AX: [00:00:00] Okay, so it is Thursday, October 26, 2023. And I am Asy interviewing Morna Briggs. Would you introduce yourself a bit?

 

MB: [00:00:19] (inaudible)

 

AX: [00:00:21] Can you introduce yourself?

 

MB: [00:00:22] Well right at the present time, I’m 100 years old, and I’ve lived in Bar Harbor and Corea. I’ve been to California. This is my home — I’ve lived here since, I guess my son was two years old.

 

AX: [00:00:43] Where we are right now? Where we are– what is this place?

 

MB: [00:00:50] This is called Corea on the island, Crowley’s Island.

 

AX: [00:01:03] I think our first question would be: what was your role in the fishing industry in here?

 

MB: [00:01:37] When I went fishing? Well, I started with my father because my father had two weirs. I used to go to the weir when his mate man wasn’t there to work with him, help him (inaudible)  the weir and bring the herring down. At that time, if we went early in the morning, whether it was foggy or not, dad had a very good way of getting around in a boat. But then I went lobster fishing in the skiff with outboard motor with my son, both sons, settin and traps and hauling them. I would take the skiff when they were in school, and go out and all the traps for them. Then after I got through in the factory after 20 some odd years working in the sardine factory both sealers and packing fish. They wanted I, I had leg problems. The lady didn’t want me. She told me that because I had been on one doctor that I shouldn’t go to another one. I told her that I was thorough. I come home and I went until I was at eighty-four with my husband in the boat, because he was sick.

 

AX: [00:02:54] How old were you when you start to go out fishing with your dad?

 

MB: [00:02:58] Well, when I want to started with my dad, I was teenager.

 

AX: [00:03:12] Do you have another siblings that go out with you as well?

 

MB: [00:03:14] No, we went clamming and doing things like that I went clamming with them. We did that for quite a while. I’ve drove the truck up and we go clamming and take them over and sell them to different places.

 

AX: [00:03:20] How was it like clamming back then?  How was it like? Like what do you do? What technique do you use to clam?

 

MB: [00:03:40] I love doing all of it, being with the kids, working with them, helping them out, and then that was the same way with my husband. He was sometime, he was so sick he could hardly stand up in the boat and I’d say “Jr it isnt worth it. Let’s go home”. He finally died in the hospital, I think was thirteen years ago.

 

AX: [00:04:09] Where do you sell the clams back then?

 

MB: [00:04:15] While they had different places that you could take them to sell them. I think it was Birch Harbor– I’m not sure. But we take them wherever they was buying in clams and that way.

 

AX: [00:04:39] Was it competitive? Were there many people going on clamming at that time?

 

MB: [00:04:45] Well, we found when you go and clamming, you trying to find spots that nobody’s around because the more you got, the less clams you’re going to be able to get. We found a spot that we had to climb down over a rock down way down.We went clamming for probably two or three days around. Then, when we came out somebody saw us and the next day there was a lot of them down there clamming, because that takes clams (inaudible) you has to find a different spot.

 

AX: [00:05:22] Yeah, how long do you do clamming? How long do you clam? How many years?

 

MB: [00:05:31] Oh, I we just did it in the fall or something like when they weren’t lobster fishing. But I don’t know just how many (years). We just tried different places and went clamming was fun.

 

AX: [00:05:50] Yeah, yeah. How was this like when you first start lobstering with your dad?

 

MB: [00:06:01] Oh, well, I had been out with my father but I was always seasick when my dad was lobster fishing and so I didn’t know anything. But, I went with the boys in the skiff and outboard motor, I would take a crab meat sandwich with me. So when I felt seasick, I would eat it. And all of a sudden, I’m broke out my face, my hands all broke out in a rash. I went to the doctor. They didn’t know what was wrong with me. It took quite a while. One night, my husband sister was down here talking and we were all talking and all at once I scratch the back of my hand and it started swelling up because I had eaten a crab meat sandwich that my husband brought home in the dinner pail and I said I was going to eat it for my supper because I like crab meat. But that was the end of that, so I don’t eat very much crab anymore. You will live and learn.

