Rodney is not only a writer but also a very gifted artist. He allowed me to take some photos of his work in his home recently and we will be sharing those images with you here on his blog.

Rodney has been working on his writing a lot lately and we will be posting some of his stories here for you to read as well.

My photos of his work are not all that great - I apologize for any fuzzy or blurry shots. His painting is vibrant and has wonderful details. Rodney has only been painting for two or three years.

One of my accomplishments that I am most proud of is:

Learning to read. Getting some education.

One thing I regret that I never got to explore:

Going to school. I couldn't sit still, I would get up and run out the backdoor and go to the back cove.

One of the ways I like to entertain guests was:

When I drank I used to hang out in the bars, I never brought anyone home.

I remember this embarrassing incident with a good friend:

I was working with my uncle Clarence at the clam shop, just a year after I married Frances, there was a guy came in there who looked just like Frances' father, so I walked up to him and said "Hi!" like I knew him, and it wasn't him, that was embarrassing.

This person helped to save my life:

I almost lost my foot one time, I had a boss one time named Lenny, he was a fish cutter, this big Canadian truckload of fish came up and it was backing up to the ramp where we unloaded the fish, there was a little board down there, my foot was down there, I thought the truck was stopped but it wasn't, Lenny pulled me out right before it crushed my foot.

These are the kinds of books I enjoy reading most:

Books about science. I like this book about John F. Kennedy. I was watching tv when he was shot. I told the fellows down at the clam shop about what I had saw and they didn't believe me, but then they heard it all on the radio an hour later.

A very difficult educational experience for me was:

I seem to have a hard time learning things, understanding things, I know right from wrong, I have problems, they would send me to the store for some cigarettes and bread and stuff, and I would forget what she wanted, for some reason, i don't know why, I would go back and have the wrong thing. I would be embarrassed, she would send me back and give me a note to give them.

The activity that I and my friends most often engaged in:

Swimming, at the lakes.

This is the sport I most enjoyed watching or attending with friends:

I was never interested in sports.

One big misunderstanding I had with a friend was:

A couple of my friends tried to get me to go rob a gas station, they did it and ended up in reform school. They didn't have any money and they thought that robbing a gas station was easy, they used to hide money in the gas stations back in the days, they didn't have safes, they used to want me to go with them, but I wouldn't.

When I think of compassion and goodness I think of this person:

I think of myself. I used to give my shirt away, I still do, and they get after me for it. I used to do a lot of people favors, when I wanted a favor they wasn't around. A favor like helping to fix a car I had, I couldn't get nobody to do that.

True friendship to me means:

A person who is honest to you, and steers you right. Loyalty. A person who is trustworthy of you, doesn't make fun of you.

These people were my best friends in my middle years:

Some guys who I worked with, when I first started they were all older guys but then they sort of all died off and they would hire younger guys, when I went in the fish market to work, the guys were old and they were tough, they would chew and yell at each other, and drink, even when they worked they would drink.

My Best Friend after I left home was:

Francis, she was my best friend after I left home.

My Brothers and/or Sisters and I acted this way toward each other:

They took care of me cause they was older. They was more or less, married when they were young, they got out, I don't know if it was because of my Father's drinking or not, my brother was 15 years older than me, he was in the Merchant Marines, he came out, he said he was in Okinawa when they dropped the bomb on Japan, they cancelled all the weekend passes then and then dropped the bombs, of course nobody knew that was going to happen, just the President.

There was a big circus, The World of Mirth Circus, when the circus was coming there was a big parade and they would go down to the back cove and set up their tents, one night I was about ten years old, I went down there about four o'clock and I was down there until about one o'clock in the morning. I was sposed to come home at nine. My sister and my brother came and found me, they found me in the girly tent where the girls did the dances, I didn't have no money so I snuck in. I went home and I had a choice of a licking or to stay in for two weeks, so I took the lickin'.

My mother used to tie me up in the front yard so that I wouldn't run away, I took off all my clothes once and run down the street, my sister Jean had to come and get me, she tells me about that all the time.

We had these pets:

We always had a cat. We had to have a couple of them put away, they got sick or hurt. I can't remember their names. Tommy and I had one named Melody.

This was a serious accident that I remember:

Dottie had another accident a year after her other one, she was about 17 at the time. They had got her a job up at Mercy through the MR (Mental Retardation) program there, they put her in the laundry room folding towels. One of the bosses figured he would teach her how to run this machine that you put sheets through to iron them, it had two rollers and it pulled her hand in, it didn't have any safety thing on it, and it burned three of her fingers down to the bone, they had to do a skin graft. When it happened they tried to cover it up, Mercy had her there soaking it in ice water, she was screeching the whole night. They bandaged her hand up and sent her home but she was still screeching all night so we took her back and they had to do surgery right that night. The worst part was that Mercy took the machine apart right that night, when the lawyer went up there to look at the machine it was gone. They closed that case in about five months or so. They sued Mercy, but I don't know what they sued for, the amount. We went through more with those burned fingers than we did with her brain injury.

