Time & Tide by Frank Conroy

quite often in the evenings, and teenagers get to know each other, sometimes very well indeed, and perhaps quaff an illicit beer or two before the recently imposed ten-thirty party curfew. The cops, who show up on dune buggies, are invariably polite and understanding, some of them not much older than the kids. They are able to blend in, sort of, standing around the bonfires with everybody else.
    All sorts of activities are available. At sixteen, Tim rides horseback with his pal Seth in the shallows of Polpis Harbor or on Quaise Pastures. He plays tennis in ’Sconset (and works at the club desk scheduling games for people), jogs to Altar Rock, practices stick-shifting on isolated dirt roads, or goes into town for a pizza on our old fifty-horsepower duck boat. The day is not long enough for him and his buddies. They love the island with a passion and never seem to take it for granted.

Boats
    AS WE HAD THIRD WORLD SOFTBALL, WE ALSO had the more amorphous Third World Yacht Club. The first members being myself and John Krebs, a pal who keeps his inflatable on my point since he does not have access to the water from his property. I started with an old scallop boat, and actually tried to earn some money scalloping with my friend Phil.
    We worked the harbor, and work it surely was. Winter. Socks, and then wool socks for a second layer. Rubber boots that almost reached your knees. Long underwear, jeans and wool shirts, a heavy sweater and full weather slicks. Workman’s gloves. We would putt-putt through Polpis Harbor out into Nantucket Harbor proper, cutting the engine when we reached a likely spot, which meant a smooth rock-free bottom where scallops rest in the eel grass. Chain-link dredges on iron frames are tossed overboard, the engine is started, and the ropes begin to feed out. When the dredges fall into the proper staggered pattern, a bit more power is coaxed from the outboard engine and the dredges are pulled twenty-five yards or more. The outboard is placed in neutral, and the outboard “donkey engine” (scavenged from a lawn mower) is cranked up, its drum extension turning, waiting for the rope which gets wrapped around the drum in such a way that the dredges, one by one, are pulled in.
    There is a culling board athwart the center of the boat. The most dangerous part of the operation is leaning over the side and manhandling the dredge, now full, weighing close to a hundred pounds, up onto the culling board to spill out crabs, seaweed, eel grass, gunk, and, one hopes, scallops. It is at the precise moment of pulling up the dredge that you can slip and fall overboard. With the boots, heavy clothing, and slickers, drowning is a certainty without quick help from one’s partner.
    The scallops are picked out of the mess on the culling board, the year-old ones (you can tell by the rings) thrown back into the water along with the slightly slimy vegetation. Then the dredges are thrown over and another run commences.
    I gave it up one foggy day when I was out alone. I was getting scallops, but at one point I almost lost my balance. I was simply not strong enough to pull up the dredges smoothly, and I had a sudden flash of my vulnerability. I decided then and there to give up scalloping, and in fact never attempted it again. (Phil was also ready to throw in the towel.) Instead I used the boat to go fishing when the weather was warm and the sun shone.
    During the summer I worked at night, playing jazz, or now and then doing magazine pieces in the daytime. I found myself spending more and more time fishing, not for money, but because I liked it.
    Island wisdom had it that Polpis Harbor held so few fish that working it would be a waste of time. I was absurdly pleased with myself to prove otherwise. I fished with a surf rod, standing on the culling board, and I discovered that Polaroid sunglasses allowed me to see into the water to a depth of four or five feet. Weeks of moving from spot to spot, throwing anchor and