Chapter Three

As autumn turned into winter and winter gave way to spring, Adam found himself spending more and more of his free time alone or in one of the net lofts, where the men now appeared to accept him as a fixture and completely ignored his presence. Although always willing to help his father with getting firewood or any of the other tasks that needed doing, with four older brothers still living at home, he was rarely called upon. He sometimes offered to help his mother, but housework was for women. Though she could use the help, she knew that a boy doing such tasks would be considered strange, both by his peers as well as the other adults in the community. When spring came and the boats took to the water once again, Saturdays were spent wandering the woodlands and the brooks. Alone with nature he felt a peacefulness he could find nowhere else and a kinship with the creatures he often heard and sometimes saw around him. The books he had borrowed from the teacher had been read and reread and returned. Much of his school history book, he could recite from memory yet he continued to read it and dream of those long ago days. In school he was a good student and when exam time came around in June he was promoted to grade seven.

Adam’s eldest brother John, had married the year before and now fished with his father-in-law. Shamus and Peter were both working as sharemen with two of the most prosperous fishermen in Little Valley, while Simon fished with their father who last winter had built a new and bigger boat. Lawrence was the only brother to have forsaken the fishing boat. In all but the winter months, he worked in Petersview on Wakeham’s “room”, as such premises were called, where most of the fish caught along that part of the coast was cured before being shipped to foreign markets. This summer for the first time, Adam fished with his father and Simon during the holidays, receiving a half share as was common for boys his age. The season was a good one as had been the two previous years, and some signs of prosperity was beginning to return to the community after the devastating years of the depression or as they were commonly known the dirty thirties.