Saturday, October 16, 2010

A Man and His Ocean

He limps up the hill from the pier as he has done most every day for the last 60 plus years. He stops and looks back at his boat one last time and satisfied that everything is secured, he goes in for the night.




Years of outside physical labor have not aged him well. His face is ruddy all the time and the wrinkles are deep set like the channels in the nautical charts he studies. He back is bent from years of pulling traps onto his boat. His hands are leathery and scarred from the millions of bags he has baited in his life. His eyes are tired, it’s a hard life he lives and rest is irregular; the weather is an unyielding alarm clock.



The small town he was born in and where he still lives is a peninsula. No matter where he goes there, he is surrounded by the ocean. He built his first boat at 12 and spent all his free time on it. He would be on his boat hauling traps, when his friends were playing pickup baseball as kids. While those same boys became young men and fast cars were their focus, his was still on the water. His junior year of high school saw his first boat become a second bigger one. When he decided to go to college it wasn’t to be a traditional businessman when he graduated, it was to understand accounting so he could expand his fishing industry. Even as a young man, he was certain of the path in life he would pursue.



In 1962, when his wife was pregnant with their first child and he realized that lobster fishing alone may not financially support his family, he built a boatyard. Days when the weather wouldn’t permit him to be on the ocean, he could work on boats while having the smell and sound of the ocean right outside the door. The boatyard was a financial success, but eventually took him away from the ocean too often. He sold it at a significant profit and used the proceeds to buy his first commercially built boat.



The ocean is his love but weather is his master. Wind is probably the only real enemy he has ever known and it is a cruel one. Wind blowing for days on end keeps him off the boat worrying about how his offshore traps and boat would be affected. Hours are spent pacing and staring at the ocean hoping for a good outcome. When the wind stops he knows it means his next days will be spent from sunrise until after dark playing catch up and recouping his losses.



Over his life he has taken the 14 foot boat he built at 12 to an industry. His house overlooks the latest boat in his fleet, a 46 foot Novie, his pier and dock, the barge he built for mooring and dock installation, and the outbuildings that house his various supplies. The picture window in his bedroom allows him to overlook this legacy he has built for his only son as he wakes in the morning and before the erratic rest he may receive at night.



After the death of his wife his children tried to convince him to sell his home and business and retire to the family camp. He knew they only wanted the best for him, and after months of trying to explain to them why he could never leave the ocean behind, they finally let him be. He’s not sure if they finally understood the ocean is his reason to get up every morning or if they just got tired of nagging.



The ocean is where he goes to celebrate life’s successes and to contemplate its failures. The ocean is where he was born and he hopes it is where he dies. The time in between those two events has been dictated by the ocean and he tells anyone who will listen that he wouldn’t have it any other way.

2 comments:

  1. I feel like I'm not doing my job if all I do each week is break out the champagne and confetti for you to celebrate another victory over the English language.

    Offer this to the Eyrie. If there were still a lot of general interest magazines in the world, I'd tell you to find a home for it in one of them too.

    You really get the profile idea beautifully. I was far from sure it would work out but so far today I've read two corkers--is it something in the drinking water where you and Heather work?

    Damn, this is good!

    Let me guess: it wrote easily; you had more material than you could use and made some cuts but none that hurt you to cut; you decided against asterisks and are quite pleased with that decision; ditto your decision to not name him; you enjoyed leaving SAT out of it for once.

    How many right did I get?

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  2. Once I had the subject matter it did come easy and you are right on all other accounts. Heather and I discuss the class and essays after we have written and posted them but never topic matters beforehand. I think it's interesting that for this particular essay we both picked a parent. I really hedged on picking my father as I wasn't sure I could pull it off without too much biography and/or emotion.

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