Rufus Nicoll: [0:00:00] Have you had many different topics?

 

GK: [0:00:02] Well, mostly, I’m just talking to people about their lives.

 

RN: [0:00:09] So you’re in deep, is what you’re saying.

 

GK: [0:00:10] I’m in deep. Yeah. One [interviewee], Alice Spencer – I’ve been over there two times, and then I’ll go again because they just pour out of her. She’s ultimate storyteller. I’m not even prompting her. Just one right after the other. It’s pretty amazing.

 

Liz Monahon: [0:00:32] Well, I did not prepare.

 

GK: [0:00:34] You don’t need to. You can just tell me your names.

 

LM: [0:00:38] Liz Monahan.

 

RN: [0:00:42] And Rufus Nichol.

 

GK: [0:00:43] Oh, I never knew your last name. Isn’t that strange? You’re just Rufus. [laughter] There’s only one. I just want to, first of all, talk about why you guys live on Deer Isle.

 

LM: [0:01:01] Well, I came here because of Billings [Diesel & Marine Service, Inc.] and had heard about Deer Isle from living on Mount Desert Island and how – don’t mess with Deer Isle.

 

GK: [0:01:13] [laughter] Wait. No, don’t –

 

[RECORDING PAUSED]

 

LM: [0:01:15] I’m glad to hear people are worried about gossiping –

 

GK: [0:01:18] Oh, yeah.

 

LM: [0:01:20] – instead of just going for it.

 

GK: [0:01:21] People will gossip not on the record. That’s a whole different thing.

So, don’t mess with Deer Isle.

 

LM: [0:01:30] Yeah. Deer Isle was the bad neighbor of MDI [Mount Desert Island.] I went to the fishermen’s forum and met the Billings folks, and they gave me a job, so here we are.

 

GK: [0:01:48] Deer Isle’s like the bad neighborhood of the Blue Hill peninsula, too.

 

RN: [0:01:54] Yeah, but who wants to go to Blue Hill?

 

LM: [0:01:57] But actually, it’s really not that –

 

RN: [0:01:58] It’s really not. I mean, the other part of the reason that we’re here is, yes, you got the job in Billings, but we didn’t move here directly until we realized that it really sucked driving from Penobscot. It was really far.

 

GK: [0:02:13] Oh, you were living in Penobscot?

 

LM: [0:02:15] Yep. In a little cabin with nothing. Taking my showers out of cold ice water bucket out back.

 

RN: [0:02:26] It was terrible.

 

LM: [0:02:27] And a scotch bright pad.

 

RN: [0:02:31] And the VW died.

 

LM: [0:02:32] My car died. Then we had to finally – that was when I met Jeff Dworsky. Yep.

 

GK: [0:02:40] You can tell that story. That’s not gossip. It’s actually a good story.

 

LM: [0:02:46] I was working at Billing’s, and this man came down to his boat that I was changing the oil on and was like laying across the threshold and asking me all about myself. And I was like, “Who is this guy?” And then he offered to show me a place to live right next to him. And I thought, “No, thank you.”  He persisted, and I realized he was not creepy; he was just really friendly. My car died, and we needed a place to live, and that’s how we ended up at Sand Beach. Hopefully, that doesn’t offend anybody, that story. [laughter]

 

GK: [0:03:26] Well, it’s funny, too, because it’s hard to find housing here, which you both know. Right?

 

LM: [0:03:33] Super hard, yeah.

 

GK: [0:03:35] And it’s all like – even in the old days, it’s always been word of mouth. Or somebody being like, “Hey, I have this thing?” That’s how you do it. I think it would be hard if you didn’t get a tip.

 

LM: [0:03:51] Well, Rufus knew (Megan?) and (Farrell?) from a while back, so we asked them.

 

RN: [0:03:59] Yeah, it’s so hard to come by. Same as the island when we were still there.

 

LM: [0:04:05] The big island.

 

RN: [0:04:06] It’s just as hard to find here, but it’s marginally cheaper. Just a little difference.

 

GK: [0:04:12] MDI was even more expensive?

 

RN: [0:04:14] Oh, yeah.

 

LM: [0:04:14] Oh, yeah.

 

GK: [0:04:14] What were the rents there?

 

RN: [0:04:17] We were paying six hundred bucks a month plus utilities for a twenty by twenty-one room cabin. No lease. When I was looking before that –

 

LM: [0:04:32] That was a good deal.