This health problem was very scary for my family:

We had many of them, especially Frances, she had problems that I didn't know about, I didn't understand her not wanting to go anywhere, we would go someplace were there was dancing, the Holiday Inn or something and Frances would just take off. When Dottie got hit by that car was bad too. The teacher called me up, I was working delivering fish, and they said that my daughter got killed out in front of the Portland High School, and a few minutes later two police officers came by and said that they didn't know if she was dead or alive. So we went up to the hospital, they said they couldn't get no vital signs but then one of the nurses saw her finger moving, she came to, I guess she was in some kind of coma, and then they got her in some kind of recovery situation, put her in a room. Her eyes were swelling up and pushing out of her head, and the nurses didn't recognize what was happening to her, but a brain surgery Doctor saw her and knew something was wrong, well she had a huge hematoma that had to be operated on. She was in a coma for three days after her surgery. They let me stay there with her for a while. Frances couldn't do it, I stayed there for a week and had to keep her awake. She recovered. I think it added to her retardation. The lawyer said it didn't, but she was worse than Rodney after that.

This was a time when I got very angry with my children:

Well when I lived on High Street at the time, on the third floor, we had a big place, three bedroom, I gave my daughter a birthday party, just me Frances and Rodney and Dottie, I cut the cake, I gave a piece to each of them and Dottie switched the pieces of cake because she wanted a bigger piece, and I got mad and took the rest of the cake up and threw it across the floor. I guess the kids got kind of scared of me after that, especially Rodney.

This was one of my favorite vacations with my loved ones:

We would go to the lakes, swimming and take lunch. Frances didn't like to go very far, she didn't like to leave the area, of course she had those panic attacks after a while.

Some of the things I loved doing with my family were:

Well I couldn't do a whole lot with them cause they were kinda retarded and they were always put in special school programs. I mean we used to give them birthdays and cakes and stuff. But we couldn't play games. We used to go out to restaurants and things, we would go to Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonalds, we would go there a lot. We had a lady who had to come to the house to help take care of Rodney.

I remember these funny incidents about the children when they were young:

I know they did some funny things, but I wasn't home much, I was always out working, and then I was always out late at night. I didn't really drink much until a couple years afterwards.

Rodney came out of school one day and stuck his tongue to one of those iron poles, to a fence, and it stuck to it. They said they had to get some warm water to pour over his tongue to get it off. They thought that was the funniest thing down at the shop were I worked.

I remember when the children were born:

Dottie was born 1961 and Rodney in 1962. I stayed in the lobby all night.

This is how we decided how many children to have:

We didn't plan how many children to have, the first baby was a miscarriage. Then we had the two kids, Dorothy came first 1961, and then Rodney in 1962, they were c-section babies. They told us when Dottie was born that she didn't have the right size of head, they told us that she would be either retarded or really smart, well she was slightly retarded, and it was the same with Rodney Jr. he was born with one hip undeveloped, they had to put a horseshoe cast on him when we was about one year old.

I remember my wedding well:

I don't remember it that well. 1961. I almost didn't make it because Frances' two brothers took me out on a bachelors night, I went out and got loaded. They had to come and get me to take me to St.Dominic's. They had these little gates you had to go through to get up to the priest and they said I was swinging on those doors while he was saying the vows...I don't even remember saying I do.

We reconciled after this happened:

After my mother passed away, he would only go out fishing for a short while at a time, overnight. Yeah, we got along better after that. He remarried about 20 years after my mother died to a lady named Mavis, they were only married a few years before he died.

This issue caused a great rift between me and my parents:

My father drank and used rotten language, that caused us not to get along. It made me scared of him, he talked loud because he was partly deaf. He used to bring his buddies home, sitting around the table arguing about money and what to do with the boat.

One of my Dad's strongest traits was:

He was smart, when he wasn't fishing, when he couldn't get out to sea all he would do was read read read. He read westerns and detective stories. He knew a lot about the law, I don't know if it was from the detective stories.

One of my Mom's strongest characteristics was:

She was very kind, she used to take people in who couldn't pay their rent. She would always tell us that no matter how people hurt you, you try to be good to them.

I kept this secret from almost everyone:

That I couldn't read, it was hard to do but I managed to do it.

I regrettably lost touch with this family member after we grew up:

My cousin Clayton, lived out to the Cape, he had a sister named Bessie, his mother was a religious person, very religious. They lived on the same road that Bette Davis lived on out the Cape, a few houses down on the opposite side, they had a big long house, long like a trailer, but it was a house, they had it divided down the middle with a blanket, and they had an old fashioned water pump to get their water, there used to be hundreds of bumble bees out in their yard, I used to play down at the lily pond catching toads with my cousin Clayton. He lives in Casco today, he has that Down East voice. After his mother died, she killed herself, they moved away to the Casco region, Sebago Lake area, it's up that way somewheres. My Uncle Bud was in the Coast Gaurd. He is still alive, I guess he is over a hundred. Clayton was one of my closest cousins, he went into the Navy, came out of the Navy and became a welder, for Williams Brothers, or McClellans, another company a family member owned. He is my age, he still works, he goes canoeing. I called him a month ago about an island that the family owns.

My first serious romance was with:

Pauline again.

For a while I thought I would marry this person but I didn't:

Her name was Pauline, it didn't work out.

"My World" consisted of this geographical area:

Right here in Portland. Part of Falmouth. A few of the islands, but I don't remember being on them, I was just a baby. Part of Cape Elizabeth.

My parents felt this way about politics:

They didn't talk about politics much, that was back in the Roosevelt and Truman days. I had two uncles in the service, one went over seas in the war. I think he went to Iwo Jima, he came back all shell shocked. He got TB over there and died. That was originally an overseas disease but I guess it is all over the world now.

