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.