Leaving hotel calafornix

Finally, I broke Andy down. I told him I’d quit if he didn’t eat some food while we were out here fishing for 2 or 3 weeks. You gotta eat something. Andy agreed to eat some food and asked me what I thought he should eat if he ate one thing. Meat, eat meat and a sip of orange juice every day and you’ll make it. He refused to drink the O.J. claiming it would make his stomach hurt. As a result he was sick constantly. I told him to fry a pound of bacon up every morning, pull out whatever bacon he wanted, crack a dozen eggs into the pan and wake up the crew. This worked, I eventually got him to slap some readymade biscuit dough in the oven and we had bacon, egg and cheese biscuit sandwiches most mornings. This really changed the dynamics of the gear haul back and the entire day for the better. The crew had energy and I spent the extra 10 minutes I would have been making my own breakfast getting the deck ready so when Captain Andy stepped out on the deck he had some food in his stomach and the deck was ready to haul gear back. If only I could have got him to eat some vitamin C, because he kept getting sick.

Radick turned out to be kinda wacko and it appeared as though he had a chemical dependency issue. Crack cocaine was the bane of the East Coast fisherman. He didn’t bring any on the boat, no, no. His paycheck didn’t last that long. Radick could enter port on a Sunday night “head to town” with a few hundred dollars advanced by the skipper and return Monday morning and try to bum a cigarette. You spent $300 on Sunday night? And don’t even have a cigarette to show for it? Boy, that’s gotta hurt.

When we caught a big eye tuna typically our most valuable fish Radick, the butcher, was supposed to immediately clean or dress the big eye and plunge it into a 50 gallon drum of ice water, the slush bucket, to chill it as fast as possible and preserve it quickly. For some reason he’d let the big eye sit in the sun instead of getting it on ice as fast as possible. I’m not sure why he did this, perhaps to prove he was in control of something. I nicknamed him “Big Eye in the sun” which was the worst nickname I could think of for a butcher. Nobody would say anything to him about it because he was such a sicko. I wasn’t afraid of him though and told him the truth.

I had a lot of nicknames on the boat over the 3 years I worked on it. Tom Able called me “The Ridilan Child” cause I had so much energy, or “Pissboy” cause I was always urinating. Of course I explained to Tom that this was why I had so much energy. I made sure to drink at least a full gallon of water everyday. I drank filtered fresh water that was produced from ocean water by the “Southern Lady’s” reverse osmosis machine. None of the rest of the crew drank water except the Skipper Ross who would drink a glass now and again. Most everyone drank Diet Coke exclusively. I drank a Coke or two everyday along with coffee, O.J., and tea in addition to the gallon of water. Sometimes in the afternoon we’d have an hour or two break and the crew would sleep because they were exhausted. This was when I stayed awake and drank almost a gallon of water. This takes discipline and intelligence because it’s tempting to take a nap especially if one only gets to sleep an hour or two, if that, a day. The crew members who took a nap would wake up even more dehydrated than when they went to sleep. This caused them to be unable to metabolize sugar, and their blood was fouled. This made them seem even more tired. I didn’t go to sleep, I drank water and was spritely and full of energy as a result, plus I had a better attitude.

When it got rough, and this was often, I’d smoke herbs, get the munchies and eat food, this helped me keep my energy up. The rest of the crew just got a little seasick, lost their appetite and didn’t eat. This hurt them because it’s hard to perform when it’s rough, it takes a lot of energy just to stand up. Andy nicknamed me “Spotter”, which may have been a double entendre but was obviously because when the gear parted, the main line broke, I would climb up the super structure to the crow’s nest as we went searching for the rest of it. It was usually pretty easy to find the missing gear, after all we had radio transponders (beepers) spaced out every 1 ½ to 2 miles so there was really no reason for me to climb up there and look for the gear. We were most likely going to find it, but I did find a few “chunks” of gear with no beepers worth several thousand dollars. I found chunks of other lost longliner’s gear, too, and every once in a while I found “floaters” or a big dead swordfish that had come off the hook and floated up to the top. At $2 a pound a 100 lb. floater was $200 in the boat. The most likely thing that would occur, that was a benefit to the crew, was that I would see the end of the gear before we got to the beeper at which point we would have to tract down the end of the line. This saved the transit time.

