My first college class: Psychology 101. Before cracking a book, the professor asked us to write down the attribute we possess that we rely on most. Responses varied from: Speech and ability to reason, to athletic prowess. No one gave the right answer. According to this professor, our memory is our best resource. Without memory we don’t know how to accomplish even the most basic tasks. The answer was so fundamental it was overlooked by everyone.
I’ve considered this question many times in the intervening years. Consciousness, which contains memory, has been a recurring theme for me. I subscribe to the belief that there must be more to consciousness than a brain. How can so many memories be stored in one’s brain?
A long-time curiosity is that I can recall odors. Just as I can visually summon up my mother’s face on a screen inside my head, I can also recreate the smell of the ether I inhaled when my tonsils were removed over sixty years ago. When recalling odors there is no screen in my mind, so where does the memory imprint? Our olfactory sense is ancient. As part of the limbic system of the brain, smell precedes thought. Conversely, odors can stimulate old memories. For instance, all it takes is the smell of diesel fuel and that reptilian part of my brain propels me back in time. Back to the year 1967 when I worked as a deck hand on a fishing boat in the Gulf of Mexico.
I had a connection in Panama City. A former basketball coach was living there. The coach knew people that could help me find work and there was also the prospect of continuing to play basketball at Gulf Coast Junior College. I was accepted to GCJC for the upcoming fall semester. I didn’t make the team but decided to stay on anyway. Besides, I was far more interested in surfing than basketball.
Even though I wasn’t going to be playing ball, nevertheless I was still able to stay at the athletic dorm of the college. My former coach had also found me employment on a tourist fishing vessel. This fishing enterprise had several ships. The one I was hired onto had recently sunk as the result of a collision at sea. Rumor had it that the captain had been drinking when the mishap occurred. Although no one was hurt, he was lucky he didn’t lose his license.
The ship was huge, at least to this mid-westerner. It could accommodate around fifty fishing poles. Since it had been damaged by the impact, sunk and later dredged out of the gulf, there was considerable clean-up that needed to happen before it was seaworthy.
The captain put me right to work. I don’t remember how much minimum wage was at the time, and I’m sure, whatever it was, I wasn’t paid a penny more, but that didn’t matter to me. I had a job, an inexpensive place to live, and was making enough money to someday buy a surf board.
My first official task at my new job was to be lowered into the belly of this whale of a boat. I would be spending the next few days down in the bilge, all alone in the stifling heat. Using a wide spatula, a lantern and a bucket, I was given instruction to scoop up the black tarry goo which was a mix of diesel fuel, mud and seawater. After a day or so of collecting several buckets of this congealed muck, I surprised myself by laughing out loud at the irony of my situation. The hubris of my fantasy had led me to a dark, dank, and smelly job far from the sound of surf, and even farther from snuggling on a beach blanket with the surfer girl I had heard about in a song.
But the end of this phase was in sight. After the boat was cleaned and seaworthy, I was promoted to the exalted title of deck hand, which I soon realized was only a small step above my previous plight. I wasn’t at all sure what was expected of me as a deck hand, there were no manuals and little in the way of instruction from the captain and crew. I assumed I was expected to watch, learn and do.
The first hurdle was to get out of bed around 4 am and report to the boat at 4:30. Evidently, early morning is the best time to catch fish. Working alongside me were several young men around my age and one grizzly old seafarer whose name was Wally, but everyone called him Gator. Gator was probably around fifty years old, though he looked much older. He had likely been a deck hand most of his life. Gator walked with a slight limp, had a mop of gray wiry hair and was missing several front teeth. Unfortunately for me, Gator did not impart much of his acumen to this greenhorn from Kentucky. I think I offended his sensibilities when I told him I wasn’t that fond of Elvis Presley.
All that said, I was up for the adventure. Each morning of the week, we would motor out about 50 miles into the Gulf of Mexico with around thirty to forty hopeful fishermen. I knew there was the chance we would be going through some turbulent waters, so I fortified myself with a couple of Dramamine each day. No one needed to advise me about seasickness.
