When I was a young boy, maybe six or seven, I once asked my grandpa if he’d ever flown in an airplane. His unusual reply left me bewildered.
"I ain’t never even seen the ocean."
The answer perplexed me, but over time I started to understand. Flying in an airplane and seeing the ocean were once-in-a-lifetime events for people of his generation deep in the hills and hollows of Appalachia. Most men of his day had seen the ocean and flown in an airplane. Many did both on the beaches of Normandy. My grandpa however fought the Germans and Japanese with a pick and shovel deep under the mountains of eastern Kentucky. He mined coal for 44 years. Therefore, Grandpa never flew in a plane or saw the ocean.
I thought about Grandpa as I sat in a lounge chair on a beach in North Carolina last week. I’m not sure he would have been a fan. I’m sure he would have been impressed by its size, but that would also have been intimidating. He’d be one to have a look and head back to Kentucky as soon as he could.
I remember the first time I saw the ocean. It was 1978 in Galveston, Texas while on vacation with my family. I was almost 10-years old. Sure it was the Gulf of Mexico, but it was still salt water and counts as "the ocean". I was impressed with its size, but even more impressed with its fishing.
We camped at a coastal campground outside the Texas oil town and I bought a minnow bucket of live shrimp at the camp store. Our campsite was on a lagoon where I planted myself in a lawn chair and proceeded to catch all manner of fish I’d never seen before nor could I identify. It seemed like every cast was producing something different. It was a thrilling feeling. I’d never had this much fishing success. Eventually night fell and I fished on in the darkness as catfish started to bite. I had a stringer loaded with a good mess by 2am when my mother finally ordered me to bed.
The next morning I rushed out of the tent, which was always my assigned sleeping quarters, while the rest of the family slept in the camper. I was horrified. The stringer of fish from the night before was laying on the bank. The minnow bucket with my remaining live shrimp was 10-feet away from the water. Flies covered the now decaying fish. My remaining bait was baking up a revolting odor inside the steel bucket in the Texas summer sun. I couldn’t understand what had happened. I had left both the in the water when I went to bed, tethered to a rock by my chair–all were undisturbed including the rocks. It was how I learned about the changing tides of the sea.
One other story of my encounters with the ocean happened when I was 16 and a junior in high school. We were yet again on a family vacation camped out at Virginia Beach. I was wade fishing in the surf using a double rig with the heavy sinker on the end and two hooks further up the line cast off by a leader. It was incredible as I caught schooling fish two at a time. It was the first time I ever caught more than one fish at a time and before the Alabama rig was a household word among fishermen.
The fun ended when I stepped unknowingly into that treacherous zone where one current is going and the other is coming. I lost my balance and was knocked off my feet by the oncoming wave. It was a literal one-two punch combination by Mother Nature. I hit the sand and to brace myself dropped my rod. The last time I saw it it was being dragged out to sea and never to be seen again. It was how I learned about riptides.
I didn’t do a lot of fishing on my most recent trip to the beach. I opted to enjoy some rare time with my family, relaxed under an umbrella and watched others fish. It’s an amazing fishery, especially when you’re from the hills. However, the sea can teach some painful lessons.