 

RN: [0:04:33] – I was looking at a three hundred square foot cabin plus utilities for twelve hundred bucks a month. It’s pretty insane. Before that, it was eight hundred a month. If you wanted a lease, eight hundred a month. That’s why when that guy who had the five hundred bucks a month for the place in Hall Quarry – the guy who murdered the guy who owned it, took over the lease, took his identity. He had a lot of respondents because – yeah.

 

LM: [0:05:03] This is creepy, but five hundred dollars?

 

GK: [0:05:06] We get it. So, how long have you been in the Sand Beach spot?

 

LM: [0:05:14] It will be two years in July. Yeah, almost two years.

 

GK: [0:05:21] And do you plan to stay?

 

LM: [0:05:25] I would like to stay. I would like to stay at Sand Beach. But I don’t want to rent anymore. Yeah, I think we’ll stay here. I think this has been the best fit for me anyway in Maine of the places I’ve lived here. And I like it here. I like that it’s sort of a little stuck in time and that the tourism is not insane the way that it is in most other coastal towns. You can still own property right next to the ocean. I like that it’s a fishing community and not a tourist community.

 

RN: [0:06:06] You’ve remarked on that a lot, the difference between Billings as a boatyard from other boatyards.

 

LM: [0:06:15] Yeah, working in a boat yard that’s lobster boats is so much different and better than working in a yacht yard where it’s all Morris yachts and Hinckleys and fancy people. The attitudes are just so much better, believe it or not.

 

GK: [0:06:37] What’s the general vibe at Billings for you with your clients?

 

LM: [0:06:44] The lobstermen are usually pretty great. Occasionally, I’ll get somebody who’s not quite sure about the lady in the room. [laughter] But for the most part, they’re pretty great. They are really respectful and trust the people working on their boats. Whereas at the fancy yards, you’re constantly being questioned and you’re suspected of – man, there was once a guy who accused all of us of – even though we had three working restrooms, he accused us of pooping in the head of his boat up in a cold storage building all winter. I was like, “What are you talking about?” [laughter] But he really did that. He seriously accused us of doing that. It’s like, what?

 

GK: [0:07:39] Oh my god.

 

LM: [0:07:40] In what world? Then, on his phone call, someone was like, “That’s just a ridiculous claim. Why would we? Even if we didn’t like you, that’s a lot of work, and none of us put that much work into people we don’t like.” He was like, “Well, do you know who I am?” And I don’t even remember who he is now. It was Hal-somebody. But he was nobody. He was just a man with a lot of money.

 

GK: [0:08:09] With a last name.

 

LM: [0:08:11] I don’t remember his last name.

 

GK: [0:08:12] A good last name.

 

RN: [0:08:14] Probably.

 

LM: [0:08:15] Probably, yeah. But that doesn’t happen at Billings. [laughter] Mainly, there are no heads in lobster boats. But I don’t think anyone would use them anyway.

 

GK: [0:08:32] Does it change? Is it seasonal the kind of work that you’re doing there? Does it change season to season, and the boats that are coming in?

 

LM: [0:08:39] Well, that’s what’s cool about it, is it doesn’t really change. I mean, the winter is more – you’ll get more people wanting to do overhauls on their engines, like rebuilds or getting new engines, that kind of thing, because they’re going away for the winter, and that’s the best time to do it. But for the most part, it’s steady, the same stuff with some variation. But we’re busy all the time. And this time of year, we’re the usual busy with a lot more busy on top of it. It’s constant.

 

GK: [0:09:18] With a lot more busy on top of it.

 

LM: [0:09:21] Yeah, lots of people running around being frazzled, which is just so helpful.

 

GK: [0:09:27] Because why? What are they doing? Are people trying to get their shit together, and that’s why they’re frazzled and running around?

 

LM: [0:09:36] No, I just think that – I don’t know if that’s a boatyard thing that people just do that, or maybe it’s just a world thing; everybody does it, where they’re stressed out and instead of just taking a couple of deep breaths and making a list and checking things off, they sort of just run around and make noises and get red in the face. You just got to keep your head down and try not to pay attention to it and try not to do the same thing because that just gets real ugly real quick. [laughter]

 

RN: [0:10:14] Do you think there’s an incentive for overtime, too, in the busyness?

 

LM: [0:10:22] Overtime. Overtime is such a scam, in my opinion. I do it. We have overtime all year. There’s even more pressure for it in the summer or this time of year, springtime. But there’s not really much time to do it. You can come in at – you can only really log five extra hours during the week and then maybe a half day on Saturday, and then you get taxed so much on it that it’s like, “Why did I just remove that much of sleep and my own time for something that’s really not making my paycheck that much more padded out?”

 

GK: [0:11:08] What is the contract there? Are you an employee with benefits, or is it like you’re a contractor? How does it work?

