Shad and the River

Three thousand miles and almost sixty years away from it, I dream of the lovely Connecticut River of my childhood. Every spring about this time it flooded with the spring snow melt from its source in Northern New Hampshire down through western Massachusetts to Long Island Sound. The Sound, a grand estuary of the Atlantic Ocean, runs along the south coast of Connecticut. It seemed a vast sea to me. Long Island, that stretch of land from New York City almost all the way to Cape Cod, was only faintly visible on a clear day from the mouth of the river.

My mother was fiercely adamant that I stay away from the flooded riverside but the strangely altered banks were irresistible. For a week in late March or early April the grassy lawns of the boat landing at Middle Haddam were several feet underwater, making the river twice as wide as usual.

The smooth glittering waters snaked silently downstream at eight miles an hour. When the tide turned in obedience to the earth's spin and the moon's pull, the Sound’s rising waters only pushed the river wider and higher. The hypnotically rising and sinking debris was a fascinating nightmare: a window frame, then the rooty stump of a huge tree, then the ribs and keel of a crushed boat drifted by. An tree's arm might lift itself in agony, then drown again.

When the mountains of northern New England had given up their snow to the sun, the river subsided to it's normal level, six feet up and down every twelve and a half hours.

By early May when it was calm again, the shad began their ancient run upriver to spawn . These big, fat silvery fish, related to herring, are an old, old source of protein for critters and humans, easy to catch with seine nets set near the shore.

With the dangerous flood safely past, Mom would send me down to buy shad roe from fisherman Pat Callahan at the small public landing, a muddy bank at the very bottom of Middle Haddam Village.

Red-faced from drinking Pat and his pal were not too tipsy to haul ashore his small, flat-bottomed boat-load of thrashing, desperate shad. Knee deep in fish, outboard motor blades dripping river water, Pat scaled each one with a toothed metal curry comb, holding it by the tail and stroking hard to the gills. The iridescent scales flew into the sun's low rays like diamonds.

"Sally wants a roe, huh?"

Pat pulled a fat female from the heap and slit its belly with a curved fillet knife, then caught the roe that dropped into his hand the way a midwife catches a new baby. Dark red and river-cool, the shape of beautiful lips, the slid the roe into a plastic bag. I gave him five dollars, pricey then, and headed back uphill for supper. I left a trail of sequined scales all the way home.

Shad roe is rarely available now even on the east coast. Mom wrapped the delicacy in waxed paper, not very pc these days, and pinned it with wooden toothpicks to keep the delicate outer membrane from breaking, then sautéed it in bacon fat. We'd peel off the waxed paper and break off a browned lump of firm, crunchy roe moistened with a squeeze of lemon and a bite of the crispy bacon. A very large roe would just about feed my father and me for breakfast but two roes were better for dinner.

Mom found it as disgusting as raw oysters and never failed to mention that we were eating at least a million eggs at one sitting. True, any roe is eggs and high in fat and cholesterol. The pale shad flesh is delicious but contains thousands of tiny hairlike bones. Occasionally Mom roasted a whole shad, sans roe of course, on a plank for a whole hour. This supposedly dissolves the bones but even so you will spit a few. For me, long-cooked fish is not worth the trouble.

Here I am three thousand miles and almost sixty years from that river but I still smell its mud. And long for just one more bite. With my father at the table before me.

For more on Shad, see: http://wdfw.wa.gov/outreach/fishing/shad/shad.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_shad

The River

I loved the Connecticut River. On Friday afternoons it spread out like a flat mirror until Dad hit the throttle and the old boat carved a long, white stripe of foamy wake down the middle as we pulled away from the landing at Middle Haddam. Ten fathoms deep in the channel for the barges and freighters hauling oil and other industrial materials up to Hartford, it was half a mile wide where we began, twenty-five miles inland. As it approached Long Island Sound it stretched out on either side into broad marshes where herons stalked their prey and ducks paddled safely among the reeds.

Just Dad and I headed out for the weekend with a twenty-five pound block of ice in the cooler, breakfast, lunch and supper supplies stashed in the tiny galley. A carton of Old Golds, two rough decks of damp playing cards and our bathing suits were all we needed. The sun was hot overhead but the breeze from the WaWa's speed cooled us.

WaWa, the name for all Dad’s boats, I, II, III and WaWa IV, meant ‘flying duck’ in some Indian language. We laughed at calling the old cruiser ‘flying anything’ for she had only enough speed to get me up on waterskis. Dad couldn’t afford anything fancier and would have preferred a sailboat to a stinkpot but old WaWa’s were better than nothing. Born in Hartford to a boat-loving father, he had grown up on the river himself and knew every shallow, every sandbar and snag.

Yes, the WaWa was plenty good enough for getting out of town for the weekend. Fresh breezes in our hair, no phones, no putting up or taking down storm windows or painting that side of the barn, just the bow cutting into the smooth water, the trance-inducing roar of the engine and soon, salt water at Fenwick Point just past Saybrook.

Mom rarely came along. She preferred her garden, her library books and the Sunday Times crossword puzzle.


Once in quiet water behind the Fenwick breakwater I would throw the anchor over while Dad gently backed the WaWa to set it, just the way a roping horse backs to hold tension on the rope so the cowboy can pigtie the lassoed steer.

Then we dove overboard. Might scrub the waterline with Babo. Might swim ashore, careful to avoid the beach just in front of Katherine Hepburn’s rambling, dark house. Didn’t even put the binoculars on her to preserve her privacy. Being so close to such a celebrity was enough.

As WaWa rode the calm swells that broke their white teeth on the beach, we ate sardine sandwiches and watched the masts of sail boats and tall outriggers on fishing boats come and go in the choppy channel on the business side of the long stone breakwater. I might get a nibble on my fish hook but it would only be some small fry too bony to bother with. We’d eat well tonight in Hamburg Cove. And tomorrow at the Griswold Inn in Essex.

When we were bored with Fenwick, I hauled up the wet anchor line, coiled it perfectly on the foredeck, then planted the little Danforth on top to keep the loops from flying overboard. We headed back up into the rough water under the high Baldwin bridge among the other boats coming and going, some under sail, others speeding past with a wave. We always waved back.

When we saw someone we knew Dad rang the brass ship’s bell that hung beside the wheel. The river was an exciting turnpike, a splashing, slapping water playground. Just upriver of the arched Baldwin Bridge that carried Route 1 traffic from New York on up to Boston, we squeezed between the complicated steel trestles of a low, flat railroad bridge that crossed the river.

Ships too tall to pass under it had to signal with two loud horn blasts to ask the bridgemaster to raise a section like the jaw of a giant stapler. If a train was coming, those boats—we never used the word ‘yacht’ to describe anything less than luxurious and certainly not our own little 'boat'—might have to circle for half an hour.

The WaWa sped through alongside dozens of other small craft going in both directions. The bigger boats made huge waves that fought with other wakes to create a swirling boil. I liked to lie on the highest part of the WaWa, atop the deckhouse, as we passed through the churning waves of changing tides, looking up at the bottom of the train.

Flung from side to side by the boat’s roll, I forced myself NOT to hold on. The train might fall on me. Soomeone might flush a toilet- ugh! I might flip overboard and be run over by some drunken lout in a speedboat. These things could happen. But my father never said No to any of my shenanigans.

This was another wonderful part of the river. And what would come next.