I remember when these technological advances were made:

I remember when radar came out during Pearl Harbor, when they picked the Jap planes up they thought they were birds because they didn't know yet, the soldiers who they put on it weren't trained enough or something. Then the fishermen started using radar, as it improved. Cars got better, farmers tractors got better. Jets came in, they was testing them. Airplanes changed. Technology got better, television came in, now we are in the computer age.

Some of my favorite Hollywood actors and actresses were: ...I liked these qualities about them:

Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, The Lone Ranger, we had to go to the movies to watch them we didn't have no TV. Buck Rogers was an imaginary space program, but it all came true today though. There was a program called Rocket Man, a guy used to fly around with a space suit on.

They always was the champions of the west, the law abiders, they always made things right, they fought for justice.

This was a big wartime event that marked a turning point in the world (eg. D-Day or Evacuation of Saigon):

When they dropped the bomb on Nagasaki, my brother was stationed at Okinawa when that happened. I remember when I was a kid, over in South Portland they used to build Liberty Ships, the women.

This is what war meant to me growing up:

People getting killed, losing friends, I lost several friends in the Korean War. Some friends would come back with no arms and no legs, one just died a few weeks ago. It was scary. When I was a kid they gave my mother some sort of ration slips, you could only buy so much milk and so much bread, and cigarettes, we had to get city help when my father didn't make much money. They used to give her some sort of lard that she had to put dye in to make it look like butter. I used to sell rags, and pieces of copper and iron. I guess Hitler put Japan up to fight us, at Pearl Harbor. A lot of wars are fought over religious rights and that.

I disliked this responsibility/work growing up but it has proved to be very helpful to me as an adult:

I didn't like people sending me someplace to get something that I would have to read and they didn't know that I couldn't read, so I would come back with the wrong thing. I couldn't do the same things that other kids could because they could read.

This is the profession that I often mentioned when people asked me what I was going to be when I grew up:

An inventor or chemist.

I hated this particular work assignment:

I didn't really hate anything about my job, the worst part was being yelled at by one of my bosses and I didn't like the dirty jokes and swearing, throwing things at you. When you aren't educated, they can use words that you don't understand, you could get the feeling that they were talking about you though, if I did something wrong that they didn't like.

I remember this about my father's work and responsibilities:

Yeah, he was a fisherman, he was a hard worker, he wasn't lazy or nothing, he was tough and had big shoulders and big arms, they used to haul the nets by hand, he would go out in dorys - which are big sorta row boats - they are built so they can take a lot of the sea and carry a heavy load. He did cook for fishing boats, draggers, he was a deck hand. He used to order all the food, they bought a lot of cheeses and stuff that was salted, stuff that would last a long time. You couldn't make a pie because the boat moved too much, it isn't like you see on TV where the boat is rocking and moving and the dishes are all still sitting on their shelves, you had to tie everything down. He was in lots of hurricanes and storms, the Coast Guard couldn't always find them. Back then if someone passed away on the boat they would wrap them up and put them on ice, keep right on fishing.

He made good money in the summer months, and then in the winter months they would have lots of bills and when he couldn't get out he would go clam digging. Then he would just bring the clams home and shuck them, in the big slate sinks we used to have back then, I don't know where they used to sell them to, restaurants or clam shops, they always bought the best food for the ships though. The ham and stuff that they bought, the roast beef and stuff, if it got a little moldy after being out there for a while they would just saw it off and cook it.

I remember this about my mother's work and responsibilities:

My mother was a housewife. She would wash our clothes in a great big set tub made of slate, they were slanted, she would take a scrub board and scrub them in one and then rinse in the other one and she would put them in this basket she had and then take them to the window to hang them out. We couldn't afford a washing machine and when we did get one it was a wringer. You had to put that near the sink, you had to fill that by hand, then to empty it there was a pump. She also cooked. She gave us kids a bath in a big tub, she would heat the water on the old wood stove and give me and Bea a bath in it. Once she sent me to the barbershop, and the barber found some nits, he wouldn't cut my hair then. She combed my hair with a fine tooth comb and rubbed kerosene on it. Boy did that hurt. That was supposed to get rid of them. I used to take the curtains to have them cleaned and starched. My mother would hang them up, she always had to have curtains up in the windows no matter what else was in the house. Lots of times we had broken windows, we had to put cardboard in the windows. She would take care of washing the floors. She took a lot of people in that put out of their houses for a while, friends, relatives.

I took care of this person or persons growing up:

I took care of this kid named Hunky Babbage, his folks were drinkers, they paid me good, $3 an hour, that was good money. They would come home loaded. I was good with kids. I babysat for my cousins kids too.

I enjoyed this particular work assignment:

I liked driving, delivering for the fish market, taking the fish to stores, through Old Orchard. I didn't have to deal with much money, that was all done through the mail. If I did have to collect money I would call up over the phone and they would help me.

My first job for pay was:

I cut a few clams for my grandfather, I think I made $.15 an hour, I cut about a pint of clams. And I used to shovel coal for people. I made about $.50 for half a days work in cold zero weather.

This is how I got to school each morning in my early years:

My sister would take me or I would walk, it was just across the street.

This is one of the most important things about life I learned in school:

Not a lot. I did learn how to keep my teeth nice. How to take care of your teeth.

College?

I don't know, I wonder what it would have been like if I had gone to college, I am sure my life would have been much different, maybe I would have been a businessman.

When I was very young I thought I would be this when I grew up:

I thought I was going to be an inventor.