 

AX: [00:07:11] Right, right, so do you still get seasick when you go out lobstering?

 

MB: [00:07:19] Not anymore. I got over it that and that’s the only way that you do you just go and if you’re seasick throw up– keep on going.

 

AX: [00:07:33] That’s awesome. I also have seasick  and it’s very hard for me now to cope with it but like you say: I’m getting better at it like you go in with it. And do you feel like the way that you fish back then have changed throughout the years?

 

MB: [00:07:53] I think the– I don’t know what you could call it– but I think the different rules and regulations that they’ve kept putting on the fishermen have changed an awful lot because you could go do just about what you wanted to. Kids, you could put as many traps out as you want in the whole nine yards. But the government and the fishing industry there has changed a lot. Certain places you can go and all of this and the time for this and the time for that.

 

AX: [00:08:38] What do you think, which changes have impacted your job the most back then?

 

MB: [00:08:48] Well, It didn’t because I was only going with the kids and things like that it wasn’t me that. It wasn’t me taking the money, it was them.

 

AX: [00:09:02] Alright. Do you see the change in like the boat or the tools that they use to lobstering and fishing?

 

MB: [00:09:13] Well they’ve stated the number of traps. They’ve stated the different places they can’t go anymore for these windmills and all of this killing the whales and all this kind of stuff. And I think it has done a lot for the boys. They had certain reefs and things out there that they know. I think sometimes they don’t stop and think about the fishermen, how hard they have to work.

 

AX: [00:09:53] So where did you guys fish back then?

 

MB: [00:09:57] Huh?

 

AX: [00:09:58] Where did you fish, like where do you fish? Do you remember?

 

MB: [00:10:03] Well, when we were fishing, we fished up the bay, we fished all around the islands and out around while they’re out around these islands — there is Western Island, Outer Bar Island, Inner Bar Island, the other island there, and you go right straight down there to Tip Manan– that you’ve got islands and rocks and things that you fish around. That was more or less the skiff fishing. But when you’re in a bigger boat, you stay off coast of the rocks.

 

AX: [00:10:50] I wonder, was it hard for them to get a lobster license when they started?

 

MB: [00:10:56] No, they had no trouble at all to get the lobster license. Because, they had skiffs and outboard motor themselves.

 

AX: [00:11:09] Another thing is, back then do you catch all lobster? Or do you also catch other kinds of fish as well?

 

MB: [00:11:18] Well, when you hold your traps up, you don’t know what you’re gonna find in the traps. It could be some kind of a fish. Could be crabs. All kinds of different little animals from the sea.

 

AX: [00:11:36] So do you take them home? Or do you-

 

MB: [00:11:40] No, just throw them overboard back into the ocean and live. Unless you wanted crabs to eat, then you could save a few crabs and bring them in and pick them out. Get the meat out of them, but they had to be fairly good crabs.

 

AX: [00:11:58] How do you tell what is a good crab? How do you tell what is a good crab?

 

MB: [00:12:04] Well, the size is more or less the size of the crab.

 

(Knocking on door)

 

MB: [00:12:12] Come in!

 

(Conversing with visiter briefly)

 

MB: [00:12:46] Well, there’s a bay crab and there’s an outside crab; there’s two different crabs. So that some of them like the bay crab is better than they do the outside crabs.

 

AX: [00:13:02] Back then, what do you use as a bait?

 

MB: [00:13:07] For bait? Yeah. Well usually back quite a while ago when there was weirs here like my father had, he would go up and sein the weirs, a lot of time they been with him. We grew up seining the way, we would bring a boatload of herring out and he would put them on the wharf in the barrel for I dollar a barrel. Nowadays, you get a little box and it’s quite a few dollars. But that’s the way things have changed. Your lucky if– they’ve taken the taken the herring away from the man here, up and down the coast there’s only so many much herring that can be caught. So the government thinks it’s doing more that way. There’s any amount of herring out behind here. They see them days.