The first task each morning was to cut bait. It took about an hour of chopping all types of partially decomposed fish into small enough chunks that would later be used to lure in the snapper and grouper. The memory of that smell is as present to me now as the diesel fuel which powered the ship.
After Gator said we had enough bait for the day, we could hoist ourselves up onto the top of the boat for an hour or so of sleep. This would have been a welcome respite from our labors, however, the top level was where the diesel engines roared and belched out their noxious fumes. It was like sleeping on a grate in downtown Manhattan while buses and trucks rushed through city streets.
When the call came around 7 am to get our asses off the top deck, the sun would just be coming up from behind us. Nobody actually said all hands on deck but like so much of the experience there was little instruction about anything to do with fishing.
I soon realized that the folks we took out were not sport fishermen. Most had no idea of how to deep-sea fish, but they were paying big bucks for the experience, and so needed plenty of assistance. There were four primary objectives for this part of the job, 1) help the passengers with getting their hooks baited, 2) show them how to work the motorized reels, (no cranking up heavy fish on this boat) 3) untangle lines when they would get crossed and 4) take the fish off the hook when they snagged one. I was somewhat competent at 1 through 3, but number 4 was a little daunting. I would watch Gator and the other hands grab the snapper or grouper by the gills and wiggle out the hook, drop the fish onto the deck and then string it up for the passenger. No one thought to ask me if I knew how this was done and I was either too naïve or embarrassed to ask.
If you’ve ever seen a five-pound live grouper wiggling from a line you might appreciate my reluctance to slide my hand into the gills which looked like many tiny projectiles waiting to clamp down on bare fingers. To my surprise it seemed like the other deck hands were immune to any such discomfort. For some time I was able to delay showing my ignorance by making sure I was busy untangling lines whenever a fish was brought up. The moment came, however, that I knew it was time for me to be a man and grab that grouper. And man did it hurt when it clamped down on my fingers! As I gave a little howl, Gator quickly came up and with a disgusted look on his face. “Don’t you know how to hold a fish?” No, obviously, I needed a little help in that department. He then showed me how to press my thumb into a spot close to the grouper’s mouth when fingers were inserted in the gills. This was priceless information.
Untangling lines was nearly as challenging as stringing up fish. We were cautioned to always ask the fishermen to put down their rods while performing this task. Again, these were motorized reels. To lower the bait you pushed a button, to bring the fish up, you pushed a button. You didn’t want people pushing buttons when you were untangling lines. So, first rule of untangling: Get the guy to place his rod and reel down before you start fooling around with the line. Unfortunately, I forgot this bit of wisdom one day and some yokel pushed the button. Before I knew it, a hook was pulled into the flesh of the middle finger of my left hand. I still have the scar.
The barb of the hook did not go through my finger, just the tip. There was no backing out that hook. Gator wanted to push it on through, but I said… no thanks. The rest of the day I was allowed to sit inside and wait until we got to port where I was dispatched to a local doctor. With the help of a little Novocain, wire cutters and pliers he pushed the hook through. This experience has left an indelible mark not only on my finger, but also on my consciousness regarding what it’s like to be a fish.
Although the Dramamine worked most days. There was one day when the seas were extremely choppy. Pills or no pills, I was on my knees in the head, the foul smell of dead fish and diesel didn’t help.
Not long after that last insult, I bid Gator and the ship’s Captain farewell. The summer was quickly ending, my first fall semester of college would soon begin. I had achieved my goal of being independent. I had gotten away from small town life and expIored new horizons, with a little money in my pocket and a few fish stories to boot.
Riding the Waves of Disenchantment
During that same summer I had a rude awakening regarding my fantasy to learn how to ride a surf board. Unless a huge storm blows in, the waves of the gulf waters are substandard for surfing. I had made a few inquires and found out the real waves were on the Atlantic side of Florida. I did notice a few guys with surf boards on top of their cars on the gulf side but concluded that owning a surf board was part of a culture that included much more than riding the waves. In my fantasy about surfing I didn’t consider that I would need a vehicle to transport the board and a place to store it. I decided maybe it was best to rent a board for a day and give it a try before buying.