 

LM: [0:11:16] Employee with benefits. Yeah.

 

GK: [0:11:19] That’s pretty sweet.

 

LM: [0:11:20] Yeah.

 

RN: [0:11:21] I’m jealous.

 

LM: [0:11:22] Yeah, it’s nice to have health care. I mean, all health insurance is pretty crappy. But at least I don’t have to pay for mine. So, it hurts more when you have to pay three hundred dollars for crappy insurance. I don’t think I caught –

 

RN: [0:11:40] Is that it for employers with benefits? Billing’s, nursing home, school – anyone else? Car? Is the –? No.

 

LM: [0:11:52] Oh, for here?

 

GK: [0:11:53] I don’t know.

 

RN: [0:11:54] I’m just curious.

 

GK: [0:11:55] I don’t know. Would the coop have benefits?

 

RN: [0:11:58] I don’t know.

 

GK: [0:11:59] They might help you figure out how to get them. But I would assume you’re still on your own.

 

LM: [0:12:06] I know some small places – at least one that I know of –that will like compensate you for a percentage of whatever health insurance you choose. Better than nothing.

 

GK: [0:12:22] Yeah. Nursing home, school, Billings, Haystack – Haystack has benefits. Opera House probably has benefits. Definitely does. But not much. Truly. Yeah. I mean, it’s crazy to talk to people – to interview people about – not that these jobs have benefits necessarily, but just how many more jobs there were in like the ’70s, ‘80s, and early ‘90s, especially the factory. It was like a hundred jobs for women.

 

LM: [0:12:58] Wow.

 

RN: [0:12:59] Until when?

 

GK: [0:13:00] ‘92.

 

RN: [0:13:01] Really?

 

GK: [0:13:01] Yes.

 

RN: [0:13:02] Wow.

 

GK: [0:13:03] Yeah, that’s when it closed down. ’92. Yeah. A hundred people worked there, which is a lot.

 

LM: [0:13:14] That is a lot. Wow.

 

GK: [0:13:16] And all women, which is also amazing. So, now you’re fishing, Rufus?

 

RN: [0:13:27] Yeah, seeing what it’s about.

 

GK: [0:13:30] How is it?

 

RN: [0:13:31] I don’t know. I didn’t mind it last fall. I’m seeing what shop work is like with Ben. I think we get along. I don’t know. It seems as taxing and brutal as people would expect. Have you done it?

 

GK: [0:13:52] Only a little. Only gone out on boats for the day. I’ve never done a whole season.

 

RN: [0:13:57] I feel basically like a five-year-old. I don’t have a clue what I’m doing. I’m just being like a Lego person carrying stuff around, but Benny’s nice; he doesn’t yell at me, so that’s good.

 

GK: [0:14:11] Yeah, that is good.

 

RN: [0:14:13] But I don’t know. We were talking about this in relationship to you at Billings and seeing all the – “Oh, wow, really different boat yard. All lobster boats,” but also getting a new perspective on thinking, “Oh, lobstering is a big deal in Southwest Harbor. Lobstering is a big deal in Bass Harbor.”

 

LM: [0:14:32] Not nearly –

 

RN: [0:14:33] And then coming here and being like, “Oh, very different. Very, very different.

 

LM: [0:14:37] Yeah, you think you’re living in a fishing community when you’re in Bass Harbor, Southwest, but you’re just not. It’s so small scale in comparison.

 

RN: [0:14:45] Like twenty boats. I don’t know. People would correct me on that, but not like this.

 

LM: [0:14:52] That’s what it feels like when you’re looking at what’s happening here.

 

RN: [0:14:55] Yeah, not everybody –

 

GK: [0:14:57] Right. Here, I feel like especially this time of year – and I hope that one of my photographers really captured this. I sent her out on her – I sent Jenny out on her own, and I was like, “This is what I need.” Just the fact that you drive down the island, and everybody’s got traps in their yard. It’s every stretch of road. It’s remarkable, and then you really see it, I think, even more this time of year than other times of year.

 

RN: [0:15:30] Yeah, and it’s crazy to me. I mean, I’ve definitely been more attentive to it now and understanding what it is and what’s going on there. But it’s kind of fun to watch. “Oh, you’ve got some new traps. Oh, you’re getting all organized. Oh, you’re behind.” You see what’s going on.

 

LM: [0:15:48] “Your traps fell over.”

 

RN: [0:15:50] Right. [laughter] “You didn’t stack them up nice like Benny makes me.”

