forward, back, or side to side. It was a godsend! I told him it was easier to fish on the other side of the pier where the tide wouldn’t wash his bait under the pier.

He smiled, and said, “Thanks.” We rattled our way down the pier smiling at folks like young men driving a snazzy car.

We found Mr. Sullivan a bit more than halfway down the pier on the left hand side. I didn’t notice earlier, but he had wadded up the squid in the wet towel and put it in the bucket before he walked back down the pier. When he got to where he wanted to fish, he emptied the stuff from the bucket on a bench. Using the bait from the rag, and the empty bucket as a makeshift cooler, he wasn’t waiting on us to get started fishing. The bucket was half-full of fish when we got to him. He lifted the fish cooler from the pier cart after we untangled it from our web of line. As he lifted the small cooler, he asked where we got the cart. We told him the story. He coiled the line neatly, putting it in the bottom of the cart.

“Be sure and tell the man thank you,” he said, as Johnny drove the cart back up the pier solo. Gilbert flipped the fish cooler lid open at his dad’s request, and his dad sloshed the fish from the bucket on top of the fish in the cooler. The cooler was just about full to the brim.

Gilbert and I started fishing with Mr. Sullivan. The action was as fast as it was in the beginning at the end of the pier; all three of us tossing in singles and doubles as quickly as we could get bait to the bottom. In a matter of minutes, the big cooler was full of fish and ice. The lid would just close tight.

“What are we going to do now, Mr. Sullivan?” I asked.

“Open the lid on the small cooler and take the food and bait out.” Gilbert threw the Styrofoam cups in a trashcan and I set the bait on the bench next to his dad. When Johnny returned, all four of us ganged up on the croaker. The steady thud of fish landing in the cooler was like a slow, heavy rain on a tin roof. It was a quick thirty to forty minutes before the cooler was as full of fish as it could get. It ended when Mr. Sullivan told us to stop fishing. All three of us had to throw the fish we had on the line at the time back in the ocean. Mr. Sullivan had to throw some of the fish on top back in order to squeeze the lid shut. It was fun tossing fish off the pier. I wondered what the fish were thinking as they sailed through the air before belly-flopping home. They were the lucky ones with a thrill ride.

Mr. Sullivan walked over to some folks fishing nearby and gave them our leftover bait. When he returned, we were washing the form fitted slime gloves from our hands with a water hose.

“Why did the fish at the end of the pier stop eating and the fish near the beach start eating, Mr. Sullivan? And, how did you know?” I asked.

“Brian, fish at the end of the pier never stopped feeding. You see, the school of fish at the end of the pier was the same school of fish at the beach; they just moved closer in with the incoming tide. We moved along the pier to follow the fish in the tide.”

I stood there with my mouth agape, like the man at the pier house, thinking about what he just said. The only thing I knew about tide was it only worked in saltwater, and it would come in during the day and leave during the day then repeat at night. Where it came from or where it went was a mystery to me, and I sure didn’t know it could carry fish. It was a good thing to know. That was when I learned fish move with the tide.

“Take your sinkers off your rigs, boys.” While we were busy doing that, Mr. Sullivan came along to each of us and cut the leadered hooks off our rigs with his knife.

“You don’t save the hooks?” I asked.

“Brian, I’ve tried, but they end up rusted out by the time I use them again. Besides, they tangle up in everything if you leave them on. It is not worth the hassle.” He showed us how to hook the snap swivel to the reel after cleaning the rig off.

“Ya’ll stay here till I come back; don’t goof off,” he told us, as he picked up the fishing poles and five-gallon bucket and walked down the pier.

When he was out of earshot, Johnny blurted, “Those coolers are heavier now than when we carried them on the pier! How are we going to get them to the car?” He was right! I was eyeballing around for a kind looking person who happened to have a pier cart or anything with wheels, but there was nothing within sight.

“What are we going to do, Gilbert?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I thought you and your dad came fishing here before?”

“We have, but we only bring a small cooler.”

“Do you think we should go ask that guy to borrow his pier cart again?”

“Johnny, what are you doing?” Gilbert and I asked in unison.

“Cooling off.” Johnny was hosing down with the sink hose. It was a great idea, considering we were thirsty, out of tea, boiling hot, and faced with what seemed to be an overwhelming task. Gilbert went to the hose on the other side of the sink and started doing the same thing. Then they started hosing me down. I fell to the pier as if I was being shot, and they soaked me down. Boy, it felt good, especially with the sea breeze. That had to escalate into a water fight; and it did.

Occasionally, someone nearby would be hit with a stream of water, but nobody minded. It felt that good. Of course, when Mr. Sullivan sneaked up on us, on an open pier, in broad daylight, and caught us in the midst of goofing off, nobody came forward and told him it felt good.