But these weren’t really the reasons I climbed up in the crow’s nest, which was actually a flat piece of steel just barely big enough to stand on, and hugged the mast to keep from falling down. I liked climbing up there just to look around, to take advantage of the incredible opportunity to witness life, the seaweed, the birds, fish and whales. I think I saw most every species of whale that is known to frequent the area we were fishing. For me it was very interesting to realize what it was that I was thinking about when I saw the whale. Most would likely think the two had nothing to do with each other. The instance being “just a coincidence” that had no meaning, whereas I came to find out the two seemingly unrelated ideas coincided exactly. Usually it was a whale of an idea I was thinking about when I saw one. I became more conscious of what it was I was thinking about in relation to what was occurring around me. I began to try and think about better things and ideas than I had in the past.

Over the years I worked on the Southern Lady the #1 nickname the crewmembers gave me was “Jonah”. This is actually my favorite book in the Bible. For some reason they thought I was bad luck. This was interesting because it was the opposite of what was actually occurring. Over the time I fished on the “Southern Lady” we had the best catches ever in the 30 years of Captain Ross’s career. He took the notes, he knew, and this was in the face of declining catches the fishing industry was experiencing. Periodically I would take a trip or two off to rest and recuperate and during these absences the most unfortunate things would occur.

I know why people think I’m bad luck. It’s because from their small short way of thinking, my being who I am at this time to end the dam ages and enforce the laws of thE manuel on the surface means their dam pipe dream of destroying life and getting away with it is over. The gigs up, and the nightmare of paying for their share of the dam ages is due. They look at me as Jonah or #13. Bad luck for them. Fishermen are known to be superstitious, humans certainly are in general, not all of them, but most of them let me tell you. Skipper Ross wouldn’t allow bananas on the boat, “No bananas”. I brought plantains instead. Captain Andy enforced a shaving rule and claimed we wouldn’t catch fish if we didn’t shave. Tom didn’t want to leave port and go fishing on Fridays. Radick? Radick did all kinds of superstitious stuff.

The crew members usually washed their gloves in order to avoid extremely painful and debilitating infections that often started under the fingernail. It seemed the best way to clean them was to soak them in a bucket with a splash of bleach and some water overnight. I came out on the deck one night to wash my gloves and Radick had sequestered every bucket we had and was staring into 5 or 6 buckets with one glove in each bucket. I asked if I could use one of the buckets. Nothing positive. I picked up one of the buckets and dumped his single glove into another bucket, for two gloves in one bucket. This elicited a ferocious response from Radick, who lurched up, grabbed me, and threw me over the side of the boat. I grabbed a chain over my head that was extended out to the riggers and held on. It was night time, the boat was in gear moving forward. This is a virtual death sentence, to throw someone over the side in these conditions. Gee wiz, I thought, I’m the guy who recommended we hire this insaneiac. I held on to the chain for my life swinging my legs around while Radick tried to pull me off the chain and finish the job. I broke away from him swinging around and then kicked him, glancing off his shoulder and getting a piece of the side of his head. I tried to kick him again and he grabbed my legs and started pulling them towards him. I thought, well now, at least he’s trying to pull me back on the boat. Tom came out on the deck with a bowl of ice cream in one hand a spoon full of ice cream in the other and a mouth full of ice cream. You had to see the look on his face. For a split second I couldn’t tell if he was going to help Radick or me. He pulled Radick off me and I jumped back on the deck.