Junior High and High School:

I didn't go. I have no idea what it was like to go. It is something that is missing out of my life. It makes me sad. When I get around people who use big words I don't know what they're talking about. It was rough for me. All the kids were coming home with A's and B's and I only got one report card in my life, I got an A in drawing on that. My sister took me to school and I would walk in the front door and out the back one. I would go run errands for people on Commercial Street. I couldn't sit still, I couldn't sit there.

It effected my life a lot. I was always interested in Inventors, and wanted to be an Inventor or Chemist, I was always taking things apart, I never cared much about putting them together again.

I had a lot of fun with this subject in elementary school:

There was a lady who used to come and tell us stories, her name was Mrs. Abbott. We would go up to the auditorium and she would tell stories there at the old North School. Probably Little Red Riding Hood and like that. She went around to other schools too I think.

One of my most memorable teachers in elementary school was:

Her name was Mrs. McGlynn, I remember that when I couldn't afford a nickle for milk and a cookie she would give it to me. She killed herself in the bay in South Portland, someone found her there. They think she jumped off the old South Portland bridge.

I really enjoyed this grade in elementary school:

I went to sub-primary school first, today they call it kindergarten, and then I did one year of first grade, then about a month of second grade and then they put me and my sister into a special school, an ungraded school, a school for kids with learning disabilities I guess, they didn't teach you nothing, just sat there and told stories. I didn't stay there, I took off to go play and swim. So I didn't have much experience with elementary school.

If my parents had only known! I did this forbidden thing with my friends:

My parents never knew that I had this job, there was a gas station that used to sell tires. They would take old tires that had been turned in, with the tread real low, and they would have a chalk mark on them, we used to wash it off with gasoline and then re-groove the tires, we did it at night in a big old barn...If my parents had known I was doing that I would have been in trouble.

I took a pocket watch from my father too and showed it to everybody, and then I put it back.

If my parents had only known! I did this forbidden thing with my friends:

My parents never knew that I had this job, there was a gas station that used to sell tires. They would take old tires that had been turned in, with the tread real low, and they would have a chalk mark on them, we used to wash it off with gasoline and then re-groove the tires, we did it at night in a big old barn...If my parents had known I was doing that I would have been in trouble.

I took a pocket watch from my father too and showed it to everybody, and then I put it back.

What my friends and I liked best to do together was:

We went swimming, I hung with an older crowd, they used to take me swimming with them, they had cars. That was during the summer months. Two lakes. I more or less hung to myself, I kept to myself. I had one real good friend named Charlie Casey.

I had a childhood crush on this person:

I had a girlfriend whose father owned a small story. He used to work for a bakery before he owned the store. Her name was Pauline, she married a sailor, a Coast Guard guy and moved to Virginia. She liked me and I liked her, I never got to kiss her, her mother liked me real good, I guess her father liked me, I remember she asked me up to her house for a piece of Birthday cake, I remember there were two or three Coast Guard guys sitting there and I told her I didn't like that, I told her I didn't want to go with her any more and I asked her for my wife's telephone number. I used to help them make sticky apples and cotton candy they used to sell.

I wanted this person to be my friend but the feeling was not mutual:

I had some people stick their noses up at me, I guess that's what you call it, because I wasn't as smart as everybody. My one girlfriend's mother didn't like me too much. Her mother came out and told me that she didn't want her kids hanging out with me because I wasn't going to amount to anything, she thought her kids were going to grow up to be doctors or lawyers, but they all turned out to be drug addicts.

I remember well this birthday party I had with my friends:

My mother used to make us a cake, from scratch of course. And give me some kind of toy or something for a present, I don't know what it was. But there were no parties, my uncles when they came around they would give me a couple dollars or something. No parties like kids have today.

This was a particularly dangerous thing I did with a friend:

I didn't really do anything dangerous with friends. I walked on the harbor when it was froze over one time, it didn't break, I got hell for it from my Uncle Clarence, it froze from one dock to another dock, across the warfs, for the salt water to freeze it has to be REALLY cold and calm too.

I helped a friend greatly on this occasion:

I used to help a lot of people. I used to do errands for people.

The people who bought my Uncle's clam business almost bought two truckloads of clams that were bad once, and I stopped them from doing that, I told them, clams came in baskets then, they used to put all the good ones on top and the ones that were dying on the bottom. From working with my Grandfather I knew that when a truck load of clams came in you had to turn them over into another basket to check and see if they were all dead or not, if they weren't properly iced they would spoil. And after that those two people became my real good friends. They took me camping, riding in airplanes. And then they moved their clam business to Freeport.

I was generally popular or unpopular because:

I was sort of unpopular because I couldn't do the things that the other kids could do, like deliver newspapers - you had to collect money and turn it in and know how to take your cut, and I was always having to put wood in the cellar or coal or shovel snow. Being unable to read and do math sort of kept me as a loner person, I kept to myself. I just made my own way.

I admired this friend because of the following talents:

Charlie played the accordian. I never got involved in musical things. After Charlie left I hung out with an older group, they kind of watched out for me, they used to take me swimming and stuff.

My best friend during childhood was:

Charlie Casey, during the Korean War he had a brother that got killed. Charlie lived in the next house up the street, he tried to teach me how to read, he could read at a really young age. His father was a bookkeeper, a big guy. He owned an old Hudson truck, I used to help him fix the engine. After his brother died they got some money from the service, they bought a house out on Washington Avenue and I didn't see him much after that. His father had an old train set we would play with. Charlie was a good friend, after we separated, he went his way. He moved away about ten I think. Ten years old.

