Buried in a great read about working men…called Men’s Lives. Not Terkle mind you. Although, Studs was ripe for the talk.
No, this explores the lives of fishermen in the coastal waters of the northeast. A primal independence, a pride unstated. Thriving and surviving requires many skills. Certain rawness in the hands, yet never a hand out. And then the fish, forever abundant, ran out. Take any job of work to live, and give up a life of living to work.
"Full-time baymen - there are scarcely one hundred left on the South Fork - must also be competent boatmen, net men, carpenters and mechanics, and most could make good money at a trade, but they value independence over security, preferring to work on their own schedule, responsible only to their own families. Protective of their freedom to the point of stubbornness, wishing only to be left alone, they have never asked for and never received direct subsidies from town or county, state or federal government." …..
Men's Lives....Peter Matthiessen