THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 8, 1995 TAG: 9510040064
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KRYS STEFANSKY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 155 lines
TEN BIG FINGERS are picking through seaweed for bloodworms, laced through a box of green-brown kelp like limp, overcooked, pink spaghetti.
The worms are cold.
``Ooooh, they can be mean when they get hot,'' says Charlie Cashman. The diamond rings on both his big hands flash as he sorts worms into piles, ready to pack by the dozen or half-dozen into little plastic bags for sale as fish bait.
He pokes a finger between two fingers on the opposite hand, ``When they bite you here, in the soft parts, that's when it stings. They're like a leech. They just hang on.''
Cashman has sorted bloodworms at the Lynnhaven Inlet Fishing Pier bait and tackle shop for more than 30 years, practically since he and his partners built the place.
``I've packed enough bloodworms so that, laid mouth to tail, they'd go around the world several times. Look here,'' Cashman says, picking up a juicy one and aggravating it until its mouth comes out, turning inside out from somewhere inside its body.
``Oooooh, he's a mean one,'' says Cashman, chuckling.
As president and proprietor of the fishing pier, Cashman could give somebody else this job. He could get an employee to finger the smelly fishbait that arrives three times a week on flights from Maine.
But he won't. He says he's the only one who'll work from the front of a box to the back, with no regard for the size of the worms.
``The reason I do this myself,'' he says, ``is I tried to get my employees to do it but they go along and pick out all the big ones first.'' Not fair for fishermen left with nothing but bags of runts, puny worms too skinny to interest a minnow.
Behind him, an employee smiles good-naturedly and rolls his eyes.
Truth is, Cashman likes his worms. They're both the bane of his existence and the soul of his operation.
``Don't even talk to him when his worms are late,'' warns his daughter, Bobbie Lou Duff. When they do get here - bad worms, hot worms, short worms, junk worms - anything less than perfect makes him mad, too.
If he doesn't have good worms to sell, he feels like he's cheated his public. Fishermen can't fish off his pier if they can't bait their hooks.
Cashman knows that hurts. He's a hunter and fisherman himself, from way back.
Sitting in a little wooden chair, picking out worms sandwiched between wet layers of the Bangor Daily News classifieds, he says, ``This business has been good to me.'' Worms and all.
Friends say Cashman is a hard worker, an opinionated guy, an excellent cook and a successful, honest businessman. He owns an operation that closes over the winter, a vacation home in Florida, and enjoys the luxury, at 70, of being a generous man. Generous to a fault, friends say.
``He'd give you the shirt off his back. He'll go out on a limb for you and you can talk him into most anything,'' says Gordon B. Potter, a friend since childhood.
``He dealt a lot with his heart and not with his head,'' says Frank Malbon, another friend who's watched Cashman help several local businessmen with risky propositions.
There was even that bad year when Cashman and his wife invested and lost tens of thousands of dollars in unrelated deals. No matter now, Cashman says, but it wasn't funny then.
Financially speaking, his wife, Lucy ``Lou'' Cashman, was always the cautious one. For 47 years, until she died last December, she was at his elbow, at home and work. Vonnie Whitworth, a Virginia Beach artist and family friend, grew up knowing the couple: ``It was always Lou and Charlie, Charlie and Lou,'' she says.
His parents were true partners, says Bill Cashman, minister of York River Baptist Church in Williamsburg. Equals who pulled no punches when they disagreed on an investment. ``It was funny,'' he says. ``They were always willing to tell each other, `I told you so.' ''
Her husband still seems surprised at having lost her. ``Everything we have in this world we wouldn't have if it weren't for her,'' Cashman says.
Today he lavishes big gifts like cars on his grandchildren - he's got five and two great-grands.
Their ``Popeye'' was born and raised in London Bridge. In 1947, he got married with $19 in his pocket. With gift cash, Lou and Charlie Cashman stretched their honeymoon all the way to Niagara Falls.
After that, financial progress came slowly but steadily. Cashman worked as a machinist, bought a gas station and then opened his own machining, welding and steel fabrication shop at London Bridge. In between, he played semipro football for a local team. He lasted 10 years as a linebacker. ``I stayed till I got the age I couldn't go anymore.''
His business investments were taking more of his time. In 1956, he had acted on an idea that became the anchor for his future financial success. He and four friends each put up $10,000 to build the Lynnhaven Inlet Fishing Pier.
``That was back in the days where everybody knew each other,'' he recalled. The day he walked into a Virginia Beach bank to get the loan, an attorney happened to be crossing the lobby. The bank officer asked the lawyer if he knew Cashman.
``He looked at me and said, `Aren't you Shorty Cashman's son?' He signed the note for me. That was the biggest kick I ever had in my life to get on my feet,'' Cashman says. The pier was a huge success. In 10 months, the five investors made their money back.
Cashman and his wife spent the next years working shifts on the pier, juggling family life on the same stretch of planking.
``We were raised on it,'' says Duff, their daughter. Bill Cashman remembers his father working so hard that for weeks the only time he saw him was on Sunday mornings before church.
Now all his original partners have died and Charlie Cashman holds the controlling interest in the pier. Duff has taken over her mother's job as bookkeeper. Duff's daughter, Megan, spent this summer in the bait shop alongside the retirees her grandfather hires to help him. They set their own hours and hardly ever quit.
``People are always asking how do you get a job in this place and we tell 'em, when somebody dies,'' Duff says.
They are a loyal and admiring bunch. Carl Jahn, a goose-hunting buddy of Cashman's, has worked part-time in the bait shop for two years and has known him for almost 15.
``Charlie's real gruff, real blunt, but he's got a heart this big,'' Jahn says, starting a story about a trip the two took to Florida last June. ``We were sitting at a stoplight and there was this guy in the median with one of those signs that says `Hungry, Need Work.' It was a really long light. I kept watching Charlie out of the corner of my eye. He was getting more and more fidgety and finally, he stuck his hand in his pocket and handed me a fistful of money and said, `Here, give it to him.'
Friends kid Cashman about his worms.
``He worries more about the worms than he does that pier,'' says H. Ernest Brown, a lifelong friend.
Cashman's pals tell him to slow down, take it easy, enjoy the profits from his other investments - a marina, several shopping centers.
``He can't let go of that fishing pier. He can't let go of those worms,'' says Dan Arris.
Last night, Cashman got word from the airline that his worms wouldn't
be in as scheduled. This morning another flight landed in Norfolk, wormless again.
At 11 a.m. on this Thursday, Cashman still doesn't have any worms and is getting madder by the minute.
``I'm not in a good mood,'' he bellows across the bait shop. ``This is the only part of this operation that's blown, is the worms. You never know what they're gonna do. I've got worms sittin' in Boston and I don't know when they'll get here. I'm hopin' I'll get 'em sometime tonight. I have to get 'em out of those boxes or they'll start eatin' each other. They're so temperamental, just like women.''
He looks up and grins.
That afternoon, Cashman's worms make it. He drives out to the Norfolk airport, brings them back. All 4,000 of them. A white apron tied around his ample middle, he sits down facing the back wall of the bait shop, opens the first box and starts making piles - $2.50 for six, $4.75 for a dozen, $6.50 for a bag of jumbos. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
L. TODD SPENCER
``I've packed enough bloodworms so that, laid mouth to tail, they'd
go around the world several times,'' says Charlie Cashman, an owner
of the Lynnhaven Inlet Fishing Pier.
by CNB