This person significantly influenced my life growing up:

My mother was. My uncles were, even though they drank a lot. They owned their own business.

We had these pets or access to other animals when growing up:

We had two dogs, Pete was the big brown one, Trigger was the small black and white one. They were originally my brother's dogs, those were the days when dogs could wander on their own. They would spend a few days down at my brothers and then come over to ours a few days. Somehow those dogs knew when his daughter got out of school and they would go down to the corner and meet her each day.

A lot of relatives had animals but I didn't really pay any attention to them.

People described me as a child in this way:

People said I was a good kid, I kept my nose clean, I didn't get in no trouble.

What I liked about my siblings was:

They are nice. They were mostly married when I was growing up, and my brother was in the service while I was growing up, he is 14 years older than me. It was just me and Bea and my younger sister Betty we kind of grew up together. They were girls and they played with dolls. They were good sisters. We always got along. It was hard, the way we lived. Everything was hard. Bea was sickly when she was young. We both had scarlet fever and mumps and chicken pox all at the same time. We spent a month in the old city hospital, that is why they think we have learning disabilities from. They quarantined us.

Games I liked to play as a child and youth were:

When I was a kid it was Cowboys and Indians, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers time, radio shows mostly and movies. I used to play soldier games, the War was going on then. There was no electronic stuff then, everything was manual. I played baseball and I played basketball, but when I played basketball I put the ball in the wrong basket and then they didn't want me to play any more and when I played baseball I hit the ball and ran the wrong way, they made me bat boy. I played jump rope and hopscotch, and jacks.

In the afternoon after school I would:

I would go down to the junk yard, and there were two abandoned ships down by the back bay that we would go play in. They had piles of old junk cars I would play in them.

My family's first TV/computer was in the year: One of my favorite TV or software programs was:

We got our first TV towards the end of the 1960's, we only got three stations with an outside antenae. I didn't watch it much, it didn't come in good. I liked Howdy Dudey and a program called Pinky Lee.

My hairstyle and hair color while growing up was:

I had blonde hair, my Mother always kept us kids hair cut, it was short. As I got older it turned brown, and now it is getting grey, as I get older.

The country or countries my ancestors came from was:

My father's grandfather was from Scotland. He came over as a young man, what type of work he did we don't know. Assume he was a fisherman. He was in the army, he was a Highlander, he owned property over there, he was an Earl or a Duke or whatever they called people that owned property over there. He must have come over on a ship.

Also my background was English, and my Great Grandfather married a Blackfoot Indian Chief's daughter, we don't know where though. There were three or four indian tribes and they intermarried.

If I remember anything about my Great Grandparents it is this:

My mother's father was born on Chebeague Island, his wife was born in Round Pond. That is where he met her. I remember him somewhat, he owned a small clam company in Portland, across from Boone's restaurant down by the pier. He was an artist, he did art work plus ran his business. His name was Ed Dyer. He had to bury his own wife, she died back in Round Pond, she had the "plague", and when she died they had to burn all the furniture in the house. My sister remembers a lot more of it. Ed Dyer was a swordfisherman, whatelse he did I don't know.

My father's mother I remember, they called her Maud. She lived to be 80 something. My sister tells me that I was her favorite. She was a big woman. The only thing I remember of her was that on holidays she would come up to the house and help cook the dinners. My father's father was born down the coast, in Friendship, we don't know how they met.

I want you to know this about my Grandfather:

My Father's Father had the same name as my father. He was born in Friendship. He was a sea captain. He was captain of several vessals. They have a piece about him in the library here. He used to go fishing in a dory, and the story was about when he got lost in the fog off Rockland with 1500 pounds of cod. It was just him in the dory and he rowed about twenty miles to Rockland, no comforts or nothing. The Coast Guard was going to go search for him but then he showed up on the dock. They could tell which way the sea run, which way they were going to go. He chewed tobacco I know, my Father said he would chew tobacco. He was a swordfisherman. When he couldn't go fishing they would go clamming. I don't know what kind of schools he went to. He was a short person. I never knew him, he died when I was a baby. My father would say they used to take him clam digging when they lived up here in Portland. He said he would chew tobacco and spit it out the window of the car and it would get all over the car, it was a Pierce Arrow they drove back then, a great big car that was. And my father used to tell me that was a big car. They used to be able to dig clams out to the Back Cove, down by the Marine Hospital, now it is Martin's Point, but it used to be all fishermen and sailors, they would get free medical care there. Course he brought my father up to be a fisherman.

I remember a little bit about my Mother's Father, Ed Dyer. He owned the Clam Company here in Portland. He was born down the coast someplace, probably Round Pond. Before he moved to Portland I don't know if he had any clam shop before then. My Mother's Mother died of the Plague down in Round Pond. Ed's family owned an island off of Yarmouth, in Town Landing area, there is a big giant cove, and the island was Sturdyvent's, we used to have clam bakes over there when I was a kid. The Hannafords and the McGowans were relatives back then, the Dyers were shipbuilders back before Longfellow's time. They built the first steamship out of Portland harbor. They built one for the Confederacy, I don't think they were at War at that time. The Dyer's were friends of Longfellows. They lived over by him. Ed was a painter, he painted oil paintings of ships in his older years. He would also carve canoes like indians use. When I was three years old, down at the clam shop, my sister used to take me down there in the baby carriage. Commercial Street was all covered in railroad tracks back then. I might have been a little older, maybe four or five, when he would go upstairs and bring me down some cookies and then taught me how to cut clams. I was five years old when I learned how to cut clams. He was a real small person. He wore round glasses that hung down on his nose, the wire rimmed kind, like Ben Franklin. I don't know if he smoked or not. His two sons took over the business when he got too old. He went to live with his daughter Pearl who married an indian fellow named Cecil Pratt. Cecil was a huge man, worked down the water front with the fish, binge drinker though. Cecil has one daughter still alive, she lives out by the airport.

