Outdoors with Charley Soares: Pinching pennies for a can of Woolsey green bottom paint
I never cried over spilt milk, at least not that I can recall, but I have cried for numerous other reasons and one of them was over a can of Woolsey green bottom paint.
At the time I owned the sweetest little bass boat this side of Cuttyhunk but back then it was like almost everything else in my existence. It was a nickel and dime undertaking. During the process of living from hand to mouth I had no business owning a boat but like many fishermen I found ways to skimp and save every bit of loose change because there was no such thing as disposable income for a struggling young family with an infant son. Up to that point in my career I had been surf fishing from the nearby shore and bridges until Russ and I moved our obsession from Newport to Sakonnet. That was our initiation to the frustration of surveying a topwater blitz taking place well beyond the range of our ability to cast our baits and lures.
It only became more painful whenever a boat came upon the scene and began hauling fish one after the other. We drooled while resenting their access to that fantastic action.
It was about that time I decided on an unreasonable and impractical task. My first boat was a sinker. One of the abandoned skiffs an owner had given up on and run up onto the shore. I came across a few of these derelicts in my time but this one appeared to have possibilities. I should have known better. I begged and borrowed caulking but the spaces between those planks just ate it up and asked for more. Every now and then one of the old timers who spent their time at Patty Connor’s boat livery would walk by on his way to the Bridge Diner and offered to burn it for me before I got too deep into my labor and expenses. They were, of course, quite prophetic. With a crew of helpful shoreside delinquents we pushed and pulled that barge until we were at the low tide line then waited. The tide came up so fast it found every opening in that leaky tub and before long the water was up to the seats. I should have taken the old man up on his offer to torch it.
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My next boating project was a pram (a flat bowed dingy) I saw high up on the beach while I was riding up the river to pull eel pots with one of the mentors. It looked pretty good from afar but after the long hike around the shore to Marchand’s cove, which was a location named after the owner of the café on Brightman street who was one of the first village residents to build a home on the Somerset shore.
I determined the reason she had been abandoned. The entire front section of the bow was missing and the rowing thwart, which held the boat together amidships, was detached from the starboard side. There was no way this prize was going to float so I begged the loan of the clubs tender and rowed across the river with a friend who helped me hoist the project aboard. The old timers were laughing and casting insults as I pulled up along the shore and hauled the pram way up into the bushes. I requisitioned a piece of heavy plywood from Clarkson’s boathouse and some oak 2x2’s and with used nails and some oakum I fashioned a seam which did not leak very much. I could not build or commandeer a pair of oars, so the initial mode of propulsion was thin paddles we fashioned from discarded boards.
A few weeks later Jimmy saw me struggling to patch the seat that actually held the boat together, so he sent me for coffee and when I returned he had a huge wood clamp securing the seat to the gunwale. Then I watched in admiration as he used his bit and brace to drive home four bronze screws which reclaimed the original shape of the pram.
Over the next two weeks I scrounged a pair of mismatched oars that had been leaning in a corner of the yacht club and those old blades gave my boat new life. I pulled that boat as far up on the banking as I could, and no one bothered it for weeks until it was finally repaired.
I came down to the shore one day after school and discovered my newly reconditioned ship was missing. I solicited the entire fleet of Taunton River fishermen to look for my little project boat, but it was never to be seen again.
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From that time on I bummed around in all types and sizes of small boats, and it wasn’t until I made one of my weekly visits to Captain O’Connell’s Boat Yard that I found the boat of my dreams, a little Hinckley inboard harbor launch that they had taken in trade. She was hidden way up inside and sheltered from view by all of the big cabin boats in the yard. I asked Joey O’Connell about the engine, and he cast me his signature glance and said it didn’t blow up when he started it. We made a deal. I can’t recall what I put down on it, but it wasn’t much, and I made weekly payments to his brother Danny until the boat was finally paid.
That was the boat I was working under when my foot shifted, and I kicked over the can of green Woolsey bottom paint. To someone else, spilling a can of paint would have just been an unfortunate accident, but for me it was a calamity. It had taken two weeks of skipping coffee and donuts every other day to pay for that can of bottom paint and just one bump of my shoe to knock it over. On that chilly spring afternoon, hidden from view, tears rolled down my cheeks and I was unable to climb out from under the boat to face the damage I had done. The weekend launching was now out of the question because I didn’t have another $5.95 for another can of paint.
When my wife came out to bring me a hot coffee she noticed the green paint spilled all over the sheet of cardboard I was using as a ground cloth. She evaluated the situation and calmly she stated she would look into our budget envelopes to see what we could spare. Later that afternoon a very grateful fisherman walked into J. O’Neil Supply Company and purchased another can of paint. I still have that can of paint in the marine supplies shelf of my basement.
Today a spilled can of paint would not elicit the same heartbreaking response, but it was just such instances that made us stronger and provided the courage to persevere. Looking back on an existence filled with much more joy than sorrow I realize that it was the little things we overcame that provided the strength to survive the most serious of problems.
Look up, the sun is shining, and it just might warm up before Memorial Day.
Charley Soares writes outdoors columns for The Herald News.
This article originally appeared on The Herald News: Outdoors: Pinching pennies for a can of Woolsey green bottom paint
