Take a Kid Fishing

I had to stretch my steps to avoid the cracks between the greying planks. At each inch or so of space between the decking, my eyes would follow the white foam gathering at the tops of waves that ran beneath us to the beach. When my grandfather, Poppy, found a spot along the pier railing, usually just behind the breakers, I continued on while he got everything set up. My circuit to the end of the pier and back was an intelligence gathering mission. I stopped at every sea-water-filled bucket and ice-packed cooler to examine the contents: usually croaker, whiting, or red drum awaiting an evening fish fry, and I asked the leather-tanned fishermen, between long pulls on their beers or long drags on their cigarettes, what bait they were using.

The top of the railing was bloody when I got back to Poppy and two lines were already in the water. The blood was from the bait, aptly called bloodworms. After a bit of pocketknife surgery, one of the foot-long parasites easily filled the four hooks of my grandfather’s two rigs. I reported what I had seen on my recon mission, and my grandfather chewed over the information, working it in his mind like he worked the plug of Redman in his cheek, trying to determine whether or not we should add some cut shrimp to our arsenal of parasites. Most fishermen preferred shrimp, not necessarily because they are more productive at the end of the line, but because bloodworms are poisonous and can deliver a pretty nasty bite, much like a bee sting.

Poppy was all business. Most of the fishermen leaned their rods on the railing and reclined, soaking in the sun or stealing a glimpse at the stream of bikinis coming and going on the pier. My grandfather remained taut and attentive, and so did his line, a length of which he always kept pinched between his thumb and forefinger. Poised to set the hook, he felt every nibble and, consequently, we filled our bucket while our pier mates mostly fed the fish. I held the second rod and tried to emulate him, hoping not to show my youthful impatience by jerking the rod back when all that had disturbed the line was the swell of a wave. When I got something on the line he helped me reel it in, but I always hoped he would get hooked up first so that I might get to pull one in all by myself while he was busy landing his own.

I was six or seven years old and clad in an orange T-shirt with a Bugs Bunny decal ironed on. For luck, I wore it every time we went fishing. I can remember an old Polaroid. I’m grinning, holding up a string of bream from our freshwater pursuits that reaches from head to toe. Bugs is taking a chunk out of a carrot. I just about lost a chunk of my face that day on the pier. Despite good fishing, I had grown antsy like all little kids do, so I set out down the planks to chart the progress of our pier mates. I looked up from a spot-tail swishing water in a bucket in time to see Poppy pulling in another one. By the time I returned, plastic flip flops snapping at my heels at every quickened step, my efficient grandfather had already bucketed the catch, rebaited the hook and, unaware of my position behind him, hoisted the rod over his shoulder. I was too close. I got a mouth full of bloodworm, a hook snagging in my lower lip as my grandfather turned the lead weight around at the onset of his cast. The sensation of extra weight on the line signaled for him to stop. It’s better to rip off a Band-Aid than work it off slowly, and I think I might’ve preferred that he had continued with the cast no matter how much of my lower lip went to sea. Instead I tried to stay still while he worked the barb loose with red-stained fingers, the bait’s blood mixing with my own.

I cried through the lecture until he suggested that maybe it was time to go.

“No, one more fish, Poppy. I promise not to get near the hooks.”

* * *

Now when I walk down that pier I have to shorten my stride, making choppy steps to stay on the planks while Silas stretches his legs to keep pace, his Crocs settling safely between the cracks, at least until he catches a glimpse of the first bucket. Then, pier rules and mother’s backs be damned, the boy takes off, running over the cracks until he finds a bucket brimming with a bountiful catch. Cutting tight circles in their holding tank--their final resting place--the fish arrest Silas’s normally scattered attention. He wants to touch them, but thankfully always politely asks the angler for permission first. Squatting, he strokes their silver sides. Eating the fish never occurs to the boy; to him they are part pet and part playmate. And he must have some of his own.

