Have a Real Nice Day

By William Ray

©2008

    Along Highway 101 in the Redwoods, it gets very quiet as winter approaches. That stretch of road between Leggett and Eureka can be dark and long and the only sound is that of a Jake-brake compressing the cylinders of a lumber truck, a rumbling sound that echoes along the canyon walls of the Eel River. It’s also a lonely sound if you have been there in the hot days of summer and contrast the absence of sound with the RV’s and the tourists that clog the roads. In the winter, it feels like the reality that  returns after a summer holiday begins to fade.

   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 vacation 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. 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 for being 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. It could have been for a lot of reasons. For one thing, drugs had troubled the daughter in the past and I knew this stretch of the county had become lousy with methamphetamine and dope growers. “No one knew” was explanation enough for outsiders. 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.

   It was bad enough that I was on my way to visit a friend in the hospital and I had a long ride to think about it; now this tawdry footnote. It left me unsettled and feeling insecure. Life can hold grim surprises that just leap out at you. Like the phone call I got from Nancy telling me that Griff had a stroke. I never figured Griff would be laid low--now here I was on my way up to Eureka to visit him at the hospital.

    I 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 gutter 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 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. I summoned a measure of courage to get out of the truck and enter this building, this situation that I realized just then scared me. I am 55 and have seen a lot, death included. My father died at twelve and my best friend at twenty-three, and at the harbor patrol I pulled dead people out of the water every summer.

    But this was different.

    I left the truck and dashed into the glass door of the hospital and into an empty reception room, not knowing 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 my friend Griff.

   Griff Savage, a West Coast icon. An iron man 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. He built his own steel boat when he was 26 and paid for it in the first year, then took that same little boat 2,600 miles to Midway Island for tuna. Tough, resolute, committed, that was Griff.  But he had another aspect of his personality: Griff was the funniest, most original human being in the world. He had an honesty that cut like a knife both ways, an honesty that comes only from personal experience. And he had a lot of stories that made you laugh. To see him in a hospital bed 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.

  “DE, come on in. Say hi to the Captain.” She turned to Griff 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 had his bell rung bad. 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. I also knew that at 56 years of age, Griff’s fishing days were over. After an awkward half-an-hour, I left for the evening to return the next day.

   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, so many laughs, and now I knew: I really loved this guy with all his honesty, faults, humor and deeds. 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 as a mirror. The sky was a wavy image on its surface. The detail in the image of the sky overhead was so striking that it occasionally posed a distraction. 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. I just couldn’t understand that until later in life.

   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, but it was pleasant weather and the company was good. I was usually anchored up by seven PM and barbecuing at the Point. Life was good.

    There were no cell phones back then and that made for many surprises. We got our fish reports over the single-side band radio three times a day, 10am, 2pm and 6PM. I always had my code-sheet on the pilothouse table, ready to decipher at these hours, 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 highliner 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 futzzing 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. Then Pablo came on.

   “Let’s see, Thirty-seven, thirty-seven. Dogwood 10. Foxtrot green.” 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 and this was worthy news.

   “Thirty seven, thirty seven? Twenty-five, twenty. Lima Green Charlie twenty. You got a Gulf report?” 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 told me he was all by himself at the Rocks.

   Our local VHF band came alive with chatter and we were all talking about Pablo at The 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 Twin Disc 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 a half-hour, the dominos fell one by one and we were all running for Pablo at Fish Rocks.

   “Ol'e 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 West Coast White Boy he finished: “We’ll center punch that spot!” Which was 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 occured was never a problem. There was lots of protection--perfect Northwest cove--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." This was classic Uncle Fred strategy; the gear was in the water while the sun was up; it wasn’t complicated, it was effective.

   It was still flat as we rolled into the anchorage around 2 AM. There were 4 mast lights in the anchorage and it looked like Mitch, Jackie, and the Lump, had come down from somewhere up above.  I set the alarm for 6 AM. Brad, my crew, had been sleeping for hours. The night air was so sweet and pleasant with the smell of redwood trees and land, that I lingered on deck a bit, 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. 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, yakking 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 that consisted of bringing them in and letting them out, gilling and cleaning fish. 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 and it had cast its spell on everyone; we were all off to a flying start and it was frenzied. I broke a sweat at 7 AM and it stayed that way until the gear was on the boat.

   Speaking of the gear, an additional chore was beginning to press itself upon me. I had lots of flashers out with all the same lure on every one, and not just any but a special lure; a C1CR with a B103 underneath in a double-skirted arrangement. I erroneously thought that success depended on this lure being in the water and I clung to this notion like a patient on life support. I was too stupid to put two and two together and realize that everyone was doing well with any lure in the water. Trouble was, my technical and fancy lures were getting destroyed by degrees and were down to little cuttlefish stumps of colored plastic with teeth marks; the fish were biting like piranhas, would have bit upon a bare hook, but my confidence level was slipping and I began to fret. Now I was tying up gear which was an added chore I did not need.

   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 Point 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 anybody and if he told you it was windy, you probably didn’t want to be there. Griff 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.

   “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. It came on us quick. The more I thought about it, the more I knew we were screwed; 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?  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. He was being sarcastic and 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 be getting out in one piece.

    I looked at the deck speaker and then to the water that was whipping itself into a frothy mess all around me and I started laughing out loud, “Real nice day, all of that! ” And it had a ways to go before it was over.

   I was the first to bail out of the spot. It was at 2 PM off Fish Rocks and the wind was out of the south at forty knots and 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 6 AM. You couldn’t get him outta this spot with dynamite if they were biting and the sun was up. I was headed for Fort 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 me. My plan to anchor at Fort 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 six.

   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 Fort 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 Guard's 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.”

    Uncle Fred built the Barbara Marie, a sixty-five footer, a beautiful boat. Junior Ames, Stan’s uncle, was taking the Sea Farmer (a beautiful wooden boat that he had built) out to get him. The Coast Guard wanted to wait for a weather break to finish the towing chore into the close quarters of the harbor. This would never do for veterans, 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 Point Arena where they had been hiding from the weather. I should have gone with them instead of beating my way to Bodega. They told me that they found shelter at Alder Creek in the lee of the Point. 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 of the last. 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.” He paused, “I’ll just out-last ‘em, if that’s how they’re gonna be.” He chuckled, just like always.

    He almost made good on that.

  *         *          *

    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 say to them wherever they are now:

    “Ya’ll have a reeeel nice day”.

Griff's Boat Up In Alaska