Page 12
THE FISHERMAN
December 18, 1959
Continued from Page 9
MEMORIES OF A ROWBOAT MAN
even before the scientists rained fallout upon us. Everything in the material world around us tends toward disorder; from tangled fishing gear to international relations, the pattern is the same.
There are, it is true, flashes in the cosmic pan that promise to conquer chaos — traffic lights, signs apologising for the inconvenience, and deflationary moves to freeze the financial river before it floods—but all are nothing but Pilot Fish's efforts writ large; the salt is passed but the hooks end in the bilge.
I joined Pilot Fish once in his efforts to lighten the world's burdens, and I still recall the emotion of a social outcast after 25 years.
Pilot Fish gave me a tow into Fanny Bay where the fish-buyer had a scow complete with store and ice-house. When we arrived, the place was busy as a supermarket: half the fleet was there unloading the morning catch and buying gas and groceries. The lad in charge, before he had started waiting on customers, had been dressing bluebacks on the gutting table, and it was loaded with offal. This was a situation made
to order for Pilot Fish—a fellow creature needing more hands to the pumps.
"Grab a bucket, Don," were the last words I heard clearly.
Fate had placed the buckets cunningly at our feet, lines attached. We filled our pails in unison and advanced upon the table, hurling the sea-water to the tune of a warning cry from the door of the store.
Some note in the lad's voice told me we had done something outrageous. I didn't have to wait long to find out what it was; for as the guts and water gushed over the side of the scow, a baby's wail of terror froze the marrow in my bones.
Pilot Fish and I tottered to the edge of the scow to gaze upon our handiwork, verbal brick-bats bouncing off our flaming ears. Crouched in the scuppers over the sodden mess that was her child, a young mother stared up at us with a reproach that made us squirm.
Pilot Fish, the urge to render assistance still strong in his bosom, made as though to compound our error, but Kentucky Blue swept across our bows with
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1
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a signal to run for shelter until the gale blew over. As we retreated, I heard his persuasive, Southern drawl dripping oil on the heavy emotional seas—
"That's a real p u r t y baby, ma'am, even when he's baptised so rough."
•
THERE were sheep kept on Lasqueti, and sometimes they came to grief when they attempted to copy their more agile cousins of the mountains. One toppled off a cliff and was caught upside down in some brambles a hundred feet above the sea. The plaintive bleats of distress reached the ears of Pilot Fish, and galvanised him into a rescue operation.
It looked easy from the beach, but as the old dime novelists were fond of saying, "it was fraught with hidden perils." If Pilot Fish didn't exactly get a tiger by the tail, he did get a sheep that he couldn't let go of without breaking its neck, and perhaps his own.
Nobody saw the beginning of the rescue, but most of the Squitty Cove fleet saw the hilarious end of it, called thither by the terrified airborne sheep and the lusty bawling of the cliff-dwelling Pilot Fish. As anyone could see from the position of the sheep and the shepherd, the engineering plan had been masterly except for one oversight— the length of the "haul-back" that was fast to an overhanging fir. The idea was to lower the living mutton gently to the rocky beach, but the fact of his miscalculation was forcibly impressed on Pilot Fish when he came to the end of the rope while the protesting burden was still 40 feet from safety. To haul it up again, jutting out at a precarious angle as
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he was, he found impossible. It had been easy to pay out the line, but he was without purchase to heave-away. Sheep and shepherd were truly between the devil and the deep blue sea.
Kentucky Blue contemplated the.bucolic drama with more than mixed emotions from the deck of his troller.
"Scripture tell us to 'leave the ninety an' nine an' find the lost sheep,' but I'm a ring-tailed 'coon if it said you had to be a high-rigger to do it."
Somebody wondered out loud why Pilot Fish just didn't let go; not even the owner of the sheep could deny that a valiant effort had been attempted.
"It ain't that simple," chuckled Kentucky, who had looked over the situation through field glasses. "He was goin' to use what was left of the rope to belay his self ■down where he could stand upright. No, no, the sheep's as safe as if it was in the fold; Pilot Fish can't let go no more'n the sheep can. We're lookin' at the real horns of a dilemma; it's a picture for the dictionary."
The anguished sounds from the cliff's face prompted one softhearted soul to suggest calling the SPCA.
"You got the wrong slant on this," snorted Kentucky. "It ain't the sheep that's sufferin', it's the shepherd."
"Why not shoot the sheep?" a realist put in his oar.