I want you to know this about my Grandmother:

My Mother's Mother was born in Round Pond Maine, she died when my Mother was 14. My Grandmother on my Father's side was a nice lady, she was a big lady. According to my sister I was her favorite Grandson. I used to sit in her lap a lot. She would take fainting spells, we didn't know what they was, blood pressure or what. They had a house down in Vinalhaven. They sold it and moved up here to Portland. They bought a house up here in Portland and then had to sell it to get my father out of some kind of trouble that he got into, no one talks about that. She was a good cook. She helped cook the holiday dinners. She used to help my mother when my mother was sick, they called it a nervous breakdown in them days, I think it was some kind of mental breakdown. I don't remember a whole lot about her.

This is what we usually did at Thanksgiving:

I didn't do much but my mother did most of the work and my Grandmother. They cooked the dinner, they made everything at home, they would start three or four days ahead. They made pies. When my father was home for Thanksgiving we would have a huge turkey, must have been a twenty pounder, they cooked it in the old wood stove. The way they went about cooking it was pretty amazing, you had to keep the stove going all day, keep banking it, with coal every half hour or so to keep the oven to a certain temperature.

They used to make the stuffing and they would stuff the turkey with it, and they would sew the darn thing up with a needle and thread on both ends. Now they don't do it that way. They would put it in a big roasting pan and they would put stuffing around it too, they would cook it slowly all day and sometimes half the night. They would keep basting it. And they would make the gravy out of the juices, lot of fat in it. They would make the pies and the bread pudding before they made the turkey. They used to make cinnamon roles and us kids would munch on them. They always had nuts and fruits on the table all the time. I used to crack the nuts open with a nutcracker, especially walnuts, the only kind I ever cared for was walnuts.

On the side they always cooked a small duck or some kind of roast in case we got tired of eating turkey I guess, we didn't have any tinfoil those days. My Mom used to send us kids to the movies, me and my two sisters, to get us out of her hair while she was cooking, we would see old Western Movies or a Frankenstein movie. Gene Autry and Roy Rogers and Hop-a-long Cassidy were a big deal when I was a kid. You used to see two movies for a quarter, they were about an hour long each, and you got a big bag of popcorn for a dime. In between the movies they used to show a newsreel about what was going on in the second World War or about the President.

My brother and my sisters would come over for the lunch time meal. There wasn't a whole lot of left overs left over afterwards. And me and my sister Bea used to fight over the turkey legs, we always wanted the whole one, my Mother never wanted us to have them because they legs have a lot of bones in them, we wanted them because we thought they had the most meat on them I guess. I was closed to Bea than to most of my other brothers or sisters.

The minced pie with homemade cream on it was my favorite, it was made with real mince meat from a deer I guess, I think it was made from deer. I think it is raisins today a lot of it. And I used to have ribbon candy sometimes, my father was a candy eater.

We used to go down to Deering Oaks for ice-skating, with skates other people gave us because we never had money for them, my father had it hard in the winter, fisherman have it hard in the winter, the ones that don't save for it. My father was a good cook, my mother was too of course. My mother would tell us some stories about Thanksgiving, I can't remember what they was. About the pilgrims I imagine. She always told us about what was supposed to be her ancestor, Mary Dyer. I will write more about that later.

I liked the left overs, hot turkey sandwiches with the gravy on them.

This is how my family celebrated Christmas:

We had a nice Christmas dinner, we had presents. We were always allowed to open one present at night on Christmas Eve, then we had to wait to morning. There was one time we didn't even see the Christmas tree until morning. They don't do it that way any more. There were times we couldn't afford a Christmas tree, a real one, everyone had real ones in them days. They would cook a great big turkey and all the fixings to go with it, they would throw a duck in with it. My father was a very good cook too. Cause he cooked on the fishing boats, plus worked on deck, they got more shares if they did more jobs.

I used to get a lot of wooden toys in my early childhood, I think my father made most of them. Then wood changed to tin.

The family would come up, there would be some drinking, she used to make us wait until my brother would come up, cause he was married then, me and my young sister would get impatient, but she would sometimes let us open the presents anyway, she liked for everyone to be there, the whole family. And she used to tell me that when she was a little girl they would put candles on the tree, I don't know how they kept the tree from burning.

We had some real old fashioned ornaments, I don't know what become of them, I guess they got destroyed. We always hung our stockings behind the stove, old nylon stockings, they used to stuff them full of fruit and some toy, whatever kind of toy they had at the time.

Bread pudding and mince pie were my favorite, they made all kinds of pies.