Before the discovery of fish our beach time was spent erecting sand structures that never got very tall before boy Godzilla un-erected them with a stomp (or ten). We played with trucks. We gathered shells. We rolled around in the sand fighting over a little Nerf football. We threw sand; okay, he threw sand, usually at me, but sometimes karmic wind gave him a taste of his own sandy medicine. When we got hot we waged war with waves in the shallow water until we cooled off. We played a game called chase Silas to the horizon and carry him back, kicking and screaming. This fun game featured the boy marching down the beach to each little tourist settlement--an umbrella, coolers, beach bags, and beach chairs or towels positioned based on their occupant’s taste for the sun--to beg food or toys off total strangers. Admittedly, I didn’t mind this game so much when he employed his considerable cuteness to get an audience with attractive ladies. But for every beach beauty there were two or three Earls, peering down at us over their beer guts, wondering why this long-haired toddler was rifling through their stuff.

Fish put an end to his wandering. We started small. Really small. I found an old butterfly net under the beach house and learned to catch mud minnows, who were tossed so far up the beach by incoming waves that sometimes they had to swim back on their sides, riding the tide as they sought the safety of deeper surf. Even in such shallow water they weren’t easy pickings, and for every 50 stabs with the net I might collect one darting fish. That one shiny minnow, no bigger than my thumb nail, would buy time until I caught the next one. I soon learned to double my odds, stalking the shoreline until I found a school of minnows and waiting for the push of an incoming wave to force an unsuspecting fish into the waiting net. If I found the net empty, I would pivot in the divot the wave dug out beneath my feet and try to pick one off on the second leg of its round trip.

Sometimes we dug a deep hole near the water and waited for a wave to fill it. Silas sat in his sandy aquarium, harassing our catch as they circled their confines, plotting an escape that wouldn’t come until a strong wave caved the walls of the watery fortress. The boy developed his own minnow transport system, plunging his Tonka dump trunk into the shallows, letting water rush into the bed before following me down the shore. The net went in. A fish came out. He held it for a moment, admiring the bright shine the sun extracted, released it into the truck bed, then beep beeped the truck backwards to his makeshift aquarium. He dumped the entire contents into his pool and the cycle began anew: fill truck, find dad, wait for fish.

“It’s time for lunch.” “It’s time for more sunscreen.” “It’s time for dinner.” “It’s time for bed...” Anything I said or did that threatened to break the cycle was met with the same response: “One more fish, Dadda.”

Eventually we moved on to bigger and better fishing technology, a casting net that allowed me to ensnare finger mullet. Now I was bringing in several fish at a time and the boy’s aquarium looked like a display at the live bait shop, except there was a boy in the middle of the tank with a butterfly net scooping out the bait. He would trace a fingernail, softened by the surf, over the silver scales and pet the fish with pruny fingers until I coaxed him, finally, to return it to the water before it wasn’t live bait anymore.

***

Our strip of sand cut a path between the blue-green ocean and the brown, muddy waters of a crab and oyster-laden inlet. The sun was just starting to color low-hanging clouds over the inlet, its westward sinking signaling the dinner bell, when a father and two sons rose, backlight at the top of the dunes, poles in hand. Down they came, stepping quickly despite the encumberance of gear, racing the sun for supper. At the shoreline they shoveled sand away from the water and picked off unearthed mole crabs (or sand fleas, depending on how southern you are) on their dash back to the sea. The little armored crabs found new homes on hooks and, with the help of four-ounce lead weights, took a flight beyond the breakers. It didn’t take long for a rod to bend.

When Silas picked up on the excitement I knew it was going to be a late dinner for us. By the time the catch was flopping on the beach, he had splashed out of the mullet farm and rushed to the scene. Seized by a convulsion of pure glee, he stretched his arms straight down at his sides, fists balled, thin muscles taut, and bounced up and down, gradually rotating to face me as I caught up.

“It’s a shark, Dadda!” he squealed. “It’s a shark!”

