We were on the northern coast of Cuba at Santa Lucia beach, just north of Camaguey where we lived. It was in 1954 that my Dad befriended an old man of the sea.
"He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream ... [He] was thin and gaunt with deep wrinkles in the back if his neck. The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his checks... his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of the scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert."
"Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.”
Ernest Hemingway, “The Old Man and the Sea,” Scribner’s Sons, 1952, pp.6-7
His brown face, arms, and hands were grizzled, dry as parchment from years exposed to Cuba’s tropical sun. His calloused fingers bore the scars of years from fishing lines cutting through them.
The old man invited our family to fish with him. His ancient fishing boat had an older motor and a mast. There was no guard rail to prevent is from falling over board. So me and my brother David wrapped our arms around the mast. The old man sat in the well aft and controlled the tiller. My parents near him on the deck.
The one cylinder motor coughed into a slow and regular rhythm “chugga chugga” as the skiff moved over the waves off the shore. The ocean spread out endlessly with the endless, the blue skies and fluffy clouds over us – and the merciless sun beating down on us. Mother insisted that David and I wear light jackets to protect us from sunburn.
The boat sailed as fast as it could at 4-5 knots per hour, when we arrived at a small cayo (key). It wasn’t much more than sand bar with a small palm tree on it. The old man anchored the boat and we dropped into the shallow water. The water was so clear, that you couldn’t see it, but you know it was there because my swimming trunks got wet. We walked about on the white, sandy bottom, when I saw a large starfish. I picked it up, and admired it, then put it back. All kinds of shells were about, except that they didn’t stay still. There were creatures in them, not like the shells that wash up on the shore.
But the journey wasn’t over. The old man had to earn his keep. We got back into the boat, and we moved beyond the shallows into the deep of the Florida Strait. With his arm around the tiller, he baited his lines with minnows as bait on hooks, tied to the fishing line about two feet apart. He had no rod to guide the fishing line. He guided the lines through his calloused hands as the filament slid through his fingers, the callouses as tough as leather gloves.
The swells grew to about four and five feet, level with the deck, as the boat rolled along the waves. The sail was furled catching the wind and pushing us along, aiding the ancient, chugging motor. David and I gripped the mast tighter and tighter, as mother reminded us to hold tight. The old methodically went about his craft as he had done for decades since his youth, pulling up the line to unhook fish and throwing them into a bucket.
Then we saw them – fins!! Bobbing up and disappearing into the surf, and breaking again, moving along, beside the boat. I was terrified because I couldn’t tell whether they were dolphins or sharks! The old man kept silent. Later we found out the dolphins were welcoming us, as they did with fishing boats, hoping to catch some scraps from the fishermen. Then, the main show. The flying fish joined the menagerie, as they skipped above the waves.
The fish bucket full, and the sun at our backs in the late afternoon, the fisherman turned his boat towards shore. And unforgettable adventure for all for this young boy and the sea. Unlike Earnest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea,” this old man of the sea had a catch to sell.
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