Learning

The nurturing period for seat of the pants learning changes dramatically with the advent of school and enforced socialization. There were two kinds of learning that I remember which helped in the formation of a budding fisherman. One was the schooling kind and the other was the character kind. The education from school was not only reading, writing and math, but also the tutelage of innumerable rules for safety and getting along. As an inquisitive child I liked the math, science and reading part but the crushing blow to my independence was irritating. In retaliation, I became a dreamer and finished my class work as fast as possible so as to be assigned messenger jobs. School just didn’t go fast enough. Between five and ten years old, the best time was recess, after school, weekends, and the whole free summertime.

It was in the time out of school when the practical lessons took place. There were the beginning stages of multiple skill sets to learn. In the nautical area, tying up a boat, learning the basic four or five knots like a bowline, sheep shank, half hitch, square knot, and simple eye splice required practice and patience for awkward fingers. Sanding and painting our wooden boats taught proper preparation of surfaces and tidy application of paint and all about turpentine and linseed oil. Other boat skills included rudimentary navigation, and helmsmanship toward an object in the distance and by compass. All of my intuitive knowledge blossomed into the beginning skills of operating a boat, whether a rowboat or a sailboat.

My Dad loved to eat fish. First he had to troll a line behind the Scamp or later the Nana boat for snapper, better known as baby bluefish, a delicacy of Great South Bay. This snapper was the first successful catch of mine that I remember eating. As I perched on a settee in the cabin, out of the perpetual afternoon breeze with the Nana boat on a reach going towards Amityville, I tasted a teeny bite of the sautéed snapper from a paper plate.
I was prepared to hate it, but instead was pleasantly surprised. I actually liked this fish and since I caught it, that made it an excellent fish. On subsequent weekends and summers on the Nana boat, we drifted and mooched for fluke, a flounder-like bottomfish which flourished in the Shinnecock Inlet area. It offered a larger fillet than snapper but it tasted bland. My mother had a lot of mouths to feed so her cooking style was get it cooked, get it eaten, get it washed up so it was a done deal. She was saddled with my Dad’s excellent clamming and fishing skills which never let up on the summer’s supply of seafood.

Dad taught us clam collection by exploiting the digging and burrowing ability of our feet. All four of us kids were poised over his secret clam beds with our toes working the mud for that special feel of a littleneck or cherrystone. When you hit one, you reached in the bay to your armpit, grabbed the clam, and stuck it in your bag. There was one adversary in this adventure. The local crab population could strike a toe or ankle and lead to howls of pain.

Seat of the pants learning was gaining the logical application of skills to further abilities in many directions. One area of learning was mental and physical toughness. My siblings and I valued bravery. If you scraped your knee or stubbed your toe, never, never cry. When being spanked it was OK to wince and grimace but not to cry. We learned a lot of neighborhood games such as Red Rover, Giant Steps, softball and others which all had rules over which we fiercely fought. Fairness was a real doctrine. Athletic ability was valued as well as the rudiments of strategy. My older sisters were adept at ditching my brother and I, which was a useful strategy later on for me. Our character was developing, our competition amongst siblings and neighbors was toughening, and our desire to succeed was growing. I wanted to be as smart and nice as my sister Lee, and
as popular and in charge as my sister Pam. We all wanted to win, be first, and be the best at everything. With four children all two years apart, it was an impossible task. It was a great rivalry because we learned discipline and drive and hard work from both our play and from our hobbies and games with each other. My brother had it the worst because we expected him to be the toughest being the only boy. We were merciless at times. I pounded him on the back for hitting me on the head with a shovel, and then with a hammer. We fought until I was 12. It was a good sturdy childhood. We all became strivers, committed to excellence. From seat of the pants and intuitive learning, we absorbed our environment, but with life’s early lessons of family life and school, it was pressed on us to challenge or react with personality and skills.

There were always boats....

Nana, Dad (4 yrs) at tiller of Scamp, Great Aunt Flo- Great South Bay, Long Island, NY.

My father’s maternal grandfather was in banking and lived in Brooklyn, New York. His family spent summers out of the humid confines of Brooklyn and commuted to Amityville on the southern shores of Long Island. Here he built a home on 138 Ocean Avenue on the Amityville River. Eventually a covered boathouse was added with a marine railway in order to maintain his growing fleet. There was the Scamp, the Teal, the Scampa, the Coot, and the Gull. The entire family sailed in the Scamp including Dad. He took the tiller at a young age. His father and mother split up and Dad remained with his mother and grandfather, Marshall Woodman. My great-grandfather “Grandpa” was only in my life for five years, but I remember his glasses, his chair, and the big tree in the yard at Ocean Avenue. Most of all, the boathouse held a fascination. The aromas of tar, linseed oil, and oakum are redolent of smoky teas like Lapsang Souchong.

My siblings and I were welcomed aboard both the Teal and the Scamp as babies. I was sleeping in a dresser drawer for my maiden voyage. My two older sisters were already old salts. Sometimes I was left to nap in a pram under the big tree (I claim it was a willow) with my Grandpa to watch for any wiggles. My first visual memory was the interplay of sunlight and shadow through the wisps of leaves on a scorching summer afternoon. Another very young memory was the sound of water slipping by the hull of the Scamp as I lay in a blanket to leeward under the cuddy. There is no finer sound than this….soothing and smooth. From the heeling angle and the faster sound of the water sliding past, I could lay there and imagine the wind freshening up, the tiller pulling slightly with weather helm, and the ripples on the surface of the bay turning into small waves. This is how a child gathers all the information to have what’s called “seat of the pants” knowledge of sailboats. Much of it comes through your senses, some of it is mimicking your parents, and very little of it is pedagogical. The wind hits your face and you can always point to its source. The waves usually come from that direction too. The sailboat won’t sail into the wind. Stronger wind causes heeling. Becalmed is no wind. Current can carry you slowly with no wind. Tides go in and out. Shallow water is to be avoided unless the centerboard is up or you are going clamming. The tiller was pushed opposite of the direction you wished to sail. No one had to school or tell us. The data came in and registered. We were sailors, rowers, and helmsmen at a very young age.

