There is a lot of time for thinking along that ride as you watch the trees go by. I always stop at the Peg House across from Standish Hickey State Park. I know the owners because my boys and I vacationed here every year. Bob and Lilly are the owners and they affectionately call each other “Grandma” and “Grandpa”. Bob is one of those gabby types, an ex-truck driver who is friendly and engaging and Lilly is the same with a cynical edge, like maybe she saw a lot in her time. Sometime several years after I first met her she changed her hairdo from a modified bee-hive to shaved and purple streaks. I took notice of the 75 year old grandma in her tank top and saggy chest with her new doo. They have two daughters about the same age as my boys and the girls worked in the store when they were teens. They are all grown now and Bob and Lilly were going to sell the place and hit the road in their RV, last I talked to them during the summer before. I pulled into the empty lot and walked into the quiet store. I noticed that the ‘for sale’ sign was missing out front and I wasn’t surprised, figuring Bob and Lilly were retired and gone. An unfamiliar face behind the counter greeted me without enthusiasm.

   “Well it looks like Bob sold out after all and hit the road”, I say.

   The man pauses and regards me before replying, “Did you know him well”?

    That was an odd response I thought, to which I answered, “No, but I saw him every year when my boys and I camped across the road. He told me he was going to sell the store and retire” I answered, uncertain where this was going.

   “Bob’s dead. He had the place sold and he and Lilly were packed up. He went down to Leggett to the trailer where his daughter lived. They quarreled and she shot him dead. The sale fell through and I’m just running the place”, the man explained in flat tones.

   I asked why she shot him and he said no one knew but that was a lie. “No one knew” was the explanation reserved for outsiders. It could have been for a lot of reasons. For one thing, drugs and a bad marriage had troubled the daughter in the past. This stretch of the county had become lousy with methamphetamine and dope growers, transforming a timeless and tranquil shrine into hard, cold currency and human wreckage. I feared she suffered at the hands of this. I was stunned nonetheless and I got out of there to continue up the road, sickened at how this beautiful Eel river canyon had become uninhabitable without fear and how children can go bad.

    The news about Bob set me off balance. I looked around as I walked out of the tiny little store where I and my boys had sat every summer, eating ice cream after the swimming hole, watching the tourists come and go from our resting spot on the porch, listening to Bob and Lilly crack wise behind the swinging screen door. There would be no revisiting that porch again with the kids grown and Bob and Lilly gone.

    It was bad enough that I had a long ride to visit a friend in the hospital. A long ride to think about every thing we ever did; now this tawdry footnote. It left me unsettled and feeling insecure. I felt that life can hold grim surprises that just leap out at you. My car trip was response to one of those grim surprises, prompting me to embark on to this long drive through the redwoods: I had received a phone call from the wife of a friend, Nancy, telling me that her husband Griff had had a stroke. That was just about the last phone message I ever expected to get; never figuring Griff would be laid low. Now here I was, on my way up to Eureka to see him.

    I had left San Francisco under blue skies. As I traveled north, I watched the high thin ridge of an approaching weather system appear, followed by the advance of a lower strata of clouds and ultimately a pervasive dark layer settled in around me. By Ferndale I turned on the windshield wipers and by Eureka, the rain was a caution as it became heavy, then torrential. I couldn’t read the street signs; the gutters overflowed and ran into the streets. I was looking for St. Joseph’s Hospital and was getting lost in the soggy suburb of Eureka. I finally found the low squat building, dismal, in need of paint and isolated. The parking lot had a capacity of 300 and I was one of three cars there that afternoon.

    I sat there in the truck a bit after I turned the key off. I listened to the rain pound on the roof and I steeled myself for I knew not what as I pictured childhood ghosts walking the hospital halls in their loose white smocks and trousers, smiling congenially but all in on a terrible secret that only hospital ghosts know. I summoned a measure of courage to get out of the truck and enter this building and this situation, realizing just then the measure of my fear.  I am 55 and seen a lot of death and injury. My father and grandmother died before I was twelve within the mysterious walls of a hospital where children were, oddly, told nothing to spare their feelings. My best friend suffocated at twenty-three and at the harbor patrol, I pulled dead people out of the water every summer and was grateful for the overtime.

