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FISHERMAN'S PARADISE
Original Names Changed Names
Ed Smith Ben Cathern
Robert Samuel
Mollie Nancy
Bill Tim
Eddie Nathan
Father Irvin Father Judson
Tom Lonnie
Date of first writing:
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Address:
Occupation:
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July 18, 1939
Ed Smith (Obite)
I. Front St. Extension, New Bern, N.C.
Retired seaman
James S. Beaman
Edwin Massengill
About 2,750
FISHERMAN'S PARADISE
At a point where the elsewhere busy, well -kept thorough-
fare gives up all pretense of being a city street and straggles
on to an abrupt, unpaved end, amidst rain -washed gullies,
honeysuckle vines, wild plum trees and trash dumps, stands a
little two -room shack, the home of Ben Cathern, retired seaman,
policeman, painter, and fisherman. A narrow footpath winds
through weeds and wire grass from the street to the front of the
shack --a distance of about sixty feet.
The gray frame structure is twelve by sixteen feet in size.
There are shallow -roofed porches across its entire width at
both framt and back. It is covered with tar paper of three con-
trasting shades. There are two rooms running the full length
from front to back, and each has a door opening upon the front
porch and /upon the back porch. A connecting door in a weather-
board partition is just inside the two front doors. Narrow
unscreened windows run almost the full height from floor to ceiling
at both ends of each small room.
A footpath led from the back porch through tall weeds
and driftwood to the water's edge, a distance of forty feet.
Six rowboats were tied around the two wharves constructed of
heavy planks. The rentals from these boats help in making up
Ben's livelihood. A crudely scrawled sign across a rough board
read: "Boats for hire heare--25 cent*"
Ben is deaf, the result of one of his experiences at sea.
He does a great deal of the talking.
"Sure," he began, "I live right down here right by my
goddam self and have been for ileven year. My boy, Samuel,
lives right up there in that house on the hill. That street
don't belong through there and we can close it any time we're
a mind to. He and his wife, Nancy, want me to live up there
with 'em, but nothing doing. When I get to where I have to live
with one of my children I want to peg out. I do go up there and
eat my dinners just to please 'em, but I get my breakfast and
supper myself, right down here on my own stove. Damn good cook,
too. Shucks, what would I want to stay up there for? Why,
suppose I wanted a girl to come stay with me awhile, how in
hell could I do it if I stayed up there with them? Damn right,
I have girls come to see me down here.
"Like I said, me and Samuel have bought this whole place
now. We lived here and rented a long time, but back in 1936
we had a chance to buy it and pay for it by 1940. Well,
yesterday we just tore up the last note —paid for it five
months ahead of time. God A'mighty only knows how we done
it, but we done it. We ain't neither of us ever had a ear
and we don't have no fine clothes but, goddam it, we have got
a place apiece to come in out of the weather. And that's a
helluva sight more than most of these folks down this way have
got."
Ben Shifted his position on the bench, drew long and
thoughtfully on his two -for -five stogie and was silent, as
if letting his last pronouncement sink home with his hearers.
Presently he said, "Well, to tell you some more about me:
My father was born in Germany --God knows where —and he married
my mother in this country. She was Irish, so I guess I'm what
you'd call German -Irish, a pretty damn mean combination, if
you'll believe me. My father died when I was so small I hardly
remember him. My mother lived to be a right old lady.
"At fourteen I joined the United States Navy as apprentice
seaman and served four years in square-riggers. ThereCin't any
more square-riggers in the Navy now, and there ain't any more
sailors neither. I saw lots of the world in my four years in
sail in the Navy: England, Ireland, France, Portogal, Spain,
and all the seaport South American countries and the West Coast.
No, I didn't never go to Chipy or Japan.
"The NSyy's good school4ng for a lad. You learn something
there besidea books. Books is all right in their place, but
,here ain't no book going to show you how to hold a square-rigger
into the wind or how to luff her. A man has to know things like
that in sail, or hell's to pay and Davy Jones gets some more
goddam company. Books is all right in their place. Take a lad
that wants to be a doctor, a preacher, or a lawyer; all right,
let him go to college four years, six years, eight years if he
wants to. Take a lad that manta to keep ft. store or run a engine;
all right, let him go to school through eight or ten grades:
that's more than enough learning for that kind of work. And
take a lad that wants to be a painter, or a fisherman, or a
policeman, or a fireman, and the fifth grade is plenty high for
him. What in the hell, I ask ;you, does a painter or a policeman
need to know about lalgebryl or history? What in the hell does
anybody need to know about history, for that matter? History
ain't nothing but a lot of made-up mess about something that
never happened or if it did happen it never happened like the
history books say it did.
