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.