The Martha’s Vineyard Times ran a Q&A with me this morning, along with a great review of the book by author and fisherman Paul Fersen.
“What Kinney uncovers in documenting this event,” he writes, “is the deep cultural underbelly of a fishing society that few people on the outside will understand. … [U]ltimately, the book does what a good book should do — it tells a great tale and like most great nonfiction, it reveals characters fiction writers would be hard-pressed to duplicate. If you fish, or love the Vineyard, or — best case — both, The Big One is well worth the time, the firewood, and the scotch.”
Check out the Fish Head blog today for a post about my favorite fishing books.
My neighbor Bill Olver came over a few weeks ago with a stack of pictures showing his dad at the Martha’s Vineyard derby in 1954 and 1955. That’s Bill Sr. in the shot above holding a nice striper. (I’m guessing he wasn’t wearing those wingtips when he caught it.)
The derby was only a decade old when these photos were taken. It started in 1946 as a way of drumming up island tourism, and with the help of a massive publicity campaign and great prizes (island land, boats, canned hams), early derbies drew fishermen from all over the U.S. and from other countries, too. Then, most guys fished for striped bass from the shore. They’d take their buggies out onto the beach and maybe stay out overnight, cooking spaghetti dinners and ham-and-egg breakfasts on their tailgates.
Bill Olver Sr., who would run a fish market in my hometown of Haddonfield, N.J., went up to the Vineyard with Elmer Marshall, who owned five hotels and a restaurant on the Jersey Shore; a friend named Ed Thompson; and a guy he met working at RCA, Ed Lick.
Ed’s son, Bob, sent me a couple of stories after seeing these old pictures of his pop. Both of them, it turns out, involve pranks at the expense of Elmer.
Bill Olver, Sr., Ed Lick, Ed Thompson on Martha’s Vineyard
“Around 1948 -50, Bill and my dad cut the body off a Model A Ford and built a beach buggy. Along about that time they began going to Martha’s Vineyard for the derby.
“There are two Vineyard stories that the guys told often.
“On one trip, when they were unpacking at the motel Elmer discovered he had forgot to pack shirts, so he borrowed one from Dad or Bill. He called his wife and requested she send six or eight shirts. When the shirts arrived Elmer was not there so my dad and Bill unleashed a plot.
“You have had to know Elmer. He was a fairly big guy who when excited his voice when to a range where only dogs can hear him. Well, the first night they went to dinner with Dad and Bill each wearing an ‘Elmer’ shirt. Elmer noticed and proclaimed, I’ll be damned, I got shirts at home exactly like the ones you guys are wearing. Coincidence was the reason Dad and Bill offered. The next night the same thing, except with different ‘Elmer’ shirts. This time, Elmer really got excited. His voice exceeded a dog’s range. Dad and Bill could not contain themselves and cut loose laughing.
“Only then did Elmer get it.
“Another night, one of the guys legitimately found a plug on the beach. When Elmer learned of the find he went off squeaking, You lucky so and so, etc, etc. and returned to casting. You have to understand, Elmer was very well off financially, but still, someone finding a plug caused him … unrest. So my Dad started throwing out a few plugs from his own plug bag.
“Of course Bill and Ed were in on the deal. My Dad grabbed his rod and as he began to walk toward the water, he exclaimed, Hey, here’s another plug! Elmer cut loose again. Awhile later, Bill walked back to the buggy and found a plug and of course let Elmer know about it. Then it was Ed’s turn. Elmer got so worked up, he quit fishing and began wandering around the beach in excitement looking for plugs.
Derbyites Elmer Marshall and Ed Thompson
“Of course, none were found and he squealed on. He wasn’t told of the plot for a few days …
“Because of my Dad’s taking the time with me, I am blessed to have experienced untold joys in the world of surf fishing and gained an unlimited number of very close friends during my many years of casting and cranking. For this I will always be grateful to my Dad.”
Great news: Bunch of Grapes bookstore is bouncing back one year after a fire destroyed its home on Main Street in Vineyard Haven. The celebrated store’s grand reopening is planned for Saturday, July 4th, and I’m happy to be kicking off its 2009 author event series at 7:30 p.m. the night before.
A couple of pieces from North Carolina, where I grew up and still have family: one appeared in today’s Winston-Salem Journal, the other in Thursday’s Greensboro News & Record. I’ll be doing a reading June 11 at the Winston-Salem Barnes & Noble, 1925 Hampton Inn Court. The show starts at 7 p.m.
