Turbo Power

Have you heard a muffler-less V8 diesel engine roar by lately? Then you don't live on the Pemaquid Peninsula. Ours is a culture in which masculinity is defined by two things:

1.) size and loudness of your truck and

2.) the speed of your boat.

We take engines pretty seriously around here. In rural Maine, trucks are more than just redneck transport; they are a form of expression. Your average city slicker might just see a hunk of rusty sheet metal on big tires, but what they don't see is a manifestation of identity, masculinity, and sex appeal.

Let's start with identity. If you sit at a gas station and observe proud truck owners as they step out of their pickups, you start noticing patterns. It's hard not to notice a relationship between height and truck size. That is to say that little guys make up for what they lack in height with wheel diameter and horsepower. And big guys like even more hemi power! They can make all the excuses they want about needing plenty of leg room and head clearance, but the fact is it makes them feel more manly.

I was recently amused to spot, among the many personality tests on Facebook, the "What type of pickup truck are you meant to drive?" test. Naturally, I couldn't help but take it. It was dead wrong: a beater Ford. I've been daydreaming about a forest green Toyota Tacoma TRD for the past few years. I look for endurance, comfort, and grace in a truck, myself. Let's just say that I'd be considered a liberal in this fishing town in more aspects than just my dream truck.

As for sex appeal, well in nature the Alpha male is the biggest, most powerful male with the best reproductive success. It naturally follows that guys with bigger trucks have more luck with the ladies. If there was a sociological study done on the correlation between truck size and reproductive success of males living in rural Maine, let's just say I think the slope of the regression line would be "1" (perfect correlation). "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy" is a big country hit around here. Us local girls can appreciate a good off-road vehicle.

I can make fun of them all I want, but I'm just as much of a sucker for a big truck as the rest of the fishermen around here. The fact is that many of the pickups that you see on the waterfront are practical work tools. But that isn't to say that the owners don't get a thrill when the ignition roars to life or secretly suck in the sweetly sickening diesel fumes as they close the tailgate. Alright, I'm going to stop making sweeping generalizations before I offend a pick-up sporting reader. Or is it already too late?

Tradition

As with most tasks related to the lobstering business, preparing the components for building new traps is redundant and tedious yet somehow very satisfying. Cap decided early this spring that he wants to sell all of his old "beater" traps (his son has been encouraging him to do so, claiming that some of them are as old as me!) and build 200 new ones. I was a little overwhelmed by this proposal until he revealed that he would be buying the "cages" with runners on them and that we would add all of the accessories.

In preparation of assembling the traps, there is much work to be done: preparing little gadgets and do-hickeys that you probably wouldn't even single out if you looked at a trap for 5 minutes. However, perhaps the most time-intensive part is the "heads" (the nylon mesh one-way doors through which the lobsters walk and never return).

I told my father about my recent work tasks and he reminisced back to the days when he was a boy and the elderly matriarchs of the community used to "knit" the trap heads for all of the fishermen. I can just picture them sitting around in rocking chairs, with white aprons and tight white buns atop their heads, fingers working away as if they are quilting or crochetting, exchanging the latest news laiden in thick Maine accents. My great-grandmother, whose name I carry on as my middle name, was probably one of these agile-fingered women. Those were the days when my dad used to build his own wooden traps as did his grandfather, who was a lobsterman and a talented artist. We still have some of my great-grandfathers wooden pot buoys as well as hundreds of his paintings.

We don't knit heads anymore, but there is other preparation involved: cutting the mesh and "lacing" it. Yesterday I was sitting in Cap's living room lacing trap heads and I couldn't help but feel some connection with the elders of this ancient tradition. I'm starting to understand what Cap was talking about when he said that "not many people have articulate hands anymore." Even the skill of knitting nylon mesh (such as trap heads or shrimp nets) is becoming scarcer. My father used to build his own nets. While groundfishermen still mend their nets, very few lobstermen know how to knit their own heads. As with many things in the modern world, there are machines that can knit nylon mesh now.

Knitting or lacing trap heads could be seen as women's work to some people, since it is detail oriented and requires dextrous fingers, as does picking out shrimp. I usually resent this notion of "women's work" since it implies gender segregation of labor. However, for some reason in this case, I find pride in carrying out the lady's task. I feel like I'm in a secret club with my great-grandmother and Cap's wife, who also does this job. It is as if I'm carrying on a female tradition for which men's strong calloused hands aren't fit.

Although Cap and I are doing a more abbreviated, modern version of trap-building, we are carrying on a tradition of self-sufficiency that is hard to come by these days. We continue to develop articulate hands.

