I was 18 years old, working
as a “coolie” on the “Sea Dog”, a 48-foot
Nova Scotian lobster boat, fishing out of Marblehead, Massachusetts.
These boats were made of wood held together with nails. The bilge
always had water in it despite the bilge pump, and the scuppers
let the sea wash across the deck. This was not a bad thing as it
was the swelling of the wet wood that kept the boat together. We
worked about 30 lobster traps, did some tub trawl, and helped Watson
Curtis haul his huge trap net. It took eight men or strong boys
in two double-ended Gloucester dories and a ninth man yelling a
lot to haul a trap net. It is an exciting event, especially when
there are fish.
 Pat
White was the owner of the “Sea Dog” and was from a
rich family out on the neck where the richest Marblehead families
lived. His father owned a business school in Boston, and I remember
him as a very nice man. Pat was going against the grain, deciding
to be a fisherman, instead of sailing. He worked hard at it to make
up for the stigma of being a rich kid. He started with a skiff and
a few lobster traps and bought that old Novy for $800, car engine
and all.
Pat told me one day as we were coming in that he had volunteered
to go to Africa and help teach Africans to fish better. I could
stay in Marblehead, fish the boat and send him a share, or maybe
go along. There was a new organization started by President Kennedy
and a guy named Sargent Shriver. It was called the Peace Corps.
They had 800 volunteers so far slated to go to different countries,
and they were looking for fisherman to go to a place called Togo,
in West Africa. In 1960 it was no easy task to find 14 fishermen,
usually supporting families, to go to Africa for $120.00 a month
to teach people how to fish. They thought this was an odd idea.
Pat and I went to Gloucester to talk to Mike Ruggerio who worked
for a government organization called something like the Fisheries
and Gear Research Center. He was bored, had read about the Peace
Corps, and had sent a letter to Sargent Shriver asking if he could
be involved. Coincidentally, a letter arrived on Shriver’s
desk at the same time from Mr. Alsop, the U.N. food and agriculture
guy assigned to Togo. Alsop said there was a major protein deficiency
in Togo that could be corrected if there were more fish available
for general consumption. Ruggerio was contacted and told to get
14 fishermen together to go to Africa. He did, and I was one of
them.
Before going to Togo we were first to join the rest of the volunteers
at Howard University in Washington for classes in French, lectures
about Togo and culture shock training. When we arrived we were introduced
to the other Togo volunteers. There were 46 of us all together.
Togo had a medical team and a group of school teachers. There were
also volunteers bound for Ghana, Sierra Leon and some South American
countries.
Our training period did not go smoothly. For the fisherman, our
day started at 6:00 am with physical training. The fisherman flat-out
refused to get up and run around a track and do sit-ups. Most of
these guys were trap, not net fishermen, aged 40 to 65. Their normal
day started at 3:00 am so they could be back to shore and make it
to the Boston markets by 7:00 am. This made sense, exercise didn’t.
They were even less enthusiastic about lectures and French class.
I, unfortunately, fell asleep not more than six feet from Sargent
Shriver when he came to speak to the Togo group.
 And
there were fist fights. Well, one was just a scuffle. The last of
the 14 fishermen to be found was not a fisherman, but a sailor who
knew his way around boats, so he was picked up at the last minute
to be number 14. All I remember about him was that he was an arrogant,
pompous asshole. There was probably more to him than that, but I
can’t remember it. I also don’t remember the nature
of our disagreement. Only that it lasted about a minute and was
physical in nature. A few days later, Vito, our next oldest fisherman
had another disagreement with him and in about the same amount of
time did some serious damage. The sailor packed up and left that
day. We had already lost another fisherman early on who had left
because he missed his girlfriend. Now we were 12.
Several days after these incidents the fisherman were called to
meet in front of the main hall where we took, or did not take, classes.
A couple of us thought it might be about the fights. It turned out
it wasn’t.
At 6:00 we gathered sitting along the edge lining the entry to the
hall. A man we had never met showed up, introduced himself and sat
across from us on the opposite wall. This is what he said:
“I have to tell you that it has come to our attention that
some of the women volunteers have been complaining about the level
of profanity used by the fishermen’s group.”
