Book is done, now editing - jumping around some - Book II The Transition Chapter 17 I called and told my parents I decided to drop out of school. They took it in stride. I bummed around the Island working as a cook and deckhand sleeping on bunks on charter boats. It wasn’t the same. I was a kid before and it was holiday; I always had a place I called home. I kept in touch. Dad needed someone to take a project in Oceanside. It was something I could do. I enrolled at Cal Poly, Pomona and drove back and forth. When the project ended, he had another. The semester ended in Pomona and I enrolled that summer at UCLA. I quit UCLA in the fall. I didn’t need a degree, I needed the equivalent of two years credit to enroll at Southwestern University Law School in Los Angeles, so I did. I was working 50 hours a week. My classes suffered, I dropped out of school. Time flies; I was treading water. Dad and I had an argument; when a Father and a son coming of age both think they’re right there is no easy solution. It was late May 1963; I pulled into a car lot, sold my car for plane fare, took a cab, and boarded a plane for Portland, Oregon. My grades were scattered. It took 120 semester hours and a major to graduate. After 4 years, I had less than 70 hours that counted. It took some doing, but Father Simonich talked the dean into letting me back in for the summer session. I went back to Fred Myers, got a job and settled in. This time I was paying the bill; grades finally mattered. Between work and school, time passed quickly. I managed to fish a few times for Chinook with Father Simonich in the Columbia, and by myself for Steelhead from the banks of the Clackamas River and Eagle Creek. By then it was routine; I could tell the difference of a snag, line bump and a bite. I escaped from the real world when I needed a break hip deep in the Willamette or McKenzie as summer passed into fall. I passed the summer courses, but because of all the screwing around, it would take three more semesters and another summer to graduate. On February 24, 1964, I met Mary, the Mother of my children. I know because it was the night of the Clay Liston fight. Somebody gave me 20 to 1; I had a $10 bet on Clay. Mary was a unique experience who put up with me when I fell asleep in her bathtub. I met her Father a few months later. The feeling wasn’t always mutual, but I liked Pete. Pete had a cabin a half mile upriver from Sawyers Rapids, and a friend with a boat in Winchester Bay. He was a successful, grizzled old man who liked bourbon, smoked a rancid pipe, and loved smoked Salmon and venison jerky. He also liked to play bridge. I was the fourth he was looking for because Marie, his wife would leave the table each time he answered her opening bid with, three no trump. I fell in love with Mary for other reasons, but this all made points. March was the beginning of the run of Spring Chinook. Pete anchored on the river in a 12 foot round bottom rowboat, in a slot a mile above Sawyers rapids most days in April and May when the river was in shape and the weather good. His and my birthdays were in April, we planned a trip. Pete was never one to be the first boat on the river. He lived an hour from his cabin and used it more for storage and a summer place for his kids to play. Pete liked to fish with the sun on the water. He believed Chinook holed up below the rapids at night and moved through his slot during the day. Arleen’s hadn’t changed; breakfast was just as good at 8 am as it was before dawn. I don’t remember who the third man was, but we slid the boat down the bank by the cabin and rowed to the buoy anchored in Pete’s slot a little after nine. Plunking never has been my method of choice. In Pete’s boat, you did it his way. My fishing gear was in Portland. Pete handed me an old pole; the thread on the guides just past frayed, and the 1920s Penn reel half filled with monofilament line, yellowed with age. I didn’t recognize the pounded brass lure, now turning green, with a rusty oversized single hook trailing offside. There were heavy warm rains the week before and the snow pack was melting. The sun was out, but the river was far from clear. I polished the lure with spit, the sleeve of my shirt, and some grit of sand I scraped from the bottom of the boat. When I dropped it over the side trailing behind a 6 once lead weight in the swift current the brass lure dodged from side to side flashing a reflection off the sun through the haze of the murky water. I was wishing I had an Anchovy to trail behind the dodger, but as I watched the intermittent twinkle, I thought to myself, “This might work.” Pete liked a variety of lures in the water as well as what he called his hired man. When fishing for Salmon in Oregon, they allow you one line in the water per person. A hired man is a hand lined dropped over the side hidden from site of the local game warden. I was fishing off the middle of the stern. Pete and his friend dropped variations of Rogue River spinners with round pounded brass blades and red beads trailing treble hooks, off either side. Pete propped his pole against the gunnel and wedged his good foot against the butt. He took his hired man out of the bucket