Tom Sawyer on Hilton Head: The Old Man and the Sea turned into the old man and his belt

Having taken quite a few kids fishing lately, along with watching teens in groups that obviously feel invulnerable from the COVID-19 pandemic, it makes me think a lot about my time growing up here.

I was just like many of these kids. Fishing was my life and I always stretched the boundaries of what my folks told me I could do because in my mind I was young, invincible and didn’t hesitate trying things that in hindsight could have easily killed me.

No doubt the most dangerous was gaining respect for the power of the ocean. Now, some 60 years later, I will freely admit that respect came only after many hard-learned lessons.

The youngest of five children, I was really the only outdoorsman of the bunch. Not known for my scholarly skills, I did just enough to get by. And when school was let out for the summer, off went the shoes and shirt and they never again touched my body until school started again in the fall.

If I had to compare myself with some fictional character, my skinny frame and cut-off jeans made me a Tom Sawyer look-alike with the only thing lacking being a straw hat.

Hilton Head Island and Bluffton were for the most part void of people. It was primarily dirt roads, the same small group of residents and, for me, the biggest playground in the world. Getting away from the crowd was as easy as walking out my front door.

But like today, my passion was fishing and being out on the water. I had a little 13-foot Boston Whaler and it was my ticket to explore all the small islands that surrounded Hilton Head. With no cell phones and very few other boats, you were pretty much flat out of luck if something were to happen.

Much to my father’s dismay, I would push the envelope when it came to common sense. On super-hot summer days like we are currently experiencing, I would round the south end of Hilton Head and take the Whaler to the Texas Tower that looked somewhat like an oil rig some 10 miles offshore. Sadly, that fish-attracting tower is no longer there since a cargo ship rammed into it a few years back.

Adventuresome, or more accurately young and stupid, I always imagined that I was akin to the Old Man and the Sea. Just me and myself out where the really big fish lurked and like the old man, hopefully hook into some giant fish that would drag me out to sea.

With no rod holders on the boat, I would troll large spoons with a rod wedged under each leg. One time I hooked into something huge and, whoosh, that was that for my dad’s favorite rod and reel. That was my last solo trip to the Texas Tower because one of my pop’s cronies saw me out there and called him that night. My visions of the Old Man and the Sea turned into the old man and his belt.

Hot summer days also bring back memories of Spanish mackerel fishing with my dad and two of his buddies. Back then you didn’t have to go much further than the south end of Hilton Head to find schools of mackerel that stretched as far as the eye could see.

I know you are probably thinking that these are false memories conjured up by an overactive adolescent imagination, but it is true. The entire south end of Sea Pines was a series of rolling sand dunes that was a rookery for shore birds, especially terns and gulls.

You could walk out where the terns nested and eggs would be lying on the ground every couple of feet for as far as the eye could see. Mother terns would dive bomb you and the air would be full of frantic birds trying to shoo you away from their clutch.

These same birds showed you the way to the mackerel as they dived on glass minnows that the mackerel had pushed to the surface. To catch a hundred mackerel in a morning wasn’t unusual.

Then, on days when the wind kept me off the water, I would try and outwit mama alligators so I could scoop up her young ’uns with a crab net or try and capture rattlesnakes with nothing more than a stick from a palmetto tree.

Stupid, you say? Nah, just invincible.

At night my friends and I could walk down the then two-lane Highway 278 and never once encounter a car.

And stars? Because there was no ambient light, the sky looked like someone had dusted glitter from horizon to horizon.

On summer nights during the full moon, my brothers and sisters and I would walk the beach looking for nesting loggerhead turtles and always seemed to find one or two. As she laid her eggs, we would scoop out a viewing spot behind her and count the eggs. When done, we would try to camouflage her nest so raccoons wouldn’t dig up those precious eggs and then help the exhausted turtle back to the sea. I can still remember the look in those turtles’ eyes. They produced what looked like tears that only made us more sympathetic to her epic journey. It was amazing.

So much has changed, but thankfully I am still able to hop in my boat and find places that offer the same feeling of solitude that was the norm when I was growing up.

I try not to dwell on the past, but I had such a unique childhood that it is hard not to think about it every once in a while.

Luckily, now I have a deep respect for the power of the ocean. She can take you in a heartbeat.