"I sent all my children through high school. It, was a
job to do it but I dons it. And what the hell! Now Samuel's
a painter in a Shipyard; Tim's a policeman; Nathan's God knows
where, and both my living girls are married and keeping house.
6
So, I say, what's the hsll's use in taxing people to give
children a lot of education they won't ever have a damn bit of
use for, huh?
"4 folks was poor and achooling was scarce and high when
I was a lad and I didn't get no further in school than what
would be about the fourth grade now, but swear and be damned
by my pains and body if I don't know more than any one of MV
children, or than all of them slung together, for that matter,
right now. Uhat do they know about real geography? Not a damn
thing. What do they know about real arithmetic? Not a damn
thing. Couldn't any one of them figure the plaster on a room
eight by eight by eight, if he was going to be shot.
"There's just one more thing that you can give too much of
more than education —religion. I am a Catholic, but I don't
claim to be a good Catholic. If believing that hell is paved
with baby tombstones and that my wife was a whore because a
Catholic priest didn't marry us is what it takes to be a good
Catholic, then goddam being a good Catholic. And take the other
churches: they are all filled up with a lot of mess that they
teach and don't really believe and sure don't practice. The
Baptists teach their way of baptizing and there ain't a one of
them with a thimble full of sense that believes it's the only
way to be saved. And the Methodists hollow against dancing and
card playing, and by my pains and body they all dance and
play cards and go two-thirds naked at the beaches and on
the streets, from the parson's folks on down. And that's
the way it is with all of them: Presbyterians, Episcopalians,
Christians, Holy Rollers, and all of lea.
"The best thing that could happen to this country right
now is to have all the churches and their religions cleaned
up and all the laws did, away with and a whole new set made.
And they ought to be made in Washington for the whole country
and everybody alike. We don't need any state laws and
county laws, and city laws --just one book of laws for everybody,
everywhere. That's the way to get back prosperity: do away
with so many fool state and county laws and let everybody be
on a equal footing.
"Now, you take this Game and Fish Laws business* I made
a good living for a big family right out of these rivers and
creeks for years when there won't no sign of a fish law. Now,
how is it? Why, most of them what did fish has quit and gone
on the WPA, and those that are still trying ain't making a
decent living for one, much less a family. And they've fixed
it so you can't trap any more. Now, I've got a hundred or more
steel traps in that red house you see there on stilts, and not
a damn one of them can I use in this goddam county —just lying
in there going to rust. Me and Samuel used to make around
$300 every year on muskrats that we caught right out there on
8
the marsh. I tell you, God Almighty put the fish in the
water and the birds and animals in the woods for the people, and
when you make any fool laws that stops the people from ',Mug
them than God Asmighty makes them scarce. You just wait until
all this WPA and CCC and other stuff is over and all this
other government help and you'll set hell to pay sure enough
when these folks have to start back to fishing and trapping, or
starve, and, goddam it, they will starve. I wouldn't want to
be in a game and fish warden's shoes then. And tell you what's
more, if I saw some fellow slip up behind one and fill him with
buckshot I wouldn't testify against him; I wouldn't tell a damn
soul, I wouldn't.
"Well, to get back to where we was. Well, when I finished
my time in the Navy I was eighteen years old. I loafed around
the
on odd jobs for about two years and then I signed up with/Merchant
Marine -win square-i-tsiggers this time, too. I sailed around the
Horn four times diming the Ileven years I was with them and had
lots of experiences I haven't got time to tell about now.
"I was pretty* rough in those days and raised right much
hell ashore. Women was my worst trouble, and liquor next. Man,
I've chased women from bell to Hatteras. Once when I was home
here on leave I got drunk and they got me for urying to assault
a woman right on the corner downtown. Of course, they didn't
try me for rape because the woman was known to be a loose character
and she had promised me a date, and It like a drunken fool,
what
didn't know/I was doing. But they said I threw her down right
on the street corner. Now, ain't that something? Well, they
turned me loose with a fine. What they ought to have done was
beat hell out of me with a whiplash. Maybe whiskey does make
tne
a man do things he wouldn't do, but what in/hell makes him drink
whiskey?
