JANE E. HERROLD is a reoccurring performer at Fisher Poets Gathering. She is currently working on a colorful collection of essays about growing up in a multi-generation NW fisher-family. Stay tuned for the book, “Dying with Dave,” a humorous and touching portrait of life with her father., who survived until the ripe old age of 90, never moving from his Ilwaco, Washington, home.
"Growing Up Fishy" was selected for print in the New Bedford, Massachusetts, "Working Waterfront Festival" program, where she also performed in October 2008. Her work has been published in RAIN Magazine, Hipfish, and online at http:cafevaquera.wordpress.com.
She’s been a community radio DJ, hairdresser, the world’s worst waitress, a professional theater costumer & set designer, a graphic artist, a cowgirl, a comedian, a junk store junkie, a music collector, a caregiver, and a cancer survivor. Jane’s been there and done that and lives to tell about it.
"Growing Up Fishy" was selected for print in the New Bedford, Massachusetts, "Working Waterfront Festival" program, where she also performed in October 2008. Her work has been published in RAIN Magazine, Hipfish, and online at http:cafevaquera.wordpress.com.
She’s been a community radio DJ, hairdresser, the world’s worst waitress, a professional theater costumer & set designer, a graphic artist, a cowgirl, a comedian, a junk store junkie, a music collector, a caregiver, and a cancer survivor. Jane’s been there and done that and lives to tell about it.
WRITINGS
Dad
David Herrold was my Dad.
He bought my first car, my first horse,
and a substantial education, in more ways than one.
I stood in awe of him as I was growing up. A lifelong resident of the fishing
berg, Ilwaco, Washington, he could run a chain saw like an electric knife,
land and gut a giant prehistoric sturgeon, dig his limit of precious razor
clams in minutes, and smoke salmon like no one else.
He was handsome and witty with a twinkle in his blue eyes.
Even at 90 years of age, he was still a lady charmer. My Dad was the
epitome of the strong, silent type with a boatload of integrity.
Like many of his generation he was given a nickname; “Easy.”
David Herrold taught his only daughter how to work hard
and showed enough trust to allow her to play equally as hard.
“Have fun, Tillicum,” he would insist.
“Tillicum” is Northwest Native American lingo for “friend.”
He died at the ripe age of ninety of complications from old age.
As he put it, “I’m all washed up, Jane.”
“So am I, Dad. So am I,” I would answer.
“You go have some fun, Tillicum,” he would always say, right on cue.
Dad had his own way of expressing himself in this
world according to David Herrold.
“Dad-isms” were always quotable and consistent.
About big boobs: “If she fell over she wouldn’t skin her nose.”
About beer guts: “Look at the bait tank on that guy.”
About the man who sells roadside yard art in Chinook:
“There’s the windmill guy--always there. He must have a mean wife.”
About someone who talks too much: “Her mouth goes like a goose’s ass.”
About crowds and traffic: “I’m like a cat in a bag.”
I became the family chauffeur, and every time we’d get ready to take off, he’d quote Jackie Gleason by saying, “And awaaaaay we go!”
Flatulence was a favored topic with my Father.
When things were good, he was “fartin’ in silk.”
His recliner was his “fart sack.”
About diarrhea: “I can’t fart with confidence.”
Sage advise regarding home repair projects:
“Just keep peckin’ away at it, Jane. Just keep peckin’ away.
Pretty soon it will be all done and you won’t have anything to bitch about.”
When the river was calm it was “flatter than a snake’s ass.”
Tourists were “pukers.”
Family vacations were “goddamn safaris.”
Icy highways were “slicker than snot on a doorknob.”
Salmon with plum sauce was a “terrible thing to do to a fish.”
He called my horse “that bovine of yours.”
Cowboy the Chihuahua was my “sidekick.”
One of my boyfriends was “that poor bastard.”
Vegetarian restaurants were “seed joints.”
Patsy Cline was the only woman in history that could sing.
About loud rock and roll music he’d say, “That’s a pretty tune… Hehehe.”
Paying rent was “like pouring sand into a rat hole.”
And I was always “busier than a three-peckered Billy goat.”
The small of gas always makes me nostalgic.
Although Dad was fond of making fart jokes,
I mean the gasoline type, in this case.
In addition to commercial fishing, Dad owned the hometown fillin’ station in downtown Ilwaco.
As a little girl he would let me run the hydraulic lift,
sit in the cop cars being serviced, and experience the thrill of washing windshields.
“You Betcha!” he would retort when “the Pukers” thanked him.
Old “Easy” was born in 1912 in Ilwaco,
graduated from Ilwaco schools, lived in Ilwaco his entire life,
except for his WWII tour of duty in the South Pacific,
and now is buried next to my
Mother in Ilwaco. (She died in 1978.)
He was the youngest of six children of pioneer residents
Roy and Elfreda (Colbert) Herrold.
His father and grandfather operated fish traps on the west side of
Sand Island on the Columbia River
in an area known as “Oklahoma.”
His mother, of local Chinook tribal decent, was born in a small village
on the shores of the Columbia;
Chinookville, a settlement long since disappeared.
Upon his return to Ilwaco after World War II,
he worked with his brother Harlan
oystering at Cougar Bend on the Willapa Bay.
He met Avis Mulhall of Ashland, Massachusetts,
while she was visiting a childhood friend in the Northwest.
When she returned home, David Herrold traveled cross-country
to pursue her.
They were married in July of 1948 in Massachusetts,
but naturally, they returned to good old Ilwaco.
That’s where I came in.
An orphan now, like so many baby-boomers,
I miss having a Dad who was a character and a folk humorist.
I am honored to have been his buddy and his daughter.
The first time I picked up the phone to call him after he went to the
“Happy Hunting Ground” was to report that I finally got new brakes on my car.
He could stop hounding me every time he saw me,
“For Christ’s sake, Jane, when are you going to get that fixed?
Nobody’s going to do it for you!”
And awaaaaay we go!