Charles Hayward wrote several historic novels that took place during
the Revolutionary war and were set in Marblehead. It says on the
town seal that Marblehead is the “Birthplace of the American
Navy.” This is because a British frigate ran aground off of
Marblehead in the fog and a group of Marblehead fishermen rowed
out, boarded the frigate, threw the British seamen over the side,
and took the frigate with the incoming tide. In one of his novels
Hayward said that because of this incident the British Navy tried
to avoid Marblehead fishing boats in the fog. He said they could
identify the Marblehead fishermen by the level of profanity that
floated to them through the fog from any fishing boat in their vicinity.
In 200 years things hadn’t changed much. A Marblehead, or
Gloucester or Rockport fisherman could hardly complete a sentence
without the word fuck. It was some colloquial grammatical thing.
“It’s a beautiful fucking day.” “It was
a hell of a fucking catch.” “Fucking boat.” “Fucking
rain.” “Fucking piss and cold.” “Fucking
bait.” “Let’s get fucking breakfast.” A
television station had tried to do a documentary on Tinker Carol,
a famous Marblehead boat builder. There were so many bleeps when
he spoke you couldn’t make sense of anything he said. They
finally gave up.
 When
our visitor finished his statement I was remembering Vito telling
his adversary just before he walloped him, in a voice usually reserved
for hollering above a storm, in what part of his anatomy he could
put a meat hook.
Tonight, however, the oldest member of our group short-circuited
our critic. Staring at him in disbelief, mouth open, head shaking,
he said slowly and clear, a ring of moral outrage in his voice,
“I have never said a fucking word to any of those women.”
He then turned to Vito for corroboration, “You Vito?”
Vito, softer, in disbelief, “Not a fucking word, swear to
God.” The man sat a moment longer, while we struggled to keep
our faces straight, said thank you, and got up and left.
Soon after this, we were invited to a party, just the fishermen.
At the party, in addition to us, were some administrative people
and a couple of our teachers. Peace Corps parties were generally
full of people singing and dancing, having a lot of fun. This party
was pretty staid and I sat on a couch by myself, wondering what
it was all about. I had noticed a very pretty blonde woman in her
30’s talking briefly with a couple of fishermen. Finally she
came over and sat with me on the couch. She asked a few questions,
made some small talk, then popped the big one. Since the fishermen
were not learning French, how did we expect to be able to teach
the Togolese our methods? I actually had no idea, but knowing that
would quickly end our conversation, I decided to improvise. I started
by explaining that there are many first generation Italian and Portuguese
fishermen who didn’t speak much English. I said that at sea,
say in a storm, no matter what language you spoke, you knew what
to do. And if a fisherman had something new to show another fisherman,
he showed him, he didn’t explain it.
“Fishermen don’t talk much,” I said, completely
contradicting myself. This of course wasn’t true, fishermen
talked all the time, making fun of and telling stories about one
another. Making stuff up like I was doing now, yelling at each other
from boat to boat, discussing the weather or the day’s catch
at Maitie’s or The Driftwood over a couple of beers. Most
were real chatterboxes. I told her a story about Injun Jim, the
one truly silent fisherman I knew. Jim had himself a string of lobster
traps that he did real well with. He built himself a new boat every
year. It was made of plywood and tar. He would use last year’s
boat for a mold so every year it would get bigger. Without him and
his gear in it, Jim’s boat road really high as it was light
and flat-bottomed. I stood next to Jim on the shore during the big
storm, or the perfect storm, as the book called it. We stood in
the boat house on Front Street staring out at the harbor with maybe
twenty other fishermen. We watched as one after another their boats
broke from their mooring as the northeast wind drove them onto the
rocky beach that connected Marblehead’s peninsula to the strip
of land, once an island, called The Neck. But not Jim’s boat.
She bobbed like a cork and no matter how hard the wind pushed she
had no weight to tear her free of her mooring. Jim never uttered
a word the entire time, but when another of the fishermen would
exclaim, “Fuck me, look at that boat of Jim’s, she’s
still fast,” Jim’s eyes would flash even more than usual,
and once I even thought I saw him smile a little smile.
