Our morning on the beach was
through, but that did not mean it was time to go home. Not yet, anyway. We’re
not in some kind of rush to get anywhere, are we? Nope, not
on a Saturday. What began as a late-morning
craving for caffeine eventually evolved into a post-angling tradition, no
matter our perceived or necessitated degree of brewed-bean dependency. From what I could tell, we weren’t the only two who did this either. I always saw a number of big pick-up trucks
or SUVs, ya know, the bumper-sticker-laden type with the aluminum tube
grill-mounted rod holders or Thule roof racks, parked in the corners of convenience
store lots after a tide has expired or the precious window of opportunity has
shut hours after sunrise. This is
exactly what Scott and I would do also. Just
as skiers may look forward to a steaming cup of hot chocolate come the end of
their day, sipping this simple pleasure inside a mountain resort’s base lodge,
as anglers, we’d look forward to rewarding our tired and dampened, salt-stained
bodies with a warm and refreshing, extra-large coffee, while catching-up for
lost time with one another, shooting the breeze until we realized forty-five minutes has already passed.
I never had so much innocent fun
with this friend as I did, while in all places, idling outside the entranceway of
some busy convenience store, where the influx of customers seemed non-stop. How often does one really find themselves hanging around in front of such a store
anyway, as a patron passing time? I
wasn’t a skateboard-riding teenager, or a listless smoker getting his nicotine fix
from a freshly-opened pack he just bought, or a Spanish-speaking day-worker for
hire hoping to get picked-up for any sort of manual labor. I was a man, dressed for the most part, like
a surf fisherman, en route home. Ah, but
the entertaining laughter that was to be shared first in the company of my
comedic cohort!
I learned long before that it
never mattered where Scott happened
to be, or the company he was holding, as he was just one of those types who
could make you laugh wherever and whenever, every time, hands-down. He was the type that easily won attention, a
bona fide comedian who made his off-the-cuff antics look as easy as lounging in
a beach chair with your feet in the sand on a warm sunny day. This gentle giant would get a kick out of
innocently busting-chops, delicately walking a self-prescribed tight-rope,
dissecting the innocence of unassuming strangers, but always for good-natured
fun, never in a nasty or demeaning
manner. Being crass wasn’t his style,
and people easily understood that, I know. I’d watch them laugh with him. He was the type
who could have sold ice to Eskimos, for crying out loud! He was that
personable.
One October morning after
catching a few Stripers on a local beach, we again found ourselves outside of a
busy 7-Eleven located on the barrier island of my hometown with coffees
in-hand. I’d swing between leaning my
back against the storefront’s coarse brick wall to stepping around from here to
there, and Scott would do the same, roving about on the sidewalk, keeping the
conversation going as his head peered around like a tank’s turret surveying the
nearby asphalt and concrete landscape for incoming targets. It was always
enjoyable to spend time this way with him, unaware in essence, that time was
idly weaving its binding thread around us, stitching us together to further
reinforce and add yet another patch of memories to the quilt that was our
ever-growing friendship.
Once, we haphazardly got onto
the subject of online fishing forums and how vicious the outcry became from internet armchair generals sitting
behind keyboards whenever ANY contributing member’s post was making a sacrilege
statement or rousing reference to a circumstance known colloquially as “spot-burning”
(revealing the exact location of a
fishing hot-spot not generally known to others through direct naming thereof or
identifying with generalities so easily decipherable such that it becomes
exposed, and going so far as to burn at the stake ANY forum member who posts a
photo of his kid holding a nice fish with geographically-identifiable structure
in the photograph). Fishermen, after
all, are notorious for keeping
secrets. The last thing they tend to do
is let four-thousand strangers on the internet know where the bite is so that
everyone and his brother is unofficially invited to inundate a beach or jetty
like hundreds of ants on a pile of sugar, whipping treble hooks within inches
of one another in hopes of hitting fish. No, no, no, it doesn’t work that
way. The unwritten law amongst the
angling community is to find your own
fish and then keep it to yourself.
Anything else is considered blasphemy in our world, and for damn-good
reasons, but I couldn’t help but laugh like hell that morning at Scott’s
suggestion, made through the giggling breaths of his unique laugh, that it
would be absolutely hilarious to read the inevitable typewritten torrent of vehemence
posted in response on a certain Striper-fishing
On-Line forum, if he flagrantly
disclosed in the most-active “Fishing in
NJ for the Month Of” thread where the blitzing action had occurred, say, an
hour earlier, but without directly
naming the associated beach town, which he knew
would only piss-off any readers as a result.