This present that I got from my parents really sticks in my memory:

An electric train, I think it cost a lot of money back then. I begged for it because other kids was havin' them. My father wasn't making much money then, the weather was bad, they couldn't get out fishing much. Fisherman have it hard in the winter months, even way back then. And I finally got my electric train, a Lionel train, it ran on three tracks, a triple track. And I had it six months and one day my father went to sea, and then the kids were all getting bicycles, so I traded the train for an older bicycle, boy was he mad at me. I didn't live that down for a long time, because the train was worth way more than a bicycle.

This person in my family was funnier than the rest:

My uncle Vernon was the funniest one. He would act funny, when he talked he put things in a funny way, not dirty jokes or nothing, just comical, he could make you laugh at times.

This person in my family was more serious than the rest:

My father, in his ugly way. Kinda ugly, he just was rough like, at times I didn't understand him. When he said something he meant it, a lot of people were like that then. People were more tough them days I think.

My parents felt strongly about passing on these lessons:

My mom wanted me to be kind to people even if they disliked me. My Dad taught me that if you get yourself in trouble you get yourself out of it. My mother was really superstitious, she used to say if a bird hit the window that someone would die, if dogs barked she would say something. A lot of people then were like that, probably some are today.

Mom always told me to help people out, because they helped us out during rough times.

One time I took a hammer out of my Father's toolbox, they made their own toolboxes them days, I don't know I was three or four, I can remember, I was outdoors with the hammer, and I don't know why I did it, I broke some headlights out of peoples cars, and one of the guys came up and told my mother what I did. He said the trouble was that the car that the headlights were broken out of belonged to his boss. I got in a little issue I guess, like most kids did. I learned not to do it again, she took away one of my toys or something I liked instead of giving me a licking.

A habit I picked up during my early years was:

Lying. I think about every kid, I don't say every kid, but I used to. I didn't recognize them as habits then. I would tease my sister, that was a habit. I guess there were things I did but I don't recognize them as habits.

This is how we usually ate dinner as a family:

We ate at the kitchen table. My father built it, it was out of wood, it was a beautiful piece of work, it was round. We cooked a lot at home, my mom did a lot of cooking. My grandmother, my father's mother come up, it was every day or every other day, she only lived down the street. We had baked haddock or whatever kind of fish was brought home, fish chowders, homemade clam cakes, Mom spent a lot of time cooking and doing laundry, there was no TV. The relatives all lived close together then, today they are so far apart. They made their own pies and cakes. In an old wood and coal stove. The stove was called a Queen Atlantic, it was a famous stove, made from the Portland Stove foundary, down Marginal Way, it was a big old dirty place to work, my brother worked there for a while. We had milk at the table, soda wasn't very popular then although it was around. Or we would have cocoa, dark cocoa was popular then, it is hard to find now, unless you go to the right store, it is always that light stuff now. We always had a bowl of fruit on the table with nuts and stuff in it. Just about everybody was always there. During the War, the second War, things were rationed, they had to get slips for butter and things. If they wanted cigarettes they could only get two packages.

I can remember when I was little, three or four, there was a man came around with a horse and wagon to collect rags and stuff, we gave them to him and he would go and sell them to make a living. We had an old ice box, the ice man would come around with an old truck Elm Ice and Oil they were called, and we used to buy a small block of ice for a dime, they would carry it upstairs with a pair of tongs. When it was winter my father built small window boxes outside to keep the food in, it would freeze sometimes.

We always had nice meals on holidays, just about everybody could cook. Neighbors would bring stuff over if they had it, some didn't have it.

I remember getting into trouble with my parents on this occasion:

The World of Mirth Circus used to come, I was young six or seven, down Bayside, they call it Back Bay now, there were no buildings there then, the water came right up to Marginal Way, that's all filled in. I must have went down early, three or four o'clock in the afternoon, I didn't have any money to get in, I snuck in. I knew the area pretty good because I played in there. And I didn't check in with my Mum until my brother found me at one o'clock in the morning, I was helping the guy set a tent up. It was where all the girls did their dance. My mom didn't like it, my Dad was involved but he never scolded us much, my Mom did the scolding. And I got a lickin'. I had a choice, stay in a week or get a lickin' and I took the lickin', they had some kind of strap, I don't know what it was. That was the first time I had a lickin' in my life, and the last time.

My sister Jean and my brother had to come find me. I deserved it I guess.

If, growing up, I had any trouble with Dad, it was in this area:

I didn't understand him. Cause he never took me to ball games or movies or restaurants. All he cared about was what he did, the sea, and fishing. He got drafted, but they didn't take him, the government wanted the fish, they wanted them to keep fishing, they took some fisherman, the ones that wanted to go I guess, and left the rest. He was young then, probably in his 40's. And he used to go dory fishing with his father off Vinalhaven, he was real young then, five or six years old, that's when they hauled the nets by hand.