 

AX: [00:14:20] You also say you work in a sardine factory, right? Can you tell us more about your experience?

 

MB: [00:14:29] I worked in Stinson sardine factory. I started in working on the sealer, putting covers on cans. Then lots of times we had to go downstairs and we had to do other kind of fish that they had brought in. Such as– well, I can’t remember some of the names of him but– then after a while, I was downstairs and I worked on doing some things that broke my hands out. And I went back. I said word to them that my hands was broken out. I didn’t feel that I should go in a factory that you’re putting your hands on things that people were going to eat. I sent word that as soon as I could get my hands healed up, I would come back to work. But they took my sealer away from me, and put me way down below. When they did, I asked for a pair of scissors and I left and went started cutting fish and putting them in the cans. From then on, I work and I got fired at 12 o’clock one night. When I got tired, I left and went home.

 

AX: [00:15:47] So when did you start work in the factory? What what time of the day you go to work in the factory?

 

MB: [00:15:58] You went to work seven o’clock in the morning work till midnight, and you might work the night, all kinds of hours until all fish was done. Sealing you had put the covers on the can and all the fish that had been packed so they could go down into the (inaudible) to be cooked?

 

AX: [00:16:23] Yeah, how? How was this like, your relationship with other people who work in a factory?

 

MB: [00:16:31] Oh, you work with all kinds of- they came from way down east. They came from all over the place. So many different people, different ages and everything. My mother worked in the factory a little bit when I was a kid. She didn’t work very long. But she worked for a while there. I used to ride the bicycle overnight when she was working. Ride over after supper and she probably come home earlier. But now, was fun.

 

AX: [00:17:18] So when do you decide to stop working at the sardine factory?

 

MB: [00:17:23] I don’t dare to tell you.

 

AX: [00:17:27] That’s okay.

 

MB: [00:17:30] It was when I was told to go back and have my knees fixed again. I told her where she could go. And I left. I come home and I told Jr “I’ll be going lobster fishing with you. I’m all through the factory.” And I never went back. I’d already spent $100 on doctor’s bills to see that my knees was going to be all right. But I’m paying for it now.

 

AX: [00:18:03] Yeah, it seemed like you also mentioned a lot about your family. So maybe we will also talk a little bit about your family backgrounds.

 

MB: [00:18:02] You want?

 

AX: [00:18:15] Maybe we talk a little bit about your family backgrounds.

 

MB: [00:18:18] My family background?

 

AX: [00:18:21] Where you grew up and about your family?

 

MB: [00:18:24] I was born seven years after my brother and sister. My mother who worked for the church and kept the church open. My daddy was a hard worker, as good as could be. You couldn’t ask for a better dad. I would go fishing and things with him. I was very much made mind by my mother. If you didn’t mind, we got to switch. So you either mind in what you was told or she didn’t hurt you or any. But you still had the mind and the lost of it after I grew up, daddy was gone or even before Daddy was gone. He depended on me because mother had gallstones and was operated on him and then he had to go back and have operation again, because one had gone up in some little golly hold. And she was very sick, the last of it.

 

MB: [00:19:42] She’d had her legs operated on and given morphine. That almost put her out. They told me I had to go in and sat down with her in the hospital. I begin to take over as mama grow older I had to go over and take care of her every morning and took food and stuff– made food for her– so that she would have plenty of food. Because she got tired, couldn’t get up. She was getting– She was 91 When she died, and she was in the hospital, the last of it. While she was in the hospital, she had a cancer on her breast. She had it operated on but the doctor never gave her any chemo or anything like that.

 

MB: [00:20:47] One morning I went over she was on the floor, and I called my husband to come and he picked her up in his arms, and she liked the screeches right out of when he tried to put her in the bed. He said “from here on in it will either be a blanket or a rug. I hurt her too much to pick her up that way.” She was still in bed, she couldn’t get out. I worked, gave her meals and things in bed. I went over one morning, she couldn’t get out of bed and I said Mama Can I call a hospital to take you up? She said “Yes, I think you better”. She was in the hospital quite a while. I can’t tell you just exactly how, how many days but when they let her out. They put her in the nursing home. They would not (inaudible) bring her home the doctor said “Morna, you cannot take 24 hours a day. I think she should go in the nursing home”.