 

GK: [0:15:55] I saw some traps down at Fifield Lobster Company that were the most beautiful traps I’ve ever seen in my entire life.

 

LM: [0:16:02] What were they?

 

GK: [0:16:03] They were just beautiful. I know [whose] they were. I can say because they were so beautiful. It was – now, I’m going to forget. Clough. But which Clough? Josh Clough, I think. I think it was Josh Clough. They were white, and then the nets were blue inside. Then they had this running – on the cement runners, he had wrapped rope, so they had like this extra buffer, and there were all these like crazy bright colors. They were the most immaculate. I was just looking at them, and Travis was like, “Yeah, he takes really good care of his gear.” And I was like,” I’ve never seen anything like this.” It was amazing.

 

LM: [0:16:49] That sounds awesome.

 

GK: [0:16:50] They were really cool.

 

LM: [0:16:50] I would have so much fun if I were a lobsterman with that kind of thing. I feel like I would maybe get a little – my OCD would come out, and it would be a little annoying for anyone around me.

 

RN: [0:17:02] Yeah, but the OCD, I think, is misunderstood because the OCD of it – Benny keeps apologizing for it, but I get it. If you look out your door and you see this mish-mash pile of stuff, you’re stressed out. If you see – “Okay, I’ve got all black traps, and all of these toggles are over here,” I get it; you want to know stuff at a glance. It’s the same with you having to reteach me how to tie dinghies up and be like, “Well, I want to be at the fleet. I want to see this knot so that I know that everything’s safe,” not like something [else] that is secure, but like you want to know immediately. Everyone has their way.

 

LM: [0:17:45] Yeah, that’s nice. Some people would just call that me being a jerk. [laughter]

 

GK: [0:17:49] Yeah, I think that’s the difference between the person that is a fisherman and the person that’s not in some ways. So, I don’t know anything about how you got involved in working as a diesel mechanic.

 

LM: [0:18:09] So, I have always liked engines. I have two older brothers and a father, and they were always doing stuff, and I was always given the broom. I’m not kidding. [laughter] That really happened. Unless my brothers weren’t around and I had to fix my own truck, and it was like, “Okay, here’s some tools. Figure out a drum break. I’ll give you one piece of advice. Really look at it before you take out that Jesus clip.” That’s how I learned some of the stuff. But I had no confidence whatsoever. Anyway, then I started working at – I came up to Maine, and I started working at Morris Yachts when I was eighteen. I loved the mechanic. I just never thought I would ever get anywhere near engines. I was rigging sailboats and running the travel lift and the crane and everything. They sent me to captains school, I got my license, and I started captaining and really fell in love with that and fell in love with the days where the engine wouldn’t start, and I got to finally, on my own, no one around, tinker. Through that job, I ended up at the Northeast Harbor Fleet Yacht Club, and I managed their waterfront and took care of all their boats. They had two boats with six-cylinder small diesels and five outboard engines and then a ton of other boats. So I did all the maintenance on those, and that job sucked.

 

GK: [0:20:08] What did that maintenance mean? Were you doing engine work, too?

 

LM: [0:20:12] Well, I did. If the engines broke down, I tried my best to figure it out. At the time, like I said, I had very little confidence and not that much knowledge, so I did my best. I did fix a lot of things, but mostly, what I did for them was general maintenance.

 

RN: [0:20:33] What was the number one in-season breakdown?

 

LM: [0:20:37] Well, outboards, I did a lot of maintenance on because those are pretty simple, but the number one thing [laughter] – because at the fleet, you’d also get called out to members’ boats to fix their boats when they wouldn’t start, and the number one thing was no fuel. Number one thing. That could mean they went and filled up the fuel, and they didn’t open the vent on their external tank so they had fuel, but they couldn’t start because there was no air letting the fuel flow, or they forgot to plug the tank back in or they literally just ran out. That was number one. Number two was they left the throttle in, and there’s a neutral safety, so you can’t start a lot of those outboards – most outboards, I think – if you’re in gear. I would just be like, “Hey, look what’s over there?” and click back and start the engine up. “What’d you do?” “Oh, don’t worry about it. [laughter] This is where I learned most of the time – well, a lot of the time – mechanics aren’t rocket scientists. There’s very simple fixes, and we just omit things to make us feel big and bad.

 

GK: [0:22:04] There are maybe a lot of people out there who aren’t – who don’t know what they’re doing? Is that what you found? Why did these people not know that they –?

