When I was a 15-year-old deckhand fishing on my parent’s boat, my dad’s hired crewman kept a spiral notebook he used as a journal. Along with the plastic ball point pen inserted in the top of the metal spiral that bound the yellow cover and collegiate blue-lined white pages within. It was the only item he was allowed to keep on the galley table. On the cover of that notebook, he had written, “Bits and Pieces of Semi-relevant Trivia“.
I learned a lot from the college-age students that fished on board our family boat when I was a kid. They seemed self-assured. Young men with direction and purpose. Often, they brought boxes of paperback books with them that resided in the focsle.
I will be forever grateful that they let me read those books!
I had a lot of time to read in those days. On the boat, it was my job to help cook, keep the wheel house clean, stand wheel watch, help scrub the deck, and help clean fish and put them in the hold when fishing got busy. However, when fishing was slower, or it took many hours (or days) to run into into port, I read.
Tolstoy, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemmingway, Leon Uris, John Updike…
At 15-years-old I read “Still Life With Woodpecker” by Tom Robbins. It was eye-opening. Memorable. Red-headedness took on a whole new meaning, the word “cocaine” entered my vocabulary and I decided I would not grow up to be an addict.
I read and read and read.
In for “Whom the Bell Tolls” by Ernest Hemmingway, the earth moved. I made a note to see if that would be the case when I got somewhat older.
The Oklahoma dust bowl in John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” became as real for me as the wetness of the ocean all around the boat. Day in and day out for up to 10-day-long fishing trips at sea. I read. The image of a mother who had just lost her baby, offering her breast to an old man to suckle, would remain seared in my brain.
That journal on the galley table. Truth be told, I snuck a bit of a read of that as well. Eventually, it would be time for me to fly home to Washington State, from Pelican, Alaska. It was the August closure and my mother thought it best if I returned home. In the deckhand’s journal, were recorded memories of the 4th of July happenings in Pelican that summer.
Our deckhand was the guy that won the greased pole contest that year. He kept the little flag. I am unable to forget the image of the young man who tried to run along the length of the greased trolling pole, maybe 20 feet long, sticking out over the water from its base with that small American flag on the tip of the pole. The object of the contest, was to try to grab the flag. That poor guy slipped, straddling the pole, with each one of his legs on either side. He just sort of leaned off the pole, in slow-motion, over to one side and toppled into the frigid Alaska water. Fishermen with cans of beer in their hands sent up a collective sigh of “oooohhhh….”.
I won the rolling pin toss that year. That competition was reserved for women. A day or so later, I overheard a tall, young gal about my age, on the end of the boardwalk near the cold storage, remarking to a friend that she would not want to get in a fight with me. Thank God for a strong throwing arm. I am also appreciative to one of my uncles who coached me in throwing a stick off the mud flats into the water the day before that contest. I can’t recall how much money I won, it seems like it was about $12. Our crewman who won the greased pole contest, won $100 for his effort.
All the fishermen, that participated, won the tug-of-war contest against the Pelican Cold Storage workers on the 4th of July that year. The bell was rung for free rounds at Vivian’s so frequently that I ended up walking back to the boat with several cans of soda after my burger and fries lunch. I am pretty sure the fishermen also won the softball game against the Pelican Cold Storage workers. There were cases of beer that marked each base out on the mudflats. The game went on until the tide started to come in making it nearly impossible for the men to play in the outfield. By about the 6th inning, cold sea water from the Strait of Lisianski had flooded in toward third base. The players on both teams were soaking wet. Nobody cared.
An old truck was on stand-by near the edge of the playing field. In the truck bed, piled high, were more cases of beer and sodas. The Pelican Cold Storage was to thank.
“You put the lime in the coconut and shake it all up…” the refrain played, loudly, over and over from the second story open window of a weather-beaten wood house on the water side of the board walk near the docks. No one cared. It was sunny, it was crowded, it was the 4th of July , it was happening, and it was Pelican. For those that have not been to Pelican or have not participated in salmon trolling in SE Alaska, much of this story is meaningless. For those in the know, however, it was an iconic event.
