EPISODE 65

I gave notice a few weeks after I got back from fishing with Sasha in Florida.  We spent two nice days on the water before ending up in bed together after a particularly good dinner of barbecued mahi, grilled red peppers and onions, and a couple of bottles of Gary Farrell Chardonnay at Sasha’s house.  After being so close for 10 years, it just seemed like the right time.  Neither of us was surprised that we also wanted to see what life might be like as a couple. We didn’t talk about moving in together or anything along those lines, at least not yet.  I found a one-bedroom bungalow for rent in Sarasota for about a grand a month.  It was small, clean, and the landlady had been amenable to a month-to-month agreement instead of a one-year lease.  Sasha approved, as it was located just a short drive from the boat ramp at Turtle Beach.  My departure from SlipNot went almost unnoticed.  Keith and Bosco were both in Asia at the time, sparing us all any further histrionics, which was probably as great a relief to them as it was to me.  

Allan had been willing to assume the rest of the lease at Jimmy’s apartment in New York.  He was sick of the group apartment he had been renting near NYU.  Since I’d sublet Jimmy’s place fully furnished, I didn’t have all that much to pack up either.  My stuff fit neatly into my car and left me with enough room in the front for a small cooler, which I had planned on filling with sandwich fixings and a few stray beers.  It was going to be a long drive down to Florida, so there was no sense to my mind in making it without proper provisions.  On a particularly beautiful June morning, I headed onto the FDR Drive and over the Triborough Bridge.  I headed east though as I had a stop to make before taking Route 95 South.

My parents were visiting my mother’s sister, Joan out on Long Island.  My aunt lived in Bridgehampton, right on the shore of Sagg Pond.  The two sisters had been born in New York City and Ellie (my dear mother) had her first encounter with my father (Rick) shortly after he got out of the army, having just completed a tour in Korea.  He had been staying with friends in Manhattan after being discharged and had spent a couple of weeks contemplating his eventual return to Vermont by hitting as many of New York’s drinking establishments as he could.  He was out slamming beers at the bar at the Heidelberg Restaurant on Second Avenue in Yorktown when Ellie came in with Joan and a couple of friends.  Joan thought he was cute, but she was already involved with a guy who was in the Navy.  He would eventually become my Uncle Andy, an avid fly angler and one of the people who taught me a lot about how a gentleman is supposed to behave on the water.  Joan urged Ellie to go talk to the nice looking fellow two barstools down and to her surprise, her sister did!  That’s how my mother met my father.  Rick really didn’t like New York all that much, but Ellie fell in love with him and fortunately, with White River Junction as well.  Joan eventually married Andy and moved out to the east end of Long island in the mid-‘60’s.  She used to joke that she did it to escape the Lindsay administration, but I think it had more to do with her new husband’s love of the ocean.  When I was a kid, my family would drive down to visit them every summer for a couple of weeks and I would spend all day at Sagg Pond, fishing for white perch.

During the heady summer that I turned eighteen, I spent the entire summer at Joan’s house.  I knew all of the thrills of working at a small newspaper doing page layout by day and drinking beer on the beach at night with the neighborhood hooligans.  One Saturday afternoon, I got a call from one of the aforementioned ruffians I’d been hanging out with.  Rob was actually pretty close to a solid citizen, at least during daytime hours.  He was the brightest and most ambitious of the guys I knew back then.  He was in the process of buying a house and Rob owned his own business too, a little farm stand located on the Montauk Highway, just to the east of Bridgehampton Village.  He also understood how to enjoy a day off and so when he invited me to join him and his grandfather for a day of fishing, I was all over it.

Of course, I showed up at the appointed morning armed for bear with my surf rod and a box filled with lures.  Rob’s grandfather smiled kindly and took them from my hands, assuring me that he already had all of the gear we’d need.  The three of us piled into his station wagon and that’s when I noticed three bamboo poles sticking out the back window.  We drove over to the long, skinny beach at North Sea and lugged the poles, a bucket, and a small seining net out to the shore.  While Rob’s grandfather filled the bucket with water, Rob and I untangled the net and waded out with it between us, corralling minnows and hauling them up onto the beach.  After a couple of sweeps, we’d caught several dozen silversides and a host of other miscellaneous species, which we dumped into the bucket.  The old man handed us each a pole and smiled.

“I think you know what to do now,” he said as he put a minnow on his hook and waded knee deep into the water.

Well, I sure as hell thought I did.  But no mater what I tried, I consistently missed the fish every time it hit my bait and yanked the bobber under.  Of course, whenever I looked over at Rob’s grandfather, I saw him take another fish off his line and drop it into a plastic garbage bag he’d brought along with him.  There was a school of snapper bluefish, little guys – maybe a foot long – that was holding just a few yards offshore and it soon became obvious that the old man was rapidly cutting into their numbers.  I, on the other hand, was beginning to feel a little foolish.  But one of the great things about old men fishing with young men is that after they’ve stopped laughing and have caught their breath, they offer to help the poor sons of bitches out. Rob’s grandfather waded over to me and explained to me that I’d been pulling back too hard when I tried to set the hook.  He also scolded me for not waiting long enough to make my move.

“The fish’s got to suck it down,” he admonished.  “You wait until that bobber is all the way down and then wait a few more seconds.”

I did and still I came up with an empty hook.

“You must love those fish,” the old man observed.  “You feed them like their mother.”

I simply refused to be taught anything when I was a young man and as I drove east on the Long Island Expressway to meet my mother and my aunt, I reckoned that it appeared that time had done little to alter that basic truth about myself.

The FINAL episode of SlipNot 

will be published on November 24th.

               If you'd like to read SlipNot in its entirety, GO HERE.