When I ran out of both truth and imagination on the non-verbal communication
skills of fishermen, I took a deep breath and said, “Want
to get a snack?” She nodded, her eyes fixed on mine in an
oddly blank way. At the snack table we both said how much we’d
enjoyed meeting each other and she wandered off. I felt a little
embarrassed that she hadn’t had an opportunity to say much,
and at the same time flattered that she had given my monologue her
undivided attention. Much later I would find out that she was more
than just a good listener.
One afternoon the Togo group was brought to the White House lawn
and lined up along a fancy red rope, in front of a simple podium.
President Kennedy came out and gave us a talk about our volunteering,
making him proud that we were Americans and in turn making us feel
proud too, like we were doing the right thing. Up until then I was
doing this for merely the adventure. President Kennedy made me feel
like maybe this was actually going to do some good in the world.
It was a good feeling, an inspiring moment.
When I was around 16 years old I was in the habit of going to the
selectmen’s meetings. Marblehead didn’t have a mayor,
we had selectmen. Nine of them I think, or thereabouts. They made
the immediate decisions, and listened to the complaints, or people’s
disputes with their neighbors. The big decisions, taxes and such,
were left to town meetings. Marblehead, being a Republican town,
voted no on anything that cost money and would raise taxes. Marblehead
was a rich town but the high school was over-crowded with 35 or
40 kids to a class. We often shared text books, one to every two
kids. We once had a gym class that had 70 kids in it. Our fat gym
teacher would wander out of his office with a ball under his arm.
He would divide us into two groups of 35, toss the ball and tells
to play dodge ball. Then he would wander back into his office and
smoke cigars with the football coach. In a town of 14,000 people,
there were 800 high school students. It being a wealthy town, most
of the kids went to parochial or private schools. Although it would
be a while before I would develop a personal political philosophy,
I think my tendency to lean towards the Democratic Party had its
roots in my high school education.
It was to this town that Jack Kennedy came to campaign for his seat
in the senate. Four people showed up for his campaign speech: the
reporter who covered town politics, one couple, and me. Kennedy
came down off the stage, sat with us, chatted and asked questions.
The only time I spoke was when he asked me what I did. I told him
I was a lobster fisherman.
After his speech on the White House lawn, he turned to leave. There
was a moan of disappointment from some of the volunteers. He turned
back, came around the podium and waked directly to Chimentaro, a
Gloucester net maker, and shook his outstretched hand. As he did,
he turned towards me and said, “How was the lobster catch
this year?”
 I’ve
never mentioned this to anyone, not even then. Chimentaro was so
excited about the way Kennedy walked right up to him, like he knew
him, I didn’t feel right in telling him that story at that
time. Kennedy was probably was briefed ahead of time that we were
fishermen, and it was something to say, or, maybe he did remember.
For our graduation ceremony, I was asked for some strange reason,
to give the graduation speech. I don’t think it was a particularly
impressive speech, something I scribbled the night before. I’m
better off the cuff, besides, I was mercilessly upstaged by Nick
Cunningham, one of my favorite volunteers. He was head of the medical
team. He had gone to Harvard and was from a rich upstate New York
family, but he was about as regular a guy as you could find. His
regular uniform was flip-flops, khaki Bermudas held up by a knotted
tie, and a non-descript to unattractive tie. Once denied entry into
a fancy restaurant because he was not wearing a tie, he obliquely
removed the tie from his waist and knotted it around his neck. “Much
better,” he said and strode into the restaurant.
Nick played classical cello. He was asked to play for our graduation.
After my speech he strode onto the stage, to everyone’s amazement,
in a black impeccable suit, white shirt and dark tie. He took his
seat by his cello, hiked up his pants, and displayed bright orange
socks, which reached half way up his gleaming white calves. He played
the cello beautifully, causing some, who knew about such things,
to shed a tear.
The following day we were to go to the mountains of central Puerto
Rico for a month of outward bound training. The idea was to present
us with foreign, somewhat hazardous situations and see if we could
deal and adjust.
This would be followed by a week in a place called Paguera, the
bay of phosphorous. We were to spend the week with an ichthyologist
who was a leading shark expert. Apparently there were a lot of sharks
off the coast of Togo and he was going to teach us how sharks behave
so we would know what to do if we fell overboard, as near as we
could tell. |
 |
|