As I got older I had trouble, I met a girl, my cousin Peter was going with a girl, he was two years older than me, he was real homely, but he ran around with lots of girls, had no trouble getting girlfriends, he was the kind of guy that was full of fun. He had lots of friends, motorcycle riders some of 'em. They had a party once and I went, with lobsters and stuff. He wasn't scared to ask any girl, even the married ones, for dates. He was in reform school for a while for something that he did. This girl, somehow I got mixed up with her, I was about fifteen, I drank then, it wasn't hard to get, there was hardly no drugs around. I went home one day, I lived on Smith Street, and she was sittin' in my cousin's lap. I was real strong, I don't know what happened, I lost my cool, and I grabbed her and I grabbed him, and I almost choked her to death. I tipped over the oil burner, my Dad couldn't believe how strong I was, I had to grab something, I guess that is part of my anger. I grabbed the table, the leg broke off and I was going to hit my Dad with it. My Dad was trying to stop me, he had been drinking, and I had had a few beers too. I used to buy that girl candy and flowers. My mom had a talk with me about the situation, I didn't know that she (the girl) had five kids, she was about ten years older than me but she didn't look it. She used to buy me beer every once in a while. Peter didn't talk to me for two years or more after that, and he was never very friendly after that. When he got out of reform school he bought me some new shoes with the money that they gave him. A nice pair of Army/Navy shoes cost about seven dollars then. They had a store called the Army/Navy Store down on Exchange street. I had a pea coat, a Navy pea coat, boy, those things were warm.

I had to move out for a couple weeks, get my own apartment on my own, when I was fifteen because my Dad didn't want me living there any more because of the fight. So I moved into an apartment house where my two uncles lived. The rent was cheap, about $12 a week, heat and lights included. Dad kicked me out because of the fight, he always told me that if you get yourself in a mess, you get yourself out of it. I guess it was a cooling off period between him and me.

I also got in trouble with my Dad over a friend of mine. My Dad was callin' my friend, cause he didn't work much-I used to always work and take him to movies-Dad called him a free loader, said he was sponging off me, called him lazy. He said he was in reform school, that was true, all his three brothers were too. I got in a big fight with him over it, same thing happened what happened with the girl. I grabbed him, he grabbed me, my Mom separated us somehow. Then I had to move out again for another two or three weeks, I moved in with my Aunt. My father's brother was a seaman too. My Aunt ran around on him. And I had to move into her apartment house, there were bootleggers in there. I used to get shots of whiskey for nothing. There was older women, they used to flirt with me. Then Mom got sick a few weeks later and my Father had to keep working, he had to keep fishing, and she suffered through five years of cancer. She was a heavy smoker, but that didn't do it, she died of cancer that women get, ovarian cancer. She was 53.

I went home to help take care of her, all I could do was make her milkshakes. The doctors they had then was like a country doctor, they did everything, there wasn't a specialized doctor, and she wouldn't change to any other doctor.

The first time I saw my father with tears come down his face was at her funeral. It was also the first time I saw him completely sober, just about. He gave up fishing, Grand Bank fishing, after she passed away. And I guess, I don't know, he run around different sea ports, but somehow they still really loved each other.

I couldn't seem to get real close to him, like other Fathers and their kids. I was always a little bit scared of him, I don't know why, his roughness and his loudness, arguments with his fishing buddies. And he knew I had some kind of learning disabilities I guess, probably didn't know how to handle it.

One of Dad's traits I admired was:

He was smart. He grew up in Vinalhaven and went to grammar school there, and high school, then they moved up here and he finished his last year here. He was good building cabinets the old fashioned way, they offered him all kinds of money to be a cabinet maker, that was back when they used cedar and planks, not plywood.

I remember him telling me a story 'bout coming back from sea in the fog. They went aground on Ram Island, they had to wait so many hours to get off the island, I think the Coast Gaurd got them off. There's a lighthouse on there today, it might have been there then too, I don't know.

He used to tell me lots of stories about what happened on ships, on the kind of ships he went out on, the big twelve man draggers. He went as cook a few times, when they would come in and settle up for the money and all that, he would order their "grub", that's what they called food, and I would help him put it down in the galley on ice, they took tons of ice, they still do today. They didn't have any refridgerator, they still have to put fish on ice because refridgerators dehydrate it, the cold air. And they didn't have no radar, just a compass. No soundin' machines or nothin'.

I begged him to take me fishing, he didn't want to take me because if the boat went down then there would be two lost in the family. After my mom passed away he took me out off shore on a small boat for three days about three different times. And I got sea sick! Wicked sea sick! They laughed at me, made fun of me, they offered me salt pork and tobacco, chewing tobacco, of that made it worse. They used to chew tobacco a lot because it kept their mouth warm they said. And when they went on long trips in the winter he would grow a big beard. And when I went with him, three or four days at a time, when we got about 2000 pounds of fish in the gill nets, they went gill fishing, they hauled the gill nets back with a one lunger, that's an engine that hauled nets and trawls. I went trawling too. They did most of the work. I helped clean the fish and put it down the hatch and ice it. You had to take the insides out of the fish so that it didn't spoil.

I really didn't know him, because he was gone most of the time, I know he drank a lot, like most fisherman. He was loud, he was partly deaf. Most seamen are, with the engine running all the time, the vibration. They say deaf people don't get sea sick.

One of the things that he did for me that was good was this:

I met a girl named Pauline. Her father owned a little sandwich shop. She was French/Italian. I liked her very much. And I used to visit her almost every day for almost four or five months at her father's shop. Her father and mother liked me. So they asked me to invite my father and mother to come up for lunch and he did. I don't know what happened, but he did. It wasn't very far from the house, it was right around the corner. They didn't charge us anything, I liked Pauline very much but it didn't work out.

We have been away for a little while!

RKat and I have been working on a "Health Literacy" project for Literacy Volunteers of Maine that was given to us by the Greater Portland coordinator, Kristen. The project involved learning a lot of new vocabulary words and some questions that RKat can ask his druggist about over the counter medications.

We attempted to log on to write some more of his story today but were not able to, so we are hopefully going to get together again this week to continue his writing.