under the seat and dropped the weight and spinner over the side. It was 10 am by the time our lines were in the water. Pete and his friend brought cushions; my butt was already tired of the wood plank bench hung off either side of the boat. I fidgeted a bit while Pete cracked the seal on a bottle of 100 proof Old Crow, took a swig and passed the bottle. It was the beginning of a 24 year, often contentious relationship. Pete had polio as a child and wore a brace on his wilted leg. Sometimes he used it as an excuse. I learned the best way to get along with Pete was to try to keep up. There was no action in the morning; it was approaching 5 o’clock. Marie’s fried chicken was gone. We were down to the last swig or two of the second bottle of Old Crow, and leftovers in a bag of venison jerky. Pete was reminiscing about two big Mule Deer he shot the year before from the front seat of his car on a stand in Eastern Oregon near the city of Burns. Plunking is not my style, and besides, my butt was sore and I had to pee. The pee bucket was under my seat. I wedged my pole propping it against the rail of the stern. Pete and his friend pulled their gear. Pete was stowing the hired man; his friend was getting ready to cut the boat lose from the buoy. I emptied the bucket over the side and reached for my pole to retrieve the lure. In the time it takes to take a breath the day took a new direction. Pete’s friend was pulling on the tether to release it from the buoy when a big fish slammed my lure and headed downriver for Sawyers Rapids. Eight hours of sun, my introduction to Old Crow, and shifting my sore and tired butt at the instant the fish struck the lure caused me to let the rod slam against the rail of the stern. The rod Pete had since childhood broke 2 feet above the reel and the fish disappeared over Sawyers Raids taking the yellowed monofilament and 5 feet of rod tip with it. Pete didn’t say much then, but when we stopped at Arleen’s he told me, “Next time, Patrick, bring your own pole.” Pete was old fashion by today’s standards. In June of 1964, I drove from Portland to Eugene, Oregon to ask for Mary’s hand in marriage. He agreed. Mary was the youngest of five; it was a Saturday of family celebration. July is the peak of the Silver Salmon run off the coast of Oregon. Pete’s friend had a boat in Winchester Bay. We planned a trip for the Sunday. Pete and his friend liked to fish, they also liked Old Crow. When they could, they pawned the chore of captain off. Pete asked me if I could handle a boat in a bar; I was new at this and debated for a moment; then I realized, they called the span between the Long Beach and San Diego jetties a bar. I didn’t have a clue, but I said, “Yes.” Now, I was the designated skipper. The bar had been too rough to cross during the minus ebb tides all week. We would be fishing the incoming in the afternoon. We left Eugene at 10 am, had lunch at Arleen’s at noon arriving in Winchester Bay a little after 1 pm. Pete and his buddy nipped on a bottle of Old Crow while we waited for the tide to change, but Pete liked to be the first in line. We launched at the ramp near the Coast Guard Station at 1:30, an hour and a half before the outgoing tide would change to slack water. Pete settled in the seat beside me, “It’s all yours.” his friend slipped into a seat facing the stern. There was no need to buy bait. We killed time casting Herring jigs near piling, filling a bucket by the time we reached the Coast Guard dock at the entrance to the Winchester Bay Bar. The U.S. Corp of Engineers converted their old dock to a fishing pier and built new jetties in the 1970s. The Corps built one of 3 new jetties as a training jetty to straighten out the channel in an effort to keep the bar from sanding in. For the most part it worked. However, In 1964 we paused, bobbing in the swells in front of the beach at the landside end of the south jetty, which is now an Oyster farm protected by the training jetty. The Coast Guard was dredging the channel every 2 or 3 years; 1964 was an off year. Before the new jetties, ebb tides caused the Winchester Bay bar to boil and thrash over the shallow sand bars created each spring by heavy rains washing gravel, sand, and soil from the riverbanks into the river. Think of the waves in a bathtub when a toddler is flailing the water trying to sink his toy boat. Six packs and private boats were stacking up behind us as we waited the last half hour for the ebbing tide to change to slack water. The ocean was slick, but with a 6 to 8 foot swell. There was an occasional breaker in the south hole, but it was a sea of foam 30 feet off the south jetty north where the incoming swells from the southwest met the shallow middle grounds and then washed over the north jetty. There was only room for one boat to cross at a time. Six to 8 feet doesn’t sound like much until you realizethere is a hole of equal depth on either side of an ocean swell. That makes an 8 foot swell on the ocean an occasional 16 foot breaking wave on the bar. I had heard the stories and Father Simonich had warned me, but one has to see it to believe it. In 1964, there were less boats, and the 6 packs would go because it was their