Seining the Tide
April 20, 2000• (0) Comments
Shortly after he retired from the Coast Guard and returned to the Carolina Lowcountry, my brother challenged me to recollect a long-ago fishing story involving our Dad, the Prince of Tides. Nothing very difficult about that, I replied, and offered up the following tale…
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Okay, Michael, I’ll take your challenge!
For me, the most memorable moment on the water with Dad didn’t happen in the Lowcountry at all, but it might easily have happened there as we repeated it often over the years at Fripp Island. There’s something unforgettable about a “first time” for anything, and the first time Dad took me out to seine a beach still plays vividly in my imagination. I was probably nine or ten at the time. We lived in Kingsland on the old Brazell place east of town. One summer night in—call it 1964—Dad hauled Danny and me out of bed and loaded us into his truck. It must have been three o’clock in the morning, pitch black outside, and we could tell he’d already been up for a while, maybe even all night. He tossed some rubber wading boots and a couple of #10 galvanized washtubs in the back, then piled on a couple of fishing rods in that haphazard, matter-of-fact way he abuses tools and equipment. We had no idea what he had in mind yet, and woke up quickly as he turned the truck south down Route 17 toward the state line. As early sleepers, nighttime travel was still a novelty to Danny and me and we were suddenly very alert at the possibilities, trying to divine Dad’s plan before he spilled it. I remember seeing Kingsland’s only traffic light blinking red in all directions, and it suddenly seemed very liberating to know that we were the only vehicle on the road at that hour. “I’ll bet you could run that light if you wanted to, Daddy.” And he did, letting us know that he felt it too.
Just outside of town, we stopped at Steffans’, ablaze with light and the parked reflections of two or three other pickups and a deputy’s patrol car. “Let’s eat, boys,” Dad said. Inside, Charlie Brazell was waiting for us along with one or two others—I think it might have been Rabbit Bruce and J.W. Mills, but I can’t say now if this is an accurate recollection or just what my heart says would have been right. We slid into a booth and while Danny and I fiddled with the little jukebox at the table, Dad ordered eggs, bacon, grits and toast all around. When the waitress returned, he pulled a huge thermos bottle from somewhere beneath the table and asked her to fill it with coffee, saying “It’s going to be a long night.”