Night Fishing

Winslow would call and say that the tide would be right on Thursday night. Preparations, load the cooler, make up some steel leaders with two ounce lead sinkers. The big surf rods were always clean and oiled. 100 lb. test nylon line. We fished the ocean side of the Cape's bended arm. We'd set up camp above high-water: a hurricane lamp, the cooler, a tarp, a couple of light-weight aluminum chairs, drive the pipes we used as rod-holders into the sand at the proper angle. Walk down to the edge of the surf and throw out over the drop off. With a six foot, very stiff surf-rod and two ounces of lead you can make a mighty cast. Walk back up from the edge, letting out line, set the safety, put the butt of the rod into the pipe, get a beer and have a smoke. He was a biology teacher at the high school, a great biology teacher (we dissected a small whale in the school parking lot) with a deep interest in American history. A very bright guy. We'd talk all night, drinking beer and nipping at a flask of whiskey. One of the rangers would usually stop by (this was National Seashore) seeing our lamp, and join in the conversation. If one of the rods dipped, the talk would stop while we watched the tip. Let it go, under light pressure, for fifteen seconds then set the hook. At this point you have two or three hundred feet of line out. It would take a while, to walk down to the edge of the water, reeling in, holding the rod high. Getting a ten pound cod in through the surf is tricky at the end, the backwash is brutal. You want to make the final pull in with the last of a dying wave. Some nights we'd only catch two or three, but sometimes we'd get into them and sell the catch at the fish pier in Rock Harbor. Cod always sold for a good price. The best restaurant on the Cape then was High Brewster, a sort of bed-and-dinner place that fed a few other people. Tables were booked a year in advance, run by two gay guys that were both great cooks and very funny. I knew it through the theater and ate there a few times. In the off-season two cod would buy me dinner, and I learned how good fresh food could be. Codfish cheeks and tongues, wild asparagus, herring roe, my first pate (rabbit and mushrooms), and game birds. I still don't understand how I navigated that world, the actors, the directors, the writers, I was a complete country idiot. But I could listen well, and told a good story. Often, that's enough. Up in Boston, at the end of my run in theater, at The Opera Company, I ate with the bigwigs often, and they ate very well indeed; and among the crew there was such ethnic diversity we tended to eat well. I have ever since. It's difficult, cooking for one, the second person comes in at 50% the cost, but I can eat a meal two or three times over a couple of days, beans and rice, and even buy a small steak, and stay below my target expense. It costs me about $300 a month to eat and drink and drive, I try and save a hundred, for taxes and insurance, another hundred for shit you don't anticipate, and another hundred to sit at the bar and watch ESPN so I can talk about the play-offs. What about them Cubs?