Little Stories: My First Time Fishing

A formative experience, one detail of which still speaks to me.

Little Stories, focusing on memories from my youth, is a recurring feature of Inconspicuous Consumption.

I went fishing last Friday, on a boat that launched off the southern tip of Brooklyn. I caught several fish, including the fluke shown above, but they were all too small and had to be tossed back.

The experience reminded me of the first time I went fishing, when I was eight years old. It was the fall of 1972, and my brother Henry, who was 20 years old at that time, had recently gotten engaged to his longtime girlfriend, Mimi. In a very nice inter-family gesture, Mimi’s father — a big, warm man named Bill Miller — offered to take me fishing.

Our Long Island town was situated right on the Great South Bay, so Mr. Miller took me out on his boat. He had a fancy rod and reel for himself (or at least it looked fancy to me), but since it was my first time, he gave me a simple bamboo pole with a classic red-and-white bobber. He showed me how to bait my hook and told me to watch the bobber. “When it goes down, that means there’s a fish,” he said, “so be ready!”