Tag: Coastal life

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The Devil

As Halloween approaches, I’ve decided to bring some of my seasonal stories back “from the grave,” so to speak. This one was from October of 2022. Although strictly fictional, it is based in part on some real events, attitudes, and behavior.

You’d be hard-pressed to find any seafarer, fisherfolk, or plain coastal types without some horror tale on the water. It just goes with the territory; salt water envelopes most of the world and is dangerous. 

Lurking beneath that calm tropical paradise you’ve vacationed in are currents, tides, rips, rocks, tidal flats, and reefs. These might all be known hazards, but that doesn’t mean that they are less deadly. Circumstances and bad luck can be the dividing line between inconvenience and tragedy. And that’s just the stuff you can make plans to avoid or correct.

There’s just a ton of stuff you can’t plan for: rogue waves, sudden squalls, or engine failures that put you at risk on lee shores. Then there are collisions with unseen objects and illness at sea. I could go on, but I think you get the idea. It’s no wonder that hidden in every sailor is a tiny little superstitious knot. It might not be as apparent as a refusal to sail on a Friday. Or no bananas on board, or not whistling while you set sail, but it’s there. But without a doubt, the most dangerous element at sea will always be the human element.

Name Changes? Oh No.

Where I lived on the coast, it was considered bad luck to change the name of a boat. But, if you did, many boatyards followed procedures that seemed more like heathen rituals. They sure didn’t come from anything Baptist, Catholic, Congregationalist, or Methodist.

Libations would be poured to Neptunas Rex and Davy Jones. Coins under the masts would be added. After repairs, they are carefully put back or eliminated in exchange for a completely new set. And of course, the boat would be thoroughly cleaned fore and aft. Sometimes this would not be enough.

Thrice Warned

One of the Allens from over to the cape purchased a very smart lobster boat third-hand. He did this against his wife, father, and brother’s wishes. He’d been thrice warned.

The boat had started life as a workhorse lobster boat built by a well-known builder out of Boothbay. She’d worked the waters of the mid-coast for years as the Hattie Carroll. Then, about 1974, she’d been sold to a New York City Banker. He had her gutted and fixed up as a fancy boat to tour clients around during the summer. She was what we call a lobster yacht these days. 

Then, without any to do, he’d had a signmaker slap some vinyl letters on her. The new name was ” The Cheek Of The Devil” in a fancy script. The boatyard had suggested that a bit of ceremony would be nice. But he wanted what he wanted, so he got it. No ceremony, but it was the talk of the harbor. Using the Devil in a boat’s name was not typical and not thought lucky.

He didn’t enjoy his boat long. A fire started offshore, and all aboard went into the bay. Unfortunately, there hadn’t been enough floatation devices aboard for all the guests, so he yielded his floatation vest and drowned. 

The boat survived with severe fire damage but was salvaged and put up for sale.

The Devil

She lay in Spinney’s yard for two years before being sold. I wouldn’t know if the reason was the fire, the owner’s death, the name, or a combination of all three. But she sat in the back of the yard, nevertheless. To locals, it was the Devil.  That should have been enough to discourage any local from buying it. 

History and name suggested that nothing but ill luck was involved in that boat. Wash it in a bathtub of holy water from Saint Jerome’s, or do whatever hocus pocus you wish, and none of that would help. My father-in-law, the Cap’n, put it succinctly enough, ” I wouldn’t allow any of my kin to sit in its shadow, much less step aboard.”

Lobster Boat Races

The Devil sat there until Jacob Allen went looking for a cheap boat with fast lines that he could pour a high-power engine into for lobster boat racing. The Devil fit the bill. And over a long Maine winter, he worked to rebuild the boat into his dream of a fast racer. 

During the spring, his trial runs seemed to indicate that he’d be a contender in any race he entered. Unfortunately, Jacob was not the type to go full speed ahead, only at a race. He’d run circles around other lobster boats in the local harbor gang he belonged to. He took pleasure in almost swamping small craft he considered to be in his way. Jacob wasn’t well-liked.

