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JEFF KLINKENBERGStorms have come and gone, but Anna Maria Island's City Pier is still there for the fishermen who love it.
ANNA MARIA ISLAND - Hurricanes keep trying to knock down the City Pier at 100 South Bay Blvd. They come from the west, and they come from the east. Every once in a while, a big daddy tries to sneak in from the south and deliver a nasty knockout punch.
Built in 1910, when Halley's Comet was beaming in the heavens, the City Pier in Manatee County knows how to endure, having withstood tropical cyclones in 1918, 1935, 1974, 1988 and 2001. The old pier, 636 feet of pine and barnacles, has surrendered lumber to four hurricanes this season, yet there it is, jutting out in Tampa Bay like a defiant middle finger.
Take that Charley. Take that Frances, Ivan and Jeanne.
As fall begins, as residents all over Anna Maria Island recover from hurricane season, carpenters are nailing down loose boards at the pier. A plumber in a boat underneath the pier reattaches pipes. Pilings are old and wobbly, but so is everything else at the pier, including the fishermen.
Jack Gray, for example, has been stalking mackerels and pompanos from the pier since 1946. He is 89 now, with skin so leathery he reminds you of an ancient loggerhead turtle. Most days he shows up after sunrise and begins fishing in his patented methodical manner. When his legs pain him, he sits and rests. The pier is better than a rocking chair.
"I got bad circulation," he says. "At least that's what the doctor says. Sometimes I can go up and down the pier like I'm a young man. Other times, I feel my age. But what you gonna do?"
A slight breeze roils the bay. A pair of dolphins chases a school of mullets. The mullets leap for their lives, the dolphins below. A dolphin grabs a mullet, throws it into the air like a baseball and catches it between toothy jaws. Dolphins know how to have fun.
So do old fishermen. The day after Tropical Storm Jeanne lashed the Suncoast, knocking down trees and snapping power lines, the bait bucket brigade showed up at the pier at dawn, eager for another fishing adventure. The manager, David Sork, had to send everyone home until he could declare the pier safe for use.
The older anglers, most of them men, have possession of the pier during daylight hours. Mostly they fish for pompanos and mackerels. Many use an artificial bait known as "Jack's Jig." Jack Gray, he of the bad legs and leathery skin, makes his lures in his utility room, around the corner from the pier on Jacaranda Road. He pours hot lead into molds, adds nylon hair, lets everything cool, then paints. He carries his lures to the pier in a Dutch Masters cigar box and sells them for a dollar each.
He offers one lure for pompanos and one for Spanish mackerels. "For pompano, cast out and let the lure hit the bottom. Then reel it in slow, but jerk it on the way, so it hops across the sand," he advises customers.
Pompanos aren't the smartest fish on earth to mistake a bit of nylon and lead for a sand flea.
"For mackerel, you got to reel real fast. Mackerel swim just under the surface. They're always moving. They think my jig is a minnow. Mackerel fight real hard."
Gray likes to eat Spanish mackerel. He fillets it or cuts it into steaks and cooks it with fresh onions. At home, he grows onions and papayas. Maybe there is a way to cook Spanish mackerel with papayas, but he hasn't figured it out.
He was born in Connecticut, in the country, and grew up on a farm that lacked running water and electricity. Jeanne knocked out his power for about a week; he got along fine with a flashlight. During the day, without power, he sat on his patio and chain-smoked Romy cigarettes - "my biggest vice" - and talked to anybody who stopped by for a visit. Every once in a while, he interrupted a chat by grabbing the fly swatter on the table and slaying an unpleasant winged insect. Jack Gray is of the fly swatter generation.
He was barely a teenager when he became a cabin boy on a ship that serviced lighthouses in the North Atlantic. Later he served in the Merchant Marine. After World War II, he visited Manatee County on vacation. He spent three months fishing from the City Pier and vowed to return after retirement. He loved the fishing, and he loved the tropical nature of the island: Even now a visitor can snatch a coconut from a palm. Gray and his wife, Madeline, came back for good in 1977.
No longer does he fish at night from the pier. His one good eye doesn't handle dark well. Night fishing is more appropriate for younger, able-bodied men who can handle husky, aggressive fish. Robust snook, 20 pounds or more, occasionally dart from under the pier to harvest a needlefish bait. From time to time, an angler will float a ladyfish bait out on the tide and haul in a shark.
Generations of anglers have caught big sharks from the City Pier and from the Rod-and-Reel Pier a half-mile distant. Oldtimers still speak fondly of the late Frank Cavendish, who once landed a 1,386-pound hammerhead on a rope from Rod-and-Reel Pier. The presence of large sharks never discouraged Cavendish from swimming from the end of the pier to the beach every afternoon. It was a night swim that stopped the ritual.
"All of a sudden, I saw this old boy heading for me," he once told a reporter, "and I curled up in a little ball so he couldn't bite my legs. Well, he turned away from me but swatted me with his tail. A shark's tail is like sandpaper. That tail peeled me like an orange. It took four Manhattans and a box of Band-Aids to get over that."
Memories are short on a small island like Anna Maria. Elderly women, oblivious to whatever might be lurking below, float on their backs in deep water next to the pier. Even the pelicans, soaring above, look nervous about diving into the murk.
Jack Gray doesn't swim with sharks. Why press your luck?
"I've had a good life," he says. "I've loved living here, though there's too many people now. When I first saw the island, you know what? It was nothing but palm trees and rattlesnakes."
In the 21st century, palm trees are still a common sight. But the rattlesnakes long ago disappeared, much to the pleasure of Madeline. They were married 37 years. She passed away from pneumonia and diabetes four years ago. Jack misses their talks and their meals together. He makes his bed every morning, tries to keep things the way she would've liked him to.
"We have lots of widows living around here," he says finally. "You know, sometimes I give a nice piece of mackerel to a widow. She'll fix me supper or something, maybe bake me a pie."
Sometimes, after a day on the water, a day on the old pier, a slice of apple pie from a grateful widow hits the spot.
Jeff Klinkenberg can be reached at 727 893-8727 or klink@sptimes.com