The Boston Marathon is typically run on the third Monday in April - Patriot's day. Three doors down from our house in Wayland (10 Snakebrook to our 4) lived the Salazars (they were Boston Globe customers and it was difficult to understand their Cuban accents). One of their kids was Alberto and he ran/won the Boston Marathon in 1982 (12 years older than me - much later banned from the sport for life).
In Massachusetts, the herring spawn in the ponds they were born in. Those ponds connect to streams and rivers (e.g. the Charles River) that empty into the Atlantic also in the spring around the same time. Herring is a pretty generic term - in Massachusetts they're Alewives (we just called them herring). When I lived in Boston in 1991, I took the T - Redline - into the city and caught the train at Alewife. Although there has been lots of damming of the rivers, society has built fish ladders so that they can jump upstream to reach their historic spawning grounds. It appears that the Marathon course and the herring run intersect (or come close) at the Watertown dam. This is the likely location for this story.
I remember Dad taking Tommy and me to see the herring run. The Marathon was happening at the same time, not our focus. It was probably 1982 - It may actually just be coincidence and we didn't go because a neighbor was running. It was a wicked cold spring day (sleet and 30s).
I remember watching schools of fish swim by - thousands of them. I learned that it was illegal to catch them using a net (like shooting fish in a barrel). Lots of people were net catching. I think we brought our rods, but spawning fish don't eat (I think) and you only catch them by foul hooking them (catching them on something other than their mouths). I think Dad/Tommy foul hooked one or more. At the place we stopped to see the herring run, there were lots of narrow fish ladders that the fish swam up. Tommy wanted to catch a fish by hand so he straddled the fish ladder and plunged his hands in. He got one.
Fun memory.
Comments