Jacob was known to infringe on the territories of nearby lobstermen. He was closely watched until, one day, he was caught. The first time you get caught, you will likely pull your traps and find a half hitch in your line. It’s a warning that your trespass has been noted. Do it again, and the penalties will go up. 

The Devil proved as successful as Jacob believed it would, and victory was frequent. Now I do not know how plush the prizes are these days, but back then, it was peanuts. You raced for the joy and pleasure of it. Jacob also raced because he loved to rub other skippers’ noses in how fast the Devil was. In a family of quiet Mainers, he inherited all the ego.

Thief

I was helping out at Spinney’s boat yard that September. It was time to be hauling out summer people’s boats, and I overheard Spinney talking to my father-in-law, the Cap’n. They both agreed that Jacob was heading for a fall. They quieted down when I walked up. But it was common knowledge that Jacob had been robbing traps, and something was bound to happen.

Things get slower as the weather gets colder. Lobstermen spend more time repairing and making new lobster pots ( or traps), repairing their gear, and taking care of their boats. But on Halloween morning, the blast rocked the entire harbor as the Devil blew up with Jacob Allen aboard. The official report said Jacob had ignited a puddle of gasoline while starting his boat. A death by misadventure, I guess. But knowing people understood that Jacob Allen had been a scrupulous man in caring for his boat.

Murder was suspected but never proven. There wasn’t enough of the Devil or Jacob Allen left for much of an inquest. Just the mutterings of people about the enemies he’d had, and someone finally canceling a grudge hard.

At the coffee shop in the morning, there were comments about how the boat had been ill-fated from the start. Then, more quietly, someone muttered that the Devil had certainly known his own.

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Rooted

For Fandango’s Flashback Friday- June 27, 20232

I entered my shop this morning to smell linseed oil, varnish, and wood shavings. I was transported to my friend’s boat shop in Newbury, the WoodenBoat School in Brookline, Maine, the shipyard I worked in one summer, and the shops of mentors and friends from over the past fifty years. A woodworker’s aromatherapy.

It’s hard to explain the languor that overcomes you as you share the unity of experience across the years and distances. It’s like you could step back twenty years or five hundred miles. One place and a single time stand-in for the others. The chips and shavings on the floor tell a story. Put them all together and have a negative shape echoing the garboard or eagle crafted from the plank.

There is a connection also, across the generations, to the mentors and masters who taught the trade to us. They sit on chairs near the woodstove during the winter, drinking coffee, smoking pipes, talking about the weather, and telling tales of launchings so long ago that the keel timbers are dust. Occasionally one will stand by our shoulder, whispering a suggestion.

I’ve been in the large industrial spaces some people call workshops, and I think they lack the sort of connectedness of the more familiar locations I am talking about. Instead, they perform a robbery of the spirit.

Maybe it’s the lack of patterns hanging from the joists, remnants of projects completed fifty years ago. The faint pencil marks tell a history of later revision as the project was modified for another client. Somewhere in the shop, you can find everything you’d ever need, every bolt, screw, or grade of sandpaper. All you have to do is find it.

So this morning, I entered my shop to smell linseed oil, varnish, and wood shavings. I was transported to my friend’s boat shop in Newbury, the WoodenBoat School in Brookline, Maine, the shipyard I worked in one summer, and the shops of mentors and friends from over the past fifty years. It’s nice to be rooted.

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QUAAK

The ship in the background is the USS Constitution. The nearby building is the maintenance facility where much of the new materials for the Constitution’s rebuild were fabricated. Tucked away on the far back of the second floor was my friend Bill Brommell’s workshop. Around that time, I was newly unemployed by the Department of the Interior. I spent at least one afternoon a week coming by for extended lunches in the shipyard or surrounding parts of Charlestown.
Bill was the model maker at the Constitution Museum, and I had met him one afternoon after I had wandered into his space. He had more tales than the average sailor, and they would poke out at the odd moment when some bit or oddity was under discussion, like how he and his wife had set up with a Greek shipbuilder right after World War II, building traditional wooden Greek fishing boats and small vessels.
They did not have a ship saw ( sort of a bandsaw on heavy steroids), so timbers were cut using a pit saw—literally a pit in the ground with one sawyer in the pit and one above pulling the saw back and forth. He casually mentioned that they called the pitman Gorilla because his arm and chest muscles were huge from working the pit saw.