I stepped into the Baltimore streets outside the greyhound station looking for a cab. It was Thursday night and there were a dozen of them. Cabbies usually have to pay the “rent” on Friday so Thursday night they need money. I knew this as I walked out. I let out the exciting news that I needed a taxi to Barnagee light. This started a frenzy, I let them bid down the price. Someone mentioned a hundred bucks. Here we go. Turns out the guy had no idea how to get there. It took us five hours to get out to the beach and we still had a ways to go. The cabbie pulled over on the side of the road out in the middle of nowhere and tried to throw me out into the sand dunes. He didn’t want to go any further. I told him I was the butcher on a fishing boat. He dropped me off at the boat in the pink of the morning. I walked on the rusty “Beth Ann” for the first time. This boat stunk like squid that had been dead for years in a warm puddle. We were supposed to be leaving this afternoon. When I walked in the boathouse the mate was doing the Australian crawl on the galley floor covered in eggs. Several empty 18 packs lay on the floor. This was funny I thought as I stood there with my seabag and watched him swim. It took him a long time to figure out I was on the boat. It startled him, and he ran into the bathroom. “Scrambled eggs” was actually a great guy, even with a heroin addiction, blonde hair and blue eyes from Puerto Rico.

We didn’t leave that day, Captain “Quaalude” was not ready and we were short a crewmember. We ended up getting a guy from the local headboat. Charlie knew just enough about fishing to decide he knew enough and decided not to do anything I recommended. He should have retired this attitude, as we were all obviously still learning. The easiest fastest way to learn something is to pay attention to others recommendations, watch and learn from what they do and at least listen and try their stuff. “Scrambled eggs” pulled fish to the boat with a different technique than I’d ever seen. It was a modified version of the sporty technique of wrapping the line around your hand to increase friction. He extended his arm out parallel with the fishy leader and took the first wrap on his arm with the second around his hand. I tried this over the next few months. It seemed to work OK, spreading the friction out and reducing the hand muscle work. It wasn’t as fast though, and I never tried it on a big green fish. Charlie pulled the line in with his fingers and thumbs. Instead of piling the line on the deck when the wind was behind you or flaking it into the water when the breeze was in your face, he coiled the line up and held on to it in his left hand. The first time he did this was on a rat white marlin. After he pulled the line in a ways and had several coils in his hand the fish turned and swam hard away. Charlie couldn’t get enough friction between his fingers and thumbs to stop this and the line he had coiled cinched up on his hand. He almost went over the side, we had to cut the line, and his hand was injured.

SOL AND THE JEWISH FISH MOB

After searching Idaho for clues disguised as a trout fisherman in steelhead/salmon country I’d come to the definite conclusion that there were a lot of former military in the area, lots of militiamen and militiawomen, too. I really liked pumping these guys for information. First hand reports from the dam development front lines, including “the Horror”.

There is little road side stores in Idaho, trailers on wheels and simple sheds. I always went inside and checked the pencils while getting goods. Often times this elicited a specific response from the shop keeper. They’d say, “A pencil is a Russian space pen”. I thought about this a long time, considering the situation. If I’m expected to show up on this surface, at this time, as the “pencil man”, and I get this response in Idaho many times… something’s up. I literally don’t have enough graphite (the good fight) in my pencils (death traps) for this idea, figuratively I do of course. 8. The first idea largely accepted relates to the problem in a weightless environment (outer space) with a pen. A typical pen is worthless (as usual) as the ink won’t continue to flow to the ball without the attraction of gravity, supposedly. They don’t work long if held sideways on the surface with gravity either.

As the story goes when the “space race” began the United States developed a high tech pressurized ink cartridge pen. The Russians went with a pencil. I always wondered if they were smart enough to bring a 3H (harder, sharpen less) instead of a #2. Pencils may have been lighter and they could have used them as chopsticks, too. Plus, one can clean out ones pipe with them, and get pickled eggs out of a jar. Also, if a colon al space pirate boarded the ship with a Farmoresuitokill than you had, one could push the tips of ones signal devices into their wavelength receptors and break them off. That way if “they” next blast you with a Reagun or whatever, upon return to their ship they’ll carry your message and perhaps a nasty infection, too. Would Graphite. I recommend a “Mirando Black Warrior”, or perhaps a “New Jersey Garden State”. I wouldn’t want to get caught without a least a “Ticonderoga”.

THE PEACE RIVER SW COAST OF FL AND THE BONESHAKER

In Wancheese, NC, at the top of Palmico sound, on the inside of the most dangerous inlet on the eastern seaboard, the ship sucker, create a lightweight seven gripped extra thin wooden dowel gaff. Sharpen it very well. Do this at night while the crew is out carousing around spending there share while you stay on the boat repairing equipment, making new tricked out tuna gaffs, while saving your money to pay off your student loans. To easy pal.

