EVERYBODY’S DANISH Fred A. Nielsen at Chipping from the Rough

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EVERYBODY’S DANISH Fred A. Nielsen

By fred | September 14, 2008

One privilege of being old, at least with me, is looking back. So many, many wonderful people have been a part of my life. One was my ‘Cousin Dave,’ like my father, he never asked for respect, never demanded respect or love – they earned it, just by the way they lived, the way they treated those around them, the way they treated us young kids! So this chapter relates a little about a young kid – me – and my adventures with my ‘Cousin Dave.’

CHAPTER (Fishing with Cousin Dave)

Dave Petersen was my father’s fourth cousin, Dad said he was and so it had to be a fact. How anyone can keep track of this fourth, fifth, and sixth cousin stuff is beyond me. Dad could. I remember once a customer of ours (in the later years when we had our import/wholesale food business) and Dad got to talking and found that they were sixth cousins. Aunt Dagney married so and so, and her kids, so and so, and on and on. Hell, I would have a tough time figuring out who a second cousin was.

In the little Danish towns such as Frederikshavn that my father came from I guess you had to know who was who, or there would have been a lot of inbreeding. I never discussed this with my Dad but I sure wish I had. Just think of how many people you would have to know about to get to a sixth cousin determination.

One of our distant cousins was “Uncle Dave”- Dave Petersen was a carpenter by trade, now a Danish carpenter was a bit more than his American counterpart. He could certainly build you a house, but if he put his mind to it he could make the fine furniture that would go inside the house. It was the way they were trained in those days, learning a trade. Dave loved to fish, he loved catching them and loved eating them.

By the way, my Mom’s maiden name was ‘Petersen’ however Cousin
Dave and her were not related. The Danes and many Europeans hundreds of years ago only had one name. ‘Sen’ is the word for ’son’ in Danish and Norwegian, in Swedish the word ‘son’ is the same as the English language ‘son’. So the names developed over the centuries, especially in Northern Europe. If a distant relation, say a great, great, great, great, grandfather was named ‘Peter’ then folks may start calling his son –

Peter sen or ‘Petersen,’ or in Swedish or English ‘Peterson.’ The name started by someone’s relation being called the a son of a single named person. Like my last name is Nielsen, a son of Niel = Nielsen.

By the way, anyone with a name with a ‘sen’ or ‘son’ behind it was ‘NOT’ royality, our old Viking relations were the ones that ‘rowed’ the boat. The royality had names without the ‘son’ stuff on it. Just wanted to give those of you not familiar with the simplistic ways our names developed a lesson in how we got our names. Other names from centuries ago came from what a distant grandpa did – carpenter (was a carpenter built stuff) – etc.

Back to fishing! We are not talking about ‘sport’ fishing here – we are talking ‘meat’ fishing. That may be a little harsh, cause Dave certainly enjoyed fishing, the fresh air, the excitement, the boat ride but to come home without fish for a fish dinner or two, or three, was a big no, no. If it happened all was very quiet on the ride home. It was like a football coach that had just lost a game.

Now Marie, Dave’s wife, loved to eat fish but she was no company on a fishing trip. “Get on one of those smelly old charter fishing boats, not on your life,” she would say.

Now my father loved to fish, but on the week-ends Dad loved to watch soccer football more, there was a league of teams each nationality had one, the Danes, the Mexicans, the English, the Germans, the French, the Swede’s, the Jews, the Italians and so forth. There was nothing Dad loved more than to watch soccer a game he excelled in as a kid. Cousin Dave knew my Dad would not be available to fish with him – but – he knew that there was one guy he could always count on to go with him,— me!

“Freddie, do you want to go fishing tomorrow?” Did he even have to ask? There is nothing in those days I would rather do but go fishing with Cousin Dave. I really don’t know what the correct title as to the blood relationship Dave was to me, he was Dad’s fourth cousin, all I know that my first cousins, and the whole family, always called him, Cousin Dave. Even the ladies, my Mom and my cousin’s Mothers & Dads, he was Cousin Dave to the whole family.

Dave was probably not quite six feet tall, weighted about 160 or 170 pounds, and had a slight stoop from bending over working with wood as a carpenter. He always had pipe in his mouth. The tobacco he smoked had a sort of sweet smelling odor, I never remember anyone else smoking it before or since. Dave would get a sly look, and could tell some stories that were whoppers. He loved kids, never had any of his own as he married very late in life, to me and my Cousin’s our “Uncle” Dave was number-one.

He would usually pick me up at about five A. M. – it would still be dark. One thing that it is not difficult to do is get out of bed for a fishing trip, the excitement of going out to catch that ‘big’ one had a young teenage buck like me up and at em. Mom would usually get up and have a breakfast ready. She would hand me a couple of lunch bags as we walked out the door, one for me, and one for Cousin Dave.

Dave had a bunch of fishing poles and reels, in his old wood tackle box. We would get to San Pedro about 6 A.M. as the charter boats would leave at 6:30. Usually they were full with about twenty or twenty-five people. Most of them “old salts” like Dave looking to bring back a mess of fish. This was all business. No light tackle, light weight line, none of that sporting stuff for the fish. With upwards of twenty-five lines in the water at one time, if you started trying to play the fish, the fish would circle around and tangle up a bunch of lines and there would be hell to pay.