 

MB: [00:21:59] She did but I went up every day to see her until the last night. I work that afternoon cleaning cottage and when I come home it was raining so hard. I sat down in the chair and my husband said he takes me to Ellsworth to see mama. By the time I got my supper, they made a telephone call that mama was gone. So I was with her, but Dr. Rocca told me he said Morna you’ve been with her all this time alone. You might not have known or she might not have even known you.  They might have given us some kind of medicine before she went so, I had to take it awful hard. Because I permed her hair, I did the washing, I bathed her in bed, change the bed with her in it, all that kind of stuff just like a nurse does in the hospital. But now.

 

AX: [00:23:14] Were your brother and sister around as well at that time?

 

MB: [00:23:24] My sister was around, my brother was home. My mother and father had given my brother a house with everything in it. Chicken soup, that chicken supper and the whole nine yards when he come out of the service, you come from California come home. We went to California to see him, beforehand daddy took mama out there when he got out of service. But he stayed in California and work. We went out there for a couple of weeks and then when we came home I hated it out there and I got some punch work to do and that’s what I sat in the house and did was punch work. When we came home why? And then daddy was loss, everything changed. It’s a different life.

 

AX: [00:24:27] How do you cope with all those changes back then?

 

MB: [00:24:34] How did I?

 

AX: [00:24:35] How did you cope with it?

 

MB: [00:24:37] I don’t know; I never stopped to think about me. It was always about something else. If the doorstep broke when mama was up, and she might go there step on the doorstep and go through something; I would fix the doorstep. Went over one day I found the chimney with pin holes in it. I– she had an oil burner– and when I found those pin holes in it, I took it all apart, come home and got what Jr had bought for himself and went back and put that in. One night, the gentleman that rented my little house didn’t have any oil and he had a little kid in a wheelchair, and he come over to get something to go get oil in. When I went over to see that he got everything fixed up at that house. I said, I guess I’ll run down to see mama, see if she’s alright, because I always had a way of getting in that nobody else could. I went in 22 below zero she had shut the fire out and gone to bed. I went back in there and I turned the fire on and get it going again. I said “don’t ever shut that fire out again mama you’ll freeze to death right in bed”. So those was the way that I spent my time. I didn’t have time to think what’s wrong with me. It was her. She had to be taken care of. My brother and sister, I probably shouldn’t say it, but they tried to have a put in a mental hospital. That just about killed me. So to think my brother and sister would do that. Thanks to Dr. La Rocca, he gave me a doctor’s name over in Blue Hill and made an appointment for me. I took her over there. He told me to go out of the room and I said “sure I will”. He talked to her and he wrote to the judge and he said “she doesn’t know all of the up to date because the television was broken. But she said she can tell you anything that had happened years and years and years around”. Said “she is not mentally ill”. I’ve got the letters in there what she wrote that attend your own self and leave me alone. Now she was alright, she could come home they couldn’t get her into that –they quit– my sister home the pills on the doorknob, never count went near her and raided until she was put in the hospital. Then they was all not wanted how much they were gonna get out of the house. I don’t know. That’s not That’s not loving your parents. You would give anything to have them have everything they want. She wouldn’t come live with me. She wanted to stay home. Because we wanted to come over here and have a little bedroom there that she could go right through the bathroom. But no, she wouldn’t, “I’m more to stay right here”. So she did she stayed there until she had to go to the hospital and then into a nursing home.

 

AX: [00:28:28] So how long have you been staying in this house?

