As an adolescent, I fished beside men whose main idiom was vulgarity. They were blue-collar stalwarts — mill rats, carpenters, plumbers, landscapers, masons and carpet layers, along with a contingent who built submarines in Groton, Connecticut. They were a hard-working, lunch-pail crowd who knew how to toss back a boilermaker. Some fished well. Others couldn’t catch a cold.
Back then, when the fish were blitzing, you earned your spot in the tight picket line that formed on the lighthouse rocks by having paid your