Bill had an almost encyclopedic knowledge of traditional boat and shipbuilding techniques. And we wound up cooperating on a variety of projects. One was constructing the small boat he was rigging in the picture. We built the boat in the fifth-floor Folklife Center I operated. It was a great lark. Bill reduced and scaled it down from a larger craft used in Porugal’s wine trade in the 1700s. My friend, Ralph Johnson from the Pert Lowell company, built it with a crew of happy volunteers, including me.

With boats, size, and capability can be a matter of perception. Bill named the boat Quaak after the sounds that yellow-crowned night herons make. Quaack was an incredible boat to row, smoothly gliding through the water. Bill, however, soon made rigging for her so she could be square or lug rigged. Quaak sailed sweetly with all those rigs. We took her to the WoodenBoat Show in Mystic, Connecticut, one year. He set up her square rigging, and we proudly proclaimed she was the only square rigger in the show that year.

Quaak was fully equipped with everything needed, including a ship bell to use as a fog signal. Her transom was properly decorated with a transom banner that I carved.

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Shore Wise

When I visit a new coastal community, I always scan the local paper to see if it covers the waterfront. Even if there are no arrivals and departures, the coverage of the waterfront gives me a good feeling for the community. Is it a “working waterfront,” a tarted-up playground for the wealthy, or an ignored part of town hidden behind a highway? You learn a lot about a place by how it “faces.” If the fisherman, boat repair yards, filet houses, and chandlers are all relegated to a back cove somewhere off the highway, I’d prefer to be elsewhere. So, I always look for places where everything comes together in a living whole – not fractions divided by walls and highways.

Last Sunday, I was on the coast, and while waiting for my wife to exit a shop, I had a conversation with someone who turned out to be a retired lobsterman. Over five minutes, we traveled fifty years back to a time when traps were wooden, and we were younger men—Fishfinders and Loran-C was high-tech then. We laughed while watching someone unfamiliar with boats struggle into a floatation vest.

The community was a fantastic melange of art galleries, jewelry shops, restaurants, and a working waterfront. Down at the end of the pier, a refrigerator truck was loading a fresh catch, and a “Cap’n” was welcoming aboard a group of tourists for a harbor cruise.

Traveling to some odd corner was unnecessary to experience the parts. It was all there, like a theatre in the round. There was always something new to view. It was a circus with the tourists and a daily round for the locals living by the sea. Get to the coffee shop early enough, and it was all local. The talk was about the weather, the catch, how the season was going, and what the Board of Selectmen were up to ( the damned fools!). I imagine that some of the fractions existed in a state of tension with one another. It seemed inevitable. But the whole was much more than a simple sum of the parts.

I’ve relished this sort of place, from Maine to the Carolina Capes, on the Chesapeake and the Great Lakes. They are all different but all sort of like home. Their success is that they have yet to close off the water, make it only a playground for the wealthy, shut it off, or encapsulate it. It’s all there. And it’s alive.

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Recollections

Some Hot!

I recall that on the coast, way back when, the older ladies would sit on the porch on July evenings complaining of the heat. I’m in my garage workshop carving a sign and idly listening—” Ahhh! Some hot!” Aunt Grace would declare, and Cora, my mother-in-law, would pipe an agreement. Off to one side, my father-in-law, the Cap’n, would grunt agreement while puffing his pipe to life. Life was tranquil, and truly hot days were uncommon on the coast.

Now, for this to sound right, there has to be that little inhalational gasp of amazement before ” some hot”, and you have to use New England Coastal English to have the right effect. 

I’ve been away from that little coastal community for many years. At the time of that porch conversation, I was getting ready to depart and never return. But the mark of having lived there, been immersed in that family and worked there left its mark on me.