 

MB: [00:28:32] This house? We bought it as a camp. We started working in in fixing it up as we went along. It was Mr. Doors, Cam. It was all glass windows across in the living room there. The bathroom was in out on the porch with all picture windows around, all the windows around it. And they had one bedroom. This was a bedroom from that wall over the edge of this chimney. You could just get in the bed and things like that. After we got the house Jr asked me to sit down and see what we can get out of the house. I sat down I took the porch in the living room to finish that up. We had a bedroom on the other side of the bathroom. That was a small bedroom in here.This I had, the kitchen went to that bar up there. He built me some new cupboards and we got things fixed up fairly good. Then as we went along one day he and Tim was out fishing, out lobster fishing. That was the garage I tore everything apart in the garage and threw it down (inaudible). When he comes in, he looked at me and he said, I think you need a carpenter I said, I don’t think I do, I think you do. So we made that big room now. Then he put a garage up and then we got the breezeway in between the garage. So it’s been a long, long struggle, but you have to just go a little as you can go along. That was a way that we come on. We’ve been married. Well, was it I don’t know, 30, 35 years I think, before he come down with heart problems. He had four bypass, the last of it. Then he went right downhill. It was a mess of medicine he had took just a little too long. Now, he went from the heart operation, to a lung problem. We had carts all the way around here for the oxygen, he had a little bit to take out to walk over there and back and he had a hard job to do anything until he came down. One morning, he asked for a glass of water because he was on oxygen in the bedroom and I had a great big jugs sitting on the window there and one night the power went off and I had to get up quick. Get to that big one and take it in and hook it up in the bedroom for him. But this was just just normal. You just do what you have to do. It’s not what you want to do, it’s what you have to do. That’s been my version. Some of the people told me that they could set that clock by me in the morning when I went over to take care of mama. They say we set the clock every morning. But we know just exactly what time you’ll go. Then when I was somewhere around 55, I went to the hospital to get my granddaughter. Her grandfather wanted to send out to California and have her adopted out there. I said “No”, Sister Eileen told us that we had the right to adopt her. I went to the hospital and got her and brought her home, and raised her for five years. Then I gave her back to a mother. But she doesn’t stay with my mother. She was here last night and had supper with me– got supper and had supper with me. She keeps coming home. “Can I come up and stay for a while”. And I said “well you will have sleep on the couch because, Terry is in the bedroom and I’m in the out there and the upstairs is shut off and I don’t think you should be up there anyway without a railing. If you should come down in the night, I’d be scared for a good fall”. But she comes she’ll lay down on the couch and a little sack she’s got to sleep in and stay down with me. But she’s moved home now. She went through divorce– she’s going through divorce. She has two boys one 21 in college down in Boston, and one up here in Maine in college.

 

AX: [00:34:00] You have two sons, right? How many children do you have?

 

MB: [00:34:01] How many?

 

AX: [00:34:02] Children?

 

MB: [00:34:03] I have Terry, I think he will be 71 in December in the summer and I have Tim that will be 66 the 16th of January– I mean December. My husband was the 12th of December. I have one daughter her birthday is in April. She’s a post mistress up in Franklin.

 

AX: [00:34:38] That’s awesome. What did your son does now? Are they still lobstering?

 

MB: [00:34:51] No my son in Boston is a hairdresser. He cuts hair and does perms and all kinds of things. This is what he does with me he comes home and chops mine off and but the one who’s having more trouble with the perm that he always got to put my head they quit making it and he’s had a job finding another one. No, he works all over Boston. He has some of them will come to his home or his apartment and he has a little place fixed up so that he can do their hair. Or they will come get him to take him to the family and he will cut mamas, daddys, and the kids hair and things like that in Boston. But he comes home every four weeks. That that’s his way of telling me what days he’s gonna come home. He was home for that one now. Now he’s he’s coming home.

 

MB: [00:35:45] You’ll lift the calendar and you’ll see the next one one is coming home. I think you’ve got two of them and in December you got November. See the line. That’s how he puts it on there, that’s when he’ll be home. Tim goes up and picks him up or Alison does up to Bangor when he comes home on the bus. And he’ll come home spend a week with me. They’re good kids. My daughter worked 27 years over in Jackson lab. Then she quit and she went into the post office. So she’s up to Franklin every day. I guess that’s the main post office and then they come down a Prospect, Birch Harbor, Winter Harbor down here that has changed the post office used to be wide open. Now it doesn’t open till half past 11 during the day. Those things have changed. These are the way things change.

