My Father As Fisherman

     Though my father worked in the "dark, satanic mills" of the paper industry, he escaped every chance he got to his avocation of fisherman.  As a child I balked at helping him build fishing boats and sew shad nets and repair his cast nets, and especially at helping him race his nets in the winter after he spent all night in the river, a job that froze my fingers and caused my hands to crack and bleed (since the job could not be done with gloves but only the bare hands). The salt water logged nets could not be left in their burlap wraps but had to be spread out to dry immediately on his return no matter the temperature or wind chill of the given day.
     In retrospect I admire my father's courage and fishing skills. My father was not the most patient man and working with him I heard enough cussing to last me many lifetimes over.  I was quiet and shy and I doubt if my father ever knew how little I shared his passion at the time.  But I learned a lot from him however unwillingly I did as I was told.  I learned to wield a net making needle and repair torn holes in the nets as well as attach the circle of cork floats to the perimeter of a cast net, essential to catching the shrimp we used for bait in the tidal creeks of the Intercoastal Waterway around Savannah, Georgia. No matter how many fish we caught, we always had a bucket of shrimp for boiling when we got home.  I ate so many and peeled so many with my mother for winter canning that I have little interest in shrimp to this day.  I can still see the mounting, pyramidal piles of shrimp hulls as we worked away in the kitchen twilight.
     Boat building did bring some near comic relief as well as back breaking work bending wood and waterproofing boat seams.  Our first production he called a "bateau,"by which he meant a flat bottomed fishing skiff with oar locks and a mounting area at the back for an outboard motor. When it was finally finished he wanted to take it to the river for a test ride.  He invited my cousin Bemis Howell, his son Charles and their grandfather to come along for the ride.  They arrived with fishing gear in tow and I was fairly amazed at the prospect of such an outing.  Bemis was over six feet tall and about 300 pounds in weight, his father of a similar magnitude. Son Charles, about fifteen at the time, was only about 180 pounds but not small in stature despite his weight.  My father weighed at least 200 pounds and was stocky if more muscular in tone than gifted with adipose tissue. I was a mere 160 pounds at the time.  We could all barely fit into the 10 foot boat with some room for food and fishing tackle under the storage area in the bow.
      When we got to the river and pushed off from the dock I was relieved we did not immediately sink.  We proceeded to motor down down the river with much talk and laughter and discussion of how many miles downriver the best fishing drops were to be found. I reached over the side and discovered the water came up nearly to the level of the oarlocks.  So prudently I asked to be let off on a good spot on the river bank not far from the pier since I had a cane pole which could be best maneuvered on a spot near a river bank rather than a moving boat with such a crowd.  I was relieved when they agreed and I watched as they disappeared around a bend in the river.  Some hours later I had caught more than my share of catfish and croakers (good for our cats) and sat to await their arrival in the gentle spring sunlight.
They took a long time.
       Finally they returned, in just as jovial a mood as they left, and picked me up.  I was astounded they had not capsized or sunk.  I had pictured their rescue in their heavy-duty naval surplus life jackets, bobbing along and wondering where the boat had gone.  The boat had no such adventure.  It seemed nearly seaworthy as we returned to the dock of the fishing camp.  Water still reached up to within 6 inches of overflow into the interior but there was very litte evidence of water on board.  I watched with a mixture of relief and disbelief as those enormous beings rose out of the boat--and it bobbed out of the water by a foot or more as they disembarked.  My father's skill in boat building was confirmed.  In looking back I believe they were all as amazed as I was.
     The most exciting moment in fishing with my father was meant to be a simple, uneventful visit to a local fishing hole just down the road from our house past King's Ferry just before the road to Richmond Hill and a short distance from the interstate traffic on US 17 heading to Florida.  Sometimes when the Ogeechee River flooded after a heavy rain, we would drive to this same area and see the highway covered in water risen from both sides, occasional alligators swimming across from the waterlogged woods to the river inlet where we fished in calmer times.  It was an innocent time when artesian wells bubbled up out of pipes near the road--before all the industrial development in Savannah sucked the water level down to where the aquifers had to be drilled to get any more well water.  The sweet taste of free-flowing artesian water was a treat.
