Men's Lives

by Peter Matthiessen

  “Pete only fished with me five years,” Milt said, “but after he left here I really missed him. Took my boy Mickey after that, and Benny Havens, good fishermen, too, but I never run across anyone like Pete. That fella really loved to fish; you tell him you’re sailing at 3 A.M., he’s there at 2. I never had to wait for him, not even once. No, sir, I don’t know how anyone could ever get mad at Pete.” Milt’s voice was quiet, and his eyes had softened; he glanced at me quickly, saw that I saw, then looked away. Impatient with his own feelings, he admitted gruffly, “Guess I miss him still.

  “I tried to keep my boy there from goin on the water, keep him from making the same mistake I did—it’s just a hell of a hard life, you know that? For a long time I never took him with me. But soon’s Mickey come back from the Korean War, he took it up, and he ain’t never looked back.

  “Seems to me I spent most of my life out around Gardiners, can’t stay away from it. Used to take all these young fellas out there and teach ’em. Used to spend the night out there, make lean-tos, and go back fishin before daylight. I know that island better’n any Gardiner, I’ll tell you that, and I feel kind of protective about that place. Always let ’em know when I see campfires of people that come in there off of boats, because a fire out there would destroy all them old woods, destroy everything. Not long ago, I seen a fire there and I went over and warned the people: They got no fire equipment here, I said, so if that fire gets away, it’ll burn this island flat. Well, damn if the lady I was speakin to wasn’t a Gardiner herself, turned out she owned the island! And she was so pleased by my attitude, and the care I took, that since then I can’t do no wrong out there.”

  I asked Milt if you could still tong surf clams west of Three Mile Harbor breakwater, and he shook his head. “Them clams is gone; gone from the channel, too. Don’t know what become of ’em. But they’ll be back. Everything comes back.”

  When I knew Milt, he lived on Meeting House Lane in Amagansett. Since then, he had moved away to Accabonac, and later to Olympic Heights at Three Mile Harbor, where he found a small house with a big fisherman’s yard out in the back. “Don’t need that land, but my boy Mickey will, way land is goin. See the way this place has changed, do ya?” Milt jerked his chin at the littered shores of Montauk Lake, which in the fifties had been mostly moorland. “Already closed the south end to clammin with all the people and pollution; gettin like that everywhere. The fishermen can’t afford to live here in East Hampton Town no more, and the fish neither; won’t be nothin left here but developers!”

  In the late nineteenth century, Milt said, the baymen had organized a delegation to Riverhead to protest the appropriation of the oyster bottoms by private corporations. Ignored, they resorted to their own measures, plying the company warden with liquor, then raiding the oyster beds at night; the oyster-poaching enterprise became so well organized that a special truck came regularly from New York to pick up deliveries for the market. (Eventually the markets colluded with the oyster companies and refused to accept these moonlight shipments. Since then, the few wild oysters harvested by baymen are sold to the companies for planting.)

  Resourceful men such as the oyster poachers took to rum-running with flair and dedication, and some of them later found ways to evade size limits and other regulations that the sportsmen were sponsoring in the state legislatures. From the beginning they had felt beleaguered by wealthy outsiders—not only sportsmen but bureaucrats, developers, city people buying up the land—and they felt obliged to flout the law for their own survival. In the early fifties, as the sportsmen’s campaign for a bass bill got under way, a formal baymen’s association was discussed, but it got nowhere; while a few baymen understood what was at stake, most were unwilling to cooperate for the common good. Year after year it was left to people like Ted Lester to defend their livelihood while the rest of the men went on about their business.

  But as the bass increased and the threat of a bass bill diminished, interest in a baymen’s organization diminished, too. Not until the late sixties was there real concern about fisheries conservation. Ironically, the first species that needed help was the faithful hard clam, the only important marine resource that had never been known to suffer a drastic decline. Hard clams, though never a leading fishery on the East End, gave most apprentice fishermen their start, and were always out there on the flats in hard times and in winter.