 

AX: [00:36:57] Right next to your house is up Co-op.

 

MB: [00:36:58] Yeah that’s the coop my husband and Coby Young started it quite a while ago. They had people running it but they got it started. It was a boy over at Prospect  that owned it. When he died I think Babe Crowley and his father-in-law bought it and started trying to keep it going. The other one use come up here and sit at the table and have a cup of coffee with Jr  and things like that. All at once Kobe in Jr thought that they could open a co op down here and get all of fishermen join up with it, and have it run and see if they could make money for the Co-op rather than be spent, you know, like, individuals getting it. So they started in Babe and them said yes, they would sell it. And they bought it and started it and  Jr worked quite a while at it. Then afterwards, I don’t know. They had another guy– I can’t remember now, I think he went to Winter Harbor to work. But there’s been different ones that’s headed up now. Darryl, Darryl, Darryl, Darryl, Darryl Stanley is working at it and now. He’s the head of it.

 

AX: [00:38:36] Were are you or any family members work are involved with the co op at all?

 

MB: [00:38:43] I think they’ve all joined the Co-op when I mean, you have to join that to buy things through the Co-op. And most of them do pay their dues and join the Co-op. My son, Tim did. Terry because he doesn’t like fishing.  He has no use for fishing in the boat. He took his boat when he first started and his father told him he could go fishing. He painted all kinds of flowers and everything all over his boat and his father there somebody asked his father do you let him paint those things? Jr said “I don’t care what he paints on his boat as long as he goes to haul his traps. I got crazy kids”. To him he’s always been a lobster fisherman he’d howl if his father went out and left him to home. He’s got his own boat now and traps and he takes care of me he is the legal guardian of me.  So he comes in. He just brought down to me when I got out of the hospital that I have to take my temperature and things. That he is he brings it down here for me . I’m supposed to keep keep record of it. He comes and gets medicine. He does all my shopping for me. He takes me to the hospital and doctors if he comes in finds I’m not feeling very good, “I think you’ve got to go to the hospital and find out” what’s said the last time I had enough of it the hospital. You get that thing around your arm for temperature or blood pressure or whatever the heck it is.  Between two and three in the morning they turn it on. Then they get in between seven and eight and oh my god, it almost takes your arm right off. I don’t like it because that is so much better around my wrist. It doesn’t hurt half as much, but you have to take it

 

AX: [00:41:29] I think you raise a really good child they take good care of you.

 

MB: [00:41:31] Huh?

 

AX: [00:41:32] I think you raise a very good child and they take a good care of you.

 

MB: [00:41:37] I can’t–

 

JB: [00:41:38] You raised a really good child and they take good care of you.

 

MB: [00:41:48] Oh yeah, he got right up to the point that if I not gonna get well he can put me out. I had everything set right up for it. My daughter’s not one that I think cares about taking care of people she’s been more or less you worked over in Jackson Laboratory for so long. She worked 27 years there. All of these new students was coming in, she had to teach them what to do. But they would advance her to give her more money. So she just told him she was all through and got out.

 

AX: [00:42:43] When they were young did they also work in the factory here or work in other areas related to fishery about?

 

MB: [00:42:50] That the factory then gone for quite some time over here. Stinson’s factory, I think it burned afterwards. Yes, a lot, Lila the one that you’re talking about: she worked there for years. You couldn’t you couldn’t keep her out of it. She loved her work there. But she was awfully lonesome after Hermin died. Because she and her dog would be walking most everyplace here. Then one of the girls went in I guess we found a passed out at the table one morning. No, Lila was a good kid.

 

AX: [00:43:34] What happened to the people who work in a factory when it got shut down?

