But those were the golden days, Frank thinks, and suddenly he feels sad. Nostalgia, isn’t that what they call it? he thinks as he shakes himself from his reverie and walks toward the bait shack, remembering summer on a cold, wet winter day.
We thought those summers would never end.
Never thought we’d ever feel the cold in our bones.
Two minutes after he opens, the fishermen start coming in.
Frank knows most of them-they’re his OBP regulars-especially on a weekday, when the weekend fishermen have to go to work. So on a Tuesday morning, he gets his retired guys, the sixty-five-and-ups, who have nothing better to do with their time than to stand on the dock in the cold and wet and try to catch a fish. Then, more and more over the years, you have your Asians-mostly Vietnamese, along with some Chinese and Malaysians-middle-aged guys for whom thisis work. This is how they put food on the table, and they always still seem amazed that they can do this pretty much for free, buy a fishing license and some bait and throw a line into the ocean and feed their families from the bounty of the sea.
But hell, Frank thinks, isn’t this what immigrants have always done here? He’s read articles about how the Chinese had a fleet of fishing junks down here way back in the 1850s, until the immigration laws shut them down. And then my own grandfather and the rest of the Italian immigrants started the tuna fleet, and dived for abalone. And now the Asians are doing it again, feeding their families from the sea.
So you got the retirees, and the Asians, and then you got the young blue-collar white guys, mostly utility workers coming off night shifts, who consider the pier their ancestral turf and resent the Asian “newcomers” for taking “their spots.” About half these guys don’t fish with poles at all, but with crossbows.
They’re not fishermen, Frank thinks; they’re hunters, waiting until they see a flash in the water and shooting one of their bolts, which are attached to long cords so they can pull the fish up. And every once in a while they shoot a little too close to a surfer coming in by the pier, and there have been a few fights over this, so there’s some tension between the surfers and the crossbow guys.
Frank doesn’t like tension on his pier.
Fishing and surfing and the water should be about fun, not tension. It’s a big ocean, boys, and there’s plenty for everybody.
That’s Frank’s philosophy, and he shares it freely.
Everyone loves Frank the Bait Guy.
The regulars love him because he always knows what fish are running and what they’re hitting on, and he’ll never sell you bait that he knows won’t work. The casual fishermen love him for the same reason, and because, if you bring your kid on a Saturday, you know that Frank is going to hook him up right, and find him a spot where he’s most likely to catch something, even if he has to nudge a regular aside for a little while to get it done. The tourists love Frank because he always has a smile, and a funny saying, and a compliment for the women that’s a little flirtatious but never a come-on.
That’s Frank the Bait Guy, who decorates his shack every Christmas like it’s Rockefeller Center, who dresses up at Halloween and gives out candy to anyone who comes by, who holds an annual Children’s Fishing Contest and gives prizes to every kid who enters.
The locals love him because he sponsors a Little League team, pays for uniforms for a local kids’ soccer team, even though he hates soccer and never attends a game, buys an ad in the program for every high school drama production, and paid for the basketball hoops at the local park.
This morning, he gets the bait for his early customers, and then there’s the usual lull, so he can relax and watch the surfers who are already out on the Dawn Patrol. These are the young, hard chargers, getting in a session before they have to go to work. A few years ago, that would have been me, he thinks with a slight pang of jealousy. Then he laughs at himself. A few years? Get real. These kids with their short-boards and their cutback maneuvers. Christ, even if you could do one of those, you’d probably just throw your back out and be in bed for a week. You’re twenty years out from being able to compete with those kids-you’d just get in their way, and you know it.
So he sits and does his crossword puzzle, another gift from Herbie, who had turned him on to the puzzles. Herbie Goldstein has been on his mind a lot these days, particularly this morning.
Maybe it’s the storm, he thinks. Storms bring up memories like they drop driftwood on the beach. Things you think are lost forever, and then, suddenly, there they are-faded, worn, but back again.
So he sits and works the puzzles, thinks about Herbie, and waits for the Gentlemen’s Hour.
The Gentlemen’s Hour is an institution on every California surf spot. It starts around 8:30 or 9:00, when the young guns have hustled off to their day jobs, leaving the water to guys with more flexible schedules. So the lineup consists of your doctors, your lawyers, your real estate investors, your federal worker early buyouts, some retired schoolteachers-in short, gentlemen.
It’s an older crowd, obviously, mostly with longboards and straight-ahead riding styles, more leisurely, less competitive, a lot more polite. No one’s in a particular hurry, no one drops in on anybody else’s wave, and no one worries if he doesn’t get a ride. Everyone knows that the waves will be there tomorrow and the next day and the next. Truth be known, a lot of the session consists of sitting out on the lineup, or even standing on the beach, swapping lies about gigantic waves and ferocious wipeouts, and talking stories about the good old days, which get better with each passing rendition.
Let the kids call it “the Geriatric Hour”-what do they know?
Life’s like a fat orange, Frank thinks. When you’re young, you squeeze it hard and fast, trying to get all the juice in a hurry. When you’re older, you squeeze it slowly, savoring every drop. Because, one, you don’t know how many drops you have left, and, two, the last drops are the sweetest.
He’s thinking this when a fracas breaks out across the pier.
Oh, this is going to make a good story for the Gentlemen’s Hour, Frank thinks when he gets over there and sees what’s what. This is rich-Crossbow Guy and Vietnamese Guy have caught the same fish and are about to come to blows over who caught it first, whether Crossbow Guy shot it while it was on Vietnamese Guy’s hook, or Vietnamese Guy hooked it when it was on Crossbow Guy’s arrow.
The poor fish is hanging in the air at the apex of this unlikely triangle, while each guy plays tug-of-war with their lines, and one look at it tells Frank that Vietnamese Guy is in the right because his hook is in the fish’s mouth. Frank somehow doubts that the fish got shot clean through the body with an arrow andthen decided it was hungry for a nice minnow.
But Crossbow Guy gives a hard yank and pulls the fish in.
Vietnamese Guy starts yelling at him, and a crowd gathers, and Crossbow Guy looks like he’s going to pound Vietnamese Guy into the pier, which he could easily do because he’s big, bigger even than Frank.
Frank steps through the crowd and stands between the two arguing men.
“It’s his fish,” Frank says to Crossbow Guy.
“Who the hell areyou?”
It’s an amazingly ignorant question. He’s Frank the Bait Guy, and anyone who frequents OBP knows it. Any regular would also know that Frank the Bait Guy is one of the pier’s sheriffs.
See, every water spot-beach, pier, or wave-has a few “sheriffs,” guys who, by virtue of seniority and respect, keep order and settle disputes. On the beach, it’s usually a lifeguard-a senior guy who’s a lifesaving legend. Out on the lineup, it’s one or two guys who’ve been riding that break forever.
On Ocean Beach Pier, it’s Frank.
You don’t argue with a sheriff. You can present your case, you can express your grievance, but you don’t argue with his ruling. And you sure as hell don’t ask who he is, because you should know. Not knowing who the sheriff is automatically labels you as an outsider, whose ignorance probably put you in the wrong in the first place.