All Good Things…

It all started back in 2005. One day in May, yours truly noticed that this very newspaper was looking for a fishing columnist. So I says to myself I says, "Andrew, you fish occasionally. You've been known to write a little bit. This might be a pretty nice gig for you."

The advertisement seeking a columnist asked that a list of qualifications be sent to thensports editor Chris Edmonds. So I sat down and wrote up my list of qualifications. And, after embellishing a little bit (you're saying I didn't ever pilot the space shuttle?), I sent it in.

Chris, naive young man that he was, believed most of it, and called me in for an interview. We discussed the particulars of life in zero-gravity, my time with the CIA and the years spent as a freedom fighter. Then we moved on to the nitty and the gritty, namely the job of fishing columnist. Chris told me that he wanted me to make the column my own, to give it my own spin, my own sort of verbal ambiance.

I told you Chris was naive.

It wasn't until I started writing that first column that I realized how tough this job was going to be. Yeah, it's easy enough to write about fishing once or twice. But when you've got to do it weekly, things get a little dicey. That first column, printed in the May 25, 2005, edition of The Nantucket Independent, talked about my friends the bluefish. Actually, it talked about the noticeable lack thereof in the waters around Nantucket at that time. The words flowed from my computer like a waterfall, spouting forth in waves of modest brilliance. And then it happened.

I had to write another one the following week.

I got worried. I had to be brilliant again. I'd set the bar in the first column, and now I had to live up to the standard I'd set for myself. And then I remembered Chris's words about making the column my own. About "having fun with it," as he'd said. Things were looking up. I was reading a newspaper account of a

scientific discovery of sorts. Archaeologists in Peru had discovered the fossilized remains of an armadillo the size of a Volkswagen. And as I said at the time, friends and neighbors, that's a mighty big armadillo.

That armadillo discovery, or at least the article about it, led to the first segue. Yep. Little-known (and probably little cared-about) trivia fact for you, kids. The first Tight Lines - which wasn't even called Tight Lines at the time - had no segue. That came in the second column. And it was on from there.

Over the past couple of years since that fateful day in May, I've written a grand total of 146 - this makes 147 - of these little gems (and one book), and dealt with subjects ranging from the fall of Bear Stearns to the salinity of human tears to the Texas Longhorns to my own dear sweet mother. And every now and again, I've managed to talk about fishing, too.

All these thoughts of the past come up on days like this, as the leaves start changing colors and the air gets a little colder and some guy named Kyle is sitting out in the Atlantic Ocean threatening to slam into us. On early fall days like this, my thoughts turn to October 1st, which happens to be the same day this column hits newsstands. And why do my thoughts turn to the first of October? Why, it's opening day of scallop season, kids.

It's not quite as spectacular as a two-thousand pound armadillo, but it's a segue nevertheless.

Friends and neighbors, October 1 is a magical day for me. And it's more than the fact that the weather is still pretty nice and the tourists have all gone back to their homes and all the cars have gone back to Connecticut, though that's all pretty nice, too. The truth is that we've survived yet another summer on Nantucket, and our reward is a reconnection with each other and with the island's natural bounty.

If you've never been out scalloping during the first day of family season, you're missing one of life's true pleasures. There's no competition, there's no yelling, there's no gesturing. It's just people having a great time collecting what is, quite possibly, the single best-tasting thing to come out of the ocean. And the real beauty of the thing is that it doesn't matter if you've never done it before or not. It's about as easy to learn as can possibly be: You push your rake along the bottom for a little while, pull it up, then sort out the scallops from the other stuff. So go get yourself a push rake and get out there.

And kids, it's a little bit of a bittersweet moment right now for yours truly. You see, with this whole book thing coming out and what not, my time constraints in the real world have taken a pretty major step up. So that means that, despite my misgivings about doing so, I'm going to have to step down from my role as columnist for The Independent. It's been a lot of fun these past 146 (going on 147) columns, and I'm grateful to all of you who have read this thing every week over the years, and I'm even more grateful to those of you who aren't related to me and still read it. And thank you to those editors who have put up with my musings, wherever they may be.

And just for old times sake, kids…

Tight lines. I