In the heyday of Monterey’s fishing industry, brothers Harold and Eddie low, and their partner and brother-in-law, Alfred Jung, built a kitchen above their business on the commercial wharf.
Regal Seafood was a company that bought the catch of the day from local fishermen, processed the fish, then sold it wholesale.
Days were long at Regal, beginning at sunrise and often extending deep into the night, sometimes past midnight, as they waited for the boats to come in.
“They built that kitchen because the Italian fishermen loved to cook,” said local historian Gerry Low-Sobado, 60, who was Eddie’s daughter and Harold’s and Alfred’s niece.
“While everybody was waiting for the boats to come in, they’d start cooking a meal. it would turn into a big party, with the fishermen, the fish-cutters, and anybody else. it was very multicultural, with Chinese, Japanese, Italians, Mexicans … there was a great feeling of friendship,” Low-Sobado said.
the low brothers and Jung were partners at Regal Seafood from 1948 — when a week’s work netted a $25 paycheck — to 1976, when their suppliers were men who made a hard living fishing Monterey Bay and beyond. the company still exists today as Royal Seafood.
Jung, 85, John Crivello, 88 and Giuseppe Pennisi, 71, reunited last week after more than 15 years to share war stories at the “Fisherman’s Days” exhibit, which runs through Sept. 30 at the historic Monterey Train Depot at 220 Figueroa St.
“I think the fishing industry was basically my destiny. I borrowed money from my sister, Alice, to go into business with Howard and Eddie,” said Jung, whose father, Yee Sing Yung, was a hook-and-line fisherman in Monterey Bay on a vessel called the Honolulu.
Pennisi named two different boats after his father, Giovanni, who immigrated to America from Sicily to fish hook-and-line in Monterey. every boat has a personality, he said, and a fisherman tends to bond with his vessel.
for Pennisi, it happened one afternoon in 1961, when a flat, calm afternoon at Pigeon Point abruptly morphed into one of the worst storms in West Coast history.
“We’d been fishing all day in good weather, but there were no fish. Fish can sense a change in the weather,” Pennisi recalled. “About 4 in the afternoon, within about 45 minutes, the winds suddenly went from zero to about 35-40mph. by the time we got everything tied down, they were at least 60mph and all we could see were huge swells, with whitecaps, coming down on us.”
the winds exceeded 95mph that night and Pennisi’s boat, the San Giovanni, was laid on its side three different times.
“Each time, I was sure we’d had it. I was thinking this is how it was all going to end for us,” he said. “But each time, she’d straighten out again.
“That was the worst storm I ever experienced, but we got through it and it didn’t make me quit,” he said. “In fact, it made me feel safe. I figured if the boat took that, she could take anything.”
Fathers passed the fishing arts along to their sons in those days. All four Pennisi boys joined their dad on the high seas.
As children, they rigged a can on a clothesline, sliding it back and forth between their bunk beds to pass candy. Joey and Mario eventually left a sagging industry and became contractors. John still fishes. mark, known as “Rowdy,” was lost at sea in 2004.
Crivello began dreaming of life on the seas as a grade-schooler, sneaking onto his father’s boat to play.
“I’d jump aboard and pretend to be the captain,” he said. “My dad would say, ‘John, did you touch anything?’ And I’d say, ‘No!’ And he’d say, ‘Yes you did!’”
by 13, he was fishing on small boats. At 15, weighing just 140 pounds, he was riding a skiff and tending to the nets for a sardine vessel. he fished 62 years, until an illness forced him ashore in 1999.
stories are plentiful. Jung recalls cutting open a shark at Regal Seafood and finding a Budweiser.
Crivello tells how crew members teased him as he tried to muscle the nets up the boom, snagging them most of the time, until they taught him to grease the path with slabs of bacon. And Pennisi has tall-but-true tales of odd things he snagged.
“The strangest was a bomb,” he recalled with a laugh. “I thought it was a barrel until I saw this dial on it, and was sure we’d pulled up a ship safe. I figured we were rich.”
Pennisi was about to pound on it with a hammer and chisel when his cousin, a World War II veteran, yelled, “Don’t touch it! That’s a mine!”
they wedged the mark 4 mine on the deck so it wouldn’t roll, then notified the Coast Guard, which summoned a Navy demolition team from San Francisco.
“The Coast Guard stopped us about a mile from shore about 7p.m., saying, ‘We don’t want anybody getting injured.’ Meanwhile, the water’s getting rough and the thing is starting to roll,” Pennisi said.
“About 2:30a.m., the demolition guys show up. we put the mine on a mattress, then use our winch to lower it onto three other mattresses in the back of a pickup. about 4a.m., they close all the streets, from the Coast Guard pier to Fort Ord, and blow the thing up.”
His other unique haul: A nuclear submarine. Pennisi was towing a net off Mission Point when he noticed his boat was slowing down. then it started going backward and bubbles were surfacing.
“I called the Coast Guard, but they told me no subs were in the area,” he said. “Then, I got worried that it was a foreign sub that wouldn’t surface just to save my butt — that would be an international incident. so we all got ready to go swimming.”
Eventually, there was the loud bang of a snapping cable and Pennisi’s boat spun completely around. After another snap, the boat spun again. then, a U.S. nuclear submarine surfaced a half-mile away.
Pennisi filed a report with the Navy, estimating damaged equipment and lost fishing time at about $50,000. To his surprise, he was reimbursed $250,000.
the local fishing industry nowadays is composed of 140 drag trawlers with permits in Washington, Oregon and California — down from a peak of more than 1,200 in the early 1980s. That number could fall by at least 50 percent again next year.
But the history needs to be remembered, said Low-Sobado, who specializes in the contributions the Chinese made to fishing in Monterey — all the way back to the mid-1800s, when her great grandmother, Quock Mui (known as “Spanish Mary”), became the first documented Chinese woman ever born on the Peninsula.
Legacies0 of families named Pennisi, Crivello, Jung and low were among those remembered in pictures, newspaper clips and other displays at the Fisherman’s Days exhibit at the Monterey train depot. the exhibit ended last week.
Dennis Taylor can be reached at 646-4344 or dtaylor@montereyherald.com.
<a href="http://www.montereyherald.com/local/ci_16004047tag:news.google.com,2005:cluster=http://www.montereyherald.com/local/ci_16004047Mon, 06 Sep 2010 12:40:26 GMT 00:00″>Local fishermen recall hard work, good times