The fishing family’s patriarch removed the offending species from the hook quickly and gave it a disgruntled heave back to whence it came. A foot-long sand shark is nobody’s idea of dinner. But that’s all they got--little sharks--one right after another, while Silas looked on with an unyielding sense of awe. Down the beach I dug a trench and herded the boy’s now forgotten pet mullet collection back to sea as the blue of the horizon faded to deeper and deeper shades. Soon there would be no horizon. The fishing family disappeared over the dunes at dark, and I finally got a hold of my prize catch, who asked, “Can you catch me a shark, Dadda? Please?” as we headed for the break in the sea oats that led to dinner and a long overdue rest. “Tomorrow,” I said.

It was a short night. As soon as dawn crept in through the blinds the boy wrestled free from our cuddle and jerked the covers off the bed, which is his not so subtle way of motivating me to get moving. I buried my face in a pillow, determined to return to slumber, but it was unburied by the whiplash from each boy bounce. Jumping up and down on the bed, he repeated two words: “You promised,” until I pulled on some clothes and we were off to the bait and tackle. I had dreamed of this milestone day--no minnows, no mullet, but a proper day fishing--since his conception, but after waiting years for the moment I could’ve happily pushed it back until the afternoon, or at least until eight a.m.

The bait shop was like our mullet farm on steroids. Bubbling tanks contained all manner of tempting treats for trophy fish, including our friends the finger mullet and mud minnow, as well as other small fish, fiddler crabs, and live shrimp. Silas stared while I shopped. I picked up an eight-foot pole for surf casting, a couple of rigs with specially shaped weights for keeping the bait anchored despite the steady onslaught of the surf, a bait knife and bait bucket, pliers (just in case something scary came back on a hook) and, with apologies to my grandfather, frozen shrimp rather than bloodworms.

Back at the beach house, I forced a bowl of cereal down Mr. Excited’s gullet and chased him around the porch until he was thoroughly lathered in zinc oxide, then I pack muled our haul from the bait and tackle shop to the beach. I worked a shrimp free from the frozen chunk, released some orange goo when I pinched its head off, shelled it, and cut it in two equal parts, one for each hook. I waded out and listened to the satisfying sound of monofilament leaving the spool after I launched the line over the breakers. I kept the reel open as I made my way to the shore so I didn’t pull the bait in with me. When I hit dry sand I snapped the reel closed and cranked it tight. I eyed the section of PVC pipe I had brought down as a rod holder, but then I thought of Poppy on the pier, forever watching the ocean, line pinched to feel every nibble. I would only use the PVC for baiting hooks. A rod belongs in your hands, so I rested the butt of it on my hip, took a length of line and felt it cut into my finger. I watched and waited, trying to resist the urge to jerk the rod tip back every time a wave pulled the line a little further into my flesh.

It wasn’t long before I felt the unmistakable back and forth signal of a bite and set the hook hard, pausing for a second to feel the satisfying vibrations of the darting prisoner before turning the crank. Fish on! Silas abandoned the dump truck and pastel plastic beach buckets and appeared at my side, sharing my excitement over solving the mystery at the end of the line. The mystery was partly solved before I cranked the fish to shore. It rose, clearing the water with a leap, tail surfing the green sea in a desperate attempt to spit the hook. Glimmering silver scales, and the fact that it jumped at all, meant that what we had was definitely not a shark. It turned out to be something more dangerous, a juvenile blue fish that maybe went a pound. After I worked the hook free I showed Silas the blue’s impressive rows of razor-sharp teeth, and we both agreed that it would be better for him not to handle this aggressive predator. I met a weathered fisherman once with a stub of a thumb: the culprit, a big blue. Big or small, they make for great sport fish but not very good eating, so I waded out to my knees and set our first specimen free.

Blue fish “run,” meaning that they migrate in a large school that seems to morph into a veracious pack of feeders all at once. Find one and there are likely many more where it came from, so I worked quickly to rebait and return the rig to about the same spot. Silas was in my pocket as soon as I returned to dry land. He also anticipated a quick hook up. A minute is an eternity in the life of a child, and after 15 minutes of all quiet at the end of my rod I had resigned myself to the prospect that the run was over. And the boy had trailed off, back to his toys. I hoped that he was really ready for this, that he could stave off his demands for attention long enough to let me hook him what he really wanted. I felt a desperate pressure to catch something, so I started jerking the rod tip back and pulling in baited hooks at every tug from a wave. Or I’d reel in the rig to find that I had given a crab or pinfish a free meal. Silas reappeared every time I started turning the crank, and, head down, turned back to his toys when the rig bounced up empty.

