18.2.08

Stangler

A stangler is a member of a quasi-secretive fraternal society of New Englanders whose fathers were killed in fishing accidents. Many members would tattoo the word "stangler" to their chins and grow beards - this stemming from a tale oft told of a bearded seaman who died on a trawler in a terrible gale in Massachusetts waters and whose tradition-starting tattoo was revealed upon his death. The word itself is derived from "stupid angler," a criticism frequently leveled - and drunkenly, slurringly so - at recreational fishers by the father of the Order's anonymous founder. This inebriated old salt died at sea, and his son applied the term to him disparagingly, and yet, as with many stories of fathers and sons, ranging back to perhaps Cain and Enoch, perhaps even predating biblical genealogy into the primordial soup of offspring and -springer, the Fraternal Order of Stanglers was established to countenance the quiet and everlasting grief felt so acutely by the grown boy bereft of his daddy. It is said that in the village of Prides Crossing, Massachusetts, Essex County, a seaside tavern closes at irregular hours once a week and the doors open only for men shuffling slowly in, a weight upon them not sufficiently explained by their long, thick beards.  

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