Wake up, little Susie, wake up!
Wake up, little Susie, wake up!
We’ve both been sound asleep
Wake up little Susie and weep
The movie’s over, it’s four o’clock
And we’re in trouble deep
Everly Brothers, 1958
1952-1968, San Antonio, Texas
“Wake up, little Susie, wake up!” Dad whispered in my ear, doing his best Everly Brothers’ imitation at 4 am on a Saturday morning. He got me out of my bed, made sure I had my slippers on and then coaxed me down the hall and outside to the station wagon which was packed up and ready to go. Mom followed behind with my pillow, blanket, and current favorite doll or stuffed animal. Tucked in the back seat of the car – this was before seat belts were available in passenger cars – I drifted back to sleep while they did one final check of the brake lights on the boat trailer. Off we went toward Charlie’s Camp near Seadrift, Texas on the Gulf coast. We were going fishing!
My father, Fred, was a handsome, 5’ 10”, slim young man, with wavy dark hair, brown eyes, and full lips. He had a ready, charming smile, and genuine, engaging laughter that showed in his eyes. Though he thickened around the middle in later life, he remained good-looking, with a nearly full head of white hair when he died at age 89. He was on the extrovert side of the scale of personalities.
My dad got his love for fishing from his dad, and once he was out of the Navy, when he and mom were first married, he spent many weekends with his buddies fishing on the Texas coast. Perhaps too many weekends for his young wife’s liking because once I was born, it appears there was a certain laying down of the law. But my mom was smart. Instead of asking Dad to give up fishing, she persuaded him that it could be fun to do as a family. She never learned to swim, which made being out on the boat nerve wracking for her when a storm came up, but she liked the organizational and logistical challenge of camping. They agreed it was a good compromise and I loved it: the boating, the fishing, the hot chocolate made from evaporated milk, the camping. Everything.
Once we had completed a rudimentary set-up of our camping gear at Charlie’s place, we were anxious to get on the water.
“C’mon Susie, get your hat and long sleeve shirt there on the cot and let’s go! The sun’s already over the horizon,” Dad said. “Best fishing is before 10 am! Hon, you got the lunch goodies?”
“Sardines, Ritz crackers, Snickers candy bars, a box of Doodads, a jug of iced tea,” Mom said. “Did I forget anything?”
“Sounds great, let’s move! I already loaded up the cooler with the bait and have in in the boat.” We would always camp close enough to the dock to be able to haul our gear in two trips on foot to take the bags of food and two ice-filled coolers – one for our food and one for the live bait which would also hold the fish we caught. We made our way to the dock where Sweet Sue, the boat Dad hand-built, was tied up and the motor purring.
“Throw me the front ropes Daddy!” I said, as he untied from the mooring and pushed us off. I braced myself against the steering console and held onto the ropes as we gathered speed, pretending I was driving a team of horses flying across the water. The wind made my eyes water, so everything was a blur, but the feeling was worth it. Ten or fifteen minutes later, the excitement of zooming across the crests of the waves settled and the early morning rising combined with the rhythmic chop of the waves sent my eyelids drooping so I prepared for another favorite part of our fishing trips. Handing the “reins” over to Mom, I crawled into the space under the covered bow of the boat and found the perfect spot to nestle among the seat cushions and life jackets, feeling – as much as hearing – the drone of the Evinrude motor until I fell hard into sleep. Half an hour later I typically awakened to the murmuring of my parents’ conversation, the gentle sound of waves as they lapped against the boat, or to the whine of Dad’s fishing line as he cast it off the stern. But not this day. I felt the boat lurch and woke to hear Dad’s excited voice.
“Son of a gun!” he said and pulled back on the fishing pole before loosening the drag a tad so the fish wouldn’t break the line.
“Susie, get up and get the net! And you better get out here or all the good fishing will be gone!” he said. I crawled out from under the bow, blinked at the full morning sun and wiped drool from my face. Time to fish!
I found the net and followed Dad’s lead as he moved the fish side to side in the water, next to the boat, until he could smoothly lift it out of the water and I could get the net under the thrashing body, and safely into the boat.
“Look at that! Twenty inches at least, maybe four pounds? And, YES, check out the black spot on the tail – what does that mean, Susie?” he asked.
“It’s a redfish!” I said, proud of the fish knowledge I had learned from Dad. Red drum were some of the best eating ever, and we loved to catch them.
“I’ll get this guy on ice. Go ahead and bait your hook and get out there!” he said. I learned how to bait the hook with live shrimp early on and by the time I was 8 or 9 years old it was common for me to catch nearly as many fish as my dad. We mostly caught sea trout, but sometimes red drum or a saltwater catfish we called a gafftop (the official name, I now know, is Gafftopsail catfish), and occasionally hooked into flounder, which we loved, or skip jacks or mullet which we cut up and used as bait.
The fishing-camping trips were just one of many things we did as a family. I do not remember ever being left with a babysitter. Mostly we did things together, or I stayed at Grandma’s or with cousins or neighborhood friends the few times a year when my parents went to a party. They played cards – pinochle with Aunt Louise and Uncle Jimmy and later bridge with neighbors June and Art and with Uncle Don and Aunt Kathy – while I played with cousins or friends. These friends and family gatherings often started or ended with everybody outside, the adults sitting in lawn chairs, drinking coffee or iced tea. My parents rarely drank beer or had a cocktail unless they went out to a party. But all the adults smoked cigarettes and told stories and talked while we kids ran around outside till exhausted and sweaty. Then we would lay on quilts and stare up at the stars looking for the Big Dipper or something that moved.
“There! See, it’s moving! Watch! It’s moving!” someone yelled.
“Where, where? Oh, yeah, I see it! Mom, Dad, look! It’s got to be Sputnik!” I said and we all looked for the tiny speck in the sky and agreed it was speeding along like Sputnik, which thrilled us, while making our parents turn their conversation to politics.
“Can you believe the Russians got their satellite into space before we did? I didn’t even know they were working on it, did you? And what are our people doing?” they chattered and spoke of our high stake’s competition with the Soviet Union and their space program, not to mention their expanding nuclear capabilities and Khrushchev’s saber-rattling.
If my childhood was marred by one thing, it was the drumbeat of news about the Cold War against Russian aggression and communist China. People started buying bomb shelters and we had both fire drills and duck-and-cover atomic bomb drills at school. At one point, during the Cuban missile crisis, we were issued identification necklaces, commonly known as “dog tags,” and were told to wear them at all times, “just in case.” Just in case, what? That’s what kept me awake at night.