One man walked around freely with a fake penis hanging from his fly. No one cared. It was the 4th of July. It was Pelican. It was the heyday of salmon trolling. No one, yet, had heard of the term “farm fish”in relation to salmon.
That evening, the famed wet t-shirt contest was held at Rosie’s Bar. I was not there. I was back on the boat listening to the revelry carrying across the smooth waters of the harbor. The next day after the contest, one of the women in the fleet laundered one of those t-shirts, and gave it to me. It was white, had a picture of a float plane on it and I wore it for years until it was nearly in shreds. Much to my mother’s chagrin. The winner of the wet t-shirt contest was awarded $500.
My future husband was there too, that year, in Pelican. He was a bachelor, older than me, and free to live his 4th of July pretty much however he wanted. Six years later we would be married on a fishing boat, in 1986.
Last week, there were discussions I witnessed online about misogyny. They were brought on by a piece written by a friend who had been affronted two fishing seasons ago by a a pair of men on the docks in Sitka. I watched the comments that ensued. Most were positive, supportive. A few were not. The ones that were not supportive tended to make assumptions that my friend had little experience with fishing in the fleet. When I entered the discussion, to advocate for my friend and her experience, a very few expressed that they did not think I had valid experience in the fishing fleet either.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
We both grew up in the fleet. I refrained in those discussions, about mentioning that my earliest memory of commercial fishing are about crossing the bar going out of Westport, WA. Before I was 6-years-old and our family moved to Port Angeles, WA . Like all the other young kids in Westport, whose fathers crabbed, I practised painting crab bouys with a big, unwieldy brush trying to get that black bouy paint on the numbers before it thickened further. I cut my teeth around kids that were from generations of crabbing families. It is a tough life. I have lost track, over the years, of how many fishermen I have known that have been lost at sea.
Commercial fishing is a dangerous industry and those of us that have survived it have learned to trust our gut.
Which is why when I was in Rosie’s Bar in my mid-20’s, married, I reacted by jumping over the bar when a man would not remove his hand from my arm after I had asked him to. Which is why I championed my friend when she wrote her story and allowed the Alaska Dispatch News to publish it. Which is why I have zero tolerance for bullying.
The man in the bar that grabbed me? He left. The next day men that were residents of Pelican came to our boat and told us the guy was bad news. Apparently, he was a transient and local folks had been keeping an eye on him.
The fishing fleet has its stories. I honor the heritage.
I also embrace change as my husband and I have raised a young woman within the fleet and we are also raising a son who, so far, likes to fish. The commercial fishing fleet has a collective responsibility to protect those, both men and women, that fish within the fleet.
Misogyny, basically the idea the women are second-class citizens in attitude or as a way of life, is becoming yesterdays news.
My son appears to have all the makings to become a commercial fisherman. I will support him in pursuing any kind of career that makes him happy, and if he chooses to follow in his father’s (and in his mother’s) foot-steps to become a commercial fisherman that is okay.
It gives me all the more reason to raise him to be a gentleman.
There has been discussion, recently, about the Western Flyer. This boat is on the blocks at the shipyard in Port Townsend about a 45 minute drive from where my family lives. Reportedly, a new buyer plans on restoring her. This is important to both fishermen and lovers of literature (oftentimes, one and the same). The Western Flyer is famous because Steinbeck chartered her.
The Western Flyer is also a boat with a rich history of fishing including King Crabbing in Alaska. Sig Hansen of “Deadliest Catch” fame mentioned his father had crewed aboard the Western Flyer in his book “North By Northwestern“. The Western Flyer was built in Tacoma, Washington in 1937, originally for the sardine seining fishery in California.
It was from Monterey Bay, California that Steinbeck chartered the Western Flyer and wrote a book about the experience entitled, “The Log from the Sea of Cortez“. When my husband, son, and I visited the Western Flyer in Port Townsend this past Fall, I bought a copy of that book. It has been residing on my bedside table ever since. Unread. A commercial fisherman recently advised me to, “sip it slowly, like century-old bourbon“. I am not certain I will be able to read it at all until I am back out on the water.
My husband and son paying homage to the Western Flyer in Port Townsend, Washington (Fall 2014).
Integration 