Pop Combs
Part 2
After prohibition, baymen and their families went back to business as usual. For the Combs family this meant catching and supplying bait for charter boats and fishing stations. Fishermen at that time (1930’s) were in pursuit of weakfish. The bait of choice was shrimp and Pop knew where to find them. Every Spring, from New Jersey to Long Island’s south shore, including the Peconics, shrimp flooded the bays.
The Combs family dominated the shrimp industry by following the shrimp migration. They towed a houseboat from Beach Haven, New Jersey to New Suffolk, Long Island. Their houseboat served as their home base, where they worked and lived during shrimp season. Pop and his family were the largest bait distributors on Long Island, if not the entire Northeast. There were times when live shrimp were loaded in the back of Ford pickups at 3 AM. The shrimp, stacked in racks and covered with wet burlap and canvas, then ran “pedal to the metal” to the Peconic docks where captains were eagerly waiting. When loaded aboard their vessels, they knew a successful day’s charter fishing was assured.
Later in the season, the houseboat was towed to Meadow Island, near Jones Inlet, where Pop and the family stayed the remainder of the year. Charter boats leaving Freeport would stop for fresh bait. Pop’s oldest son Jack remembers taking his shoes off the day school let out, and not looking for them till school began in September. He spent his days walking the meadows, creeks, and ponds in search of bait, shorebirds, adventure, and knowledge. It was a happy time for the family.
1940’s – During World War II, the Coast Guard commissioned Pop to captain the Gander, an 80-foot private yawl commandeered from then famous Doris Duke. The Gander was to be used as a submarine spotter sailing Long Island’s south shore up to 140 miles off between Greenport and New York Harbor. Pop loved the Gander and spoke fondly of her the rest of his life, like some mystical able-bodied woman of mystery.
During these sub patrols, Pop and his crew encountered only one submarine, but he could not ignore the abundance of sea life surrounding them. Swordfish, tuna, sharks, and marlin were plentiful. Eventually, Pop fixed a pulpit to the Gander, stowed harpoons and buoy barrels aboard, and fished to feed the crew. At some point Pop’s entrepreneurial spirit kicked in, he could no longer ignore the abundance of the recourse surrounding them. Before long he was running a fishing business along with his Coast Guard commitments. It didn’t take long before the Coast Guard admiralty found out. On one trip to New York Harbor, he was called in to speak with the top brass. He was asked, “Didn’t you think you’d get caught?” Pop replied: “You couldn’t catch me rumrunning.” So they settled on a partnership going forward.
After the war, Pop and his wife Francis commissioned a house to be built in Massapequa on a canal. The contractor, Orb Mole, worked from his houseboat, which he tied up to the bog bank where the house was to be built. He finished it in six months, and Massapequa became the Combs’ family’s new home port. Oldest son Jack and his younger brother George lived there until they married. When both boys were in the service, Pop continued running the family bait business by himself. It was a huge undertaking. It was then that he spotted me across the canal, and introduced me to the rest of my life.
At age fifteen I was recruited or should I say volunteered. Pop and I worked shoulder to shoulder catching bait at times in the middle of the night, in waist-deep water, hauling a one-hundred-foot seine for spearing or pulling shrimp net on the flats, often filling our boats with bait within inches of the gunnel. We’d catch only a few hours of sleep at the bay house, then made our way to Freeport. We had to get there before any boat traffic began because the slightest wake could have easily sunk us. I did not tell my parents what I was doing for obvious reasons.
One year, in the peak of shrimp season, Pop asked for a hand. I was in high school at the time. Pop said the tide is just right and he needed to catch a mess of shrimp. I explained it was “spring project night” at the school so I had to be back in time. Pop said, “No problem.” He dropped me on Johnson’s flat. It was a beautiful afternoon in June, blue skies lite warm breeze. As soon as I dipped my arm into the water I could feel the shrimp bumping into me. Pop staked off two shrimp cars, and said, “I’ll be back in an hour.” The shrimp were thick and I filled both cars in half the time and waited for Pop to pick me up. The tide was rising and the water was up to my waste when pop pulled up. Wow, are these shrimp think we echoed one another. I did get to my school project night on time!
And what a night it was. In woodshop class, we put our projects out for display. We were told School District Superintendent, Raymond J. Lockhart might stop by. The entire class had made cheese boards of various shapes and sizes. I had carved a set of Black Duck decoys, thanks to the tutelage of Pop, but the astonishment and confusion of my shop teacher, Mr. Mordeno, who asked “What are you going to use those for?” Before I could answer, the Superintendent and his entourage entered the room. He almost immediately spotted my decoys, in the back of the room and made a beeline for them, walking past a dozen cheese boards. It turned out he was an avid duck hunter, and we wound up swapping hunting stories, until he was ushered away to finish his tour, but not before he gave me his phone number, asking that we might get out on a hunt together.
The wealth of knowledge Pop possessed was unimaginable. Whatever the season or task at hand, there was a proper and correct way to approach things. This came from generations of practical experience producing successful results. Whether it was how you load a four-hundred-pound shrimp car onto the bow of an eighteen-foot garvey by yourself; or how to delicately carve the underside of a duckbill on a decoy. There was always a correct way to get it done.