Being an anthropologist is kind of funny because your life in the field is immersive. I was training, writing about the community, and making a living there. I absorbed it like a sponge. In a way, it absorbed me.

While doing some work at one of the local boat yards, one of the guys suggested that I give directions to some New Yorkers. I did so, and one of the women remarked that she loved my “Yankee” accent. No matter how hard I tried to insist that I was from New York, but they laughed it off as a joke. I was so used to speaking to my friends as they talked to me that I had slipped into their speaking style without thinking. My friends had set me up for a joke. I was not too amused.

Later that night on the porch, and after the comments on how hot it had been, the Cap’n found it amusing, too. Being a cultural chameleon was not a form of hypocrisy but a way of learning. He remarked that I was fitting in, and eventually, people would forget that I was “from away.“

The Applied Anthropologist

The family had high expectations that I’d stay, give up dreams of fieldwork in Spain, university professorships, and publication in journals for life on the coast. Take up a job at a boatyard or join Lowell as a stern man on his lobster boat.

Well, none of that happened. I became an applied anthropologist working primarily in urban ethnic communities in Massachusetts. The marriage had failed, and I never returned to the small coastal community.

Then, in 1992, I learned that my job was about to be “reinvented” out of existence by the Clinton administration. There was some time before the ax fell, and I decided to dance on the edge of the abyss just a bit. Part of my job was to manage the traditional crafts area of a major folk festival. That year, I persuaded a lobsterman to bring his boat to the weekend festival and talk to people about lobstering. A boat builder also came to demonstrate boatbuilding skills. Guess where I spent my weekend during the festival that year.

Well in for a nickel, in for a dime. I invited the boatbuilder to build a boat in our Folklife Center. Guess who one of the helpers was.

Then came the moment that changed everything. I started hanging around the boat shows with my friend, the boatbuilder. Someone came up looking to have a transom banner carved, and my friend pointed to me, ” Speak to Lou.” I had started carving again; I was ready for the challenge. I probably undercharged for that board, but the experience was transformative.

New Lou

Not long after the ax fell on the government job, I found myself teaching maritime carving at a boatbuilding school along the coast of Maine. Walking along the roadside one evening on my way to the little harbor, I felt curiously at home. I recalled the proverb attributed to Mark Twain that –“History never repeats itself but it rhymes.”

It’s curious how history and experience shape our lives—not quite one thing but a blend of them all. We all seek some form of security and assurance that life is stable. But we often wind up on adventures brought about by factors beyond our control. You need to grasp the opportunities to shape life as you can. I was fortunate that I was able to pull together elements from my family’s maritime history, my time along the coast, anthropology, and the craft. The new synthesis allowed me to make my way through some troubling times.

We have some say about how the elements fit together in our lives. Our choices are important.  It’s not random unless we let it be.

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Twilight

Twilight is not just a simple fading of the light. If you’re a sailor, there is civil twilight and nautical twilight. Then some sit, gin and tonic in hand, waiting to see the green flash as the rapid tropical sunset fades into the short tropical twilight. All these, except for that elusive green flash, can be gauged and timed. But, so far as I know, no attempt has succeeded in predicting the green flash.

The flash is debated. After exhausting that topic, a few more Pusser rums are consumed. Then the group discusses other maritime mysteries, like how the ship’s cooks can ruin perfectly good chow. Interestingly, the vessel size seems immaterial; everything from a thirty-four-foot ketch to a colossal tanker suffers the same fate.

After this, things settle down, and as the evening rolls on, other mysteries are divulged, discussed, and interpreted– the best bars in ports they’ve visited, the worst storms, women, and how much they miss the Loran-C navigational system. This last start a debate among the master mariners in the group about who can still use a sextant for a noon sight.

When midnight comes, and the Mid-watch is about to commence, the topic turns to nautical versus civil sunrise.
It’s terrific being a sailor…there is always something to bull shit about.