Now, when you’re out fishing and you come upon a tripletail camouflaged as seaweed from above and looks like sky from below, a fellow could attempt to strike down on the fish with the gaff. Typically, what you’ll find is that these triple tail fish are really slick and will see it coming, shifting their bodies and causing you to miss with the gaff perhaps catching a scale. One must remember to gaff with the point from back to front or you’ll never get under the armor plated scales entirely covering the fish. The easiest way to gaff one of these fish is to place the gaff head in the water and entice the creature to hide alongside it, as this is its natural tendency in the sea. It loves to hide in or next to stuff floating around.

Another method for catching tripletails is to use a rod and reel. The skipper is best at this. A fly rod with a shiny white miniscule bait tipped lure works best, as I’ve observed. It might take a dozen years to perfect this technique. Now, absolutely the easiest way to catch one of these triple tail fish is to throw a basket over the side attached to a line. When the fish swims in the basket and it will for sure, just pull in the basket and you’ve got one. The first time I did this I won a pitcher of beer on a bet that it wouldn’t work. I tied the basket to the several thousand dollar radio beacon. The fish were already attracted to this as the counter weight was a good hiding spot. I eventually was banned from this practice as it “dredged” up so much stuff and they didn’t want to lose the beacon.

While enjoying/engaged in perhaps one of the longest commutes in the country from my So. Fla. “home” and my N.E. fishing gig I stopped in Manhattan. I was investigating SoHo in particular this time and was fortunate to spend the night with a “girlfriend” of mine, Amanda Blackshire. Miss Blackshire was Tufts University suma cum laude and was a cage dancer in NY as well as working for Morgan Stanley at the second from the top floor of the World Trade Center. So Amanda worked for the best and the worst of all worlds. I related to her an idea from “Bringing Down the House” a book about a team of composed of quite a few M.I.T. grads who counted cards at black jack tables around the world. They were very successful, kinda until they hit Monte Carlo last basically when they should have hit it first. Whoops. Anyway I related to her how I was thinking of putting together a crew to do just that, but in the largest of senses. She didn’t bite. She would rather have talked about James “Gangs of NY” McNulty the Cuban necktie/vampire bite survivor. As if the two ideas weren’t related and she was “changing the subject”. Very intelligent girl, missed the larger picture unfortunately. Being a Komistadoor is tough in 2001.

Another “stupid human trick” one figured out while commercial fishing related to “dolphin safe tuna”. The humans in their finicky fish eating “thing” had felt the need to “save Flipper”. Often, the big tuna net boats when catching tunas encounter dolphin with the tunas and catch them along with the desirable tuna. The dolphin become unwanted bycatch and are a hassle, messing up the gear and injuring the crew (who’s trying to release them) it’s a pain in the butt. This whole thing reached a peak with pictures of dolphin being senselessly slaughtered by fishermen, likely cause they’re tired of the creatures fouling up the set, or thinking “They’re eating all the bait fish” or some such dumb thing. They’re mad that the dolphins are worthless. This resulted in a consumer outcry for “dolphin safe tuna”. New nets, special extruders, enforcement…

The problem is the fishermen catch the dolphin with the tuna. There is a reason for this. The two are fishing partners. The most likely thing that is occurring is that the dolphin are circling below the bait emitting a small stream of bubbles and perhaps “balling up” or condensing the small fish into a tight ball, for easy collection. The dolphin may even be “screaming” at the fish or covering up the tunas attack. The tunas “crash” the smaller fishes, cutting them in half, ripping them to shreds, and the other half of the small fish or leftover spoils sink below where the dolphin get there share. If one were to catch the tunas and release the dolphin in some kind of less product full “dolphin safe tuna” fishing hoax the “freed” dolphin would suffer or starve for lack of their fishing partner.

One day while hauling back the gear and catching tunas we pulled a line in with the front 1/3 of a dolphin attached to a hook. It’d been recently bit in half (probably a Mako shark) and I pulled the upper half onto the deck. I wanted the teeth and to cut a few steaks off the shoulder to sample and see how they tasted. The Skipper said, “No way” and ordered me to throw the half carcass away over the side immediately. I didn’t want to waste the product, plus I really wanted to eat some and the teeth were way cool as could be. But by law we weren’t even allowed to have a molecule of this dolphin aboard the ship.

