Reeling In Time with Fish Tales. Brian E. Smith
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much brazen inflection as I felt I could get away with.
“You got some big ol’ carp, Champ?”
I answered John Wayne style in a twelve-year-old voice, “Yes, sir,” then blathered on and on like Mom and Aunt Quida on the phone, telling Dad about the big fish and how I figured out how to catch it. He listened to things I ranted about three times as night fell on my recollections. He put his arm around me as we walked into the garage light.
“So what do you think about that, Dad?”
“I think you’re growing up, Champ.”
Chapter 5 - The Pier
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