Adventures in Darkness by Tom Sullivan

Author:Tom Sullivan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2010-03-29T00:00:00+00:00

10 : FOG BOUND

BILLY’S DAD, JOHN HANNON, LIKED TO FISH. Actually, that’s not quite true. John Hannon loved to fish. He was obsessed with spending his summers on the ocean in pursuit of anything that would bite fresh bait. In the waters off New England, he preferred to fish for blues, bass, and an occasional tuna. However, he’d settle for all of the bottom stuff—cod, haddock, flounder. He’d even take the small ones you’d get when you trolled along the coastline—mackerel and pollack. Those weren’t any good to eat, but they still were a lot of fun to catch.

Billy had developed the same passion as his father for the sport, and we spent a lot of our afternoons sitting on the town pier in Scituate Harbor with drop lines, hoping to catch any-thing—even a perch or a skate. And you know what? I came to love all of it, too. I suppose just being with Billy was my principal motivation, but the fishing certainly added to the fun. Mr. Hannon owned a twenty-one-foot Novie with a small, protected cabin. These boats were called Novies because they were built in Nova Scotia, principally out of oak and maple, with an overlap design that allowed for double strength nailing and caulking. They were, pound-for-pound, the most seaworthy craft available to New England fishermen at that time.

He powered it with a big Johnson outboard that sounded like an old jalopy when you got up to speed. But it did the job. Mr. Hannon kept the boat as neat as a pin, and he must’ve spent as much time cramming it just so with fishing gear as he did out on the water. Everything had its place, and he was finicky to the nth degree regarding the ship-shape nature of his craft. She was called Bonnie Mary after Billy’s mother, Mary Hannon, and I loved it when the call would come—sometimes by phone, and sometimes on the walkie-talkie—telling me to be ready at five o’clock the next morning to “go out after the big ones.”

We’d fish the coastline from Cohasset to Marshfield and back. John Hannon knew every inlet and rock outcropping where bass or blues might be hiding. This was before the Coast Guard had forced anglers to carry radios and way before the development of the Global Positioning System (GPS). So, when you fished the New England coast, you were virtually out there on your own.

I don’t know why it is that the simplest food always tastes so good when you eat it out on the water. Mrs. Hannon would prepare tuna sandwiches on white bread and ham and cheese loaded with heavy mustard on what we called “booky” rolls, bought at the local delicatessen in Scituate Harbor. These rolls were hard as a rock, but for some reason they tasted great with ham and cheese and a lot of mustard.

Mr. Hannon would let me bring my transistor radio, and on many days, we’d fish while listening to afternoon Red Sox baseball games.

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