   But this was different.

    I left the truck and dashed into the glass door of the hospital and into an empty reception room. I didn’t know where I was, only where I was going. It was dingy and dark; half the overhead lights were off as I walked down a long corridor toward room 122A.

   Griff  Savage, a West Coast icon. A hardy soul, laid low. A fishermen who could walk down to his boat in the marina, hit the starter button and go non-stop to Alaska without a thought. A man who other men told stories about. He built his own steel boat when he was 26, named it the Outlaw and paid for it in the first year. He took that same little boat 2600 miles to Midway Island for tuna, went bust and turned around and ran 2600 miles back and laughed about it after the pain subsided. Tough, resolute, committed, that was Griff.  But he had another aspect of his personality; he was the funniest, most original human being in the world. He had an honesty that cut like a knife- both ways. The joke could be on you or him and it was always born from personal experience. He had a lot of stories that made you laugh. To anticipate seeing him in a hospital bed now was just about the last thing I ever imagined I would look upon.

   But there he was and he wasn’t alone. His wife Nancy was cuddled up in bed with him, they seemed to be napping and I felt like I was interrupting. I was two steps in and about to turn around when Nancy greeted me by my nickname as she rolled out of the hospital bed. Griff smiled up in a bit of wonderment.

  “DE, come on in. Say hi to the Captain.” she turned to her groggy husband and said, “Honey, DE’s here to see you”

   Griff rolled over and had a half smile on his face, “DE”, he said with an expression of smiling uncertainty.

   I could tell that Griff was altered, it was obvious. He struggled to form words and figure stuff out. Nancy had the room decorated with boat pictures and family pictures and I immediately knew why. Memory loss comes with stroke and head trauma and she wanted him to remember who he was. Just one look and I also knew that if things didn’t greatly improve, at 56 years of age his fishing days were over.

  Those five little words, ‘his fishing days are over’, were often spoken without the gravity they deserved and always were accompanied by either fear or relief, depending. In this case I don’t think it was relief.

  I tried to say the right thing but couldn’t find it; tried to make jokes and they fell flat; shifted to Nancy and ended up hugging, the only thing that felt right all day so far. After an awkward half an hour, I left for the evening to return the next day. I know what Griff would have said if we had been in opposite places;

  “That son-of-bitch is fucked up”, he would say.

   I felt empty walking down that pale green corridor back to the truck. I think I had hoped for more but the reality was stark. It was still pouring rain outside and I paused before making the dash out into the parking lot. Memories came upon me as I stared blank-faced into the plate glass doors. There were so many highlights in our acquaintance, so many laughs. The time he knocked over the band tip jar in the Knife and Gun Club, the time he wrapped up the grinder wheel in the breakaway straps on the leads twice in a row, the time my boat rolled so far over he offered condiments to replace those on the wall as he watched with glee, never missing a chance to wisecrack. And now I knew; I really loved this guy with all his honesty, faults and humor. We had been through a lot together.

   I remember one time- in fact, I’ll never forget it.

                                                 *               *                *

   It was flat calm. It was so calm that the ocean was alike a mirror. The sky was a wavy image on its surface and not a breath of wind all day. The detail in the image of the sky overhead was so striking that it occasionally posed a distraction as I tried to figure the landscape from the picture represented overhead. I was trolling for salmon and the whole gang was in the area except one guy, Pablo. He was never in the area because he didn’t give a shit about being in the right spot where the most fish were. I just couldn’t understand that. Not much later in my life it made perfect sense, but not today.

   We were inside the North Islands and the gang was all there. The five or six boats in our group were doing all right, scratching 50-60 fish a day. The fish came one at a time and you had to work for them, pulling 50 fathoms of wire each haul-back, but it was pleasant weather and the company was good. I was usually anchored up by seven PM and barbecuing at the Point. Good duty by comparison.

    There were no cell phones back then and that lent itself to surprises. We got our fish reports in code over the single-side band radio three times a day at 10am, 2pm and 6PM. I always had my code-sheet on the pilothouse table, ready to decipher, even though I had it memorized by now.