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The Great Sail Contest

The Mermaid Inn was not the best in town. However, it had the distinction of surviving an insurance fire staged by New York owners and abandonment in the Great Depression.
Having survived hardship, The Inn had acquired the crusty “knock me down, and I’ll get back up” reputation that locals admired because they saw it as among their best traits. It also had the distinction of being the summer residence of J. Paul Henry, a prominent travel writer of the era immediately following the Second World War. Mr. Henry was in “residence” from mid-June through mid-October when he decamped to his Key West home.

The annual residency was heralded by the advance arrival of Mr. Henry’s great walk-in teak travel chest. A local boatbuilder opined that those chests were made from enough old-growth teak and mahogany to get out at least two fast motor boats. The boys who handled the delivery always questioned the pronunciation of the travel stickers, tags, and posters that decorated the chests. Of course, the many retired mariners and Navy men in town knew the exotic locations, but these were the first accurate indication that those places existed for the boys.

Despite a years-long effort by the local Chamber of Commerce to persuade Mr. Henry to write about the town, he refused. It was perfect as it was, he insisted. Too many summer complaints, he stated, would ruin the place. Local business owners construed this to mean that Mr. Henry wanted to keep it a well-kept secret all to himself, something he did not bother to deny.
Then a travel writer from a competing ” New York Rag” came to town for a visit. He stayed at the newer Mountsweg Inn in the center of town. Unfortunately, his opinion of the locale was at odds with that of Mr. Henry. The coffee at the restaurants was consistently weak, the local boating club plebian at best, and the harbor overvalued as an attraction.

This screed, when published, had more of an effect on a weak local economy than the years of celebrated residence by Mr. Henry.

But time, and the recording of history, tend to forget many things once thought important, focusing attention elsewhere. So when a very oversized walk-in teak travel chest was bequeathed to the local historical society by the estate of Mr. Henry, it came as a surprise. It took a survey of older residents to recall who Mr. Henry had been. And then there was a minor crisis over where to put the walk-in travel chest; actually, what the hell they were going to do with it. Finally, the estate sent a warm note in Mr. Henry’s writing, glowingly recalling his time spent rusticating locally, the community’s wonderful residents, and the area’s gratifying natural beauty. This was all very well, but the Board of Directors of the Historical Society had to come up with a place to store the monstrosity while they decided what to do with it. A note of thanks went back to the estate executor that if a suitable amount of money was contributed, an exhibit on Mr. Henry could be mounted. The letter met with silence from the executor. They stored the chest outside under a tarp.

For years that was the fate of the chest; it was so solidly constructed out of old-growth tropical hardwoods that it seemed to shrug off the effect of the Maine winters and thrived under its layering of tarps. Who knows how long it might have sat there if not for the local boat club deciding to have a boat race open to all comers who’d enter the race in whimsical homemade boats. Prizes would be awarded for completing the course, being the most daring entry, and honorable mentions for most unique construction.

The Historical Society saw an opportunity for unloading, that is, making use of the large walk-in trunk; the chest might do for their entry. So they called upon my father-in-law, the Cap’n, and a well-regarded local boatbuilder Wallace Allen, to survey the chest, and determine what they could make of it.
The chest was solidly overbuilt. In its time, it had moved around the world on steamships to exotic locations marked on its surface with old travel posters. There were so many that, in places, they seemed to form a veneer over the teak and mahogany. An immersion test was done, and the vessel was declared tight and potentially seaworthy.

The Cap’n and the builder added a skeg for stability and some ballast. Sparring was selected, and renovations got made to allow for rigging. It would be a bastardized Catboat/Sloop with a tiny jib sail and a salvaged storm sail off a larger boat for the main. I was selected to be captain and crew.

