A Soul Makes All of Us Kin

Dear Boo and Bubble,

What strange times we are in right now. We are entering our third week of self-imposed isolation because of the confounding Coronavirus that has descended upon us. Looking out our window, all I can see is cloudless blue sky with a brilliant streak of sunlight illuminating the freshly mowed stripes on the fairway of the #4 hole. There is no visible sign of distress. In fact, one would be hard pressed to believe that there is a care in the world. But we are here in this circumstance, as are you, and it dictates that we make the best of it.

Yesterday, Captain decided to dust off a couple of old external hard drives plus a binder filled with CDs that he tucked away in his closet several years ago.  They truly proved to be a treasure trove of memories—some of our fondest—that we made while cruising on our sailboat Up Jinks. Picture after picture took us back to places we experienced all the way up the east coast from the flat sandy beaches of our home port of Charleston, SC, to the rocky shores of Maine with its average fifteen-foot tidal range; from the islands and keys of the Bahamas to the welcoming comfort of hurricane-ravaged Isla Mujeres, Mexico after a 54-hour passage across the Gulf that bears that country’s name; down the coastline of Mexico into Belize and ultimately into Guatemala…our second home for six years.

Along this most personal and unique journey, your Meemaw started her writing career. It began at first with emails to friends recording what we were seeing and doing. The audience started to grow before long and while we were in the Bahamas, Captain and I decided to upgrade our stories to a website format. We created Life’s Story which morphed into an e-magazine that we published every quarter for six years on the internet chocked full of descriptive articles that I wrote and pictures that Captain took.

When our cruising days wound down and we brought Up Jinks back to the United States, it became apparent that there was no need to continue with the website. I saved what I could from its pages for posterity but much of the content was lost. This was also true for much of the earlier writing…the journals that we initially shared at the beginning…or at least so I thought.

Today, while I was trying to make “easy yeast-free” bread (Hah!) to supplement the deteriorating single loaf that we purchased from the grocery store, he shouted from upstairs, “Beth, come here!”

I hastily washed the gooey, uncooperative dough from my fingers and gave them a cursory wipe as I trudged up the spiral staircase to our bedroom where he sat at his desk.

“Look what I found!” he exclaimed.

As I hunched over his shoulder to catch a view of his computer screen, I could see a string of documents (not pictures) displayed there. He began scrolling the cursor over them, clicking on first one then the other. With each click, one of the original journal emails opened. Together we enjoyed them as Captain read the words to me. Talk about a lost fortune…perhaps not to the material world, but certainly to us!

I asked him to copy some of the files onto a chip so that I could go through them as well, which he did. I tucked it into the pocket of my sweatpants (my Coronavirus uniform bottoms) and went back downstairs to finish wrestling with the bread dough. Once I had punched it into a rather deformed loaf and stuck it in the oven, I settled into my recliner chair with my laptop on my thighs and plugged the chip into its portal. A folder by the name of Lifesstory popped up in the content and I opened it. There were ten random documents within its sleeves, listed in alphabetical order, starting with “Can’t Fool Mother Nature” and ending with “Xcalak” (the southernmost town in the state of Quintana Roo on the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, and pronounced Eesh-ka-lak). Most of them I remembered as soon as I read them, but when I clicked on “Xcalak,” what displayed on my computer screen was a poem…one that I couldn’t recall writing, but obviously did.

As I read it, there was an immediate flashback to our time in Xcalak, which would have been towards the end of February in 2006. We had crossed over the Gulf of Mexico from the Dry Tortugas to Isla Mujeres (Isle of Women) at the end of January…and about a month after Hurricane Wilma had ravaged the entire eastern coastline of the Yucatan. We checked into Mexico at Isla Mujeres and stayed there for over two weeks before heading south, following the Mayan Reef line…transitioning from the Gulf of Mexico to the NW Caribbean Sea, the destination being Belize. Our plan was to check out of Mexico at Xcalak which should require only a brief overnight anchorage and even a more cursory visit to the port captain’s office to fill out the required forms.

My story starts here.