“Fifty-nine, fifty-nine. Lima Green, Charlie 20, kinda like, uh, Delta 30. Over.” The radio blasted with its first report. It was Uncle Fred, senior member and high liner of the group. He was right next to me all day, I already knew what he had and I didn’t even look at the code sheet. I was thinking about dinner and futzing in the galley. The reports continued, all from guys in my area, I listened with only casual interest as one after another guy checked in for the evening with more or less the same as I had and from exactly the same location. Then Pablo came on.

“Let’s see, Thirty-seven, thirty-seven” I could tell he was reading, “ Dogwood 10. Foxtrot green, Gulf 40?” He ended it there after a slow and halting delivery of his report.

   I dropped my spatula and ran to the microphone. Pablo had a thousand pounds at Fish Rocks, 180 miles away. Pablo never has a thousand pounds by himself at Fish Rocks, that’s what it sounded like  and this was worthy news.

  “Thirty seven, thirty seven? Twenty-five, twenty. Lima Green Charlie twenty. You got a Gulf report again?” I called Pablo and gave him my day-score and asked him who was up there.

  “Gulf 40”, he came right back like he had read my mind and done his code-sheet homework. He confirmed he was all by himself at the Rocks.

   Our local VHF band came alive with chatter and we were all  talking about Pablo at Fish Rocks.

  “Pablo’s got the day. All by himself, too” Griff growled in his normal speaking voice, which sounded somewhere between un-oiled machinery in a Capitol gear box and tractor treads.

  “Maybe we should go give him a hand”, Ronnie chimed right in. He was always ready to pick-up and run. The grass was always greener for Ron somewhere else.

  “They gotta be thick up there; Pablo doesn’t work it to hard. Probably only runs the gear two or three times day, it must be pretty fishy up there.” Billy observed.

   After the initial discussions, silence descended over the radio but you could hear the wheels turning in the heads of all the skippers in the area and it sounded like this:  “The weather is flat, we could be anchored up at 2AM in Fish Rocks and we could wake up in the morning with hope, hmmmmm?” I weighed the very same question in my own mind and within the half hour, the dominos fell one by one and we were all running for Pablo at Fish Rocks.

  “Ole Pablo’s gonna have a little company when he wakes up” Ronnie cracked dryly.

  “Gonna gang-bang his ass good.” Griff said in his Ghetto accent which was pretty authentic. Then, switching back to his West Coast White Boy shtick he finished, “We’ll center punch that spot” he added with a mischievous chuckle.

  “What’s the weather doing”, I asked. I hadn’t thought about it for days on end it was so calm. It was calm and humid. It was May and any fresh breeze that may occur out of the Northwest was not a problem anyway. There was lots of protection, perfect Northwest cover in any number of anchorages up there. My question went unanswered and I turned the chicken over on the barbecue.

  Back behind us, Uncle Fred was still dragging the gear and catching a few fish. He spoke.

   “I’ll be up behind you. I’ll grind it out here ‘til dark and then come up” He reported. This was classic Uncle Fred strategy; the gear was in the water while the sun was up, it wasn’t complicated.

   It was still flat as we rolled into the anchorage around 2AM. The journey has been the easiest passage up that stretch ever, especially in May when the northwest wind machine turns on in April and runs until August. But not this time. As we approached the anchorage, I counted 4 mast lights in the anchorage. It looked like Mitch, Jackie. and the Lump had come down from somewhere up above.  I set the alarm for 6 AM. The night air was sweet and pleasant with the smell of redwood trees and lupens.  I lingered on deck a bit, gazing at the bands, clusters and points of stars in the black night sky and watching the rest of the gang come into the anchorage. I was excited about being here and in the morning I woke up a half hour before the alarm. I didn’t have far to travel in the morning before I set the fishing gear because Pablo had been fishing in 45 fathoms right outside the anchorage. It was all set up about as good as it gets.