  By the late sixties the oysters had all but disappeared from Accabonac, Montauk Lake, and Three Mile Harbor, where they had been common after World War II. (“Too much salinity,” Milt believes. “Oysters need brackish water for good spawnin. Water table was lowered by all this development, and dredgin the channels brought in too much salt water, that’s my opinion.”) As for Accabonac’s clams, they had been reduced to an estimated one tenth of their former numbers. Development of the sand spit called Cape Gardiner—now Gerard Park—had closed the northern channel of Accabonac, cutting down tidal circulation and the flow of tide-borne nutrients from the spartina bogs; the stagnant shallows, once an important marine nursery and reservoir of shellfish, eels, diamondback terrapin, and other life, were invaded by an alga called enteromorpha. Fed by farm fertilizers and accumulating sewage, the algae formed a thick mat over the bottom. Decomposing, this hairy mat bred swarms of bacteria that used up too much of the scarce oxygen, suffocating not only quahogs but also steamer clams, horseshoe crabs, sea cucumbers, and winkles, as well as the young of such valuable species as flounder and blowfish.

  Milt and I could remember how, back in the fifties, blowfish had been so abundant that the haul seine sometimes came ashore like a downed dirigible. The panicked fish filled themselves with air and sand, packing the bag tight with white squeaky bellies and chafing the twine with their abrasive skin, and the crew had to attack the bag with ice-picks, to deflate it enough to winch the haul ashore. The puffer had been one of the first trash fish to find a market, and when they showed up in sufficient numbers, we would set up long tables on the beach for “skunning off” the froggish green-eyed creatures; the delicious meat in one shrimplike piece on the extracted backbone had become popular as chicken-of-the-sea. In the sixties the blowfish swarm was a plague to pin-hookers, taking every bait. Then, in the early seventies, it disappeared throughout its range, from Massachusetts south to the Carolinas. The kingfish had all but vanished, too, and both sea bass and porgies were way down. As for the weakfish, it had disappeared entirely after ’52, despite the huge numbers of small fish seen that year; when it reappeared again, in 1974, the first weakfish caught were very big ones. Where had they come from? More than any fish cycle in recent decades, the curious history of the weakfish persuaded the baymen that the ways of fish were still a mystery, not only to fishermen but to biologists as well.

  In the 1950s, when Bill Lester had been “clam king” here on Montauk Lake, the decline of the hard clam had already begun, and in 1957 Milt Miller, William Havens, and Francis and Billy Lester met in Billy Lester’s basement to discuss what would develop two years later as the East Hampton Baymen’s Association. “Billy Lester was conservation-minded, Francis, too—most people ain’t—and William Havens was always a good, conscientious person, didn’t waste nothin, threw back small scallops. Remember how Old Bill, and Ted, too, used to take their garbage down to the beach, dump it out into the slews, get the tourists hollerin? Anyways, we wanted a few sincere people to help educate the baymen, and we ended up educatin the whole town. Wouldn’t be any wetlands left here in the harbors if it wasn’t for the association, and that’s a fact. But most of the baymen never helped. Them fellas seemed to think it rained clams every time it rained, they’d just cull out the small clams, dump ’em on their driveway for gravel. There was always a-plenty in the old days, so the older generation didn’t care, and some of them younger ones still think that way, they just don’t give a damn: cull out small steamers, white perch, and such, throw ’em away, instead of puttin ’em back where they belong.” Milt Miller sighed. “If you want any future as a fisher
man, you got to take care of things, that’s all.”

  The sixties had been good years, though few baymen would admit it. Traditionally, times had been hard, and they had learned to be close-mouthed, careful with money. Many talked poor as a matter of habit, knowing that one-third of their income must be put aside for maintenance and gear, that their costs were rising steadily, that the town would sacrifice their interests whenever they interfered with the resort economy. They were also convinced that the fish stocks were being dangerously depleted by boats from other states and from abroad—“Fishermen get all stirred up when anyone tries to take somethin’ away from them,” Milt says—that no matter how high fish prices rose, there would be no future in fishing unless they organized to defend their interests. Enthusiastically supporting the new association, they elected a popular part-time fisherman named Howard Miller as first president, with Milt vice-president; a few years later Milt succeeded to the presidency. A membership of well over one hundred included an encouraging number of townspeople who had realized that, in many ways, an end to its fishing industry would be a great loss to the town.