The reality of the situation is real dolphin safe tuna is a managed sustainable harvest of both dolphin and tuna. Then when one goes to the meat market dolphin steaks are right next to the tuna steaks or perhaps the dolphin is right next to the beef as that’s what the meat looked like. If nobody wants to eat the dolphin at an equitable price compared to tuna, increase the price of the tuna (the government or the fishermen or the fish mongers could do this) and lessen the price of the dolphin compensating the sellers of the dolphin meat with the money made on the expensive tuna. Control the price until their eating both of them in correct proportions for continued harvest. Of course the easiest way to fix the problem is end dam and ditch agriculture. They’d eat the dolphin then for sure. There’s no point in fixing this particular problem as usual, because the dam scheme if maintained (which is impossible) would destroy the life in the ocean anyway. If an adolt were abhorrent to the idea of eating “Flipper” they could pay a lot to eat a small portion of tuna and feed not yet finicky kids a big slab of cheap dolphin. I know sushi chefs that are able to prepare dolphin deliciously.

Another thing one figured out here was that American fishermen couldn’t compete with other fishermen, say for instance from South Africa, cause the men over there would steal a bag of dam UNICEF rice (funded by a dime a day American mum) intended “for the children” and were willing to get on a fishing boat with the dam stolen loot and fish for free. They didn’t want any money they just wanted to put some bycatch on the rice, offal, anything. Dam rice sucks.

The skipper would periodically go up in the wheelhouse and talk to the rest of the fleet on the radio for a minute or two, sometimes once or twice a haul back. On this particular occasion 9/11/2001 we were fishing the George’s Bank south of Eastern NY and the skipper came back on the deck looking like he’d seen a ghost and called a break telling the crew to come up in the wheelhouse and listen to the radio. Unbeknownst to us he’d already been following the events from the VHF at the hauling station but we never stop working, not with thousands of dollars’ worth of highly perishable goods at risk, but we stopped hauling back the gear when NY got its two front teeth knocked out. My reaction to the news over the radio was to lay down on the wheelhouse floor (nearly passing out), OH F*(K! Do you know what this means? Do you know what we’re gonna do as a result of this?

We came back into Fairhaven, Mass and few days later I got a seat on one of the first planes back in the air out of one of the airports the reported box cutter wielding clowns had high jacked an airliner from. My buddy the antique dealer gave me a lift to the airport. He related a second hand story to me about how some guy he knew was at the World Trade Center site at the time of the attacks, and had filmed it with a video recorder as it took place, the planes flying into the buildings. Later, back at this guy’s place the “G-men” showed up and confiscated the recorded material. Apparently one is not allowed to look at what really happened. This guy claimed there was something else “a bump” on the fuselage of the underside of the airplane that wasn’t typically there. Anyway, we’re not allowed to look at his recording to see if this was true, or anything else. This was the beginning of my 9/11 investigation.

The New Bedford antique dealer/former fisherman and I drove onto the airport in a black midsized pickup truck with a big antique Persian rug laid out in the pickup bed, some parts draped out over the sides and tail. We were dressed in black, sunglasses and sporting beards (don’t shave your forehead). We even had Middle Eastern themed music pumping on the music box and my big black duffle bags (several) were in the truck bed. We lit up a huge spliff for the approach. As we got near the departure unloading site (the place was like a ghost town) there was mirrored shades, wire wearing G-men everywhere. While we were the center of attention, black bags and Persian rug tassels flapping in the breeze, the Islamic music blaring, smoke pouring out the window we hadn’t finished the dobie yet, so we circled back around the airport again as I still had an extra ten minutes to get there an hour early.

On the second approach we came in quick smoke still pouring out the windows. The antique dealer loved this, what a guy. I jumped out fast, hopped in the bed and started chucking black duffle bags out. My black jacket sported an “Ace” black spade and everything, Doom. The G-men were extremely apprehensive and immediately all over us. I mean if there was going to be a follow up strike “this was it”