ANCHORS AWEIGH

I wasn't fishing around for a job down at the Jersey Shore, but this one floated my way while waiting to begin my junior year in college. Let me take you on this voyage.

ANCHORS AWEIGH

The summer of 1948 found me without a job. There was no pressing financial need for me to seek one. My parents had banked much of my military pay for me. Under the provisions of the GI Bill, the government had paid me a living allowance of $75 per month since reentering school. Therefore, I was content to bum around the New Jersey shore at places like Rumson, Point Pleasant, and Asbury Park.

In July, a fraternity brother told me his family had decided to move to California, where he would attend UCLA. He had served as a mate on his father’s pleasure fishing boat, which sailed out of Point Pleasant. The new owner of his father’s boat needed a mate. My pal asked me to take the job. “I’ll teach you the ropes.” With a great deal of reluctance, I decided to give it a try.

   On my first voyage, it was apparent that many of the owner’s fishermen friends came aboard already quite drunk. They slept while we sailed ten miles out to sea looking for the Great White Whale. As we neared a location filled with other fishing craft, our captain slowed down to a crawl and my college pal and I began dropping bait, a process called “chumming.” It lured a school of blue fish to the surface in a feeding frenzy. The captain awakened the anglers from their stupor. In a frenzy themselves, they cast their lines and began catching an endless number of fish. In port, we iced about three hundred pounds of them, washed down the boat and provisioned it for the next day's expedition. A few voyages later, I decided this was not a job for me, a landlubber at heart.  I quit and spent the rest of the summer lounging around on the beach. What I lacked in ambition, I made up for in laziness. 

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