 

LM: [0:22:14] Oh, summer folks don’t know most of the time how to deal with their boats. They just don’t bother for some reason, or they have these egos on them that just make them think that it’s a plug-and-play. Not much respect for the ocean there or the vessel upon it. It’s just drink beers and go. That really got me into realizing that I was tired of dealing with people and that I really liked dealing with the engines. I had found out through all of this I was leaving in the winter and going to New Brunswick to my cabin up there for six months out of the year. So, I was up there talking about how I would really like a path to becoming a mechanic, but I just felt like it wasn’t possible. A friend of mine said, “Well, actually, there’s a marine diesel class at the community college right across the bay in St Andrews.” I looked into it, and it was a year-long course. Maine residents got domestic tuition, so you only had to pay the Canadian tuition, and with the exchange rate, it was crazy cheap and incredibly good course.

 

RN: [0:23:45] It was what? Twenty-five hundred bucks for the year?

 

LM: [0:23:47] Yeah.

 

GK: [0:23:48] Holy cow.

 

LM: [0:23:49] Yeah, twenty-five, twenty-seven, something like that for the year. I mean, you had to buy tools, and there were expenses on top of that, but not much. A grand more than that for –

 

RN: [0:24:01] And is there a program like that –?

 

LM: [0:24:03] There is no program like that in Maine, or really – I mean, I looked. I looked all over the country, and there’s really not much that you can get that much out of in that small amount of time. It ended up being like a forty-hour work week for a school year. I rebuilt a – what was the horsepower on that thing? – six hundred horsepower diesel engine. I rebuilt it at school.

 

RN: [0:24:40] Is that a Cummins?

 

LM: [0:24:40] Yeah

 

RN: [0:24:42] Full circle.

 

LM: [0:24:43] Yeah, it was a Cummins. Yeah, so that was a pretty amazing school, and then you had to get a – to graduate from it, you had to get a work term, like an internship, and it was hard to do that in Canada, and I wanted to try and turn it into a job anyway, so I was talking with John Spofford, who has  Downeast Diesel in Southwest Harbor Maine, and I had always – he’d had always been this magician to me that I really looked up to, and he said he would take me on for the work term but he couldn’t really – he’s such a small shop and his core group of guys – he couldn’t really offer me a job. But he said that I should go to the Fishermen’s Forum and just talk to people there. I did that, and the first booth I went up to was Billings, which I always wanted to – Billings, to me, was like the holy grail of diesel in Maine and the Northeast Coast. I mean, it’s the place. There’s no way that place would hire me. I’m just out of school. I’m a woman. There’s just no – I have no experience apart from dabbling and then the year school. I went up to the booth. It was the first place I went, and they said, “Yeah.” I said, “Can I have a job afterward?” And they said, “If you work hard, yeah.”

 

GK: [0:26:31] Cool.

 

RN: [0:26:14] Who was at the booth?

 

LM: [0:26:16] Yeah, it was Greg Sanborn, Mary Parker, and Eric Smith.

 

GK: [0:26:25] Do you think they were hungry for mechanics at that time?

 

LM: [0:26:28] I think they must have been. [laughter] What was funny is I’m this super prepared person, and so I had put together these envelopes that had all the internship paperwork in it and my resume and references. It was nerdy. I handed it to Greg, and then four months into working there, actually being hired, Greg was like, “So, I never really looked at that. You went to school where?” He had no idea really who I was. So, I imagine it was definitely just a serious need for mechanics. I mean, there is a serious need everywhere. There just aren’t mechanics. Young mechanics.

 

GK: [0:27:19] Hold on. I’m going to get the cord you put in.

 

[RECORDING PAUSED]

 

RN: [0:27:23] I definitely have a feeling of having sat alongside you through the whole process. You tend to sell yourself short and tell the story in a very short way, which is your right, and that’s okay. But there were a lot of steps, and you were very persistent. In going to the school scenario, it’s easy to not tell the part about the francophone/anglophone thing in New Brunswick, where they didn’t want to talk to you because you spoke English. The administrative office was –

 

LM: [0:28:00] In French country.

 

RN: [0:28:00] – in French Country.