If you’re on Martha’s Vineyard with little kids during the second Sunday of the annual fishing derby, set your alarm to go off before dawn and head to Oak Bluffs for a look at the next generation of addicted anglers. At 6 a.m. sharp, the youngsters swarm the steamship dock in hopes of catching a fish. At the Kids Derby, any fish will do.
It’s a scene worthy of a multimedia presentation, so here goes.
First, the video:
Fun, right? But just as the real derby has been known to prompt major disputes among hardcore competitors as they vie for prizes and fame, one year a fight actually broke out on Kids Day. As usual, Nelson Sigelman from The Martha’s Vineyard Times had the story.
Finally, here’s a little of what I wrote about the 2007 Kids Derby in The Big One:
Late one Saturday night during the derby, I climbed into Cooper Gilkes’s truck and rode with him and his brother in-law into Edgartown. They had spent all day out on a boat, and he walked into the crowded weigh station holding a 33-pound bass by its bloodied gill plate. Cooper is a legend in the island’s outdoor community, a guy who has caught his fish and made a life of passing on what he knows. I had heard story after story about the man’s sporting prowess. “He’s like God as far as stripers go,” one fisherman told me. As we approached the weighmaster, it felt like walking with a star athlete through a mass of fans onto the playing field. People seemed to take special notice when Coop arrived with a fish.
“Look at that one,” a woman said.
“Nice fish, Coop,” somebody called out from behind the rope line.
Like a ballplayer grown accustomed to fan appreciation, he didn’t acknowledge the comment. Instead, he went straight back to the truck. He was exhausted but he had more work to do. Every year in the middle of September, Coop runs the derby’s one-day fishing contest for kids. Though it takes place in the midst of the main tournament, it’s a stand-alone event. At six the next morning, a few hundred kids would show up with their parents on the steamship wharf in Oak Bluffs for two hours of fishing before the boats started to run. The kid’s day rules are simple: longest fish wins. It can be a little baitfish, like a scup, or an eel, or a sea bass, or even a bonito. Coop supplies the bait, so after we left the weigh station we went out to a pond and seined enough silversides to fill a cooler four inches deep. The next morning, the kids caught a mess of scup. Donald O’Shaughnessy Jr., eight years old, caught the winner—it measured a bit over fourteen inches—and went home with a trophy scup mounted by Janet Messineo. “He’s been fishing hard since he was four,” said his dad, Donald Sr. “He’s nuts. He’ll have a charter boat by the time he’s eighteen.” Nelson Sigelman asked the boy if he’d share his secret of success. “Never,” came the reply. Everybody laughed as the O’Shaughnessys made their way back to their car. “Okay,” father said to son, “let’s go win the other derby.”
As I thought more about those weeks I spent on the island, it struck me that the derby could never be transported to a different place. Only on the Vineyard could a fishing contest become something more than a bunch of fishermen flogging the water, another time slot on ESPN2’s weekend schedule. Its people are clinging to their island’s history and its status as a place apart, even if they can’t help but worry that their grasp is slipping. Six decades is a long time, though, and the derby has a momentum that’s not likely to be slowed anytime soon. For some people, it’s one of the few things that haven’t changed about the island. Gazette writer Mark Alan Lovewell says the tournament has grown into something akin to a historic building, like the Tabernacle in Oak Bluffs or Edgartown’s Old Whaling Church. It is an institution not to be trifled with. It connects past and present on an island where the new is relentlessly erasing the old. “I just think we’re really lucky that the fish are still in the ocean,” he says, “that the stories still get told, that the memories of what this island is about is still getting told. That makes the derby even more important.”
It’s one long Vineyard tale that stretches as far as the mind can see in both directions, from the first Wampanoag bone-hook anglers of antiquity to the kids who tried their luck on the Oak Bluffs wharf and who, in a few years, will no doubt stride into the weigh station gripping winners by the gills—that next generation of ordinary islanders mainlining the sea and taking their measure by it.
(Thanks again to the derby committee and Mike Laptew for sharing this video.)
Big One fan Lisa Doricchi of Chesapeake City, Md., invited me down to talk to her book club last weekend. Among the members is Christie Chumley, who agreed to host us all on the Mosey, a 70-foot steel-hulled trawler her husband, Ken, has spent the better part of the past decade building. We had wine, fish cakes and perfect weather during the cruise down the Sassafras River.
All the derby talk had people making plans for the fall. Lisa rents a house on Vineyard with a group of friends for the tournament every year. It sounds like she may need to rent something larger than usual, or else pitch some tents out back.
(Thanks to Ken Chumley for the photo from the crow’s nest.)