Lending a Helping Hand

One thing I've learned "down ta the shoah" is that there's no such thing as asking for help. I used to ask, which I considered to be common etiquette. I figured that if someone didn't want help then it's actually helpful to stay out of the way and if they needed a hand then, by golly, go to town! But not so in the world of fishing. Every time that I asked for help, I got replies like "Oh, that's ok, deah, we got it." I suppose part of this had to do with being a young lady whom they didn't think should be lifting heavy items, but there are also different codes of courtesy on the dock of which I wasn't yet aware.

As I spent more time on the dock I observed that other fishermen didn't bother asking if someone needed a hand. They just saw where they could be of use and they jumped right in. When the job is done, thanks will be exchanged in a form something like this: "Shoah do 'preciate it, Billy." "No problem, Joe." Or not. Some guys aren't in the habit of expressing gratitude verbally, or perhaps they just think it's extraneous. But often their thanks will show up later down the road.

It is especially common for fishermen who are operating off of the same dock, meaning either they are members of the same fishermen's co-op or they sell lobsters to the same buyer, to help eachother out. There have been numerous occasions when we bring a trailer full of traps down to load onto the boat and someone else has pulled their boat up alongside the dock. In this case we might help the other fishermen load his boat in order to speed things up so that we might pull Cap's boat in sooner. In other words, the incentive to help another isn't always selfless. But regardless of the underlying motives, we are all in this game together. . . why not lend eachother a hand?

2-Faced

Growing up in a small, rural area where my father's side of the family traces back many generations, practically everyone knows who I am when I say I'm "Dad's" daughter. That's not to say that I know everyone in the area, but those with whom I have interacted tend to think fondly of myself and my family and I of them. I have many friends in this community including many fishermen.

When I became intertwined in the fishing community, I began learning alternate identities of well-esteemed townsfolk. My innocent respect for several fishermen was turned upside-down when I learned of not-so-respectable acts that they have committed on the water. This wasn't easy for me to swallow, as a girl who tends to believe in the good in people.

For example, I heard through the grapevine that someone with whom I regularly have amiable conversations is known to have cut a significant number of buoys on multiple occasions upon losing his temper. Every lobsterman loses his/her patience at some point, but cutting traps is the most disrespectful act that one can commit around here. It isn't much better than spitting in someone's face. Actually, it's worse because not only are you disrespecting them, but you're costing them money too.

As with most predicaments in my life, I went to my Dad with this paradox. How could the fishermen who are so fatherly and kind to me on land be such hellians on the sea? My father explained in his usual soothing and reasonable way how some fishermen are in fact respectable members of this community, but when they get irritated at work on the water that they can be short-of-temper and very reactive. When lobstermen loose their patience on the water, bad things can happen. This reminded me of "Two-Face" in Batman, who's good or ill will depends on the flip of a two-headed coin.

This isn't to say that I am no longer friends with those "two-faced" individuals. I believe that, regardless of the ugly rumors one may hear about a person, I should make my own judgements based on my personal interaction with them. However, my new perspective opened my eyes to the fact that a person can be much more complicated than they first appear.

Solitary Spruce

There's a solitary spruce jutting out on a little point along the shore just south of Round Pond. I notice it every time we pass. When I look up from cleaning the boat on the steam home, I know we're close if I look south and see that tree. It bids us a safe journey on our steam out of the harbor and beckons us home on our return.

In the summertime, my dad and I like to "run out of the harbor" in his 22' Aquasport to catch the sunset. On the way back into the cove we swing by the bell buoy to hear its gentle clanging, like a church bell. My dad says that he used to know when he was home at the end of a fishing trip when he saw and/or heard (in the dark or fog) the New Harbor bell buoy. I know I'm home when I see that scraggly spruce.

Trap Shackin'

Trap shacking is a coastal activity akin in degree of integrity and intellegence to the agrarian past time of cow tipping. In other words, it's just downright stupid and obnoxious.

The other day we encountered a unique snarl that seemed somehow familiar. The tailer line was wrapped around the trap and all bolluxed up. It took a while to sort it out.

"How did that happen?" I asked because I was concerned that perhaps it was something that I had done, maybe the way I set the trap, and wanted to know how to prevent it from happening again.

His reply was unexpected: "Well, you've seen it before, so you might as well know. . ."

Turned out that someone had hauled his traps and then just set them one on top of another in a heap, instead of carefully spacing them.