His idea jokingly sprung from out of nowhere, as a random, musing piscatorial-minded
proposal, a bedeviling idea crafted solely to ruffle a large number of the
old-salts feathers, and would undoubtedly elicit explicit, vociferous uproar
and furor, quite possibly leading to the complete excommunication of his online
namesake. Well, not really, but his suggestion, a masquerading stunt of sorts, fancied
in order to get a good rise out of these hundreds upon hundreds of unknown and
unseen, die-hard forum contributors, was to instead rename the local shore towns in a forum post with a nearly
identical homonym, spot-burning in every sense of the word, and thereby clueing
those in on the whereabouts of any daily hot-spots. Genius,
I thought! “Imagine what would happen if
I posted in the main forum that the action is ON in “Flea Light” (Sea Bright), “Ronmouth
Reach” (Monmouth Beach), or “Wrong Ranch” (Long Branch),” he asked with a
great, rolling laugh. “Man, ya shoulda been there!! I’m sure the bite will be insane later tho! Go get ‘em!” I was dying
after hearing this! How clever! Yes,
that would really get them going Scott, I told him. And of course, we both knew it would start WWIII online.
That was the whole point of the joke.
Of course, he had no intention of provoking, so it would stay between
us, our half-filled coffee cups, and the straight-faced guy who happened to walk
into the store glancing over at us, certainly wondering what the hell could those two idiots possibly be laughing at so much?
Yet another time, we would find
ourselves again leaving with sore abs after a lively hour of stomach-twisting chuckling
was had. I remember the endless
amusements made over the outlandish behavior of a dreadfully salty local old-salt
from a neighboring town named Theo, who
I never, ever saw fishing once without
his mangy, five-pound Poodle trotting by his side. We saw him on the beach that morning (after all the action was said and done
mind you - i.e. he caught wind of it from someone else) wearing oversized, shin-high
rubber galoshes over blue denim jeans, dragging and drudging his flopping
footwear through the sand with his dog in-tow, holding what looked to be a boat
rod set-up, looking around wide-eyed at the other fishermen like a turkey
vulture skipping around on a roadside shoulder, scampering for the spoils of a
free meal. “Hey Theeeeeeeeo” Scott
would parody in a stressed-syllable-sounding, innocently mimicking
manner that instantly made me lose it! He
would carry-on, entertaining in a quirky style only he could pull-off so well, enacting
for me an impromptu comedic skit about a companion we envisioned of Theo’s
named Russell, who I imagined to resemble a real dunce, a motley-dressed,
lackadaisical, simple-minded country bumpkin perhaps, randomly and aimlessly
moping about, a neighborly pal making mindless conversation with this Theo,
bantering how the two would chatter and gossip about the fishing that occurred,
and how both had missed it, again. I
would laugh as though a feather was tickling me in the worst way possible. It was that
good.
So simple, yet so fun. It comforts me to know that I had the
pleasures of sharing these mornings together with a super-outgoing friend who
had a special knack of reminding me by way of his every day actions that the
purpose of life is to live, to
cut-loose whenever you can, to simply enjoy the ride, and make sure you find
time to get high on the everyday humor in life that always surrounds us. So that’s what I continue to do. I’ve made it as much a priority as catching
the tide.
While every fisherman’s ideals
are different, the hopes of propping up a nice fish while standing within shifting,
sinking sand as rushing seawater hisses up the beach slope, splashing over one’s
feet, so that he can show his buddy who is standing beside him, smiling with
bundled enthusiasm and proudly posing for a quick snapshot, is in my opinion, what
draws each of us anglers out of bed at ungodly hours of the night in a
momentary stupor, shore-bound before any hint of dawn appears, eager to wrangle
with a fish taken from each of our “secret” spots discovered over time and held
dear. I guess in Scott’s spirited
opinion, naturally peppered with whimsical light-heartedness, he must have felt
that it’s absolutely silly to keep a fishy location secret, or that there’s no
credence in keeping a spot private; it’s simply a location that had fish there yesterday, so why not share the wealth,
so-to-speak. Or maybe to an extent, he
just didn’t think someone should take surf fishing that seriously, so as to deny someone with the very same ideals and desires of conviction as them, a fellow surf-rat,
the opportunity, or hope moreover, of
landing a single fish, a magnificent, but downright simple, spellbinding act which
has the universally uplifting power to help someone rediscover a deep-seated
joy exhibited to others with the flashing of a smile, to positively change
their outlook for the day, allowing one to beam in happiness and enjoy the related
sensations of floating on air for a while, or allowing them to build a fond
memory with a friend or loved one so that it may survive for years untold, proof
for making that grinding, five-day work-week just put behind them, and the
uncommon discipline to get out of bed after turning-off the damned ringing of
an abnormally-early-sounding Saturday morning alarm clock, worth all the while.
Laughing to no end alongside a
friend, while wearing a grin plastered unto your face has the tendency to make
an ordinary cup of coffee taste
rather delicious. On mornings such as
these, as we loitered with our tired backs pressed against brick-walled storefronts,
watching the world come and go, where people just like us pulled-up seeking
salvation of sorts from the plastic-packaged to-go offerings sold inside a
24-hr quickie-mart, we were more than content to observe and undoubtedly
crack-up together as two saltwater-obsessed buddies jesting over life’s
quirkiness delivered to us between sips of coffee siphoned from under plastic
Solo lids, knowing that on each occasion we met for a cup o’ Joe, the precious time that disappeared like the slowly savored java from our mugs would always be good to the last drop.
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