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We arrived at Xcalak at dusk. Getting into the anchorage was tricky, having to navigate a narrow opening in the reef which was very difficult to see because of the waves that constantly camouflaged it with their rolling motion. In the diminishing light, we barely made it thanks to the aid of a guidebook that gave Captain some points of reference on the shore that he could line up with the bow of the boat. The anchorage, if you could call it that, lay exposed to the winds from the east and the reef barely gave any relief from the waves. To boot, the bottom was hard scrabble rather than soft sand which meant the anchor had nothing of substance to sink into. My first impression of the place left me certain that one night would be aplenty and the sooner we left, the better.

The night verified my feeling as the wind blew constantly and we were awakened several times by the tooth-shattering sound of the anchor dragging over the hapless surface below. When morning finally broke, my nerves were pretty much shot and I couldn’t wait for Captain to lower the dinghy into the water in order for us to putt-putt over to shore, locate the port office and get our paperwork signed. That would allow us to leave immediately for Belize—the cayes of which we could see off in the distance…calling like sirens…from the boat on a beautiful, sunny morning.

Although we were only 50 yards from the community dock, it took us about ten minutes to get there because of the choppy waves whipped up by the wind. By the time we made it, we were starting to get wet from the spray that hit us with each angle of the dinghy against the swells.

There was…no doubt…instant comfort in standing on solid ground, but in surveying Xcalak initially, I could only equate what I saw to my stereotypical concept of life in the poorest of third world countries. Dusty dirt roads forked off in all directions from the dock with thick ropes periodically stretched across their expanse acting as rudimentary speed bumps…to stop what I couldn’t readily determine. A few small stucco buildings dotted the roadside, their once bright Caribbean colors of the region now dulled from the constant barrage of nature’s weather-driven cocktail of wind, rain and sun. Some doubled as businesses and homes with signs over the front door and clotheslines in the backyard. The only semblances of modern conveniences were a cellphone tower and the occasional DirectTV disc.

One prominent two-story structure sat at the top of a small rise in the landscape overlooking the water. Captain determined that it was the most likely prospect to house Xcalak’s port office. We trudged up the road and found his hunch to be correct. A very attractive young lady in her crisply starched uniform sat at a desk in an outer room. Her desk plate revealed a first name of Susie. Captain explained to Susie what we needed, and she told us, in impeccable English, that the port captain was away for the moment at a meeting over in Chetumal, a larger metropolitan city on the border with Belize…that he wouldn’t be back until later in the afternoon. “But, remember that we close at 4:00. And if you like, you can keep in touch by radio from your boat to see if he’s returned.”

I couldn’t hide my disappointment. The last thing I wanted to do was have to go back to the boat without the papers in hand allowing us to leave. Captain suggested that we stroll around and find what Xcalak had to offer. After a hearty sigh of skepticism, I agreed, and we struck out to explore the wasteland. We stopped at one of the stucco huts with Sylvia's written across the top of the door and a Dos Equis sign in the window and inquired about the possibility of ceña y una cerveza (lunch and a beer). The proprietor invited us inside, sat us at a small table, and presented us with two ice cold beers from a refrigerator on the back stoop. It was…and probably still is…the best beer I’ve ever had. Captain ordered lobster and I asked for quesadillas con pollo (chicken quesadillas) from the menu. The flavor and freshness of the food rivaled that of the beer.

After lunch, we went back over to the port office to find that the port captain, whose name was Jorgé (George) Morales had not yet come back from Chetumal. Susie explained that from her experience, if he wasn’t there by now, it would be tomorrow. “Perhaps you can radio me from your boat in the morning and we’ll get you signed out then.”

Wearing my resignation prominently all over my face, we retreated to the dock to find our dinghy filled halfway up with water from the waves that had slapped against it over the couple of hours we had been ashore. We had nothing with which to bail it out, so the only option was to motor slowly back out the boat, sloshing our way as we went. By the time we safely reached the stern of Up Jinks, we were soaking wet. Somehow, Captain found humor in the situation. Any inkling of it eluded me!