I tried to channel my grandfather, the man who used a .22 to pick off squirrels and rabbits that dared infiltrate his garden, and ate them. The man who came home with a deer strapped to the hood of his Buick after a successful hunting trip. The man whose quiet patience always yielded a stringer of fish. I resolved to quit freaking out over every tug of the sea. I’d plant myself, gentle, foamy waves lapping at my ankles, line in hand, until I felt the sure tug of a fish. And, finally, I did. This is no fish story; the rod did not double over and I never had any energy sucking battles. But, as the sun moved behind me and scoured my neck a bright red, the bites came. Maybe the smell of the bait had finally gotten around. One little shark, two little sharks, three little sharks...we never waited more than five minutes before I was taking back line.

The little scavengers were exhausted by the tug of war and fell limp in my hand as I worked out the hook. They had jaws full of teeth, but they were too small to do any damage. I even ran my finger over the teeth and let one gnaw on me a bit to make sure it was safe for Silas to handle. He took them with outstretched hands and no fear, though curious beachcombers were a bit more weary when he ran up to them and shoved the captives into their personal space. To save the sharks, and the old ladies with their grocery bags full of shells from heart attacks, I urged him to take them back to water so they could grow up. “We’ll catch them again some day when they’re bigger,” I promised.

We did catch one decent-sized shark, a scalloped hammerhead of about three feet with a nasty disposition. Silas chose to let me put this one back. When I turned him loose in waist-high water he turned to face me rather than dart back to sea, circling menacingly a few times before I plowed through the water to the safety of shore. I walked down the beach a bit before wading in for the next cast.

By the time darkness arrived to put an end to our day we had landed 18 sharks along with an assorted oddity of sea dwellers, including a sea robin, puffer fish and, believe it or not, a starfish who had sucked a bit of shrimp into its hole. The starfish rode the line all the way in despite not having been pierced by the hook. We managed to snare a few careless bait-stealing pinfish and some red drum, both good eats, but I wasn’t confident that we would get enough to make a meal so I threw them back. And, unlike my grandfather, I didin’t have a wife waiting to tackle the always pleasant job of cleaning them.

After we reached double digit sharks I told the boy we were done for the day. “It’s getting late; it’s time for dinner. Maybe if we hurry we can play with trains before it gets too late.” But he wasn’t satisfied, so I kept pulling them in until it was too dark to be fumbling with hooks.

“One more shark, Dadda,” was his new refrain.

We were back at the bait shop first thing in the morning for more shrimp.

Adjunk

I was hunched over in the backyard, left hand gripping my knee and right hand, index and middle fingers extended, pushing as deep into my throat as possible. I had tried to disappear quietly, easing the sliding glass doors open and finding a site in the yard where none of the house windows would reveal my position to our dinner guests. I hope it comes loose quickly so I am not missed. I hope they don't notice my flushed face when I return, the beads of sweat on my forehead.

I don't have an eating disorder, but I might as well. Eat. Choke. Force myself to gag. Repeat. Seized in my throat by unpredictable spasms, solid food refuses to go down; it has to come back the way it came in. Steak and chicken have been removed from the menu. Even a well-masticated Triscuit feels like swallowing a chainsaw.

When the fear of getting something hung made it impossible for me to enjoy entertaining guests or eating out for fear that I would have to excuse myself to get the suspended morsel unhung, I phoned my family doctor. After filling my mind with visions of cancerous cells clogging my esophagus, he sent me to a GI. The GI, who I met about two seconds before succumbing to anaesthesia, determined from my symptoms that an esophagogastroduodenoscopy was in order. Not surprisingly, they call the procedure an EGD for short. They put you out for the EGD, which involves snaking a tiny camera down your throat, stomach and the upper reaches of your intestines. I would not want to be awake for that. The last thing I remember was the lens of the camera swimming for the pried open cave of my mouth like a lone fish eye.

