“Dod Damn it George! Haul that shrimp car up on the bow. We gotta get underway or we’ll miss the tide.” These were the sounds that bellowed through the bedroom window of this twelve-year-old boy at 5 AM.
It was the first Spring morning in our new home. My family moved to the South Shore of Long Island on a canal. Directly across the canal lived George Combs. Captain George Washington Combs avoided using foul language. He didn’t have to, the resonance of his voice fell somewhere between a foghorn and a tugboat blast. He always got your attention, even at a whisper.
“Pop,” as I came to know him was in the truest sense, a bayman. A last of his breed, one of a kind, thirteenth generation off the Mayflower bayman.
A bayman is one who makes his living directly from the bay. His income and family depend upon his ability, twelve months of the year, through wind, rain, ice, snow, and heat. Bayman is a full-time occupation, using his ingenuity and labor to harvest marine resources to make his living. There is an incomprehensible wealth of knowledge required to do this successfully, I was soon to find out. He must understand every aspect of the natural world including weather, tide, moon, conservation, and how to follow the seasons.
In the Winter, he depended upon scalloping and clamming. Spring was time for shrimping, bait-catching, then crabbing thru the Summer months. In the Fall, scallops, oysters, mussels, green crabs, combing for eels, and the preparation for colder weather coming, this was a bayman’s life.
The Fall as it turned out, would be my favorite season, and Pop’s bay house was at the center of it all. This was an especially busy time of year, grassing of duck-boats, carving or repairing decoys, training and re-training dogs, and preparing equipment for hunting and shell-fishing. Although this may sound like a sport, I assure you it was a necessary and laborious part in supporting their families.
Fall was also a gathering time for baymen who celebrated with a clambake and shootout each October. Fellow baymen gathered together to share stories, see who was the best shot, and enjoy shared bay food. But never divulge the secrets of their favorite spots, that went without saying. On one occasion Bud Ward, a fellow bayman asked Pop “Where you been finding those silverside eels George?” Everyone went silent.
After a great pause, then Pop said without hesitation “Now Bud you know better than to even ask!” I’m sure he already knew what the answer would be, but he asked just to get a laugh.
When you sat for dinner at Pop’s bay house, generous portions were served to all. If it was a duck dinner everyone received a complete duck. Pop got two. This was accompanied by eel or scallop stew with all the trimmings. Hard work required a huge amount of energy, sustenance was necessary. Everyone who was part of a maritime community worked hard then. It’s just the way it was.
I remember Pop spotted me watching him from across the canal. He said, “Want to go along for a ride? I’m gonna pick up some horse feet.”
Horse feet, I thought, how is that going to happen? “Sure,” I said. Soon as his scow left the mouth of the canal and started down the bay, I knew my life would never be the same.