After another uncomfortable night, I awoke with positive anticipation that we would soon be on our way back through the reef and over to Belize where we could at least get some protection from the wind anchoring on the lee side of a caye. Captain called over the radio to confirm that Jorge was in the office. My presence was not needed for the paperwork, so I suggested that he go over in the dinghy by himself while I prepared the boat for our passage. I assisted with both lowering the dinghy into the water and getting Captain into it. The waves were now quite a bit more stringent than the day before causing him to bob up and down beside the boat while he started the motor. Once it cranked, I released the line and watched him struggle to make headway towards the dock. When he finally reached the meager distance to the destination, I went down the companionway of Up Jinks into the salon and began securing everything possible.

In what seemed like a pretty short time, I heard the approaching putt-putting of the dinghy motor. Captain yelled to me for assistance and I came up to the cockpit to see what was going on. Although he was once again soaking wet, he had remembered to take a bailer this time, so the dinghy wasn’t full of water.

“Did you get the papers signed?” I screamed over the noise of wind and wave.

“We aren’t leaving,” he answered.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Get me tied up and I’ll tell you.”

He pulled the dinghy alongside the starboard stern of Up Jinks where the its hoist was located. With the waves roiling around so, we had to lift the dinghy out of the water to keep it from sinking.

Once on the boat, Captain went below to dry off and change his clothes. I paced around the cockpit like a cat circling a mouse, waiting for him to resurface. When he did, I hit him with a barrage of questions.

“What do you mean we aren’t leaving? Couldn’t you get the papers signed? Was the port Captain there?”

“Let’s start with the last question first. Yes, Jorgé was there. The papers are ready to be signed as soon as we know the day we’re leaving. And…I mean we aren’t leaving because we can’t leave. The winds are too strong, and we can’t get through the reef cut safely until they die down.”

“Who says?” I asked with a huff.

“Jorgé. And don’t even suggest that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

“How long then?”

“From what he can tell with the brand, new weather program on his computer…looks like maybe a week before there’s a window of opportunity.”

“But we only have to go right over there! I can see it from here!” My voice began to pitch upward.

“I know. I know,” Captain responded with a tempering tone. “Just look at the bright side. What better place to spend a week than here, in Xcalak…with all it has to offer!”

I don’t remember for sure, but probably at that point, I stormed down the companionway and into our berth to pout. That was my usual modus operandi when confronted with unpleasant cruising situations and this time was no different. Little did I know what a week it would be.

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We were “stuck” in Xcalak for seven days and I learned a profound lesson there: No matter the circumstance of a place, they all have the commonality of community. Walls may be dilapidated but behind them are families filled with love for one another. The restaurant may not be posh, but the food is delicious and the camaraderie priceless. The store may only be a shack boarded up at closing, but the vendor, in his Kansas Jayhawks teeshirt, has a cold Coca-Cola and a fresh aho (garlic) to sell…the sonrisa (smile) is free.

Our time there introduced us to Jeff and Cindy Deziel, fellow cruisers trapped alongside for the duration. At the local pizza joint Coco’s, we met Tom Sowers from Missouri who invited us to dinner at his beautiful home north of town. (Last year, I serendipitously met his daughter Samantha at a book club presentation in Greenville, SC.) Looking back on it, I wouldn’t trade those days in Xcalak for anything. It’s no wonder I was inspired to write these words upon our departure.

Xcalak

I said –

            I’ll never go back

            To old Xcalak

            On the border of south Mexico.

            Where the streets have no hope

            With their speed bumps of rope

            And potholes from long, long ago.

But then –

            The wind came to say

            One more day you must stay

            And make a brand, new start.

            If you shut your eyes blind

            You will not ever find

            What lies in Xcalak’s heart.

So –

            Doubtful once more

            I dinghied ashore

            Not sure where my quest would land.

            Fate showed me the way

            To Capitan Jorge

            Who helped me understand.

            Xcalak is a place

            Stripped of its grace

            By the cruelty of the hurricane.

            But the storms cannot tear

            From the people there

            The spirit and pride they maintain.

Thus –

            My shame is that I

            With my prejudiced eye

            Overlooked the beauty within.

            Mortar may crumble

            And bridges may tumble

            But a soul makes all of us kin.

