In my adult life, Halloween has meant different things at different times. For the last 7 years, it has meant taking my daughter trick-or-treating with her friends. I like to think I’m the cool dad, and because of my lifelong dedication to sleep-deprivation, they can never outlast me; in fact I have seen tears more than once, because I pushed it too far. I take pride in being the guy that will take a gaggle of giggling girls out for Halloween and make sure they get everything they want out of it. I want them to think back and remember these times fondly, and perhaps be inspired to take their own kids an extra block or two, because I did that for them.
The old saying states: ‘everything in moderation’ but I don’t see how that can apply to enjoying life. And whenever I think of that, I travel back in time to one particular Halloween eve, I believe the year was 2006. It was a dismal, wet and cold night. Rain poured down and was forecast to changeover to snow at some point. I looked at my old fishing partner, Dave Parrillo, and silently urged him to get out of the truck. It’s funny, he was probably close the age I am now and I was 26.
We had a long walk ahead and it would be through a driving rain, but at least the northeast winds would be at our backs. It wasn’t long after we arrived at the sandy inlet that the rain transitioned to an icy slush that slapped our faces and raincoats in the wind. There was a moment where it seemed like we might turn back, but I drew the line in the slushy sand by hooking an eel. In my headlamp, I saw Dave’s smirking face as he uttered, “What the [heck] is wrong with us!?” and hooked an eel on as well.
We stood in the surf, with the inlet current streaming around our legs and drifted eels into the black water in front of us. The ‘snow’ was the type that lands as an icy lump and then immediately melts into frigid water that drips into your collar and soaks your shirt. We were already cold before we started, but there’s this weird machismo thing about fishing in crappy conditions, no one wants to be the first person to break, so you just don’t break!
Drift after drift, we caught nothing. And I remember getting out of the water for a few minutes to try and warm my body, but I mostly just wanted a break. In that time, I heard Dave call out, “I’m on!” It was a strange moment, because I had flinched and he caught the fish, it easily could have been me that hooked up. The fish took the eel a long distance from shore and the fight was long. When he finally landed the fish, it looked huge in the halo of my headlamp. I thought it was much bigger than it actually was, but 38 pounds is nothing to sneeze at, especially after a soul-drowning mile walk and leaning into wind-driven, saturated snow for an hour.
This lit a fire in me. And much to my partner’s dismay, there would be no chance of dislodging my feet from that sandbar until the tide was dead. For hours I cast and drifted my eels into that inlet current. And in spite of the fact that I caught four respectable fish, 20 to 25 pounds, to my compadre’s one, I’d have given all of them up for his 38. About an hour after his fish, he found a place to sit on the beach where he could duck the wind. I’ll never know what was going through his mind, he either thought I was crazy or was just sitting there annoyed. Or maybe he was marveling at my determination. I was so sure that there would be another big one. Looking back, I realize that this was a significant night in my life. A time when I pushed it, all for the hope of adrenalin, without regard for my own comfort (or anyone else’s). There would be many more in the years to come, but that one really stands out and I remember it fondly.
Going the extra mile sometimes feels impossible. Or sometimes it just feels like too much work for, what may seem like, a low possibility of reward. But one thing I know, whether it’s trick-or-treating until someone cries, or fishing in the snot until someone succumbs to hypothermia… those times become hallowed memories, retold again and again, and never forgotten.