When upset those old salts could use words that are not in any polite dictionary, English or Danish for that matter. You had to horse in the fish fast, so Dave had heavy-duty line on all the reels. When you got a bite, reel as fast as you can, and pull like hell, get the fish out of the water fast and in the sack. Quick put on another live anchovy and try and find a spot at the rail while the school of fish was still around the boat.

When I first went out with Dave I guess I was a little small. Oh, the men were nice about it but they knew I would be slow getting the fish out of the water and that standing next to me could mean and ugly tangle so they would give me a wide berth. I remember everyone standing next to me, which included cousin Dave – would reel up fast if I had a fish. They figured a few minutes down time from fishing was a hell of a lot better than a half hour trying to untangle a big mess of line and hooks.

Sometimes we would go out for just a half-day, just a few miles out from the harbor in San Pedro to a famous fishing area called the horseshoe kelp. When I first started fishing with Dave, I would usually go deeper to get the kelp bass, but sometimes a yellowtail would hit the bait on the way down, and Dave would have to take over. Some would be twenty to thirty pounds, a little too much of a battle even for a young kid. When Dave had the fish whipped and tired, the deck hand would come over and gaff the big fish. If I had caught it Dave would always hand the pole to me after the fish was gaffed and coming over the side. “It’s your fish Freddie, I just helped you out a little,” he would say.

As I got older Dave had me go with him for another kind of fishing that really was not so much fun. And that is deep, deep, fishing. I guess they were mostly a kind of rock bass, but all kind of stuff would come off the bottom. The thing is you did not use a pole. The charter boat would give you a bucket of heavy duty line, actually a sort of rope. Tied to the bottom of the line was a four or five pound long window sash weight. The line usually had at least four hooks on it. No live bait here, if you put a live anchovy on it would die because of the pressure going down several hundred feet. So you used hunks of cut bait.

The boat would drift over the area, and then the yell would be “all lines up” and the boat would circle around for another drift of about twenty minutes. Putting down two hundred feet of heavy line with a heavy weight is work, but pulling the line up was even more work. And when you got the line up to the boat most of the time you would have at least two to four fish on, and you did not even know it. You would have been so deep that you could hardly even tell when they bit the hook.

Every fish would be dead, eyes bulging out, the tongue or insides sticking out of their mouths. What happened is that the pressure-change from way down on the ocean floor to coming up topside was too much for the fish. Ugly fishing, real meat fishing, the kind of fishing I have never done since. The only reason I went was that Dad and everyone in the family loved the fish. Those deep bottom guys are especially tasty. Your shoulders would be aching by the time you were through, but the praise from Dad was enough to make the trip worth it.

Now Dave would love to put on a show. I had seen him do it many, many times – a ball to watch. Dave would be looking over the anchovy tank on the charter boat looking for good lively bait and some other rich looking dud would be there too. Dave would say, “I will give you ten bucks if you swallow one of these guys alive.” In those distant days when a gallon of gas was maybe .30 cents a gallon, ten bucks was a lot of money.

The guy would usually say “Are you crazy, I’ll bet you wouldn’t do it.”

“Well,” Dave would say “I might take a crack at it for twenty bucks, if I swallow him alive I win, if I heave him back up you win.” Sometimes he could get a pool of a lot more than twenty bucks going. In those days the charter fee was only about ten bucks apiece for our fishing trip so if he won the ‘con’ he would pay for the whole trip.

If Cousin Dave found a ‘sucker’ Dave would always let him go first. The other guy never made it. Usually he would chicken out at the last minute – maybe he would get it half way down his throat and then gag, and cough it up. Then he would say to Dave “Let’s see you do it!” Dave would grab the bait net, dip it in the bait tank, carefully select one of the smaller anchovies, put his head all the way back and drop it down his throat.

I never, ever saw him miss. He would then smack his lips like he never had anything so good. He would pocket his money and all the other guys would shake their heads. Cousin Dave kept this con up for years. The charter captains and the deck hands would be grinning from ear to ear when Dave would start his con on a guy because they had all seen him do it time and time again with never a flaw.

Sometime, but not often, some guy that had been on a charter with us before would yell out “Don’t take that bet I’ve seen him do it before, you’ll lose your money.” Dave would laugh and give the guy a look, like “Can’t you keep your mouth shut.”

Funny I must have inherited at least one thing from my Danish ancestors and that was the fact that I never remember being seasick. Some of the times the winds would come up and the seas would have some heavy duty chop, never seemed to happen.

One Danish American lady that did not inherit this from her ancestors was my Mom.

The only time she ever went fishing with me was once for some reason or other she decided to go with me to Santa Monica. They had a barge in the middle of the bay and when the barracuda came into the Bay fishing it could be a lot of fun. The small boat that brought people from the pier to the barge ran only every half-hour. She was O. K. on the short run out to the barge, but that was it. Ten minutes later she was already a very sick lady. That is the shortest fishing trip I was ever on. As soon as she got on the pier she was fine, Mom just could not handle the rocking. Dad used to kid her by saying “Helga, wouldn’t it be nice to take an ocean cruse as a vacation?” Dad then got the ‘drop dead’ look.

Dave Pedersen lived a long life, he was almost ninety years old when he finally passed away to that big fishing-hole in the sky. I used to visit him at the nursing home, and we would talk about the fishing trips, happy memories. Cousin Dave was a guy that made a lot of us ‘cousins’ happy. Dave is gone now. Dave where ever you are you are still number one in our books, you always had time for the younger generation, always took time to explain, and listen to us, kids were never a bore for you. You will never be forgotten.