Before the procedure a nurse showed me to my gown and then threw the curtain closed on her way out to give me some privacy. I undressed, clumsily fiddled with the ties until I was more or less covered, and waited for the nurse to return to rub up a vein for the IV. She didn't come back for awhile, so I went in search of something to read, finding the latest copy of the local home showcase magazine beckoning from a rack on the wall.

The chancellor's house from the area university was featured. I've got two degrees from that university and I've been teaching there part time for five years, but this was my first glimpse inside the behemoth mansion, a 9,000 square foot structure with two kitchens; the whole thing cost two million dollars to build. The dining room seats 66, but apparently there's no room for adjunct instructors at the fund raising dinners. And that makes sense. How much could a person making $15,000 a year afford to give?

I flipped the page. The main kitchen has more sinks in it than my entire house. Glimmering stainless steel appliances, adorned with the prestigious Viking label, broke the expanse of granite countertops. I am sure the appliances alone cost generous alumni donors more than my salary sets back the taxpayers. The fridge was bigger than a dorm room. The island seemed more like a continent.

Owing to economic recession, the chancellor's university had a hiring freeze for the 2009-10 academic year. The following year the budget was sliced by six percent, and the university passed the buck to students through a $500 tuition hike. My salary, which is less than half of what's considered a "living wage" for where I live, has remained stagnant for the last two years, and is up only a few hundred dollars from what it was when I started. Perhaps, given the current economic climate, the opulent spread of the chancellor's mansion was poorly timed and in poor taste. Like a lot of things lately, I had trouble swallowing it.

Down the hill from the chancellor's house, working quarters aren't quite so luxurious. I am housed in my department's adjunct office. The office was once a classroom, but due to its position above the aging hall's boiler room, it was deemed unfit for teaching purposes. In winter, when the archaic heating system strains to heat the building, the room constantly shakes like a magnitude 7.0 earthquake. In the room's next life it housed the graduate assistants, but their vociferous complaints led to their exodus into a cushy room across the hall that has--shudder--window air conditioning units. My office space enjoys no such amenities, yet, despite the shakes in winter and the oppressive heat in August and September, there is always a crowd. It's not really my office at all, but rather a communal earthquake grounds shared by 14 of my coworkers. The 14 of us inhabit 14 desks, strewn about the crowded space, taking on various shapes and sizes, no two alike. We share four computers, hand-me-downs from the grad students across the hall. There are two printers. One that doesn't work and one that sometimes works.

The adjunct office is not exactly a welcoming environment for student consultations, as you're constantly reassuring them that the trembling structure isn't going to collapse on top of them. "I promise you're not nervous," I joke. "It's just the room that's shaking." But, as I leaf through the home magazine and see the chancellor's master bathroom, with its separate room for the toilet, so spacious that I could park my beat up truck in it, and its dressing room that dwarfs my son's bedroom, it became more apparent than ever that the conditions--both physical and financial--that I work in are no laughing matter.

Half of my department is staffed by non-tenure track faculty, most of whom are part-time employees despite their wish for full-time work, and none of whom have had the right to vote in committee and department meetings. It's the apartheid of higher education, and, not surprisingly, the caste system creates a lot of animosity between the haves and have nots. We want a living wage, we want health benefits, and we want the right to vote on department matters. The tenured faculty fight to stifle our upward mobility, clinging to the power bestowed upon them by their PhDs like politicians trailing in the polls.

And their numbers are down. According to the New York Times, only 27 percent of college classes are taught by tenured professors, down from 75 percent 50 years ago. When a tenured professor retires, universities, ever conscious of their bottom lines, can replace the outgoing professor with three part-time instructors, give the part-timers the maximum number of classes that they can teach without qualifying for benefits, and save a boatload of money. We're quick to admonish Walmart for such behavior, but the public universities entrusted in developing the workforce that will be the lifeblood of our country's future get a free pass.

