What Salmon Fishing Taught Me About Courage

On this episode of Our American Stories, Seaside, Oregon, was a small Pacific Northwest town built on logging and salmon fishing. Karl Marlantes’ grandfather had already survived a logging accident that crushed both his legs before turning fully to commercial salmon fishing. As a gillnetter, he worked the tides with precision, and when Karl was thirteen, he brought him into the family business. Karl, the author of What It Is Like to Go to War and Matterhorn, shares the story of how those summer days changed his life.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American People.
And you can listen to the show on the iHeartRadio
app or wherever you get your podcast. Up next, a
story from Carlin Merlantes. Carl is a Marine who received
the Navy Cross for his service in Vietnam and the

(00:33):
author of Matterhorn and What it is Like to Go
to War Today. He shares with us the story of
his time growing up in the Pacific Northwest and working
with his grandfather and one of America's most dangerous professions.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Take it away, Carl, I was born in Astoria, Oregon,
and my dad was actually in the Battle of the
Bulge at the time I was born, and I grew
up in a town about fifteen miles away.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
My mother went up there to.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Have you at the hospital there. Seaside, Oregon, which was
a logging town, a little town of about twenty five
hundred people. The two major professions where I grew up
were fishing and logging, and I actually looked it up.

(01:34):
They are the two most dangerous occupations that we have.
About every year, somebody's father would die in the woods,
or somebody would drown. And I remember five of my
friends lost their fathers during the time I was going
to school with them, So dying death was it wasn't morbid, No,

(01:54):
we just didn't think much about it. It was like, oh, yeah,
Alan's dad just got rolled over while log and he died.
And you know, in you're eight or nine, you know,
you just plugged along. And most of the kids in
the summer tried to get jobs in the woods because
they paid really well. That was back in the day
when you know, labor was making good money. I mean,

(02:14):
you know, Detroit was booming, and he could work on
the assembly lines and you know, be able to take
vacations in Florida. And my grandfather was a commercial fisherman, Scannonavian.
He was a Swedish Finn, and he was a salmon fisherman, Gilnetter,

(02:35):
And I love to tell this story about him because
giving you an idea of his character. He was working
a log boom by himself and the two booms came
together and crushed both of his legs, and he crawled
about a mile to get to his car and drove

(02:57):
himself to the hospital. And one of the legs had
be amputated and he couldn't do log booms anymore, and
of course fishing he needed help. So my older brother
and I were then brought into the family business. So
I fished with my grandfather when I was from about
age thirteen, i'd guess into seventh grade. It was a

(03:26):
wonderful experience because how many kids actually get to work
with their grandfather and you know, spend time with him,
lots of time because fishing, it's like it's massive activity
when the salmon are hitting and the nets out and
you have to try and pull those nets in as
fast as you can, and then you set up another

(03:48):
what they called drifts, and you put the net back
out and then you're there. You just sit and wait
for the fish to hit again. And that's a lot
of downtime. And one of the things I laugh about
at my younger self being with my grandfather. I did
nothing but moan the entire time I worked for him,
because it was like, how come I have to come

(04:09):
up at two o'clock in the morning because he has
all about tides. You have to go out on the tide,
you have to you have to hit the fish when
the tide is slack or running your way. So you know,
if it's two in the morning, it's that's you get
up and go to work. And I learned how to
do that. And I actually slept with my grandmother and

(04:33):
my grandfather. It was really old country, I mean, you know,
and I can remember the smell. I mean it was
just like they didn't use deodorant.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
You know.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
But so I slept it scept in the same bed
with my grandpa and grandma, and then it roused me
out of bed at midnight or whatever, and off we'd
go to work. And I can remember complaining. All my
friends work in restaurants and all the girls come and
talk to them, and they get to eat all the
ice cream may want. And I have to be up
at two in the morning and go out this rain
and this cold, and I could just I could just

(05:04):
think about my poor grandfather, you know, I emigrated from
Finland to raise this, you know, I mean, it was
It's one of those tragedies. When you're young, you have
no idea how privileged you are to be able to
have the experience as you do. And I learned a
lot from my grandfather. I mean, one of the things
was coolness under fire. I mean, we'd get in trouble

(05:26):
every so often. I mean, tides would go wrong, the
winded push us in the wrong direction, we'd come up
against rocks, waves come in over the gunwales, and Grandpa
was just cool. I mean, if I was doing something wrong,
or if we were slow getting the net out, he'd
be jumping up and down on his wooden leg and

(05:48):
screaming at me. But when in real trouble hit, it
was just incredible to watch him just go into sort
of cool mode and solve the problem. And he never panicked.
And I was frightened lots of times because it's dangerous work.
I mean, that's all I can say. And I kind
of grew up, you know, learning a lot of lessons
that way. The other one is, you know, the first

(06:10):
beer that I ever had was on the fourth of July,
and I was thirteen, and my granda was on the
docks with all the other fishermen. They were celebrating the
fourth of July, and Grandpa handed me a beer, you know,
and it was like, by god, I'm a grown up,
you know. It was a wonderful feeling. I always remember
this day, just my grandfather handing me a beer and
just saying, you know, I didn't say a word. You

(06:31):
didn't say a word, but I was there with all
the other fishermen, you know. So he was an important
part of my life. He really was.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
And a great job on the production by Monty Montgomery
and a special thanks to Carl Orlantis for sharing the
story of his grandfather. They hear the story of those
two booms and how they came together and crushed his
grandfather's legs, and he crawls back to the car, gets
himself to the hospital and gets a lot like amputated,
only to go to another dangerous profession, famine fishing. And

(07:05):
the stories and the lessons that Carl learned from his grandfather,
including that first beer on July fourth, Carl melentis the
story of his grandfather. Here on Our American Story. This

(07:34):
is Lee Habib, host of our American Stories. Every day
on this show we tell stories of history, faith, business, love, loss,
and your stories. Send us your story small or large
to our email oas at Ouramerican Stories dot com. That's
oas at Ouramerican Stories dot com. We'd love to hear

(07:55):
them and put them on the air. Our audience loves
them too.