  

The Lure of the Lure - Part 2

Dear Boo and Bubble,

Here is the rest of the essay written by your great Uncle Bryant about his quest to learn of antique fishing lures. In this segment, he tells you about L.E. and Eva Lisk…two folks whose philosophy of business is so simple, it might not seem possible that they could have been successful. He conducted the interviews and composed this in 1999. I rather doubt that L.E. and Eva are still alive. After searching on the internet, I can’t find evidence that their company is still around either.

I hope you enjoy learning about them, though, because…who knows…maybe you’ll have a knack for something when you grow up and you can make it your life’s work.

How Deciding What Antique Fishing Tackle to Acquire May Lead You to Experiences You’d Never Expect:

Notes from a Novice Lure Collector (Part 2)

By

S. Bryant Kendrick

            …After a couple of days, my wait ended. I received a call from Mr. Leard Evander Lisk, who quickly informed me that his friends call him “L.E.” I also learned that L.E., now over 80 years old, was deep in the process of having his life story completed by a biographer. In spite of a busy schedule, he agreed to my request to meet him so that I could learn about the company. He graciously invited me to his home where, on two occasions, I was fortunate enough to get to know this remarkable man, meet his charming wife and business companion, Eva—who actually owns the company, as L.E. is happy to point out—and learn the fascinating story of List Lures, Inc.

            The story begins in 1954 with L.E. and Eva’s production of their first and all-time best-selling lure, the Little Skunk. This lure consists of a gold main hook (size 8) whose shank was hand-wrapped with lead to make the lure sink fast. A trailer hook (size 12) tied with fluffy white hackle completes the Little Skunk. It comes in five “fish catching” colors: white with black stripe; black with white strip; yellow with black stripe; green with yellow stripe; and red with white stripe. The lure is intended to be fished with a darting or jerking motion and can be used with cane pole, fly, spinning, and/or spin-casting rods. It is an ideal bait for bass, bream and crappie.

            While production and sale of the Little Skunk marked the “official” beginning of Lisk Lures, Inc., as a commercial venture, the actual origins of lure making in the Lisk family predates the beginning of the company. Eva herself had already been working in the lure-making business, adding hackle to the bodies of cork-based lures manufactured by the Frye Fly Company. Consequently, she was highly skilled in a process that would be important in the development of her husband’s lures.

            The beginning of the Lisk Company overlaps the demise of the Frye Fly Company in several ways. For his main source of income, L.E. drove a truck for Central Motor Lines hauling freight from Greensboro to Clifton, New Jersey. But he only made two runs a week which left him with several free days to travel with Mr. Frye as he sold his lures at various bait and tackle shops all over the eastern expanse of North Carolina. L.E. hoped to expand his role in the Frye Company, as its aging owner was getting feeble and finding the life on the road to be more and more difficult. Unfortunately, Mr. Frye’s enterprise came to a sudden end when he suffered a fatal heart attack.

            At the time of his demise, Mr. Frye owed Eva a significant sum of money for back wages. With no asset available to pay her, Mr. Frye’s daughter offered to give Eva all the current inventory of corks, feathers, and hooks left in Mr. Frye’s stock in order to settle the debt. Eva eagerly agreed to this, and she and L.E. immediately began piecing together cork lures like those she had assembled for Mr. Frye, with LE. distributing them around to Mr. Frye’s well-established customer base.

            During this period, L.E. kept up his role as truck driver with Central Motor Lines, but he strongly desired to improve his standard of living in order to better provide for his growing family. It had to be something more lucrative and intuitively he realized that the secret to reaching his goal lay within his own prodigious creativity…a talent which first emerged in his childhood.

            Out of necessity, he had learned to be an independent and inventive person. Born into a family of modest means, there was little extra money to spend on necessities, much less a child’s whims. Through his ingenuity, he learned to not only make his own entertainment but also equipment out things “at hand” that might be put to a more practical use. In a foreshadowing of much that would happen later, he began crafting fishing lures at a very young age.