  The Baymen’s Association fought the pollution and destruction by fill, bulkheads, and marinas of the precious wetlands all around the bays. It also promoted the planting of seed clams and denounced the sportsmen’s efforts to reserve for themselves the striped bass, which had been more numerous in recent decades than at any other time in the past century. In 1976 some association members set up a co-op in Jenny Lester’s former fish shop, providing gear at wholesale cost and guaranteeing five more cents a pound than the Fulton Market (which was giving the fishermen “a rookin,” said co-op sponsor John Collins. “They know you gotta get rid of the stuff, and that’s it.”) “I’m not gonna get much out of it,” Francis Lester said, “but maybe my son will, and my grandson.”

  But the co-op, despite the sincere efforts of many baymen,1 collapsed from debt a few years later due to bad management, unauthorized payments and appropriations, and other abuses, including a tendency among certain members to undercut it by continuing to buy gear from their customary sources, selling fish to their own customers, and refusing to help in crucial co-op expenses such as the repair costs of Ted Lester’s old freezers. An ornery, opportunistic attitude is the destructive side of the fishermen’s hard-nosed independence, and most baymen recognize today that the failure of the co-op, which attracted, then lost, the strong support of many people in the town, was a self-inflicted wound that lessened their long-term chances of survival.

  “Some of ’em came out of that co-op with flyin colors,” Milt says wryly. “You don’t see them people around too much no more. But other fellas, the ones that was sincere, like Francis and his boy Jens, Benny Havens and them, they lost their shirt. Fisherman ain’t cut out to run a business. What the up-streeters never realized was that a lot of baymen, myself included, never believed in that co-op and never joined, and we never approved of the way that it was managed, neither. But to the public it was all hooked up with the Baymen’s Association, and that done us a lot of damage.” After the co-op fell apart, Milt was reelected president of the association, which recovered some of its prestige with the establishment of a volunteer dory rescue squad for beach emergencies and also a new clam-seeding program,2 still in progress today. Its close attention to environmental issues has made it a strong and respected force in the politics of the town.

  We sat in the Indian summer sun on Montauk Lake and talked a while.

  “The Lester boys was the best there was after the old whalers went,” Milt was saying. “Old Frank, he was some fisherman, that fella! Never in a rush like Bill and Ted, y’know, always lightin up that pipe, and if you was buntin up when he come along, he’d always stop and lend a hand, no matter if fish was breakin out all over the place. Never try to beat you to a set, the way his brothers done; Ted was the worst that way, but Bill was lingerin not far behind.

  “One day down Erdmann’s, fish was showin and Frank was there first, but that old Model A of his, one had the platform on back for the dory, she got stuck in that wet sand right to the axle. So we come along, and Ted backs down right alongside. He ain’t there to help his brother out, y’know, he wants the set: ‘Better try ’em, boys! Let’s go! Let’s go!’ So I said, ‘Looks like Frank’s set to me,’ and Ted is hollerin, ‘He ain’t gonna make no goddam set, bogged down like that!’ Well, I was the stroke oar, and I said, ‘Ted, if you want to set this net that bad, you’re gonna have to row it out yourself.’ I was some mad, and I wasn’t the only one. We left Ted shoutin in his truck and our crew went over and helped Frank go off and make that set. Got about two fish out of it, as I recall. But day in, day out, Frank caught some fish with that wore-out old gear of his, and when the end of the season come, he always done good as the others.

  “Another time there I come into Montauk Seafood with a pretty good load of bass from Gardiners Island, and Ted said, ‘Where’d you get them fish?’ and so I told him; he was fishin the ocean and I was fishin the bay, and I didn’t think nothin about it. But by Jesus, that evenin, when I went out there from Bonac Creek, I found Ted on my spot with some of his haul-seine crew, and when I said somethin about it, Ted let me know I never owned the bay. Well, I told him to hell with him, knowin he planned to make his set at sunset; to get those bass, you had to fish the tides. So he makes his set, don’t get a single fish, and the next mornin I come in with a thousand pounds. Old Ted had a fit: said I had told him the wrong place to go, said I had lied to him!” Milt laughed. “But most of the time, Cap’n Ted and me, we got on good.