How a Father Raises a Fisherman

All fathers seem larger than life when a child is very young and mine was no exception. It seemed like he led our family on its greatest adventures which usually centered around boats. My first sailing trip was in a dresser drawer on The Scamp, my great grandfather’s sailboat. We lived in Amityville, New York, the town in which my father grew up. My great grandfather and my grandmother lived on the Amityville River which afforded a covered boathouse with an internal marine railway for hauling out in the winter. This boathouse was a hangout for my father as a child, listening to the stories of his grandfather and his friends as they smoked their pipes and whittled half models. It smelled of oakum, tar, and linseed oil, the scent of my favorite tea, Lapsang Souchong. My father grew up immersed in the culture of Great South Bay which for him meant anything to do with, on, or around boats. He knew the south shore like the back of his hand and was eager to share it with his family, which eventually grew to four little onions. That was his name for us in fond times…his “onions”.

We soaked up his style, vocabulary, and talent with sailing and rowing. He taught us how to dive under the breakers in the Atlantic surf while Mom counted heads to see if we came up. He could walk on his hands down the beach. He towed us swimming the breaststroke with our arms around his neck. He showed us how to dig for clams with our toes in the shallow water where he had a secret bed. My Dad often hummed or whistled and had a smile on his face out on the water. Tamping down his pipe filled with the tobacco in the blue package, he’d survey his “onions” rowing and sailing with a competence he never questioned. He was happiest in this world of ocean and we thrived in it too.

When children learn skills at their parents’ side, it transfers the deeper attitudes towards life in general. We also learned optimism, and a strong work ethic. We learned classical music and Broadway musicals without knowing…..they were in the background but in the fabric of every day. My mother taught us the practical stuff and my father provided the romance. He also was “true blue.” This exacting sense of doing the right thing by others was bone deep and his strongest moral principle.

My brother and I spent numerous days out cod fishing with him as our older siblings found our lobster boat less thrilling and our mom stayed home. This special time with him was his way of getting away from the stress of the corporate world. My brother and I were rascals and poor fishermen. Instead we horsed around in the dinghy one cold fall day off of Children’s Island (Marblehead, A) and swamped it. My Dad quickly raised anchor and came to our aid. The chilly water was debilitating. He never yelled, just stripped off our wet clothes, wrapped us in scratchy wool blankets, and made us swig a shot of scotch. We didn’t say a word through blue guilty lips. We stayed in our bunks until the mooring buoy an hour later. Our punishment was disappointing my father. He was worried about hypothermia and we were worried about losing our good standing in his eyes. That is how it should be….he earned our deepest respect, love, energy, and hard work….that was my father and by the way, he gave a fabulous bear hug.

How my Mother raised a fisherman

Our mother had her hands full with four children, all two years apart. We were a noisy lot but left to our own devices, were able to entertain ourselves quite well. In order to do what I wanted, it was necessary to tell my parents just enough to make them think I was involving them in my life. If I said too much like my oldest sister, then there was a lot of restrictions. If I said nothing, like my next oldest sister, then it aroused suspicion.
The middle road of parental notification suited me because it afforded the most freedom
and did not altogether eliminate my parents as allies. My mother claims that I was a skeptical child and needed direct experience to learn. If I was told the stove was hot, I touched it once and verified what hot and burn and pain meant. I just couldn’t believe my Mom or anyone for that matter.

She did teach us many skills which had a lot to do with going to sea. From the age of four, I was given a blue denim bag the size of a pillow case to pack all my clothes, books, dolls, etc. for a trip on the boat. It was our job and if we forgot something, then we had to make do. Mom was a master of lists and organization. She had large canvas bags with sturdy handles in which to pack all the food. A good cruise planner runs a seamless operation and my mother was a champ. Good stowing skills utilized a thought process of what will be used or eaten first and last. Shapes must fit all together in tiny spaces and then be stable so that rough weather won’t dislodge them. The labels were taken off and the canned food was marked with magic marker. We all helped and by doing so, learned the business of planning, packing, stowing, and tying down. None of us paid a lot of attention to actually learning anything from Mom but we must have copied her expertise because all of us are capable of planning and organizing on a much larger scale.

Mom was usually cheerful and that is a good quality for life at sea. One could always be reminded that you could be in school or some other miserable fate and it would make life on the boat very sweet. She was a disciplinarian when it came to speaking the king’s English. Our grammar and manners were corrected no matter if we were steaming towards Gloucester or reciting a homework assignment. Sometimes on weekends she would choose to stay home and we would feel like Dad was the leader of the lost children from Peter Pan as he took us on adventures in the Phyllis. All we had to be was “charitable” as he called it. We were an eager crew when Mom stayed home because the rules were slackened. Our cooking and crewing were appreciated by my father’s great love for having his “onions” close by.

Mom got the short end of the stick because she was stuck with raising us alone when Dad traveled on business which was often and for long periods of time. It was similar to having a fisherman father, gone fishing for six months. Four energetic, independent, and opinionated kids couldn’t have been an easy group to manage, but she did and much credit is due for her perseverance and dedication. We all survived childhood in one piece. My mother credits it to the philosophy which she and Dad used.” Treat them like racehorses: give them a little slack on the reins but be ready to pull them back in.”