 

[RECORDING PAUSED]

 

LM: [0:28:04] So, I wanted to go to the school. I applied, and they said no because I had dropped out of high school and I had gone right to college, but I never got a GED or anything. I dropped out of college, too, but they didn’t really know that, so they were like, “No, you can’t. We’re not going to accept you because we can’t tell – we can’t see that you’ve done math,” which was like, “Okay, I can do it for you now on the phone.” [laughter] So, they said no. I got rejected, and I said, “Well, what do I need to do?” They said, “Get your GED.” So, then I did that, which was a nightmare because I got this GED instructor that really wanted me to learn, which was like, “I’m not here for that. I’m here to take the test and get out.” She wouldn’t let it happen. She got me so worked up over the math portion that I actually made an index card with all the formulas on it, folded it up tiny, and put it in my pocket cause I was planning on cheating on the math, which was so stupid because all the formulas – first of all, half the stuff she taught me was not even there, and then all of the formulas that you needed were listed right next to the problem that they asked. So, she just had me so worked up over nothing, and at this time – what was I? – I‘m trying to think of the timeline – mid-twenties. This was a ridiculous thing to be going through at that age where you have to finally realize, “Oh, no, I am an adult. I can tell this teacher to just leave me alone and give me the test,” which I did. I was just like, “I’m done. No more homework. Just give me the test.”  So, I did it anyway, and I passed, and I actually did –

 

RN: [0:30:08] The worst part was that she lived right at the end of our driveway.

 

LM: [0:30:10] Yeah, she was our neighbor [laughter]

 

RN: [0:30:13] It was the very proverbial gatekeeper.

 

LM: [0:30:15] “Oh, no, she’s going to see we’re drinking beer. [laughter]

 

GK: [0:30:19] Oh, god. Wait, where were you at this time?

 

LM: [0:30:21] This was in Southwest Harbor. Yeah, but it ended up doing the best that anyone had done – this sounds braggy. I don’t mean it as braggy.

 

RN: [0:30:32] You were the valedictorian of your HiSET [High School Equivalency Test] class.

 

LM: [0:30:34] Of my GED. I think because she had made me so freaking paranoid; otherwise, I would have just done it and been done with it. But anyway, so then I applied again, and they didn’t get back to me, didn’t get back to me, and I called and called. They’re still processing the application. Then there was all these problems. It turns out that in Canada, you can’t just send the link to your HiSET results, and that’s enough, even though in the States, that is. So, [in] Canada, that doesn’t count. So they had rejected me again because I had sent my HiSET with all these passing grades, but they wouldn’t accept it because it wasn’t a paper copy. It was an authentic, stamped thing, diploma, and so I was like, “Okay, you’re not rejecting me. I’m coming.” I drove up that day to Canada and handed them this thing and was like, “This is it. I’m in, right? You need to tell me that I’m in.” But this was also – in this, I was trying to talk to people, and they sent me to the administrative offices, which were in Miramichi, and up there, French is the number one language, and they don’t really like anglophone because that’s what happens in New Brunswick. It’s anglophone vs francophone. It’s kind of a weird, very strange mess, so I had to fight to be heard by people who refused to really speak English to me.

 

GK: [0:32:20] Did you speak any French?

 

LM: [0:32:22] No, I’m American. [laughter] No, but the French I can speak, which is very little, is Parisian French, which is not the same. That’s almost as bad as speaking English to them.

 

GK: [0:32:36] Oh, wow. They’ve got their own thing. Why did you have a cabin in New Brunswick?

 

LM: [0:32:44] My father moved up there in the ’70s and bought a big swath of land and built this funky cabin, and then it got all torn apart by hunters and made into tree stands and stuff. He hadn’t been there in thirty years, so it wasn’t like –

 

RN: [0:33:04] Understandable.

 

LM: [0:33:05] No one was angry about that happening in our family. Yeah. So, we rebuilt it when we were kids with him. I was tired of living in Bar Harbor, where you worked your butt off all summer, and then everyone just got drunk all winter, and I just didn’t want to be around it anymore, so I was like, “I’ll go to Canada to this place with no running water, no electricity, only a tiny little wood stove.” I was like, “I’d rather be up there by myself in the woods than be there in the wintertime.” I went up the first day, and I was sitting there having beers by the wood stove. I called my father and my brother, and they said they had placed bets on how long I’d last, and neither of them expected me to last through the night. So, whenever someone says something like that to me, I’m like, “Challenge accepted.”

 

GK: [0:34:07] Through the night? Woah, low expectations.

 

RN: [0:34:11] Low bar.

 

LM: [0:34:11] Yeah, I mean, this place is – I mean, it’s by the road, but you park, and then you have to hike up a hill to it, and it’s pitch black.

 

RN: [0:34:24] What grade would you give the structural stability of the cabin?

 

LM: [0:34:30] Shaky at best. Yeah, you’re living in the woods with that – you‘re amongst the wildlife. But the next day, I made it through the night. Whiskey helped. I made it through the night and went and knocked on a neighbor’s door because it was like, if I’m going to be –

 

[RECORDING PAUSED]

 

GK: [0:34:57] No, I can’t. Thank you for your opinion. Just in general, those things could come up to where – and you’re trying to describe it. Do you feel like you’ve had situations where you’ve had to talk about – I don’t know – being a woman in that environment to your superiors, or has it not come to that?

