I hadn't seen him in years and we met recently but I heard he was fishing lobsters for a living many years ago from a mutual friend.
I guess he spent a couple years in college but decided he didn't want to wind up another Dilbert in a cubicle so he chose between the family business of demolition or fishing and fishing won out. I can't say as I blame him.
Then again demolition sounds right up my alley. I probably would have taken that kind of a business to new levels by learning to blow stuff up. Imploding buildings seems pretty neat to me. Why use a ball on a crane when you can use det cord and TNT?
He's had his own boat for decades and it is his business and he goes out just about every day that the weather will let him.
Lobstering is basically hard work and to a point inherently dangerous. You go out every day and eventually SOMETHING life and death is going to happen that you didn't see coming and you have to deal with it.
One thing that hasn't changed since my boyhood is that weathermen can be wrong more than half the time and still keep their jobs. While weather prediction has certainly gotten better it is still far from perfect.
The weather in New England is constantly changing and for a fisherman that can be either a good or very, very bad thing. The sea can go from calm to a lump in a New York minute with little or no warning.
I'll bet that there are some changes since I pulled lobster pots as a kid with a couple guys from Damon's Point.
The hull shape is very likely the same or close to it but the materiels are different. Gone are the old wood hulls. They have been replaced with fiberglass and most of them now sport diesel engines instead of the old gas jobs I remember.
Electronics have changes, too. Back in the day the only electronics most guys had was a newfangled transistor radio so they could listen to the Red Sox games on WBZ or WHDH.
Now they sport Marine VHFs, GPS navigation, depth sounders possibly weather faxes. Some probably have a lot more than that.
One thing I'd bet hasn't changed much is the basic gear for pulling pots consisting of a block on a davit and a gypsy head. It's likely still that dead simple. The pots are different these days, though. They used to be made of oak. Now they're vinal covered steel wire.
I'm going to be in his area soon and hope I can drop by and check his boat out.
Of course, the business he is in is a true business where he is paid for what he catches. I figure he's probably pretty good at catching lobsters because if he wasn't he'd have gone broke long ago and doing something else.
One of the things he shares with cab drivers, waitresses, day laborers and strippers is that he generally gets paid daily or fairly close to daily. When he gets in he takes his catch to the fish pound and settles up.
You have to be disciplined to get paid like that. It's too easy to let a day's pay slip through your hands regularly because you think you can just make another day's pay tomorrow. In reality it doesn't work that way.
You have to be disciplined.
I drove cab for a while and was paid daily. I used to put my day's pay in an old coffee can and bank it every week or so I'd have money for rent, utilities and other things. I saw how it could be too easy to let it slip from my fingers at the bar or other dens of iniquity. A lobsterman has to be the same way.
Back when I was a kid I knew a couple of old Yankee lobstermen and both of them were real characters. One was a WW1 vet that had gone Over There to France as a private and returned as a captain having gone over the top with Black Jack Pershing.
He had been in college for a divinity degree but after the war he went back and changed his major.
Frankly I think he majored in profanity and drinking as he was often half in the bag when I saw him but I digress. Somewhere along the line he fell into lobstering and it agreed with him.
He was a character and about the only adult I called by his first name unless I was in front of my parents. I'd call him Charlie because he told me to and in front of my folks he was Mr. Wendell.
Sadly, the guy I went to school with isn't a drunk or even remotely as colorful and profane as the old guy I knew as a kid. It's a shame he isn't. In this day and age we could probably use a little more local color. I suppose in this day and age they'd throw him in jail if he got drunk and sang dirty songs.
Then again, if I remember, Charlie Wendell was no stranger to a jail cell but I digress.
Still, profanity and drunkeness aside, I would imagine they are kindred spirits. Lobstermen seem to like the independence of fishing and being their own bosses.
I hope to see him soon and I'm posting this, printing it and sending it to him as a head's up that I'm headed his way shortly. I am bringing a bottle of Jameson's to try and civilize him a bit because I think he's a Jack Daniels guy.
To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY
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