  In the morning, it started right in; the fish were biting hard. The first line on the set was pumping all the way down and I just kept clipping on snaps and leaders until 6 lines were out and they were all banging away with what was a gear-load. The springs were rattling and I had to stop Brad twice from running the gear too soon. After we cleared the bowlines we brought the dog lines into the boat for the first and the last time before the stack-out. Brad was like a machine over on his side, gaffing and gilling as he brought the lines up and down, taking the silvery salmon aboard and giving them a conk on the head. We were in high gear from the ‘git-go. There was never question of whether we had fish on the gear, it was a mechanical rotation of taking the fish off the lines by bringing them in and letting them out, gilling and cleaning fish simultaneously and catch-as-catch-can. I had my head down and elbows up with work as the decks ran red out the scuppers. It was all I could do to fish, tack and back tack. It was primal. It had cast its spell on everyone; we were all off to a flying start and it was frenzied. I broke a sweat at 7AM and it stayed that way until the gear was on the boat.

   The tack reports from the gang became unnecessary after the first pass; we were all busy and the radio went silent. We were too busy to notice that a breeze had come with daylight and it was from the south, and, it was increasing. I kept bumping the throttle higher with each successive back tack and nobody said a word about it. The radio was silent until about 10 AM when Griff came on.

  “We just kept tacking down. Jethro and I had to get caught up back there. We’re down here by Black Pt now and we still get about 25 or 30 each time through the gear.” His raspy voice reported in a straight ahead fashion with pauses; I could tell he was looking out the windows at the trolling springs as he talked. His voice would fade a bit as his head turned from the microphone he was speaking into. He continued.

  “But it’s windy, Christ. Got the throttle at 1350 going into it,” this was being spoken by a guy who’d been to Midway and back in a little tin boat on a chance, a guy who’d seen more salt water go by the windows than Ahab, and if he told you it was windy, you probably didn’t want to be there. He was waiting for somebody to come back and report, that was protocol; a report followed by the report of another. But everybody was buried with work and couldn’t catch up with the cleaning. I didn’t even have time to take a leak. From the deck speaker, Griff continued with a slight edge of humor in his voice:

  “Well, when ONE of you guys gets the time up there? I mean when it’s like CONVENIENT? When you can climb over the top of that pile of fish in the stern and make it to the cabin door? Can you pleeeease let me know if they’re still biting on that upper end? And one thing more,” he added. In the background, I could hear the RPM’s of the engine on the Chief Joseph struggle against the weather. It was fucking rough and I was thinking about it now that he had brought it up. Sure seemed like it came on us quick and the more I thought about it, the more I knew we were screwed out in the open like we were. There was everywhere to hide from northwest weather but nowhere to hide in a southerly for miles and miles. We just had to take our licks. Griff finished with his request for the group:

  “One more thing. I want you all to do something for me. Can you all do this for me?” he paused for effect and continued,   “I want you all to have a REEEEEEEEAL NICE DAY, ya’ hear?”. It was that mischievous chuckle again and Griff was imitating a car sale commercial that had been on the AM radio lately. Sarcasm dripped from the deck speaker and I knew he was laughing on the other end of this conversation because of the ironic juxtaposition of success and hardship. He knew we saw the best part of this day hours ago and that we had a chore waiting for us after the gear was aboard. That chore would soon enough be upon us.

    I turned from the deck speaker and looked toward the water that was whipping itself into a frothy mess all around me. I started laughing out loud, “Have a real nice day, right! Right!” And with that I went back to cleaning fish as Brad flopped a few recent arrivals over to my side for cleaning.

  “Where’s Pablo? I haven’t seen him all morning.” Ronnie informed over the deck speaker, adding, “Griff, we got bites on the gear and we’re damn near up to Saunders Reef. And I can tell you this; the weather doesn’t get any better the farther up you get. I bet old Pablo’s off Mendocino by now and gonna make late-coffee at the Tradewinds.”