 

LM: [0:35:34] I’ve tried to talk about that with my co-workers. It came up. I did have to file a formal complaint against somebody, and it did come up with them. They did say, “Do you think it’s because you’re a woman?” and I said, “Of course it’s because I’m a woman.” That case was pretty clear-cut. I think the person had even said that, pretty much. I’ve tried to talk about it with some of the guys I work with who respect me and are great, and it’s just a no-go zone, and I’m not quite sure why exactly. I mean, I’m getting there. I think that – yeah, I try and bring it up because I think that they would better understand me if they accepted that, or they noticed it a little bit more, or they just open themselves up to knowing that that’s a truth because there are days that I am incredibly frustrated, and it’s because of something that has been done that is based on my gender that I’m not allowed to talk about with any of them because they don’t want to hear.

 

GK: [0:36:53] Why don’t they want to hear it?

 

LM: [0:36:55] I don’t know. I don’t know. I think there’s – I think we can see from the world we’re living in right now is that there is this disbelief of that kind of inequality. A place like this, especially small places, not just a place like this being Deer Isle, but Maine, there’s like – “Well, no, I have these people in my life, and I treat them just like I would treat these people, so I don’t know what you’re talking about,” and it’s just not really realistic.

 

RN: [0:37:33] One thing you talked about when you came from Cummins school was the feeling of – the presumption of inequality rather than the presumption of – I’m just a student here, too, like you. Of course, I work on engines. They kept asking you if you just did oil changes.

 

LM: [0:37:52] They immediately – well, the first assumption was that I was from the office, and then the other assumptions were just like, “Oh, she is a mechanic, but she does lesser work than we would do.” It was amazing how much you could tell they didn’t mean it maliciously. It was just where their brains went. I ended up having a great time at that training, and all those guys ended up being great. But I was the first. They had never met another – none of those guys had ever met another female mechanic. They were operating on zero knowledge. It was laughable. I literally laughed out loud multiple times – how stereotypically I was treated. They were talking about engine stuff and being engine nerds, which, for me, is a unicorn situation. I just love it so much, and I get so excited. I chimed in, and I added something about engines, and they just looked at me and then went right back to their conversation as if I did not say anything. It was just one of those moments of like, “Oh my gosh, this is so textbook that people have written about this in textbooks.” [laughter]

 

RN: [0:39:18] It makes me sad because it’s important for you to have those times because I can’t engine-nerd out with you at all. Way over my head.

 

LM: [0:39:26] Yeah, but eventually it was there. I ended up having a really candid talk with all of those guys at one of the break times. They were all sitting there, and we talked about sexism. It was awesome. They all heard me. Because I had said it – I think we turned around when – they were complaining about not being able to find any young mechanics. I was like, “Well, I’m a part of this female mechanics alliance, and I know plenty of women looking for jobs, but you’d have to be able to handle hiring a woman.” And it was a challenge for them. Like, “Of course we could do that.”

 

GK: [0:40:07] This was at the school?

 

LM: [0:40:08] Yeah, yeah.

 

RN: [0:40:13] As a measure of my mechanical sexism, I was impressed with how quickly Liz left me in the dust. I expected to be able to learn a little bit, catching up with Liz, starting in school. But on the first day of school, I was like, “Oh shit, Liz is way past me. This is not going to work.” Not that it’s not going to work, but like what’s not going to work is me keeping up, so now I don’t even try. I let you talk to me about it, but I don’t –

 

LM: [0:40:41] You read my dirty magazines.

 

RN: [0:40:44] Right. Diesel Progress.

 

LM: [0:40:45] My Diesel Progress magazines. You probably read them more than I read them, even.

 

RN: [0:40:51] Well, because I am trying. I don’t understand a word of it, but I try.

 

GK: [0:45:58] Yeah, I think it’s crazy because we do live in a time, one, when we’re trying to have this conversation about sexism in the workplace and what that looks like, but also there’s this – with that, comes this conversation about, well, this is happening because women are in the workplace. Women have made all these strides in the workplace. People will say – well, not really in STEM – science, technology, engineering math – and it’s like, oh, yeah, that’s definitely true, that diesel mechanics – Billings had never had a diesel mechanic, had they?

 

LM: [0:41:47] No.

 

GK: [0:41:49] Are there any female mechanics on the island? Car mechanics?

 

LM: [0:41:54] Not that I know of.

 

GK: [0:41:56] That’s an interesting thing.