The day of the race was also the first test of the rig. This wasn’t too much of a handicap because many other entries also saw water for the first time. Unfortunately, about half the entries sank before making it to the start line. Innovation in design did not necessarily equate with good sail characteristics, so the butterfly, the Batmobile, and the windmill boat went adrift very rapidly. We had named our vessel the J.Paul Henry, and our main competitor turned out to be the pontoon inner tube boat with Chinese Junk sails crewed by women from the Ladies Civic League. The only other boat that could keep to the course was a converted ice boat mounted on twin canoe hulls – the Ice Queen. Unfortunately, the Ice Queen had a mishap when the lashing holding it together failed. Now the race was between the Ladies Civic League and our boat. Despite shifting winds, we both made it around the course in good time and raced downwind for the finish. It looked like a dead heat until the main sheet on the Civic League’s boat parted, and she rounded up to windward and stalled in irons. The J Paul Henry smartly crossed the finish line, won first prize, and a photo in the local newspaper.
The only sour note was the scathing denunciation published by several local antique dealers the following week. They decried how a bunch of local heathen had cut up a historic teak and mahogany trunk, ruining its considerable value for a brief frolic. This letter appeared on page seven. On page two, there was another picture of the J Paul Henry, the Cap’n, and Mr. Allen. They would head up the committee for next year’s race. Since the race had been a great success, attracted lots of tourist visitation, and brought much attention locally, the Chamber of Commerce was thrilled that J Paul Henry had, at last, made a substantial contribution to the community.

You can guess which article received the most attention.

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Cribbage, Lights List and Coastal Pilot

The broken cribbage board and the Coast Pilot Take me back to the days when I learned to “Hand, Reef, and Steer” aboard the 34-foot ketch Psyche. The lovely thing about the ketch rig is that you have a wide choice of sails and sail configurations. Pick the right combo, and the boat will “wing on wing” before light air leaving you to enjoy the sail. The less fun part of the ketch rig is gaining the experience to choose correctly. The knight in the Indiana Jones movie said – “Choose, but choose wisely.”

Among my duties aboard were to swing the lead line, go forward on a heaving foredeck to take in jibs, reef, steer under the Cap’ns instructions, and heave the anchor up ( no, no capstan chanteys). I also mess cooked, went for ice, was first off with the lines, and had a plethora of additional duties. Look, I was chief cook, bottle washer, mate and buffet server.

At night I was required on demand to play cribbage with the Cap’n. Playing cribbage was not an optional duty. His daughter, my first wife, was not thrilled by the game, and thus, I was required to play. I developed a robust distaste for the game. And that’s why the broken cribbage board will stay that way. 

I’d like you to consider that for many years I could not recall the name of the game or could not force it past my lips. I still can’t remember the rules. Only in recent years have I been able to push those two syllables past my lips. I do not consider this a detriment, because by now you have realized that I loathe the game.

The Cap’n didn’t want to talk. He didn’t want to play some other reasonable sailor’s game:

  • No Acey-Ducey.
  • Cheaters Monopoly ( and I don’t mean the wimpy civilian version).
  •  Or Craps.

He wanted to play cribbage, night after night after night.

One night on deck, the question arose about identifying the navigational lights we saw from the various lighthouses along the coast. That conversation lead to my introduction to the Lights List and Notices to Mariners. The next day the Cap’n introduced me to the Coast Pilot, a publication that lists important information for mariners regarding the harbors and waterways along the coast.

Over the next two trips, the Cap’n pulled out his worn 1941 edition of Bowditch, a sexton, sight reduction tables, and away we went. I eventually got good enough that I did not calculate our position as somewhere near Washington, D.C., when we were near Sequin.

All these instructions gave me a solution to the cribbage problem. I found that if I begged off playing because I had to study the Coastal Pilot or Lights List, my wife had to play cribbage with the Cap’n. Unfortunately, this “evasion of my duties” didn’t help my deteriorating marriage . 

Things came to a head just before I left to return to school one summer. I played my educational card once too often and got accused of selfish behavior. Too damn true! I self-righteously refused to give up my navigational studies for mere cribbage. I maintained that I was taking the high road to self-improvement. My wife seeing through my ploy, clocked me with the cribbage board. That night I played cribbage.

Somehow when we separated, the broken cribbage board wound up in one of my boxes. It went undiscovered for years but gradually found its way into one of the family game boxes; forgotten.