“What are ya’ll doing!” barked Mr. Sullivan. The hoses went silent. We three boys stood board straight in silence. Everybody around us was silent, waiting and watching to see what was going to happen next. Even the gulls stopped screeching. The world stopped. The only sound was that of running water still flowing from our short pants, splattering on the pier. I’m not quite sure it was all just water either.

“I can’t believe I can’t leave ya’ll alone for ten minutes without some antics! You’re going to get in my car sopping wet!”

“Dad, we were just cooling off.”

“Gilbert!”

I noticed Mr. Sullivan had rolled a hand truck with him and then I loved that man who was yelling at us. Mr. Sullivan put the large cooler on the bottom, and then put the small cooler on top.

“You wet rats ready?”

“Yes, sir,” said in synchronicity. Mr. Sullivan eased the hand truck back and started rolling it down the pier. We quietly followed behind, puppy fashion.

Gilbert whispered to Johnny, “It’s all your fault!”

“Yeah, but don’t it feel good?” He was right, it still felt good.

At the pier house, Mr. Sullivan stopped, gave Gilbert a couple of bucks, and told him to go buy four Cokes. Johnny went with him as I rolled on with Mr. Sullivan. The car was parked at the entrance with the trunk popped open. He set the small cooler in the trunk and then he heaved the large cooler in the trunk. He sure was a strong man!

Gilbert and Johnny came scrambling down with the drinks. Mr. Sullivan shut the trunk, told Gilbert to roll the hand truck back to the pier house, and slid behind the steering wheel. Gilbert ran back in a couple of minutes and we boys hopped in. We sat still, with shut mouths and the windows rolled down, anticipating the air conditioning. Mr. Sullivan pulled away and asked us if we enjoyed fishing from the pier. That broke the ice.

We started briefly talking about feeling the fish bite, then exaggerating a guess of how many fish each of us caught. A belch here and there from the Cokes was the only thing that interrupted the chatter. The ride over to the Sullivan’s went by so quickly. It seemed like minutes before Mr. Sullivan was backing the LTD through a gate on the side of his house to a picnic table in the back yard. I thought about how many fish we caught from another perspective, then. The fun was over and work about to begin.

Mr. Sullivan popped the trunk, set the coolers by the picnic table, and started getting things and people in motion. He told Gilbert to get two fish scalers and two sharp knives from the kitchen.

He told Johnny to carry the water hose over to the table, “and this time, manage not to get wet,” he said in jest.

He told me to get two five-gallon buckets from beside the house and a shovel from the garage. I brought the buckets to the table, and he pointed out the garden in the corner of the backyard. I knew what to do, but not exactly how big a hole I should dig. Mrs. Sullivan brought out four big glasses of iced tea with Gilbert. She said she’d hug us later and went back in the house. By the time I had dug a good-sized hole in the ground, Mr. Sullivan had organized a Henry Ford de-assembly line at the picnic table. A custom fit, well-used, sheet of plywood lay atop the picnic table with a clean open cooler, the size of the large cooler we brought on the pier, on top of that at the far end. The small cooler set atop the large cooler at the other end, on the ground. It was open, ready for business to begin. Two metal fish scalers were placed on the table across from one another, close to the cooler of fish. Two knives sat next to the open, clean cooler across from one another. Between the scalers and knives, draped the water hose. One five-gallon bucket sat on the picnic bench seat just forward of the clean cooler on the table. The other five-gallon bucket was the same way but on the opposite side of the table. The only things missing were the line workers.

Before production began, Mr. Sullivan told Johnny and me that Mrs. Sullivan had called our parents and told them we’d be home after we finished cleaning the fish. I thought, this is going to take forever, plus some. Johnny and I ain’t getting home for quite a while. Mr. Sullivan may have adopted us into a fish labor camp!

“Gilbert, you and Johnny start scraping the scales off the fish and pass them down to Brian and me to cut the heads off and gut them. The scales started flying; heads lopped off, bellies slit open, and guts rooted out with the scrape of a thumbnail at a steady pace, but slightly slower than the scaling process. Mr. Sullivan was cleaning the fish a bit faster than I was, but I was racing to keep up. The clean cooler was loading up with dressed croakers. When ice was stuck to the fish from the fish cooler, we rinsed it with the hose and dropped in the cleaned fish cooler. Every now and then, someone would grab the hose and give the table a quick rinse of fresh water. The five-gallon buckets filled up with heads and guts.

“Gilbert and Johnny, go dump the buckets in the hole,” Mr. Sullivan told them. He and I had a backlog of fish anyway.

They returned and set the buckets back up, saying, “Dad, the hole ain’t big enough.”