 

MB: [00:43:42] Well, they did open — somebody else bought it and they did pick lobster out for a while but I don’t know who was in there then. Because even in the other factory they had cars come in from way down east. All down from Suben and Millbridge and all over the place. You had your own car you had to drive it because there was only certain places that that. For a while they picked up a few but not very long. You went on your own. Yeah, I got fired. When I got through the factory, I left at 12 o’clock I said “My legs ache and I’m tired. I’m going home”. I went home and the knock come on the door and poor for Jimmy Fosse he called me very big tears in his eyes he said “I was sent over to tell your Morna that you you lost your job”. I said “Don’t feel bad Jimmy”, I said “My god I can sleep in the morning” and he left and went back and the next one morning and they call me out because at that time I was I guess Democrat at that time I don’t know. The Republicans called me out one no five drive the car for $5 I said Sure I’ll drive it I never took one to the polls but I got the $5. That’s your life, you just go ahead and do what you have to do. You don’t stop and think about what it’s going to be like but then I turned around went up to South Gouldsboro went to work in the factory up there for a while. That was fun.

 

AX: [00:45:41] What factory is it?

 

MB: [00:45:43] Up in Southern Gouldsboro– I can’t imagine I can’t think of what his name was– but he had started a small fish factory up there at the time. I went up that packing fish for a while just to keep busy and something to do because at that time I was going fishing with Jr. He was going by himself.

 

AX: [00:46:12] What are some changes that you observed or noticed that happen around here?

 

MB: [00:46:24] Well, while the post office has changed for one thing. That doesn’t open till half past 11 Always was wide open. Because Daisy was the postmistress and it was in Herbet Young’s Store her, her brother in laws. So they had the store opened in the morning and you could go into the post office anytime that you wanted to buy stamps or anything. Because she will come down stairs and her sister was crippled, but she always worked there too. Daisy always knit bait bags and nets and things like that for fishermen. So that’s one thing that changed. I don’t know whether they have in the church on a regular basis up here now or not. Because the Latter Day Saint Church has been bought over by people thats made a home out of it. So those are different things.

 

MB: [00:47:17] I don’t know if any of the people that were here that I know knew as family. I don’t think there was any of them here anymore. I know Francis, the family, Francis lived over there. I was playing with his sister when he was born. And they just buried him a short time ago, that took care of the fences. Right up the line, they’re all all gone. They’ve changed over the different ones. Jean over here, I think you know her. She’s come back here and this year, I guess she’s gonna stay here. She’s been going every year down to Georgia, I guess it was. To play golf and things like that. But this year, she should gonna stay home. But she went lobster fishing. She and I always talk back and forth. I think she said she would go on one year more than I did. And I said, that’s all right. I don’t care. But I don’t think she enjoyed it very much. She said she had so many pains.

 

AX: [00:48:39] Yeah, what about like the change in the environment, like if the water changed, the temperature, or the sea level change?

 