A few weeks ago, Matilda and I visited Shelbourne Falls with a few of our kids. In one of the used bookstores, I found this copy of the Coast Pilot, and all the memories came pouring forth: Psyche, my first marriage coming undone, piloting, navigation, and of course, cribbage.

I am reminded of an anonymous quote: A smooth sea never made a skillful mariner. However, I hope by now that I am at least somewhat skilled in life, if not too wise.

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Dissonance

The other day I had a strange experience. Someone had posted a video of the fourth of July celebration in the community where I used to live on the Maine Coast. I had this strange deja vu sensation. Here was the Town Hall, the roadway, and the view off to the coast that was so familiar. There was the old school house that was a landmark. But all the people were strangers. The people driving the fire engines and cars looked nothing like the folk in my memory. The older people looked not at all like the ones I remembered, and the youth among whom I had once numbered were all alien to me.

Of course, I’ve been gone forty-seven years. Young people are now old, and the old long time departed. Still, some of me kept asking where the people I knew were. I stowed this bit of cognitive dissonance away, but I guess it wasn’t done with me yet because today, I read a post of someone vacationing there. Their photos and maps brought all the dissonance back to the forefront.

I should take a weekend with my wife and drive up and visit. But then I thought not. What is there about visiting a place that has all the memories, feelings and landmarks but none of the people? You are a sort of a stranger in a known landscape.
At the diner, the wait staff asks if you are visiting for long, and a light conversation develops as you explain that you used to live there. The motel clerk is local and confirms what you already knew; all your contemporaries are moved to Florida, deceased, or in memory care units. The house that was your home has been torn down and is a development of new homes. You are officially ancient.

At last, you glance across the cove from the restaurant and know how final change is because the 34-foot ketch that centered most of your life here is forever gone.

No, I don’t think I’ll visit and confirm what I already know but wish to deny.

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Stash

I was talking to Spinney. It was a late August Sunday evening, and we watched the sun sink into the bay. A conversation about the green flash had evolved into a discussion of the Golden Age of Piracy. I was going on about how the piratical equivalent of the fence was really the most essential part of the operation. There wasn’t much “yo ho ho and a bottle of rum” without the cash to pay for the booze and fast women. Spinney allowed that this was true. He took a sip of his beer. Then, looking out over the bay, he went silent for a moment. Finally, he said: “it’s not just about a good fence; it’s also about a good place to hold the goods until the fence can move them, or until the fence agrees to a price.” I did a fast take on Spinney, “What?” This was Spinney speaking, deacon of his church, most ethical boatyard owner on this stretch of the coast.

Spinney said, “My family has been around this stretch of the coast since before the first Census. Even before the Revolution. Some families claim to have been here before the Pilgrims landed. Not a few of us moved goods that the Crown saw as against the “Navigation Acts.” My father was known to move goods from offshore and Canada during Prohibition. Not my family, but others made a racket some years ago, breaking into summer people’s homes and emptying them out. An excellent place to stow goods is essential. You can’t exactly keep two hundred cases of Canadian Whiskey in your garage. Well, you could, but that’d be the first place they’d look, Likewise with stowing four rooms of antique furniture.

I bit. “OK, where would you put it”? Spinney looked towards the bay, pointed out to Boomkin Island, then a bit further to the ledges known as the Spires. “Out there, here and there.” The summer cottage break-ins were solved because the police chief was a Grey. He knew the spots that old Alden Grey used in the Thirties. Unfortunately, Alden’s grandson was no Alden. He had no clue that other family members knew those spots. Todd was not too bright, and the Chief didn’t like a family member dragging the Grey name in the mud. So one morning, they rounded up the furniture and soon rounded up Todd. That was the last I can recall of the old spots being used. There were a few attempts to use sites on Old Ram, but those were outsiders.

“So Spinney, are there still goods out there? Could you show me a spot or two?”
Spinney quickly changed the subject to sports, a topic he knew I knew nothing about and liked less. Soon afterward, the sun went down, and we each went our own ways.

