DEADLIEST CATCH

If you grew up near the Hudson River (before River Road’s toxic riverfront properties were replaced by trendy malls, expensive restaurant chains, and upscale condos) or spent summers down the Jersey Shore, you probably know how to crab. Chances are, buried somewhere in your parent’s basement is a collection of rusting crab nets that haven’t seen the light of day since 1981. If you know what I’m talking about, then you know that the creator of the Discovery Channel’s “Deadliest Catch” had to have crabbed among us. He was probably the kid with the camera.

Although my remote control had scrolled by “Deadliest Catch” many times, it wasn’t until I was trapped inside by “Snow-mageddon” that I actually watched it. Luckily for me, it was a weekend marathon of re-run’s showcasing the real men of professional King Crab and Opi crabbing in Alaska. As I sat there and watched these fearless seamen brave the icy storms of the Bering Sea my thoughts travelled back to my days as a Hudson River crabber and I can’t help but marvel at the danger my fellow crabbers and I dodged.

We ancient Hudson crabbers of the last millennium may not know the experience of working on a boat while being pounded by 30 foot waves in below zero temperatures in the middle of an ice storm for six months braving squalls and tempests, but in some sense, our dangers were graver. First of all, if the Hudson was at low tide we had to walk shoeless (because we only got one pair of Converse or Pro-Keds a year and they had to last) across the marshes of toxic waste dumps to reach the decaying abandoned barges where we would cast our nets. We had to toe-dodge syringes, shards of broken beer bottles, the razor sharp pop tops of soda cans, and the decomposing flesh of rotting bodies. (Okay, so “rotting bodies” is part of the riverfront mythology, but did you ever smell the river at low tide?)

My father would come home from work to take us to the bait shop on Bigler Street in Fort Lee before depositing me, my brother, Eddie Faraday, Jimmy Younghans, Frank Moltisanti, and Don Nicoletti on some vacant riverfront property off River Road in Edgewater with nothing but our crab nets. Then he’d return to work leaving us unsupervised with nothing more than a warning—don’t get the lines crossed or tangled. There we’d join all the other kids whose father’s had dropped them off. For hours we’d boil in the sun in these days before sunscreen. We arrived at low tide, and by the time dad picked us up six hours later it was high tide, and we had to swim from the broken barge to his Rambler while carrying all the nets, and any crabs we were lucky enough to catch, above our heads. 

I remember swimming through the Hudson back to shore, my eyes blinded by the rays of the late afternoon sun trying to figure out which one out of the line-up of men, arms crossed, leaning against the uneven rows of parked Chevy’s, Falcons, Dart Swingers that lined the broken pavement of some former factory, was my father. Kids from Edgewater, Fort Lee, Cliffside Park, Fairview, North Bergen coming together for an afternoon of shared companionship. It was our very own lower East Side.

The other popular place to crab was off the side of Bunty’s dock near the base of the George Washington Bridge. That was the safe place to crab. Not only because Bunty was there to protect all us kids and teach us how to swim in the river, but while we were waiting for the crabs to bite he taught us how to bet on the horses, and heartily fed us thick slices of cheddar cheese and saltine crackers while he had his Rolling Rock Ale. No gourmet lunch ever tasted so good. The salt water, the feel of the wet twine burning the palms of your hand as you hauled the crab net into shore, and the toss of the heavy steel cage back into the River was enough to work up a sailor’s appetite.

When the flags atop Columbia Presbyterian Hospital descended at 5pm we knew it was time to head home. Little did we know, we crabsmen and women of the Hudson, that we already were home. 

JERSEY BOYS OF SUMMERS PAST

Shadows sink from the awning of the outstretched arms of the tremendous oak tree and dance at my feet as I sit in my deck chair, gin and tonic in hand, thinking and remembering. On this July afternoon, it’s those priceless summers of the ‘70’s. For you, it may be the summer of the 60’s, 50’s, 40’s, or 30’s. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that every summer of our youth called us forth to fill its empty days with possibility. In the end, we’re left with a string of bloated golden moments hemorrhaging meaning and memory.

The recognizable scent of Coppertone makes me want to do the Jersey Jig and shake the sand from my swimsuit; air perfumed by sausage and peppers summons crowds on Lower Main Street in Fort Lee feasting at the Feast of Saint Rocco. The other day I was sitting in my mother’s kitchen when the sight of her dust mop leaning against the wall conjured summer days long gone. Her threatening screams, “Did your brother take the handle of my dust mop for a stickball game?” echoed in my head.

Then the other day I was in Modell’s with my son roaming the aisles when I came upon a box with a big sign that read, “Stickball Bats.” I started to laugh thinking, “Really? They’re selling mop handles?” Then I saw the price tag and gulped. $25 for a mop handle?  Yes, $25 for a mop handle. If our moms had any foresight, they would be millionairesses now and could afford to hire someone to mop their floors.

          We never know what event can trigger memory, but for the tanned Jersey boys of summer’s past, now burdened by responsibilities they never anticipated, it’s got to be stickball. Stickball was, perhaps, the greatest of any unorganized sport. You didn’t have to try out for it, you didn’t have to wait for field time, and you didn’t have to buy any special equipment—all you needed was a mom with a mop, tape for the handle, and a pink Spaulding Hi-Bounce rubber ball from Feiler’s or County Discount. Stickball was a pick-up game that could be played pretty much anywhere.

That distinctive hollow pop of the pink rubber ball perfectly connecting with the wood of someone’s mother’s pilfered mop or broom handle; a fusion of excited voices caught midway between youth and manhood; the scraping of black converse high-tops upon the sun soaked gravel; the crack of the bat splitting the ball in half—one part dropping dead to the ground, the other hurling through the air like a spastic spaceship.

The boys from Fort Lee, Englewood Cliffs, Cliffside Park, Palisades Park, Leonia, Edgewater, Fairview, North Bergen, West New York and all towns in-between all had one thing in common (other than their paper routes)--stickball. For Jersey boys, all you needed was a wall to draw a batting box on, or a chain-link fence to string out a box, and a Spaulding. In Fort Lee there was the handball wall of Sixth Street Park, the handball wall of Holy Trinity’s field (anyone in Coytesville remember that?); the south facing red-brick wall of Madonna’s CYO Hall; Westview Park’s chain-linked fence.

In the summer of 1978, my best friend, Mary Lutz, created what was to become the great batting box mystery of Westview Park. For 32 years it’s been a cold case. Until now. In retaliation for her Frisbee interrupting Bobby Peterkin’s perfect pitch, one of the boys indiscriminately tossed it onto the roof of an elderly gentleman’s house. As cranky as he could be, he told Mary that her lousy Frisbee could rot on his shingled roof before he retrieved it for one of us hoodlums. In an act of pure vengeance, beneath the cover of night with only me by her side, Mary withdrew her pocket knife from the pocket of her Levi cut-offs and severed the ties of John Pagano’s meticulously twined batting box. The wrath of all the neighborhood boys greeted us the next day. These pious, genuflecting altar boys promised that the perpetrators of such a heinous crime would be shown no mercy. No suspects were ever charged.

So here’s to all those Jersey boys of summers past and their stickball games, especially the boys from Westview Park who waited 32 years for their case to be solved. Ah, memory…