Pop called South Oyster Bay in the Town of Oysterbay,“his Bay”, and no one disputed that. Pop’s boyhood friend, Dudley McCabe, son of Senator McCabe of Oyster Bay, lived nearby. Dudley was also the game warden and Pop and Dudley were a team. If an intruder or part-time waterman showed up on Pop’s turf, Dudley would get a call. “After all, that is what friends are for”, Pop would say. Dud would go out and give whomever the once-over, by the time he was done checking this and that, the outsider was happy to move on. Pop cared for his bay. This was necessary because a true bayman never over-harvested, realizing he had to make a living all twelve months, year after year. He understood the need and obligation to conserve the resource, rotating his crop much like a farmer. There were always some short-sighted part-timers didn’t understand this or didn’t care. They were after the fast buck.
Dudley also owned a 50-foot fishing boat called the “Miz.” She was painted battleship grey, her beam was narrow and she was tender, the ugliest boat I have ever seen. Dudley and Pop would take her swordfishing just outside of Jones Inlet. Pop recalled harpooning swordfish within five miles of the inlet.
Pop, like most baymen, enjoyed duck hunting. He looked forward to the change of seasons—the Fall migration of ducks, the cooler air, the changes on the bay. In our maritime community, I did not know anyone who felt differently. There was excitement in the air. It was not just about enjoying a duck dinner. The hunt was steeped in tradition – the design of duck boats, the grassing of those boats, the carving of shoving oars, and gun selection, whether punt-guns, shotguns, black powder side by side, or 4-6-8 and 10 gauge, it all mattered. The decoys, or “stool” as they were called, were especially important—how decoys sat in the water and the way the rig was displayed. To have a successful hunt required attention to every detail.
On one Fall day, I was lucky enough to be invited on a duck hunt with Pop and Dudley. I had my own duck boat by then, built by a boatbuilder from Freeport known as “Superman.” I set up a short distance from Pop and Dud, who shared a larger boat.
As we sat ready, in front of us a perfect rig of decoys, ducks were flying a little too high to get a clean shot. I could hear Pop and Dud talking, forever joking around as they did. Pop said, Dud you have a knife? He handed it to him. Pop scored the paper shotgun shell case around its circumference just under the wade, loaded it and waited. The next group of black ducks came near, still too high by my estimate. Pop raised his shotgun, followed the bird, and fired. The bird folded immediately at a distance I could not have imagined. I couldn’t believe the shot, but I was even more amazed was when that duck landed directly on the back of his boat. I’m sure he was as surprised as I was, but sitting there with my mouth wide open, Pop glanced over. He looked away like it was nothing, then said,
“That’s the way you do it Bub.” We all had a good laugh.
Pop was also a master decoy carver, his birds still prized by collectors today. Back then, some of the most renowned carvers in the world lived on Long Island, no doubt because it was directly in the path of the Atlantic Flyway. They included Obadiah Verity, Nelson Verity, Gruby Verity, Bill Bowman, and John Dilley, who produced some of the world’s most prized collectible decoys today. Pop’s oldest son Jack is also a world-renowned master carver whose work is on display at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC. Captain Jack still carves today. True to the Combs family tradition, Jack’s son Michael is also a renowned master carver and artist, whose work can be seen in many museums.
As years went by, things changed around the bay. More homes were built, and as development progressed, conservation suffered, especially because decisions were now being made by government officials who lived far from the bay and had no sensitivity to the importance of its pulse and beat.
Pop and Francis lived quietly, close to the things they loved. Always surrounded by friends and family. It was later that Pop declared, “Barry, you are my third son.” I couldn’t have been more honored. The truth was because I wasn’t his son, our relationship transcended the boundaries of typical father-and-son. There were no hereditary expectations. We enjoyed a man-to-man relationship, speaking of things with complete unselfish honesty, including my asking him to be my best man at my wedding, which he quickly declined. We enjoyed conversations like the view from the outhouse, and how that late afternoon sun glowed off the seed pods of the bay grass, and the afternoon southwest breeze cooled the seat. I guess you had to be there.
Pop had a way about him. People drew to him like a magnet. When he walked into a room, he filled it with an undefinable presence. A soft-spoken powerful man who could delicately hold and carve a decoy in hands so large when you shook them, your forearm disappeared. What was it about this man? I later tripped over the obvious, his entire life he had followed the most profound influence on our planet – Nature, the ultimate truth. He wasn’t just in it. He was part of it.
Some of the baymen I’ve been lucky enough to know, speak intimately about their relationship with Nature, the Sea, and the water around them. They speak of how it breathes with the tide. They understand the relationship between the tides, the moon, the seasons, and the cycles of life that correspond to its every move. They understand because they participated in it on a daily basis. They experienced life and death. They understand for something to begin, something must end. They understand what is real, and true. That life, is here for the taking, for anyone who takes the time to observe and feel the living world around you. It’s almost unavoidable when you are on the water every day – the observer becomes a participant. You become part of the ebb and flow, a part of something so enormous it is nearly unfathomable.
What I didn’t know then, I know now, because of one man.
Pop passed in 1991. When the call came through, I was on a hillside outside of Madrid, Spain. I was watching a full moon set over an olive grove, green gently rolling hills in the evening mist.
I thought, “Of Course.”
George Washington Combs (1991)
“The Snow, the Rain, the Wind, the Sea – It all belonged to Me”