       One day we went to this area and we youngsters had our cane poles by the pond-like inlet from the river nearest the highway just beyond an old wooden fence made of a series of two horizontal logs between each of the several fence posts. I remember threading the earth worms on my hook just below the lead sinker that extended about a foot below the cork float.  Swinging the line out over the surface of the water I just let it fall into place. Minutes later I saw the cork bobble and go under as a fish took the bait. I could feel the quivering line between my fingers before I raised the pole like a great pendulum and swung the writhing fish, the scales flashing in sunlight, back toward me and the waiting fish net.  The fish we put into a crocus sack and the cycle was repeated.  My father, who had gone just out of sight further into the deep wood near the river itself, was beginning to shout excitedly.  When we deciphered his voice it was, "Climb a tree quickly!  There is a large gator coming out of the river!"  There were muffled sounds and scuffling in the distance as we scurried up two small saplings.  My skills at tree climbing were well-honed from a game we played frequently: climbing young trees to the top and riding them near the ground before releasing them to snap back to their full height.  I clung to the tree just below the top, not wishing to be dropped back to the ground very soon.  It was not long before my father appeared and said it was safe to climb down.  He had had to kill the alligator who charged him by shoving a small log down its throat.  Later we stopped to tell a local fisherman about our adventure, a black man my father knew from his job near Love's fishing camp nearby where many blacks sat in small wooden shacks up above the river waters and caught catfish from a hole in the flooring.  It reminded me later of Catfish Row in Porgy and Bess.  Blacks were known to eat alligator when available so they were given my father's information.  My guess in that my father had accidentally strayed too close to an alligator nest and the mother was just defending her eggs.  Our luck my father was safe but a terrible misfortune for the gator.
     Most often I seem to dream of my father in some watery context.  Sometimes it is getting dark and I am in a boat rounding a bend where I sense the water is getting uncomfortably deep and swift.  Georgia waters in tidal rivers are brackish and murky even in sunlight.  I begin to have that deep fear instilled in me long ago of the death awaiting in those murky depths.  On the map one can see how this dream river is like a real place, the Kilkenny Fishing Camp, on a river that is an outlet to the ocean near St. Catherine Sound, a fishing area where I once saw thousands of jellyfish and where my father brought back a small hammerhead shark.  To this day I do not like the ominous hint of great ocean depths.  None of my interest in oceanography or marine science can overcome this aversion.  I have to employ enormous reserves of steely will power to go on the surface of deep rivers or near an ocean basin.
      Once I dreamed I saw my father across a vast expanse of marsh bog near a tall metal building, a twisted ruin like a huge abstract metal sculpture.  He seemed to be in a submarine docked near this vast wetland on a tidal river.  I was wondering how to reach my father when I awakened.  All all-too-apt description of our emotional relationship. The paper mill where he worked could well be the metallic sculpture in the dream, the place that drove him to submarine depths to survive with his sanity more or less intact.  Another occasion many years after his death, I dreamed again of this vast expanse of marsh and mud between the riverbank and the water that led to the sea.  I am an albatross, as in the poem by Beaudelaire in Les Fleurs du Mal, and I am running along the shore toward a cliff which looks across the vast expanse of mud. I can only lift my wings with an enormous effort.  I approach the cliff edge with my wings only beginning to feel the air, running as rapidly as my clumsy feet can manage.  I come to the edge of the cliff  and leap into the air only to glide downward toward the mud.  At the last possible moment my wings lift me high into the sky and I soar ecstatically over the sea.

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L'ALBATROS de Charles Beaudelaire  (dans Les Fleurs du Mal)

Souvent, pour s'amuser, les hommes d'équipage
Prennent des albatros, vastes oiseaux des mers,
Qui suivent, indolents compagnons de voyage,
Le navire glissant sur les gouffres amers.

A peine les ont-ils déposés sur les planches,
Que ces rois de l'azur, maladroits et honteux,
Laissent piteusement leurs grandes ailes blanches
Comme des avirons traîner à côté d'eux.

Ce voyageur ailé, comme il est gauche et veule!
Lui, naguère si beau, qu'il est comique et laid!
L'un agace son bec avec un brûle-gueule,
L'autre mime, en boitant, l'infirme qui volait!

Le Poète est semblable au prince des nuées
Qui hante la tempête et se rit de l'archer;
Exilé sur le sol au milieu des huées,
Ses ailes de géant l'empêchent de marcher.

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