I'm aware that Cap tries to protect me from some of the ugly truths of lobstering. The dirty local politics. The stealing and resentments. However, it's a reality of the business. I don't need to know names, but I appreciate him letting me know what's going on.

"Shacking" traps means hauling them and stealing the lobsters. I wrote about this before in the case of shrimp traps in "Ghosts Up Above," but it's more common with lobster traps, since lobsters are more valuable. Some people will go to desperate measures to steal. If the trap door is fool-proof, they will find some other way of breaking into it. Cap said that for a while someone was even popping vents so that they could reach in the hole with the vent gone and remove the precious plunder. He had to start drilling a hole in the top of the vent that snaps into the wire mesh and secure the top with a rusty hogring in addition to the two usual bottom corners.

When it gets to that point, you wonder if they are doing it for the purpose of making a few extra dollars or if they are just trying to prove that they can break into the trap. Like a thief who prides himself on cracking safes. In any case, it is a dishonest and disrespectful thing to do to someone else's hard-earned property. An activity that can only be rivaled by trap cutting, which is just plain nasty. But enough of my bitching. Let's move on to more pleasant topics. . .

A Learning Process

People often inquire as to my current occupation. Upon my replying that I'm a sternlady on a lobsterboat, I am commonly met with the usual reactions of skepticism, surprise, and even admiration. The other day someone remarked that I am "overqualified" for my job, referring to my academic credentials. I replied that although lobstering is physical labor, I learn something new on the boat every day.

For example, just a few days ago I learned how to estimate the age of a fish. We were using sheepshead heads for bait at the time. All day I was finding little white circles that felt like hard plastic or bone on the deck. I looked everywhere trying to find some plastic gear that it could have chipped off of, but to no avail. Finally, I asked Cap about them. He pondered it for a minute, then came to the conclusion that they were fish ear bones from our bait. All that remained of the old heads that had been munched by lobsters and various other critters was bone and cartilidge. The earbones easily could have fallen out of the fish skulls. He showed me that you can count the concentric circles on the bone to determine the age of a fish, just as you can count the growth rings on a tree to estimate its age! I found this fascinating.

Cap is a wealth of juicy little marine factoids. I like to think of myself collecting them, in the same way that I used to collect marbles or stamps. In fact, just yesterday we caught a good-sized flounder, maybe 16" long. Flounders begin life in this world with an eye on each side of their body. Eventually, the eye on the bottom migrates to the top of the fish, so that both eyes are on top, but you can still tell which eye was originally on top. I'll call this the dominant eye. Cap told me flounders can either be "left-handed" (with the dominant eye on the left) or "right-handed."

However, these marine factoids are only little snippets of my education on the boat. How could I ever explain to a casual aquaintence all that I have learned from fishing? How could I convey that when you first step on a boat, you have to learn everything anew in this strange, aquatic dimension? It's like being a toddler again. First you learn how to stand, then to walk, then to actually get work done on a plane that is in constant motion.

The fishing industry is a world in which paper resumes have no use besides maybe absorbing engine oil spilled on the deck. You "qualify" for the job of sternman only if you can repeatedly lift at least 50 lbs, work efficiently on the boat without puking, and do fast, hard work all day long. How many "overqualified" Smithies can spend a day on a lobsterboat without barfing over the rail the whole time let alone bait 200 traps with rotten fish?

I survived fishing through the 6 hardest months of the year. Yet I'm still a mere "greenhorn" by a real fisherman's standards. I have worked up to a decent speed at the redundant duties on deck (baiting, banding lobsters, etc.). Upon watching my video of us setting traps, my father, an ex-captain of two draggers, remarked that I am an "efficient worker," which I found very flattering. However, I still have much to learn as a sternlady.

Probably the biggest challenge of working on a boat is learning 1.) how to not be in the way and 2.) how to be useful. One can only learn these things by observation and experience. Only recently have I felt more competent at knowing how to be useful when we get in predicaments. For example, in my early days working with Cap, when we came to a snarl (our lines tangled with those of another fisherman) Cap would give me verbal directions such as "Hold this," "Coil that line," "OK, you can throw the buoy back now." Sometimes he would find difficulty in verbalizing what needed to be done or I didn't do it in time. This could be frustrating for both of us. By now, we have done this routine enough times, that I can predict what needs to be done and I can be of assistance without needing direction. I have also learned little tricks like how to hold the weight of a line over the rail while Cap reties a knot. Simple properties of physics. But there's always more to learn. Although Cap is wise and experienced in my eyes, he too learns new things every day from encountering new challenges.