Tag Archives: Father’s Day

Father’s Day Weekend, 1974

Posted on by
2

Happy Father’s Day

It is dawn out on the Gulf of Mexico. The throttle is hard down on the 22-foot open Wellcraft as the first waves check our smooth progress, sharply marking the passage from inside South Louisiana’s protective Mermentau River jetties to open water. With an hour till full sunrise, the air is still cool and we have 10 miles to go before the inner line of oil rigs. I eat a mustard and liverwurst sandwich, sitting on the bow, legs dangling over the side, as we begin to plane out over the crest of the waves.

The fog is lifting when we pass the first rigs, and we both see and hear them, each with its own distinctive horn. The skies are clear, the winds calm, so we head farther into to gulf to the rigs 20 miles offshore in search of red snapper.

Once we’re beyond the first belt of rigs, we drop the trolling lines, looking to get some king mackerel. We find instead that the Spanish mackerel have started their runs in the northern gulf. We quickly begin to get some strikes. Before long we have a dozen seven-pounders in the ice chests, thumping around in the well running down the center of the boat.

By 10 a.m. we are pulling up to the next grouping of rigs. Dad slows the boat and circles the platform so we can tie up and fish. Standing on the bow with the rig hook, a 10-foot-long aluminum shaft with an over-large shepherd’s crook on one end, I wait. The rig hook has a rope attached with a rubber tensioner tied in the middle, and each oil rig is composed of two-foot-diameter pipes. My job is to reach out and hook the rig, then secure the rope.

Modest three-to-four-foot swells are coming in under the bow, and with the boat nosed under the platform, the up and down motion is significant. Balancing, waiting for the boat to rise, I reach out and make the hook. Dad throttles back to about 30 feet from the rig, and I tie us off. My brother Keith and I break out the tackle, bait our hooks with pogies, and drop our lines. The depth at 20 miles off the Cameron Parish coastline is only 20-30 feet.

We stay put for a couple of hours, adding more sheepshead than red snapper to the cooler. The waves start to shift direction, so we move on. We troll for another hour without much success. Keith gets one sensational strike from what is probably a ling, but the large fish throws the lure in an acrobatic leap out of the water.

Thunderstorms are beginning to build to the east and west, so Dad turns our boat northward and begins a fast run to the jetties. Other than a few waterspouts at 10 miles distance, the return trip is uneventful. The water is smooth on the Mermentau, and we head the final four miles to the dock at Grand Chenier. With our boat safely trailered, we stop by the Tarpon Freezo for a malt in the one-blinking-light town of Creole. We’re delayed at the drawbridge by heavy barge traffic on the intercoastal, but we’re finally back home around 5.

Having cleaned the boat and hosed the salt from the tackle, the three of us stand in the backyard cleaning and gutting for the next couple of hours. I dump the heads and guts to the waiting turtles in our five-acre pond. The fish are packed in Guth milk cartons and stacked in the freezer. Exhausted but satisfied, we polish our shoes for church in the morning and call it a day.

………………………………………………………………………………

Reading this weekend: some light summertime fare. Hope Road, by John Barlow. A Taste For Vengeance, by Martin Walker

Father’s Day: a Thanksgiving

Posted on by
4

This weekend I am in Oregon for the wedding of my niece, daughter of my eldest sister, Cynthia. Here is a “Thanksgiving” post from the archives about the importance a father plays in shaping who we are today. Happy Father’s Day, dad.

It always seemed cold out on the Louisiana marsh as a boy. On Thanksgiving eve my father and I would head out to the hunting camp, a ramshackle building under centuries-old live oaks. At dinner we’d sit down at a long communal table and enjoy hearty bowls of duck gumbo. The dozen or more men would talk, and we the sons would keep quiet, seen but not heard. The morning smell of bacon and eggs served as an early alarm. And by 4:30 we were climbing into mud-boats and heading off across the marsh. At regular intervals a father and son would disembark into a wooden pirogue and push off into the darkness, usually arriving at a duck blind an hour before sunrise. Our hunt would begin with my father calling the ducks, enticing them to circle and land.

 At the end of the hunt in late morning, we’d head home, pulling into the drive around noon. Thanksgiving preparations inside were well underway, pies lined up on the counter. I’d cast an anxious gaze to determine that a favored sweet potato pie was among them, then off for a shower and a change to clean clothes. The table was set and dinner typically eaten in mid-afternoon; afterward, the calls would begin from distant relatives.

Today, as a grown man, my rituals have changed. I’m now the relative calling across the distance of a time zone and seven hundred miles. Instead of a duck hunt early Thanksgiving, my morning is filled with chores: feeding pigs, sheep, cattle and chickens, stacking wood for the woodstove. Busy, but still time will be made later for a woodland walk on our farm. We eat late, so no need to rush dinner preparations. Some years we are graced by the company of friends, and other years we dine alone. This year, Cindy travels and I will dine by myself or with a couple of friends.

I’ll prepare a roast duck in memory of those boyhood hunts with my father. And I’ll regret the absence from the table of a sweet potato pie. But since it is Thanksgiving, I’ll be grateful for reasonable health, a loving partner, a satisfying life, a full library; that my father is still with us, as is a large abundance of siblings and other kin. I’ll also be thankful for what is absent in my life, namely, the darkness of war and the dislocation from hearth and home of the refugee.

As I step out on the porch before sunrise Thanksgiving morning, the air will smell of smoke from a dozen farmhouses in our valley. It will be cold on our farm here in the hills of East Tennessee. The cattle will begin to bawl. But over their din, if I listen well, I will hear the sound of my father calling the wild ducks out on the marsh.