Next week Spinney showed up in his battered green pickup truck. I offered him a cold beer, but he said: “no time for that now if we’re going to get to the Little Widows before dark.” I didn’t bother questioning but assumed this was the inevitable continuation of our last conversation. Spinney was going to show me one of the spots. “Now I know that you anthropologists make a point of confidentiality. So understand that what I’m going to show you is in the way of being a family trade secret.” I glibly agreed never to reveal the secret … not that I could ever pilot a boat out to the nubs of rock and spruce we were about to visit.
“Anyhow, one of the Widows has been a family spot since before the Revolution. There are lots of Spinneys in the state. But, particularly my family to this one town. So my spots are only known to close family.” As Spinney laid out the family history, we were going recklessly, or so it seemed to me, through narrow passages from the inner bay to the outer. I had once been out with Spinney in a thick fog that he had navigated through solely by the benefit of the rare sounding, dead reckoning, and wave sounds from adjacent shores.

The sun was almost gone when we reached the tiny islet he assured me was the location of a Spinney spot. Searching around in the tide, Spinney eventually found a rusted chain with a shackle. To this, he secured the boat. Walking into the thicket of stunted oak and spruce, Spinney suddenly reached out and stopped me. He reached down and grabbed the edge of a ratty tarp. Shaking off several years of storm wrack, leaves, and jetsam, Spinney revealed a rusted metal hatch plate. “Grab the other side. I haven’t been out this way for years, and the last time I was still young enough to handle this myself.”
Lifting up the hatch almost pulled my arms out of their sockets. In his 80’s, Spinney was as lean and spare as they come. He was known as a compact powerhouse around his yard. Straining not to drop my end of the hatch, I awkwardly crab-walked back the few yards while Spinney effortlessly walked off with his side. “Ok, put this down easily now.” Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a flashlight, and careful not to shine the light about, he illuminated the contents of the stash. “We have to be careful about the light. Don’t want anyone ashore getting curious”. Inside were stacks of wooden cases, brandy, Scots Whiskey, rye, Canadian, liquors, sherry, and more. I felt a terrible thirst building. It had been a dry ride out, and the night was cooling. Spinney must have read my mind because I next heard the clink of two shot glasses being pulled out of his jacket. “What shall it be?” asks Spinney, as politely as the bartender at the Anchor Bar over in the harbor. “Well, Spinney, it’s your stash, so it’s your choice.”

Spinney cast the light over the stash and waved his hand over a few of the closest cases while he contemplated his selection. Then, reaching down seemingly randomly, he pulled up a Napoleon brandy. “This will take off the chill.” Opening the bottle with a bit of flair, Spinney pours us both a shot that we knock back fast, making room for refills. We lingered over the refills. I’m sitting on a speck of an island, drinking from a stash of booze that’s been sitting there since Prohibition. I am in on one of the biggest secrets on the coast. I’m also thinking about how hard it would be to confirm documentation from other families about similar spots and traditions. I am thinking about an article in American Anthropologist (Traditions and Family in Illicit Coastal Trades: Stashes and Spots along the Mid Maine Coast). It could help me get a tenure track after I finish my dissertation.
Spinney has been my confidant for years. He has questioned me closely about anthropology and academia as I have asked him about life in a coastal community. In the jargon of my trade, Spinney is a “key informant.” In short, Spinney knows what is running through my head. But then, quietly, he refills our glasses and says, “No, you’ll never be able to write it up, except maybe when you’re my age. But, it’ll be a nice story to tell when you’re out for drinks.”
I looked at Spinney and said: “Yeah, especially when I add that I sat here drinking booze hidden from the time of Prohibition.”

Spinney sat there quiet for a few minutes. “Uh. Wes?” “Yeah?” “This stuff is old, but it’s not from Prohibition. About twenty years ago, I closed the roadhouse we used to run on Route 29. The rest of the family are straight-out teetotalers, and I couldn’t stow this stuff in the barn, so I stashed it out here”.
“Oh.”