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The little boy, who has always been most gratefull for the experience to have had the chance to sit and listen to these legends, will be fifty next October 7th. You are young, I envy that beleive me but on the other hand I had the chance to experience the end of an era.
You will never know what it was like to be able to land on Monomoy and walk the wild edge of the surf casting to schools of monster bass taht once rolled in the first wave, now with the regulations and the seals that is gone. To watch your father line up with the other fisherman at the Herring Run on the canal and everyone waited until the guy at the mouth of the pipe got his herring and hooked it on, cast it out and proceeded to walk it with the tide east to the old restroom building, one after the other they followed in an orderly procession. No baskets, no trash, no tempers, when someoine hooked up the others closest would automatically reel in to give the guy fighting space and would watch and admire as he fought it.
To run the beach from Eastham to P-town uninterupted except for washouts and fish every inch possible. I am glad I was born when I was born and where I was born, actually I wish I had been born a little earlier, but with what I and a few others were able to experience comes a hidden sadness that it will never be like that again.
I sometimes feel like a survivor of a shipwreck when I am alone on the beach at night. Everyone that I started with fishing the beach except for my close friend Dave LaPorte, is gone. Most are dead and some just lost interest. I find the drive in me is still very strong and I must continue even if all by myself. It's a demon I cannot fight. It controls my existence. I know though that the spirits of men who went before me, who had the same compulsion, fought the same losing battle with that demon, walk with me each lonely night, measuring me, sizing me up for the time when I will walk with them, watching silently as others come to the edge of the sea.
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