   I was the first to bail out of the spot. It was at 2PM off Fish Rocks and the wind was out of the south at forty knots. I had a few hundred fish anyway, enough. Nobody was counting. The rest of the gang was still fishing but all were on a long tack up the hill and going with the weather. Except Uncle Fred of course. He was religiously tacking back and forth on the same plot lines as the ones established at 6AM. If they were biting and the sun was up, you couldn’t get him outta this spot with dynamite . I was headed for Ft Ross which was hours away and against the weather. It was a real slow-go and every once in a while I was alarmed at the heavy sound of a ‘whump’ against the windows as a brace of green water came over the bow and stopped against the plate glass in front of my nose. My plan to anchor at Ft Ross was deteriorating like the weather around me because it would be rough in there and dangerous against the rocks of the little cove. I lost heart and just kept going for Bodega. The wind backed off a bit and it started raining very hard. I got to Bodega a little before midnight; it had been a ten hour boat ride that should have taken 6 hours. The rest of the gang settled in behind Pt Arena at the end of the day.

   It was still raining the next morning when I woke up, a torrential downpour actually; it was out of the ordinary. The Bodega guys were all in and up at the coffee shop smoking like chimneys and gossiping. I walked in and Stan turned to me.

  “Coast Guard’s towing Uncle Fred in” These Bodega guys always get the drop on you when you’re half awake.

  “What? Where is he? I asked like the sleepy dummy that I was.

  “Weren’t you with him up at the Rocks” Stan asked and continued. “He anchored at Ft Ross buoy last night. Rained so hard that it ran down the exhaust stack and filled a cylinder with water. Hydraulic-ed it when he turned it over in the morning”.

  “No shit. Was he by himself? I asked, getting up to speed slowly.

  “Yeah. You did the right thing” he reassured, “It smoked up there last night, the Lump’s home, he called”.

  “I took a beating all the way down last night is what I did, it was a ten hour ride” I replied and then asked “Where is Uncle Fred now?”

  “Coast Guards got him at the buoy out front.” Stan replied “My uncle’s going out to get the tow and bring him in to the dock.”

   Junior Ames, Stan’s uncle, was taking the Sea Farmer out to get him. The Coast Guard wanted to wait for a weather break to finish their towing chore into the close quarters of the harbor. This would never do for veteran salts and there would be no waiting to get out of a storm because of boat handling uncertainty. Junior would finish the job for the Coasties and tow the Barbara Marie himself.  We all piled out of the coffee shop to watch the show. It’s no small feat to bring two large side-tied boats into a small space in the wind. We all knew Junior could do it, but we just wanted to see how well it was done. It was done flawlessly and anticlimax dispersed us.

  That afternoon the wind switched and it cleared. I unloaded and the rest of the gang ran down from Pt Arena. I should have gone with them instead of beating my way to Bodega. They told me that they anchored at Alder Creek in the lee of the Point and slept good there. No matter, all’s well that end’s well. Uncle Fred had a mechanic on the boat the next day and we all were gearing up for another trip and laughing about the circumstances, good fortune and bad. We went out in the evening to anchor in the outer harbor and rest up, ready to start another trip. In the morning, Billy found a spot right outside Bodega and before long, the gang was assembled for another day of good fishing.

  Griff said, “Jesus, these fish are everywhere, everywhere we go. They’re wearing me down but I’ll show-‘em I’ll just outlast ‘em.” He chuckled, just like always.

    He almost made good on that. But, he didn’t and he had no way of knowing that he wouldn’t.

                                                         *         *          *

   In the hospital reception room, I stood there staring out at the rain and the empty parking lot, just remembering. We had some times; we fished, cooked, laughed, drank, danced and told stories and never thought twice about it. As I stood there that feeling began to return, that feeling I had when I heard the sound of the lumber truck on the drive up, echoing against the Eel canyon walls, lonesome and distant. All the guys in that old gang are retired or gone now, and I know that somewhere they are thinking about times they had when they stood on deck and watched the lines, listening to their friends on the deck speaker. I asked Ronnie the other day, retired twenty years ago and living in Arizona, if he ever thinks on those times.

  “Just about every single day, you bet”, was his answer.

  Those were the best times and the best people I’ll ever know and I didn’t even have a clue at the time. I took it all for granted, just like I did with my sitting on the porch with the kids; just like Bob took for granted wisecracking with the tourists. I say to all those men and women with a deck under their feet then and now, wherever they are;

 “Ya’ll have a reeeeal nice day”.

                          * * *