“Go dig another hole then.” Gilbert walked off with the shovel, and Johnny resumed scaling fish, solo. When Gilbert came back, we were steady working, with less than a dozen fish in the bottom of the small cooler. We cleaned those remaining quickly.

“Gilbert, rinse that cooler out with the hose,” Mr. Sullivan told his son, as he walked off. He returned a few minutes later with a jug of bleach and a rag. Gilbert was relieved of cooler cleaning when his dad took hold of the cooler and dumped the residual water on the ground. He set the small cooler atop the large cooler upright, tossed the rag in it, splashed a good glug of bleach on the rag and in the cooler, and squirted in some extra water. Then he thoroughly wiped the rag around the inside and outside of the cooler and dumped the wash water out. He closed the lid and set the small cooler on the ground beside the larger cooler.

“When I lift this big cooler up, Gilbert, you slide the smaller cooler underneath.” Before he did that, he said, “Johnny, go dump the gut buckets.” Johnny ran both gut-buckets to the new pit and came back in a flash.

Mr. Sullivan opened the lid to the big cooler and we were back in business scraping scales and gutting fish. The cleaning tempo resumed with a smoother rhythm. With the second cooler, I was able to keep up with Mr. Sullivan cleaning fish. Either I was getting better or it was good to be young. The second cooler, even though it was larger, emptied in about the same amount of time as the first, smaller cooler. A couple of gut-bucket runs by Gilbert and Johnny and the fish cleaning was over. Amazingly, all the fish that took up two coolers of space fit in a single, large cooler after being cleaned. We couldn’t close the lid, but they fit without falling out.

When we saw the bottom of the big cooler, we thought the work was over. We were wrong.

“Gilbert, rinse out the big fish cooler and wipe it down. Johnny, rinse off the table when Gilbert is done with the hose. Brian, go dump the rest of the guts and cover them up. And be sure and clean the buckets when you’re through.” Mr. Sullivan kept us all hopping. In ten minutes, we boys had finished our jobs. Mr. Sullivan took the two empty coolers and gave them each a quick rinse with the hose. He then sat the coolers, with closed lids, on the picnic table bench seat, on the opposite side of the table where he was working. The cooler with the cleaned fish, he carefully dumped on the table then rinsed that cooler out well afterwards and set it with the other two coolers on the bench seat.

“Boys, fish around, and pick out the chunks of ice and bring them to me,” Mr. Sullivan said. Back in the slime we went, getting a few pokes from the fish fins as we hunted. When we found a chunk of ice, we brought it to him. We’d hold it in our hands while he rinsed it off, and then put it in a bucket. The big blocks of ice were now small chunks, but I was still impressed at how long block ice lasted. Crushed bag ice would have long ago melted away, but Mr. Sullivan’s milk carton, ice idea was smart.

After sorting out the ice, Mr. Sullivan turned the hose on the pile of fish. The firm spray had slime, blood, and left over scales pouring off the ends of the picnic table. Twice he stopped and had us stir the pile of fish around. By the end of the third rinse, the fish were very clean.

He gave the closed coolers a quick rinse then said, “Gilbert, go flip the cooler lids open.” Mr. Sullivan had arranged the coolers so the cooler lids opened out away from the table. “Ya’ll boys come over here now,” said Mr. Sullivan.

“Johnny, the cooler on the far end is yours. Brian, your cooler is in the middle and, Gilbert, ours is on this end,” he directed. “When I toss a fish in my cooler, ya’ll toss a fish in your coolers, OK?” said Mr. Sullivan.

“Cool, a fish toss,” Johnny said. Mr. Sullivan grabbed a fish and flipped it in his cooler. We all did the same with our coolers. We got in a rhythm and the fish were flying. It was disappointing when we got down to the last two fish. Mr. Sullivan told Johnny and me we could have them. He and I picked up a fish apiece and tossed them in Mr. Sullivan’s and Gilbert’s cooler as a thank you. Mr. Sullivan divided the ice in the bucket between Johnny’s cooler and mine. Gilbert toted their cooler of fish into the house for the bagging process. Johnny and I put our coolers in the back of the LTD, while Mr. Sullivan rinsed the table and area around the table. We washed up with the hose as best we could. Fish smell takes soap, water, scrubbing, and time to get rid of.

Johnny and I said goodbye to Mrs. Sullivan and Gilbert before loading up in the car and taking the short ride to our houses. It had just turned dark when Mr. Sullivan pulled into my driveway. My dad came out and met us at the car. The men talked a bit as I carried the cooler in the garage with Johnny’s help. Mom was going to bag up the fish and put them in the garage freezer. I came back out and thanked Mr. Sullivan for taking me fishing. I told Johnny I’d see him around. Going back in the house, I felt tired. For the first time, I realized there could be a lot of work involved in the fun of fishing.