![]() Being at Grandpa and Grandma’s house next door was sanctuary. Gramps wasn’t a hunter, which I learned mostly on my own, but he bought me my first air rifle and never squealed to my dad about having BB holes in his windows, made by errant shots from my bedroom window across the yard at blackbirds in the big maple tree. When Grandma would tell us of our alleged Native American background, her father, a lumberjack from Quebec, born of an Indian woman and a lumberjack near Trois-Rivieres (Three Rivers), Gramps would say, “I think she was keeping his wig warm, and her name was Tommy Hawk.” And we believed him, about our great, great grandmother’s name being Tommy Hawk, despite Grandma scolding him for telling us such tales. ![]() It’s the kind of move you see a burlesque dancer do in the old movies, which can knock a man’s hat off his head. One of his favorite antics was to cup both of his hands behind his head and do a single, quick, pelvic thrust and pop his tongue simultaneously. He was a comedian, both with his jokes, humor and quick wit, and with his physical comedy. Whether it was fishing or just hanging out, it was always fun to be around Gramps. Most of the lobstermen had “nudey” pinup calendars hanging in their shacks and Gramps tried to usher us past the open doors before we got our eyes full. The smell of lobster bait, while repugnant to some, is a welcome aroma to these olfactory glands, evoking memories of the lobster shacks on the wharf at Cuttyhunk, when Gramps used to take us for the day. I’ll hook-up with Grandpa’s reel - someday maybe - before I run out of somedays. So I cleaned the reel, put new line on it, got a new rod and have trolled for tuna from my 18-foot Sea Ox, yet to no avail. The rod is long-gone, the roller guides having seized with mossy green corrosion more than 40 years ago. I’ve still got his tuna reel, a Penn Senator 9/0. His first boat was a 16-foot Bristol and he’d tow it to P-Town every Sunday and go trolling for tuna until he finally caught one on a lure they used to call Japanese feathers. We loved the story of how he caught a bluefin tuna off Provincetown. His faith was as deep as the ocean he fished and he would cast off on Sunday mornings at 6 a.m. It had to be blowing a gale for him to stay tied up at the dock when he had plans to go fishing. He was fearless and had the heart of a lion. Small craft warnings were for small crafts so he bought a bigger boat. He was sweet and kind and used to say that he had to be nice, “because I can’t fight and I can’t run.” ![]() ![]() Our sister, Annie, thought they were even grosser, especially when we exercised our brotherly duty and chased her around the yard with it.Īt 5 ½ feet tall, Gramps wasn’t a big, tall man, but he was sturdy and strong, and still had muscles into his 80s. On occasion, there would be a tape worm, which we thought were pretty gross. For the cod with good taste, we’d find small lobsters and crabs. There were usually half-digested fish of all kinds, even spiny sea robins. When a big cod’s stomach was full, we’d beg Gramps to cut it open to see what it had been eating. “You should always have a sharp knife in your pocket,” he’d say, sage advice that I live by. Gramps was a stickler for sharp knives and showed us to sharpen a blade, both on a whetstone and on a steel. Prior to the first cut, he’d sharpen his knife to a razor’s edge on a steel with the blade flashing along with the slick sound of steel on steel. After one of his successful cod-fishing trips, there would be a galvanized tub under the big maple tree, brimming with cod, waiting to be filleted. While he cleaned fish on a homemade wooden fish-cleaning table, it also served as our indoctrination into the fascinating world of forensics. Gramps taught me and my brother, Tony, how to clean and fillet fish.
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