  “Ted was a good surfman; he was quick. Some of ’em was overcautious, waitin’ for a good slatch, but Ted could see slatches where nobody else could. Cap’n Frank would take his time, make sure you got out there, and Bill was somewhere in between, but Ted would push you off into damn near anything, when others would say it wasn’t fit to go. And you had to row! If you didn’t pull when Ted hollered Pull!, you were gonna get wet! But you had to have confidence in the captain, and I did; when Ted said Go! I’d go.”

  Remembering how Ted’s quickness saved my hide, I said I missed him, and Milt Miller nodded. “A lot of people was jealous of Ted; he had too much drive. Said he didn’t whack up fair and things like that. I always trusted him; wouldn’t have fished with him if I didn’t. And even if I didn’t, I’d never have questioned him like that, I’d just go away. After you left, one of Ted’s relatives come on the crew, used to yell at him, accuse him of sellin on the side them few flounders that come in with the bass—well, even if he did, what of it? He had to clean up that damn freezer after we got done packin out and went on home, and by God, he earned them few flounder! You know the fella I’m talkin about; we won’t say his name because he’s bigger’n us. But anyway, it was embarrassin. I walked right out, couldn’t listen to it, and that’s why I finally quit Ted’s crew.”

  Milt grinned that sad-eyed, sly, and kindly grin that I remembered so well from the old days; I noticed he had lost his sight in his right eye. “Course I ain’t saying now that Ted weren’t thrifty! If that fella seen a bass loose in the net, he’d drop everything, run right down and wrassle with it in the water; you’d think that bass was the last fish in the world!” Recalling Ted’s frenzy at such moments, we burst out laughing, but already Milt was serious again. “Well, that’s the spirit he took up to Albany. Once Ted got up to talk, he’d never sit down; you’d have to knock him down. Talk to them people about makin a livin, payin off bills, and he’d talk from the heart; that’s how you get people to hear. Who wants to listen to a guy who stands up and rustles a lot of papers?” Milt shook his head. “There’s nobody like Ted around here now, nobody who’ll get up on his hind legs and holler. And without that, the bass fishin is goin to go.” Milt lifted his brown hand to the Indian summer day, and the gesture seemed to wave away all the once-bountiful waters, all of the harmonious ocean landscape, all of the slow serenity of South Fork tradition. “All of it is going to go,” Milt Miller
said.

  15.

  A Dying Fishery

  In 1978 a study by the University of Rhode Island discovered that rod-and-reel fishermen harvested 93 percent of the striped bass taken that year in the state, and that most of these fish were sold commercially. In all the Atlantic states, commercial netters take only one tenth of the striped bass landed, according to long-term Interior Department figures; in New York, the Department of Environmental Conservation (D.E.C.) estimates that as many as half the bass sold at New York City’s Fulton Fish Market during the past decade were taken on rod-and-reel—these in addition to the great numbers of fish given away or consumed at home. Yet the recreational fishermen had never offered to limit the size of their own catch. Instead they continued to attack a small, traditional livelihood that does far less damage to the fish stocks than they do themselves, and almost none when compared to the real enemy of the striped bass, which is the sickening destruction of its breeding grounds in the fouled waterways of the Atlantic coast.

  Until recently, at least, the tidal rivers of Chesapeake Bay were thought to supply nine out of ten of the striped bass that migrate up and down the Atlantic coast. Since 1970 the accumulating pollution by sewage and sewage chlorines, industrial and agricultural chemicals, and toxic metals in the bay mud have poisoned the water, depleted its oxygen, and dimmed the necessary sunlight, wiping out most of the aquatic vegetation in the food chain;1 inevitably, this pollution has destroyed the vulnerable eggs and larvae, not only of the striped bass but of six species of anadromous perches and herrings of commercial value, reducing the surviving fingerlings to a scattered remnant. In the ten years after 1969, herring catches in Virginia waters dropped from more than 30 million to one and one-half million pounds; in the same period, there was an 80 percent drop in landings of American shad in Maryland, which finally prohibited shad fishing in 1980.