livelihood, but few sport boat captains today would have the nerve to attempt a bar crossing that day. Rules were different then; today the Coast Guard would close the bar to traffic under 40 feet, back then, ignorance was bliss. I told Pete the scene wasn’t like the rolling swells crossing out of San Diego over a channel that was 70 feet deep and wide enough for an aircraft carrier to pass a destroyer. Pete told me it was a piece of cake, but to wait until he gave the signal. He also told me that once we made the commitment there was no turning back. I watched as a series of swells blended with the foam in the middle grounds and then the south jetty disappear in a sea of spray under a breaking swell across its tip. Pete said, “Now, go!” We were in a 21 foot open boat. That half mile trip along the south jetty to when I turned south into the open ocean was one of the longest journeys of my life. What looks like a gentle rolling 6 foot swell in the open ocean on a calm day, morphs into a treacherous tsunami crossing over a shallow bar. Half way down the jetty, I was climbing 45 degree walls of water plunging into the 20 foot hole left between it and the next wave. Pete was right; there was no turning back. A boat sideways to the swells in a breaking bar is a casket for its passengers. There was no rushing the 5 minutes, which seemed an expedition at the time. A captain set a pace fast enough to gain ground, but not so fast that you would drive the bow into the base of the incoming swell. The object coming and going is to let the swell roll under and past the boat. Towering walls of curling waves passed above my head on the right at the edge of the middle grounds as we bobbed along 30 feet off the jetty. There was a churning current where the river met the ocean; spray drenched the boat as I made a sharp turn south to avoid the breaker coming at us that would wash over the tip of the South Jetty. The first boat to cross was the guinea pig. Had we waited another half hour the bar laid down, which is what the smarter captains in the boats behind us chose to do after watching us skirt under, and just past that last breaking wave. We were a half mile off the beach when I slowed the boat to a troll; Pete was fileting a Herring. He mentioned that he had misjudged the size of the swells, and it probably would have been better to wait, but once we committed it was too late to turn back. I had used the toilet at Arleen’s so I didn’t have to throw my shorts away. Pete and his friend were using medium stiff rods with Penn reels filled with 40 pound test line. They both dropped foot long flashers trailing behind 8 ounce banana weights with Herring filets for bait over the side. I took Pete at his word and brought my own gear; I came to play. There fish were finning on the surface. I chose a light Steelhead rod with an ambassador 5000 filled with 12 pound monofilament, and then baited a double hook rig behind a one ounce sinker and cast it 30 feet behind the prop wash. Before I set it in the pole holder I free spooled another 30 feet of line. Pete mumbled something about light gear and losing big fish, and that we would quit when we had 6 fish on board no matter who caught them. Pete was the first to hook a 10 pound fish. He told me to leave the boat in gear. The fish dragged the lead and flasher back and forth while he winched it to the net. It took about 2 minutes. He was bleeding the fish when I hooked a rowdy 20 pound Silver that headed for a clump of knolls on the beach 5 miles south of Winchester Bay. I slipped the boat in neutral and stepped back to the stern to play the fish that stripped another 50 yards of line. Pete grumbled some during the 15 minutes of fishing time I was wasting, and then reached over and shut the mortar down to conserve fuel. Pete netted the fish and put it in the fish box. Pete was a native Oregonian. He started fishing as a boy to help feed his family. He treated the sport as a trip to the market. After they reset their lines and placed their poles in holders Pete took out his hired man. He dropped the cannon ball of lead with the trailing flasher and filet over the side. I hooked a second fish before Pete and his buddy had another strike. When the 12 pound hen was in the box the rules changed; it did matter who caught the fish. I had my limit; it was their turn. I put my pole away and steered the boat. Our limit was six. It took another half hour. Waves were breaking in the north hole, but the south side had calmed to rolling swells. The crossing method in those days was the reverse of coming out. I slowed the boat to a speed that would maintain steerage while allowing the swells to roll under and past the boat. It was an erring feeling when I looked back at a towering wall of slick water rushing toward the stern before it lifted the boat out of the trough. We didn’t go back to Winchester bay, that year, but I fished a few more times with Pete at Depoe Bay and on the Columbia River for Fall Chinook. He taught me how to smoke and can Salmon, and to make venison jerky. I married his daughter on November 21, 1964. The flooding in the Pacific Northwest during the Christmas holidays of 1964 was unprecedented