 

LM: [0:41:58] Yeah, you see some – occasionally, car mechanics, but not very many heavy equipment or diesel. It’s because they’re told they can’t physically do it, which is bonkers crazy. I mean, just so fundamentally wrong. First of all, they can – scientifically proven we can be just as strong as men of equal size. But also, who lifts over fifty pounds anyway? That’s a liability. Most places don’t even allow you to lift that much. So you have all of this equipment that helps you lift things. So, even if you’re a tiny woman with no muscle mass, you can still be a diesel mechanic. There’s this amazing thing called leverage. Oh, you can’t wrench on that thing? Well, just put a pipe on the end of it. And it’s just this absolute frailty myth that is preventing women from getting into the field, and it’s wrong.

 

GK: [0:43:02] I feel like there’s also – well, I had two older brothers and two stepbrothers, and they were all older. My stepdad would always do the same thing. He would go out and be like, “Okay, boys, gather round. It’s teaching you how to change your oil day.” And I’d be there. I’d just be there and be like, “Oh, obviously, that’s not for me.” Same with learning the guitar, which is really interesting. But it’s those sorts of things. That was the boy’s stuff. I accused my stepdad later – we’ve had long conversations about it. For me, it was totally presented as a spatial awareness thing. That my brain was – I don’t know. I always felt like they knew – if I looked at an engine, I would never know where the parts were.

 

LM: [0:43:56] Well, boys have mechanical brains.

 

GK: [0:43:59] I know. That’s what they say.

 

LM: [0:44:00] They say that. I have been told that.

 

RN: [0:44:02] It’s not true.

 

LM: [0:44:03] That girls don’t. Boys do, and girls don’t.

 

RN: [0:44:07] Not this boy.

LM: [0:44:07] It’s like, “No, you just gave my brother tools for his birthday and let him tear apart the radio and didn’t get mad at him for that. Whereas, you gave me a Barbie, and I probably would be super pissed if I tore the radio apart.” It’s crazy, and so often, you’re allowed to be in the presence of it, but you’re not really included in it, and you’re discouraged at the same time. So, you’re allowed to be there and watch it, but it’s clearly stated that it is not for you. I mean, that’s what I was saying earlier. It took me forever to get any kind of confidence around the stuff. Even though I had this knowledge, I wasn’t confident enough to use any of it. The only times I would were when I had nobody there to help me, and I had to figure it out, and then I realized, oh, I don’t have to figure this out; I know this. I know how to change a tire. I know how to jump-start a battery. This was when I was a teenager. But it was so ingrained in my mind that it wasn’t for me that I sought help before I just did it myself. I still have confidence issues that are totally left over from that, and also, people are trying to put on me still. I think about the little things that people say to me that they think are supportive but just are not at all. Like, “Oh, wow, you do that? That’s really impressive.” It’s like, “Well, no, it’s not. You wouldn’t say that to anybody else that it’s impressive that I’m doing this.” Or “Let me see your hands. I want to see. Oh, your hands don’t look like they’re mechanics’ hands.” It’s just like, “You guys all need to stop doing that stuff.”

 

RN: [0:45:58] Yes, they do. Your hands are very mechanic-y.

 

LM: [0:46:00] They clearly do, first of all.

 

GK: [0:46:04] “Let me see your hands.” That’s really a bad one, I have to say. That’s pretty bad.

 

LM: [0:46:09] That’s the one that happens the most often. But then the jokes – so I was just – that picture of me was just published in the magazine, and the jokes that came in that were like, “You don’t look like you’re actually doing any machine work, like mechanical work.” I get that you want to joke with me because you think we’re maybe on a joking level, but that joke? You choose that joke to tell me that I don’t look like a real – that it looks like I’m faking it in the picture? Look around. Feel the room, buddy. That is not the joke you make to a woman who is actually being treated as if she’s a phony or doing this as a hobby. You don’t get taken very seriously, so don’t make that joke. Just pick another one. Make fun of my hair. Make fun of anything else. I don’t care. The doubt is too real. So don’t joke about it.

 

RN: [0:47:09] Well, that was the (fleet style?) doubt was that about your hair. “That couldn’t possibly be natural color.”

 

LM: [0:47:17] “What dye do you use?” “I don’t use dye.” “No, really, you can tell me. What dye do you use?” “No, I don’t use dye.” “Oh, you’re right. You couldn’t possibly do that with one dye. Who do you go to?” It’s like, “Oh my god. Get away from me.” [laughter]

 

GK: [0:47:33] [laughter] Oh my god. Well, guys, I have to go to dinner, but I have –