Master-Baiter
I was lucky enough to grow up in a place where work is plentiful, if not always pleasant. The neighbors across the street crabbed dungies and long-lined halibut and black cod, so they always needed bait. In fourth grade I started going out with them to jig herring, for which we were paid five bucks a bucket. We would all load up in the skiff, the parents and their two kids and a dog or two and me, and it was a race to fill our buckets without hooking ourselves, each other, or the dogs.
I was an only child, so it was a treat to get a taste of sibling life. Their son was a year younger and their daughter two years older than I in school, so I always felt somewhat neutral and free to be amused by their squabbles, which could be pretty intense (reportedly on one long-line trip the parents had resorted to shutting the bait hold hatch on them for a few minutes to let little brother and big sister cool off in the dark among the frozen bait). I couldn't quite understand how they got so sick of each other on the boat, but I would eventually learn.
My admiration for the family outweighed my amusement and confusion. It was really cool to see a whole family working together (somewhat smoothly) to make a living. My parents worked for the Forest Service, which seemed pretty cool too, but I wasn't allowed to see them doing the cool parts of their job, I just got to see them at the office. When I was young they would alternate going out on ten day trips into the field, which wasn't all that different from the neighbors going on long fishing trips without the kids sometimes. The difference was that their kids got to go with them more and more often, so they could easily explain what it was their parents did for a living. I had a vague idea of my parents' jobs. Mom was a botanist, so she did plant surveys to make sure there was nothing endangered in a proposed logging area. Dad was a timber-cruiser, so he would flag the boundaries of timber sales and estimate the board-feet contained in each one. When I was around them in the office they were usually just doing paperwork, sometimes looking at cool maps or aerial photos (maybe why I wound up with a geography degree). But the equivalent for the neighbors would be for the kids to only hear about the actual fishing, and only spend time with their parents while they were looking at fishing charts or filling out gear loan applications or something.
Then there was the neighbors' boat. I got to see the boats and floatplanes that shuttled my parents to and from camp, but in my little boy mind it didn't quite compare with being able to say "That's our boat." Allegedly my first word was boat, which I stated matter-of-factly as I watched one pass through the mouth of the Wrangell Narrows.
I was stoked when the neighbors invited me crabbing in the summer after sixth grade. We took the big boat over to Thomas Bay, with the crab skiff in tow. For the first few days we overhauled pots, which meant replacing worn out parts and obsolete permit tags and a lot of unstacking and restacking the awkward things. My little middle-school back was killing me before we caught a single crab, and I had already dropped my favorite pocket knife in the drink. But it was worth the satisfaction of doing real work, getting dirty and tired and sleeping hard to the slap of the waves on the hull.
I still definitely felt like a poser with my recreational grade Columbia raingear and boots that weren't even Xtra Tufs. And I didn't know what I was doing, which meant I was usually in the way "Like a goddamn puppy dog" as the skipper put it. At least that meant I was still cute.
By the time we were actually catching crab, the neighbor boy and I had become worst enemies, despite the fact that we were and still are best friends. Pitching baitfish across deck one day I accidentally slung a rope of fish slime across his face, to which he replied "You suck so bad at this, you're never going to get another fishing job." Damn, I thought, for growing up fishing he sure did freak out about a little fish slime on his face.
Leisure time on the boat was no better. The skipper had stocked the boat with nothing but John Wayne movies, which us boys deemed uncool, so the neighbor boy and I passed the time playing cards, usually rummy, and we played rough. If I won a hand, I would smile smugly and the neighbor boy would seethe "That was just luck, you suck at this." If he won a hand he would gloat "You suck so bad at this" nearly bringing me to tears.
Eventually the skipper would get tired of listening to that, pause his western, and growl, "Deal me in, girls." Though he claimed that rummy was half luck and half skill, he whupped us every time. "There it's settled. You both suck at this." Then he would take up where he left off with The King of the West, leaving us boys too demoralized to fight with one another.
Waking up early was a lot more difficult for me as a young boy, especially to "MORNIN' GIRLS" as was the skipper's customary wake up call. It took a few weeks for us to earn "DROP YOUR COCKS AND GRAB YOUR SOCKS" which I found strangely flattering.
I also found that I had no appetite at three in the morning, but knowing that it would be many hours before lunch, I would stuff myself sick every day. Some days even with only a slight chop on the water in the anchorage, my green stomach didn't handle dinner well either. We ate a lot of eggs, meat and potatoes, mostly moose meat. I loved the stuff, but found it crazy that I was expected to eat what seemed like a pound per sitting. The skipper would see me losing my resolve to clean my plate and cut me some slack, saying "I don't give a shit about those potatoes but you finish that fuckin' moose meat." I nodded and kept chewing.
My duties on deck were almost all bait related. I would be handed the bait jar full of old bait and mud, with a rag of old salmon skin hanging on the clip. I would pull off the skin, pitch it overboard, unscrew the lid, pour the contents overboard, refill the jar from a tote of ground up herring, stick the clip through a fresh chunk of dog salmon, then hand it back to be clipped back in the pot before it was reset. Over and over. That's when I learned that reciting song lyrics in my head could help pass the time. I listened to a lot of Blink-182 back then, so one of my go-tos was "Party Song."
... then I saw her standing there
with green eyes and long blonde hair
she wasn't wearing underwear at least I prayed that
she might be the one maybe we'd have some fun
maybe we'd watch the sun rise
but that night I learned some girls try too hard
nanana, nanana, nanana
some girls try too hard
nanana, nanana, nanana
some girls try too hard to impress
with the way that they dress
with those things on their chests
and the things they suggest...
See, isn't that distracting? I probably filled thousands of bait jars to that song, bundled up in my flimsy rain gear, slipping around deck in my Not-So-Tufs.
Other forms of entertainment included trying to remember all the creative expletives used by the skipper, and the wonders of crabbinatomy. We sometimes had crab for lunch out on deck, fresh out of the crab cooker. I learned how to clean them, which involves holding them with both hands and hitting them on the corner of something to open the top of their shell like the lid of a teapot, before separating the legs for cooking. The neighbor boy showed me how to use a long pointy crab leg shell to fish the meat out of the rest of the legs, and how to crack the claws by smashing them on the table with a clenched fist, like a frustrated medieval king.
Despite how tasty they are, crab are more alien than anything from science-fiction. The way their mouths drop open like the door on an armored transport to expose two mini claws, the way their eyes stick out and bend around, the sharp points on all their legs, the fact that they have back and leg hair, and their powerful serrated claws. My first time unloading crab at the dock I didn't quite hold one right, and was promptly pinched on the finger, which left the nail purple for months. So I had acquired a respectful fear of the creatures. The neighbor boy was well aware of that, and I was often aware that he was watching me with amusement as I timidly corralled crab around deck.
One day he decided to teach me something even more terrifying about the big bugs. He picked up a disembodied claw from the deck and held it up to his gloved pinky, saying "You know, the reflexes in these things can still aaaaaaaaaaaAAAAEEE!" as I watched, it clamped down hard. There wasn't much weight to the thing, so he couldn't shake it off, despite his most rockin' Pete Townshend impression. Finally he grabbed it with his other hand and ripped it off along with the glove. I was in heaven. I couldn't breathe I was laughing so hard. His dad had to stop what he was doing to wipe the tears of mirth from his own eyes. The crabbinatomy professor was curled up and whimpering on the bow while we hauled the next few pots. To this day I don't know what he expected to happen.
I can only hope to share moments like that with my children and their friends one day, and to make some money while we're at it.