in the record books. The Rogue River raised 120 feet above its banks where the canyon narrowed at the town of Agnes 30 miles from Gold Beach. High water swept houses off their foundations along the Umpqua from Roseburg to Scottsburg; they opened the railroad drawbridge crossing the Umpqua River at Reedsport, Oregon to let them pass out to sea. I was in my senior year; Mary was concerned about her folks. Most communications and utilities were out for the better part of a week. I traveled to Eugene sitting on the hood of a truck straddling the white line in the road 2 feet below the floodwater to check on Pete and Marie. A few weeks later Mary and I went back to Eugene to visit. The flood had dissipated; the rivers returned to their banks and were clearing. Mary stayed with her folks while I took a trip to Sawyers Rapids to check on the cabin. It was gone, but the boat was tied to the tree where Pete left it that summer, the oars were in it tucked under the seats and the plug hung off a string tied to the stern. I loaded my Steelhead gear and dragged the boat to the bank. The flood swept Pete’s buoy away; there was no anchor. It was early, a spur of the moment hope trip that time of year. I didn’t expect to, but I rowed upstream to give myself enough room to play a fish above the rapids if I hooked a Steelhead. I was drifting the slow water and casting into the channel. After three unsuccessful drifts I changed from eggs to a plug rowing upstream to hold in the current letting the plug work off the stern. Five hundred yards above the rapids was my deadline, that would give me enough time to land a fish and make it back to the slow water over the rock shelf near the bank. I was approaching what I though was the point of no return when a big Steelhead slammed the plug. I dropped the oars to grab the pole, and then put it back when the current swung the boat sideways. The pole was bucking and the fish was heading for the hole below Sawyer’s Rapids. I was trying to turn the boat toward shore. They didn’t design a square back, round bottom, lap strake boat to run rapids and most rowboats are designed with a flat bottom, which is easier to row. I didn’t make it to the soft water going through the slot at the head of the rapids sideways before slamming into a bolder the size of the boat, tearing off one of the oarlocks and blowing a hole in the side. Water was coming through the hull and the oar was out of sight. Sawyers is a short rapids; the boat was still floating upright, but half submerged when I reached the hole below the whitewater. I was up to my knees paddling to shore with the remaining oar when a man in a drift boat threw me a rope and pulled alongside. I grabbed my pole and climbed onboard letting the river claim Pete’s boat. The fish was gone and the boat was out of sight when the man dropped me at the bank. Somebody at the camp drove me to my car a mile upriver. I told Pete the flood claimed both the cabin and his boat. I graduated the first week in June. It was a first for a male in the Roelle clan. My proud Father offered me a job at a country club he was building in Walnut, California. Mary was 6 months pregnant with Maria. Pete and I planned a farewell fishing trip. We stopped in Eugene before heading south. I caught a 45 pound Springer out of Pete’s new boat tied to his new buoy in his slot on the river, but with my fishing pole and my spinner. Pete wanted smoked salmon; I wanted a fresh steak. We decided we each owned half. We cut enough steaks for dinner and chunked the rest to smoke. Pete used a simple brine of salt, brown sugar, fresh ground pepper, and a soaking time of 6 to 8 hours. Pete’s smokehouse was an outhouse before they had indoor plumbing. They filled the hole and moved it a few feet, retrofitting it with a fire pit, wire screens, and a chimney. Pete smoked Salmon in the spring and summer, and made venison jerky in the fall. It was something he showed off to family and friends whenever there was smoke coming from the chimney. We played a rubber or two of bridge and called it a night about 10 pm. We planned to leave by noon the next day and I wanted to take some Smoked Salmon with us. It would take 12 hours to smoke 3 inch thick chunks of Salmon. I loaded the smokehouse racks and went to bed, waking at 1 am to check the fire. There was a bed of hot coals, but little smoke. I was tired and needed sleep. There was a pile of dry kindling and green limbs from the apple tree in the yard. I piled on what I gauged to be enough green apple limbs to last until morning and went to bed. Somebody woke me at 3 am. The heat dried out the pile of limbs and the smoldering smoke turned to a blazing fire; it was too late to put it out and save anything. By morning, Pete’s smokehouse, which had survived 70 years and 3 generations, was a pile of twisted wire racks and ash. Marie said Pete watched the fire until it was nothing but coals, and then moved to his chair in the living room. He had mellowed by morning and was sipping on a glass of Old Crow when I walked in the room, he didn’t bother to get up to say goodbye
Posted on: Sun, 01 Sep 2013 18:45:37 +0000
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