"That would cut the noise in half," Kentucky admitted, "but.it wouldn't solve the problem. It's a caution," he added, coiling, a length of line in preparation for his sally up the cliff, "how Pilot Fish kin whistle a breeze up into a gale quicker'n a cat kin wash itself, tail up an' tongue out. He ties trouble to hisself with wet rawhide, an' throws away the knife."
•
IWAS delegated to follow Kentucky up the steep side-hill, toting sandwiches, the "makings" and a thermos of coffee. I expressed the opinion on the way, that it would surely have been much simpler to lead the sheep down the route we were climbing.
it would." grunted Kentucky, "but Pilot Fish likes to go direct to the point and rig his own complications on the way. Be I allowed the allotted span, I ain't goin' to see a man put his elbow in his ear so easy as he kin."
When we got to the tree where the bluff fell away to the beach, Kentucky looked' down at the victim with the mirthless chuckle of a hangman. Pilot Fish, sweating but cheerful, had a ready explanation for his plight, imparting the information as though it were a secret known only to himself and the eagles.
"I run short of tackle," he croaked. "That ain't all you're short on,"
Masterly engineering plan except for one oversight.
Kentucky eased out on the tree. "With the biggest run of the season churnin' up the Gulf, you got us chasin' sheep like they had a bounty on 'em. -I declare to Gawd, you'd turn your own honeymoon into a wake!"
"I ain't married," Pilot Fish said, fending off the charge.
"Some old maid mournin' for the bait don't know the grief she missed strugglin' in your snare. Seems like I was elected by an inscrutable Providence to pick up her burden, but with no conjugal bliss to lighten my labors."
The sheep was restored to green pastures, and Pilot Fish to blue. Kentucky gave him a rough outline of the ancient legend about the sailors who were lured to destruction by sweet sounds from shore, and how they poured wax in their ears and tied themselves to the mast to resist the urgent call.
"You ain't got nothin' to contend with but the bleat of sheep," he concluded.
"Sometimes," said Pilot Fish, gazing aloft, "I get the idea them bells on the trigger sticks is a herd of heavenly sheep passin' overhead."
"Are you makin' fun of me?" Kentucky asked.
"No, I ain't. It's only that life gets kinda dull, just fishin'.".
"Not with you around, it don't! ' Kentucky spoke with conviction.
Five UE Unionists Delegates to China
United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers has accepted an invitation to send a five-member delegation to the Chinese People's Republic next. year. Members of the delegation will be one officer of the UE and four rank and file members drawn from plants.
The invitation was extended by Li Yun Chuan, vice chairman of the Chinese first Machinery Union, who visited this country last May as a fraternal guest of UE.
Jubilee Camp Has Good Year
A break-even year, despite a drop in registration, combined with greater union support and interest in its work was reported at the November 23 annual meeting of the Children's Jubilee Camp Association in Vancouver.
Camp backers are represented by 97 unions, 16 firms, nine associations, eight ladies' auxiliaries, 28 individuals, three Canadian Legions, three councils, one camp leader group, two groups with collection cans and the Scandinavian Central Committee.
The Camp's financial statement for the year showed a marked improvement, due to a saving in operating expenses.
The Hospital Employees' Union, Local 180, and the Vancouver General Hospital Unit of Local 180, donated fire equipment to the Camp which will be more than adequate for fighting any fire likely to occur.
Camp manager Lome Webber reported a good year of work by the special work committees and expressed his thanks to them for giving up weekends in this cause.
Camp officers elected for 1960 are as follows:
President, A. E. Hallock, Local 2404, Bridgemen and Pile Drivers; vice pres., J. Harlow, Div. 101, Street Railwaymen Union; corresp. sec'y, Mrs. Doris Berger; recording sec'y, Mrs. M. Lenfesty; treasurer, R. Berger; building manager, A. Brennan, Local 138, Painters & Decorators; finance chairman, Reg. Lenfesty, Local 31, Truck Drivers; publicity, Mrs. J. Hallock, Local 28, Hotel & Restaurant Workers & Union Label Trades Council; auditors, J. Mason, Local 535, Retail & Wholesale Dept. Store Union, and A. H. Duff, Local 1-217, IWA.
Executive at large: A. Brogan, Local 1, Marine Workers, H. Duff, Hospital Workers Local 180; J. Daisley, A. Hanson, Steel Workers; F. McKinnon, Local 1, Marine Workers; L. Miller, Local 1-357, IWA.
A vote of thanks was accorded the retiring executive and the past president, William Pierce of Local 1-252, IWA.
i • §
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