By every measure--student evaluations, peer reviews, and the end of year reports from my supervisors--I am an excellent teacher, as are the majority of non-tenure track and part-time instructors I've huddled under the door frame with in the earthquake room. A PhD and the comfort of tenure does not necessarily make for a better teacher, especially for those professors who view teaching as an annoyance that gets in the way of their research responsibilities. Most adjuncts are highly motivated teachers, and we can focus all of our efforts on teaching, as most of us are not expected to contribute research as part of our jobs. We work semester to semester with no job security. We're certainly not in it for the money, so it follows that we not only have a passion for shepherding our students to the essential knowledge they need in their academic and professional careers, but also that we must perform our jobs well in order to keep those eleventh-hour emails offering us one more class, one more paycheck, from disappearing from our inboxes.

But, even though most part-time instructors do their jobs well, the system hurts students. Because they are so poorly compensated, adjuncts do not have one job. Many, like me, pick up a class or two at the closest community college (in fact the local community college has syphoned many of its full-time faculty from the pool of adjuncts at my university). We teach for online schools like the University of Phoenix. No matter how competent and motivated the instructor is, she or he cannot possibly serve the individual needs of their students as well while teaching seven classes as they can while teaching three. And the overload of caffeinated late-night grading and planning sessions can lead to burnout for even the most dedicated teacher. Whether it's due to burnout, frustration with the lack of a voice within their institutions, or being forced to find another career path for financial reasons, adjuncts are a transient lot, and the heavy reliance on them creates instability in the foundation of our higher education system. If the bottom line was providing the best education--to truly best serve the public that supports them--then public universities would take care of their best teachers. But the bottom line is not providing the best education. The bottom line is the bottom line, so adjuncts will go on being exploited, reheating the leftover beans and rice while, up the hill, a chef prepares gourmet fare for the chancellor's well-heeled guests.

But I couldn't swallow that steak dinner anyway. To the bemusement of the nurse, I babbled nonsensical dream words as she welcomed me, begrudgingly, back from the twilight sleep. At first she, too, seemed to be speaking in a foreign, syrupy tongue, but I finally made out the message: "You're waking up. The doctor will be in to see you soon." As the cloud of anaesthesia burned away, I thought about my son. I didn't have any health insurance before he was born, but the responsibility of taking care of him brought with it the responsibility of taking better care of myself. So I shell out $400 a month out of pocket, and if not for that I wouldn't be here with my ass hanging out the back of my gown. An EGD can cost as much as $2,000 without insurance, and that's not in the adjunct's budget. Today my bill will be $30. And, thankfully, that $30 bought some piece of mind. The doctor's camera didn't find anything out of the ordinary in my esophagus. No cancer. He explained to me that stress and acid reflux are likely the culprit for my esophageal spasms. The throat uses contractions to move food to the stomach, but the spasms make these contractions irregular, uncoordinated and overly powerful. Instead of being moved to its next stop on the GI train, the food gets stuck.

I was ready to get unstuck. There's a note on the door of my department chair's chambers explaining that he is in, but the door is closed to keep the cool air from escaping. He has an air conditioning unit too. The cold front that greeted me when I entered was refreshing. I had spent the last hour sorting through the last five years of my life, dumping most of the desk clutter into a recycling bin I had dragged from the hallway to my sweltering communal office. The chair's secretary announced my presence and I strained a "Hello" over the droning of the AC. I felt out of place in my plaid shorts and polo shirt, products of the clearance rack at Old Navy, when the chair rose to greet me, resplendent in a dark, tailored suit.

"Is this easy or complicated?" he asked. I had no appointment and he was expecting someone.

"It's complicated, but it won't take long, " I promised.

I told him that I would not be returning for another semester without a raise and benefits. He mumbled something about budget restraints, wanting to help me, but not being able to wave a magic wand.

I spent nine years as a student at that university, getting a degree in journalism, a license to teach high school English, and finally an MA in English Education. I spent five years teaching there. But I walked out the door without mixed emotions, without even a tinge of melancholy. No regrets. I don't need this stress.

Maybe Walmart is hiring.