            “I used to make any lure if I got any. We’d tie hair from a cow’s tail or horse or mule to a hook to make a fly. We used to use Number 8 sewing thread to fish with. And we had a hook we called a hair hook. It was real small and we’d catch a lot of bream with it. The first fish I ever caught was on a straight pin. I bent it and tied a string around the head of the pin, and when you catch them like that there is no barb in it and you have to pull ‘em right on out and they’d fall off on the bank, you know.”

            This resourceful and energetic streak has continued to play an important role in L.E.’s life, usually expressing itself through his numerous inventions, some of which were granted patents. His genius is not limited to the field of fishing lures, either. A partial list of his inventions include: a machine gun which at one time was the world’s fastest mechanism and whose prototype is currently housed in the Greensboro Historical Museum; a home water purification system; the world’s first electric trolling motor which is currently part of the collection of the Fishing Museum in Orlando, FL; and automatic automobile seat belt unbuckling device that activates after an accident; and a device to remove the picks from double-knit polyester clothes.

            In retrospect, it is easy to see that when L.E,’s inventive genius combined with Eva’s sound business skills and her experience in lure making, the prospect for an interesting venture together emerged. Buttressed by his desire for a better financial situation, the two of them embarked on a daring adventure that proved to bring more success than they could have imagined.

            As L.E. tells the story, the idea for the company’s first lure was hatched between 2 and 3 AM one morning while he was on a run to Clifton, New Jersey. He had finished his turn at the wheel and was stretched out in the sleeper section of the long-haul truck. As the rig lumbered over the New Jersey highways, L.E. mused over his destine. Soothed by the humming of the tires, his mind drifted into that twilight zone where conscious awareness and unconscious processing are known to coalesce. As the miles rolled away beneath him, ideas for lures turned over and over in his mind until, like a flash of lightning suddenly illuminating an entire landscape, the solution to his life’s problem lay before him.

            “By damn, I’ve got it!” L.E. exclaimed as he slapped the curtain separating the sleeping section from the rest of the cab.

            “What you got, Lisk?” replied his startled companion at the wheel.

            “I’m gonna get off this truck. I ain’t gonna have to drive it no more. When I get back—it won’t be long—and I’ll be off sellin’ fishing lures.”

            What lay at the source of this “eureka” was the idea for the lure that would soon become known as the “Little Skunk.”

            Upon L.E.’s return from this fateful trip, he and Eva began assembling this first lure of the new “Lisk line,” an invention which at this time had no formal name. This problem was soon solved when L.E. was invited to join Gene Garner, a friend and tackle shop owner, for a fishing trip at High Rock Lake. When L.E. arrived at the lake, Gene was in the process of tying a brand new lure to his own line and proudly opined, “This new lure of mine will out fish anything you’ve got, I betcha.”

            L.E., always amiable, but also confident in his own as yet untested and un-named creation, replied, “Well, we’ll see about that.”

            Pretty soon L.E. had a strike on his lure and pulled in a nice bass. Maintaining a polite silence, he placed his catch on the stringer and returned to casting his no-name lure. Almost immediately another fish struck and was soon added to the stringer. Again, L.E. said nothing. After he landed his third bass, and while Gene had not even had a nibble with his fancy store-bought lure, Gene turned and said, “Looks like you’re gonna skunk me with that lure of yours!”

            And that was the origin of the name of the lure which originated in the bunk of a long-haul trick in the midst of the New Jersey night, the one that would go on to become the mainstay and all time bestseller of Lisk Lures, Inc., for over 45 years. Since those early days, the Little Skunk has been joined by a group of “siblings,” among them the Baby Spin Skunk, the Big Skunk, and the Jumbo Skunk.

            The first customers for the Little Skunk were the group of proprietors who had been loyal customers of Mr. Frye. After Mr. Frye’s death and the invention of the Little Skunk, L.E. began restocking the shelves of these store owners with his own creation and eventually phased out most of Mr. Frye’s lures. The first year of business L.E. and Eva actually lost money, primarily because L.E. replaced unsold Frye lures for free with the Little Skunk, confident that his lure would soon be a “hot” item.

            Still holding down a job with Central Motor Lines, he was not able to devote his full time to the fledgling lure enterprise. But the business began to grow and when he was away on a trip, Eva would create the next batch of Little Skunks and have them ready for L.E. to sell when he returned. His early sales route took him from Greensboro east to the Scuppernong River, almost to the coast of North Carolina.

