I stood there with my mouth agape, like the man at the pier house, thinking about what he just said. The only thing I knew about tide was it only worked in saltwater, and it would come in during the day and leave during the day then repeat at night. Where it came from or where it went was a mystery to me, and I sure didn’t know it could carry fish. It was a good thing to know. That was when I learned fish move with the tide.
“Take your sinkers off your rigs, boys.” While we were busy doing that, Mr. Sullivan came along to each of us and cut the leadered hooks off our rigs with his knife.
“You don’t save the hooks?” I asked.
“Brian, I’ve tried, but they end up rusted out by the time I use them again. Besides, they tangle up in everything if you leave them on. It is not worth the hassle.” He showed us how to hook the snap swivel to the reel after cleaning the rig off.
“Ya’ll stay here till I come back; don’t goof off,” he told us, as he picked up the fishing poles and five-gallon bucket and walked down the pier.
When he was out of earshot, Johnny blurted, “Those coolers are heavier now than when we carried them on the pier! How are we going to get them to the car?” He was right! I was eyeballing around for a kind looking person who happened to have a pier cart or anything with wheels, but there was nothing within sight.
“What are we going to do, Gilbert?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I thought you and your dad came fishing here before?”
“We have, but we only bring a small cooler.”
“Do you think we should go ask that guy to borrow his pier cart again?”
“Johnny, what are you doing?” Gilbert and I asked in unison.
“Cooling off.” Johnny was hosing down with the sink hose. It was a great idea, considering we were thirsty, out of tea, boiling hot, and faced with what seemed to be an overwhelming task. Gilbert went to the hose on the other side of the sink and started doing the same thing. Then they started hosing me down. I fell to the pier as if I was being shot, and they soaked me down. Boy, it felt good, especially with the sea breeze. That had to escalate into a water fight; and it did.
Occasionally, someone nearby would be hit with a stream of water, but nobody minded. It felt that good. Of course, when Mr. Sullivan sneaked up on us, on an open pier, in broad daylight, and caught us in the midst of goofing off, nobody came forward and told him it felt good.
“What are ya’ll doing!” barked Mr. Sullivan. The hoses went silent. We three boys stood board straight in silence. Everybody around us was silent, waiting and watching to see what was going to happen next. Even the gulls stopped screeching. The world stopped. The only sound was that of running water still flowing from our short pants, splattering on the pier. I’m not quite sure it was all just water either.
“I can’t believe I can’t leave ya’ll alone for ten minutes without some antics! You’re going to get in my car sopping wet!”
“Dad, we were just cooling off.”
“Gilbert!”
I noticed Mr. Sullivan had rolled a hand truck with him and then I loved that man who was yelling at us. Mr. Sullivan put the large cooler on the bottom, and then put the small cooler on top.
“You wet rats ready?”
“Yes, sir,” said in synchronicity. Mr. Sullivan eased the hand truck back and started rolling it down the pier. We quietly followed behind, puppy fashion.
Gilbert whispered to Johnny, “It’s all your fault!”
“Yeah, but don’t it feel good?” He was right, it still felt good.
At the pier house, Mr. Sullivan stopped, gave Gilbert a couple of bucks, and told him to go buy four Cokes. Johnny went with him as I rolled on with Mr. Sullivan. The car was parked at the entrance with the trunk popped open. He set the small cooler in the trunk and then he heaved the large cooler in the trunk. He sure was a strong man!
Gilbert and Johnny came scrambling down with the drinks. Mr. Sullivan shut the trunk, told Gilbert to roll the hand truck back to the pier house, and slid behind the steering wheel. Gilbert ran back in a couple of minutes and we boys hopped in. We sat still, with shut mouths and the windows rolled down, anticipating the air conditioning. Mr. Sullivan pulled away and asked us if we enjoyed fishing from the pier. That broke the ice.
We started briefly talking about feeling the fish bite, then exaggerating a guess of how many fish each of us caught. A belch here and there from the Cokes was the only thing that interrupted the chatter. The ride over to the Sullivan’s went by so quickly. It seemed like minutes before Mr. Sullivan was backing the LTD through a gate on the side of his house to a picnic table in the back yard. I thought about how many fish we caught from another perspective, then. The fun was over and work about to begin.
Mr. Sullivan popped the trunk, set the coolers by the picnic table, and started getting things and people in motion. He told Gilbert to get two fish scalers and two sharp knives from the kitchen.
He told Johnny to carry the water hose over to the table, “and this time, manage not to get wet,” he said in jest.
He told me to get two five-gallon buckets from beside the house and a shovel from the garage. I brought the buckets to the table, and he pointed out the garden in the corner of the backyard. I knew what to do, but not exactly how big a hole I should dig. Mrs. Sullivan brought out four big glasses of iced tea with Gilbert. She said she’d hug us later and went back in the house. By the time I had dug a good-sized hole in the ground, Mr. Sullivan had organized a Henry Ford de-assembly line at the picnic table. A custom fit, well-used, sheet of plywood lay atop the picnic table with a clean open cooler, the size of the large cooler we brought on the pier, on top of that at the far end. The small cooler set atop the large cooler at the other end, on the ground. It was open, ready for business to begin. Two metal fish scalers were placed on the table across from one another, close to the cooler of fish. Two knives sat next to the open, clean cooler across from one another. Between the scalers and knives, draped the water hose. One five-gallon bucket sat on the picnic bench seat just forward of the clean cooler on the table. The other five-gallon bucket was the same way but on the opposite side of the table. The only things missing were the line workers.
Before production began, Mr. Sullivan told Johnny and me that Mrs. Sullivan had called our parents and told them we’d be home after we finished cleaning the fish. I thought, this is going to take forever, plus some. Johnny and I ain’t getting home for quite a while. Mr. Sullivan may have adopted us into a fish labor camp!
“Gilbert, you and Johnny start scraping the scales off the fish and pass them down to Brian and me to cut the heads off and gut them. The scales started flying; heads lopped off, bellies slit open, and guts rooted out with the scrape of a thumbnail at a steady pace, but slightly slower than the scaling process. Mr. Sullivan was cleaning the fish a bit faster than I was, but I was racing to keep up. The clean cooler was loading up with dressed croakers. When ice was stuck to the fish from the fish cooler, we rinsed it with the hose and dropped in the cleaned fish cooler. Every now and then, someone would grab the hose and give the table a quick rinse of fresh water. The five-gallon buckets filled up with heads and guts.
“Gilbert and Johnny, go dump the buckets in the hole,” Mr. Sullivan told them. He and I had a backlog of fish anyway.
They returned and set the buckets back up, saying, “Dad, the hole ain’t big enough.”
“Go dig another hole then.” Gilbert walked off with the shovel, and Johnny resumed scaling fish, solo. When Gilbert came back, we were steady working, with less than a dozen fish in the bottom of the small cooler. We cleaned those remaining quickly.
“Gilbert,