I was a late bloomer when it came to cars. Though I could have gotten my license here in South Carolina at 14, I held out until I was heading off to college when I bought my first car, brand new, for $2,300. Have you ever seen the color of canned peas? Well that was the color of my car, a Fiat 124 sedan. Maybe it was the color that made it so cheap.
Anyway, I headed off to Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, Fla., and since I am an avid fisherman, it didn’t take me long to use my artistic ambitions to “customize” my sweet ride. But before I tell you about these modifications, I loved that car! It would hug the road like a little girl hugs her doll and, on long trips, I used the rather odd cruise control, which was nothing more than when you got to whatever speed, you pulled out a knob, twisted it clockwise, and it kept you at that speed. Problem was that, if you braked, you had to quickly reach down and turn the knob counter-clockwise to disengage the cruise control or else the engine would stay revved up. I don’t think that feature would fly these days.
Back to my customizing. Every weekend I would travel 80 miles out in the Gulf of Mexico for grouper fishing on a head boat. Unlike the others on board, I had it down to a science. While they used dead squid for bait, live bait would out-fish them very time. To keep my pinfish alive, I fiberglassed the entire trunk, put a drain hole in the bottom and, around the top edge, PVC pipe with holes drilled in it and connected to a recirculation pump. Talk about a low ride, when that sucker was full of water, my rear end was inches from the pavement, and if I hit a bump, sparks would always fly.
Arriving at the boat in the wee hours before dawn, I would drain the trunk, put the live fish in coolers full of saltwater on the boat and hook up an air pump to the coolers. Then I would take my Fiat’s battery out and use that to power the pump. The only problem was that, when I got back to the dock and put the battery back in my green machine, I would have to walk around with jumper cables begging for a jump-start since the battery was dead.
Yes, I loved my Fiat. Since I was in my late teens, it wasn’t much for wooing the ladies because it always smelled like seaweed and dead fish. But the way I looked at it was, if my girl didn’t like fishing, then we were not meant to be. (Isn’t that right, Karen?)
Finally, remember last week’s column about how fish go nuts just before and after a hurricane?
The day before Irma hit, I wasn’t stuck in gridlocked traffic, no sir-ee, because I was fishing! It was unbelievable. In two hours time, I released dozens of redfish and trout, but not the flounder. They were the size of doormats! Then, the day after, I was bummed from losing our brand new dock and the death of my beloved beagle, Girlie, so I went shrimping. Mother Nature must have sensed my sorrow, because I limited out on shrimp, big shrimp, in less than an hour. All I can say is ain’t life strange?
This story was originally published September 16, 2017 6:10 PM.