            The big break for the company came unexpectedly. Back from one of his long hauls to New Jersey, L.E. filled his car with Little Skunks in preparation for his usual run down to the Scuppernong River, but on this particular trip, he never reached his destination.

            “I had a load of them and I was going to go to the coast and sell down at the Scuppernong River, and I stopped at G.I. 1200, and the fella’s name—the buyer for G.I. 1200—his name was Mr. Mateer, and I went in and he says, they had seven stores…and he says ‘Give me nine dozen of this and nine of that”…kept on and give me such a big order there I turned around and went back home. It took us two weeks to fill that order, and I said then…I said, ‘Man, I ain’t working for Central no more.’ But I did work the notice, I’ve got my logbook in there and my last trip was to Philadelphia. And I quit and started selling lures and that was just it.”

            Mr. Mateer’s order was soon followed by gigger orders from even larger chains who wanted Lisk Lures for their customers. One of the most prominent members of their growing client base was Western Auto. With its customers, the Little Skunk quickly moved from a regional to a national market.

            Over the years, L.E. and Eva have continued to develop new types of lures and add them to the company line—among them the Pole Kat, Pole Kat Wiggleworm, Wampus Kat, Santee Special, Little Cub, Torky, and the Lisk Sputnik. The Little Skunk, Pole Kat and Wampus Kat have been the most popular and remain in production to this day.

            Before a new lure could be added to the Lisk line, ti had to go through a two-stage testing process. After Eva fashioned the prototype for the new lure, L.E. would fill up the tub in their bathroom and pull the lure through the water by had to analyze its action. After making any needed adjustments, he then took the lure to a favorite pond and fish with it. Each lure had to unmistakably prove its ability to catch fish in L.E.’s hands or it never made it back to Eva’s assembly line.

            Ideas for new lures would come from several sources. Initially, L.E. himself would pass the hours driving to restock his customers’ shelves by thinking about better ways to attract fish. Later, during their many hours of making lures together, he and Eva would discuss fresh approaches. “I would think of something, or she and I would come up with a new idea, and she’d put it together,” L.E. recounted.

            He also listened to his customers who would from time to time make a suggestion about a color change or some other minor alteration of a lure’s design. If L.E. liked the idea, he discussed the changes with Eva and if she could figure out a way to do it, they would make the modifications and test the prototype. If the lure passed the “tub test” and the “pond test,” a small number would then be produced and presented to the store owner who, beaming with pride, would become a strong advocate for this new Lisk lure. If the lure caught fish (and it usually did), other store owners in the area would soon be hearing about the “new one’ from their customers and would have to start placing orders just to keep up with the competition.

            As is true in the design of their lures, the manufacturing process used by the Lisks reflects several values important to them. For example, much of the equipment used to mechanize part of the production process was designed by L.E. and bears his distinctive stamp. Pulling a picture from a large collection of photographs of company activities and point to one of the employees making lures, he says, “See, this bicycle wheel with chain, with the lures clipped on it? That’s how we’d dip the body of the lure into the paint. But we still had to ‘eye’ them by hand.”

            Eva remembers that although she and L.E. enjoyed making the lures together, there would come times when the repetition of painting the exact same color scheme over and over on each lure became burdensome. To break the monotony, she would from time to time mischievously paint a few “cross-eyed” Skunks or Wampus Kats just for fun. “I don’t reckon it hurt the fishing any,” she chuckles. “If a fish is that persnickety, probably don’t want to catch it anyway!”

            While Lisk Lures, Inc., certainly has a past deep in innovation and accomplishment, today the future of the company looks a bit uncertain. L.E. and Eva are now ready to “wind things down” and, although they have had many offers to buy the company, they have never really seriously considered doing so. “You can’t sell you name,” Eva declares. They are hopeful, however, that their children and grandchildren will keep the company going somehow so that the Little Skunk, Wampus Kat and Pole Kat can continue to “put fish on the table” for hungry anglers well into the 21<sup>st</sup> century.