°I was talking back yonder about being a Catholic. Well,
that sounds pretty bad for a good Catholic, don't it? But,
goddam it, I didn't say I was a good Catholic, did I?
"Once when I hadn't been to mass in a long time Father Judson
came to see me about it and asked me what the trouble was, and
I told him that I hadn't been to church, goddam it, because I
just didn't want to go; and I didn't have any other excuse.
That's just what I think about going to church: if you want to
go$ why, goddam it, go, and if you don't want to go, why just
don't go. Now, Father Judson is a good man if there ever was
one, and I didn't mean no disrespect to him; I was just honest
enough to tell him the truth.
"Once, since times have been so light with me and the city
dredge that I used to watch had been moved from that dock right
over there, Father Judson told me he would like to help me, but
I told him that with what I made on renting mv boats and what
Samuel and Tim gave me from time to time I guessed I could get
on. I've lived this long without ever getting private or
public charity, and I hope to die before I ever have to.
"Well, after 'lever" years in Merchant Marine square-riggers,
I decided I'd had enough sailing for awhile, so I quit. I was
only thirty-one then, and hale and hearty. I coma back here and
rented a house. All of my six children was born in that house*
Oh yes, I was married then. Got married three years before I
left the Merchant Marine. She stayed with her folks till I quit
the sea. She was sick a long, long time and I spent lots of
money on her for doctors and medicine, but it didn't do no good.
I didn't mind the money, for she made me a good wife and my
children a good mother. God bless her and rest her soul. I
reckon I was pretty rough during that time but I worked hard and
provided well for my family.
"It was when Samuel was about six years old that I quit
liquor. I looked at him toddling up the street to meet me coming
in one day from work, and I says right then and thereptItve
either got to give up liquor or my boy.' I meant if I kept on
drinking like I was and he grew up seeing it I couldn't do nothing
if he took up liquor, too. So I quit right then and there, and
from that day to this I haven't taken, a drop. And Samuel, he
don't know the taste of liquor and he don't smoke or chew.
U
"Yes, I reckon you'd say he was my favorite; he's lived
right close around me all of his life and he was my youngest.
He and his wife have been married three years and they haven't
had no children yet. I tell 'am that's right. They are both
young and healthy and there's plenty of time for a family after
they get their place fixed up and some laid awgy. I tell
'em that nobody ought to have children they can't provide a good
decent home for and as much schooling as they need.
"There's Lonnie coming down the path now. Wants me to talk
with him a minute, I guess. Lonnie ain't my boy, but he's just
like my boy, though. He comes to me for advice about everything,
and I keep his money for him. His real daddy is as sorry a scamp
as ever lived. Works on the street cleaning force when he ain't
too drunk, or on the roads for being drunk and fighting. Lonnie
is a good boy, though. He don't even smoke cigarettes and works
hard at anything he can get to do. He hasn't got a steady job
now, but he fishes and crabs and belongs to the National Guard
and gets $13 every three months for drilling. He's just come
back from encampment now and he got $17 extra for that. He'll
give me all of it to save for him. I tell him it ain't what he
makes but what he saves that counts, and he believes it. My Tim
has promised to get him a place on the police force when Lonnie's
a little older. He ain't but nineteen now.
12
*I don't believe I've told you I was on the police force
here once. Well, I was after I'd quit the sea, for about four
years. It didn't pay but $50 a month then, but that was about
as good in them times as Tim's $120 now.
"Well, I've been lots of places and done lots of things
in qy day and had lots of close calls, but there ain't never been
but one thing I was afraid of and that's getting old. And I am
getting old now. I ain't afraid I'll starve because qv boats
bring me in something all along, and Tim and Samuel hand me a
dollar or two now and then and I own this here place. NO, I ain't
afraid of that part of it, but I hate to get to where I just have
to set around and do nothing but think. But what's the use to
worry; it don't help keep you any younger. And this damn hot
weather will be gone by -and -V. If I can just live through the
goddam stuff I can stir around more, do a little net fishing,
and gather me some driftwood, and While I'm busy I'll forget I'm
growing old."