When I was about six or seven years old I had my first encounter with a striped bass. My great
grandmother, Myrtle Mae was cutting its head off at the kitchen table. I can still see her pulling the guts out; them
flowing onto the news paper. Then promptly scooping them up and running to the garden with them, the whole time smiling.
On her dresser was a picture of my great-great-grandfather John Havens, also known as the fish-man. He would take his
horse drawn wagon to the Port Monmouth Ice House (N.J.), then to the dock which would later become the BELFORD SEAFOOD CO-OP.
There he would meet the boats that had gone out that morning. He would buy their fish from them, and then go up-and-down
the streets of Belford. Kind of like the ice cream man. Everyone just called him the fish-man. Back to the
picture. In it he was holding two striped bass, they looked to be about sixty pounds each. Since I was a
small child, not many days have gone by that I have not thought about that picture. ( exert pg. 29 Lures &
Legends)