At this point I hadn’t really made any connection to the surfing community. I could have hired someone to give me some lessons but decided to save some money and set out on my own. How hard could it be? Even though the waves were small and not worth the effort, I had seen plenty of guys paddle out and jump up on the board and get a half way decent ride. I could do this. Surfing would be like learning to swim or ride a bike. Turned out surfing wasn’t as easy as it looked. I took my rented board and spent most of the time paddling out and then waiting patiently for the next wimpy wave that might allow me to stand up on the board. The one time I did manage to do this my ride lasted a total of about five seconds before I was tossed on my head into the sand then had to scurry around to find the board.
After an hour or so, I felt exhausted and defeated. I had perhaps another hour or two of rental time, so I decided to lie down on the board and allow the waves to jostle me for a while before going back to shore. This reprieve was much more to my liking than the fruitless efforts that had left me weak and spent. I lay back and watch the clouds float across the wide expanse of sky. After twenty minutes or so my reverie was interrupted by someone nearby trying to get my attention. I raised my head to see a life guard who had paddled out on his surf board. “Hey buddy, do you know where you are?” I looked up from my supine position to see that I had floated far out into the gulf. I could barely see the shore. This was my first lesson in ocean currents. If that life guard hadn’t seen me, I might have been paddling for hours to get back. This bit of naivete reminded me that the real world can be unforgiving. When I returned to shore and dropped off the board, I put my surfer fantasies on the back burner.
A few weeks after my failed attempt, I met a young man named Steve who worked as a cabana boy at a resort on the white sandy beaches of Panama City. Steve was the epitome of the quintessential beach boy. He had a shock of sun-bleached blond hair that curled around a pair of sleepy blue eyes like a wave of golden light around two gem stones. He lived and worked in a pair of huarache sandals and a baggie swim suit. He was the proverbial chick magnet. Most important for me, he was connected to the surfing culture. Steve was a little older than me, but not much wiser. Still, it was nice to have someone take an interest in my nascent quest to be a part of this salt world I was wanting to embrace. Steve became a sort of mentor for my introduction into the world of beach life education. Unfortunately, we never got around to taking his board out to the beach.
One weekend night Steve asked me if I wanted to go to a party in a nearby town. I jumped at the opportunity. Here I would meet not only more cool surfer dudes like him, but available young surfer girls. During my high school years, I had an identity as a basketball jock. I didn’t have trouble finding good looking girls to date. Here, I was a rube from Kentucky with little to say to any of the chicks at this gathering. While the Pina Coladas I was tossing back somewhat helped bolster my confidence, my out-ward vibe was flashing “midwestern wannabe”. One buxom young beauty took me aside and said flatly, “you don’t fit in here”. Those words were stronger than a slap in the face. The bubble burst and I finally woke up to the situation. Although difficult to admit, I knew she was right.
Steve was so drunk that night that I had to drive him in his Chevy Malibu back to the hotel where he lived. With Steve passed out in the passenger seat and the air slowly leaking out of my pipe dream, I reconsidered my options. I was eighteen by this time, still in the flower of life. There would be other fish to fry.
Being told I didn’t belong with the in-crowd was probably a blessing in disguise. I didn’t hang with Steve much after that experience. A month or so later I learned that Steve had totaled his car and broken his back in a car accident driving drunk after a party. When I learned this, I felt like I had probably dodged a bullet. Perhaps that young woman at the party was an angel in disguise.
It was around this time that I had the epiphany: although it is exciting to chase a dream, the realities of life always come knocking at the door. I had been so caught up in my fantasy world, I hadn’t even stopped to think that it might be a good idea to set a course in a direction that would allow me to discover where my true talents lay. At eighteen years of age, this was a timely realization. Although there has been plenty of disillusionment since then, I have retained some of the life lessons of that summer. I have learned to ride the waves of conflict and disappointment when they arise, to confront situations that required keeping my head above water and not drifting too far from shore.
by Alan Hundley
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