MB: [00:48:55] Well, because the homes had been built, been bought out by different people. There’s only one or two that you might know. Now in Florus Bridges house over there. I know those people because they rented my little house until they could find the house to buy. Then they bought that house and moved over there. She had a mother with her and she’s gone. But they’re still live it now. But the biggest part of them Loise Crowley is still in her house. I think she’ll be 96 this year. But that’s about the only one I know of Crispy Cat, his grandfather on the house there but he’s in it now. The Black Duck is owned by a couple of different people. Barbara, over there by the all, her husband’s gone. He bought that place but she still live there now. When in the summer, that’s all and Nikki, I think is one of the kids. You might see the kids something like that. My grandmother’s house up there. The Boers lived in it, but the girl has got that one  and the boys got the other one on this other side. But other than that, they just turn over from one like that to somebody that in the family or they buy them. Kid don’t want, they don’t want to sell the house here. They want to run it. And I own a field over there and a little house. Tim likes that; he liked to build the bigger house there. But the town is kind of taken over anything that has shore privilege. They want to use it as shore privilege whereas I’ve got quite a shore privilege over there. But he said “well, nothing more I could put in have anybody that had a trailer. Want to go in there and stay”. The only thing he’d have to dig another well, I don’t think he’d have enough water. The things has changed so. They had another accident, Chrystia Orkat over here. Did you hear about Chrystia Orkat? No, he was went down here the other day to get a buoy and it caught around his heels, took him right out over the boat, and then the water right down underneath the water. He come up and he found out this boat was there. He had to go to get clear the rope and things and I guess he wants to show get back into the boat and brought it home. But nobody knew anything about it. And I see he was limping with one leg. Evidently he hurt his ankle where that rope went around it and dragged him out of the boat. That’s one of the troubles right there. Nobody knew anything about it. He could have drowned. It’s a very so dangerous vision. My father was coming home from the bay, lobster fishing. He came around the Outer Bar island, coming in through Western island right there. He had a tendency to stand on one foot on the railing, one on the stair and hold on to the top and a wave come a struck him. Knocked him over and he stuck his head right here on the metal piece that holds where you put the rope and pull it in. He went overboard. They never found him for pretty close to three weeks. One of the twins over there found him walking. I mean he had his old pants on his boots was full but he was gone for three weeks couldn’t find him. He’d been out through the night after night when you could hold your hand up like this and you couldn’t even see for fog but it just caught him off base. He said if I could just live to 62 to get my first check from the government he said I’ll be a happy person, he never made it. Mama got it but he didn’t. No three weeks, was all horrible trying to find somebody that you love. He’d been up to the weir so many nights, pitch dark, and the kids going on with him. Come down there and sleep under his car and things so that when he got up in the morning to go up there early morning that they could go with him. He take the kids with him sometimes you hold your hand up this way so foggy but you could see it. That’s all it takes is just one little mistake. Lobster fishing is a dangerous business. If you get a rope around anything: (inaudible) if it’ll get you over the side you had it. Just like the little boy down East there, nobody seems to know just exactly what happened to him. He wanted to go to the school there in Castine in fall. He got drowned before he even got there, trying to earn money to pay for it. No it’s dangerous.

 

AX: [00:55:22] Is that anything that I didn’t ask and you want to share with us?

 

MB: [00:55:29] Not especially.

 

AX: [00:55:33] Do you have any questions?

 

MB: [00:55:34] Nothing unless you want something different?

 

JB: [00:55:40] Well, thank you so much for sharing. It’s really such a pleasure that you let us in your home.

 

MB: [00:55:44] (inaudible) done something that you want.

 

JB: [00:55:50] it’s just lovely being with you. Can you tell me a little bit about what it’s been like for you to have such a good view of the harbor.

 

MB: [00:56:06] Well, living here you do have a lot of of the sights of the boats and things. One boy had a had the boat down here. He’d been off there working on the boat and it seems something to do with a light that was up on top of his house and things. He got it all shut off and everything and he went ashore. All of a sudden the light came back on and I knew  his grandmother but I didn’t know his number. I called his grandmother and I told her I said I don’t know whether he’s had trouble with his lights or not but they’ve come back on again. He I know he shot him off when he went home, and she called him out, he said, “boy, she keeps watching of everybody’s boat and things. Thank God” he said. That evidently was worrying him because it would drain the battery out. But I call them and and Cody, his light was on in his boat one night, right through the snowstorm. I couldn’t call him because I didn’t have his number. I did call somebody, his mother’s number, but evidently, they had changed, somebody else had his number then. I caught him out here and I said, Cody, your light was on but I couldn’t call you because I didn’t know your number. So he gave me the whole three numbers, his mothers and all of them. So I had it but now he’s changing gone over there.

 

JB: [00:58:04] So you’re busy taking care of everyone. You mentioned that winter that everything froze and no one went out. Can you tell me more about how you’ve noticed the weather and climate change through time?

 

MB: [00:58:15] Oh, when we have a hurricane or anything like that, it’s horrible here. Because down here when we had that awful bad storm not too long ago. Terry was home. He and Alison went down to the shore. The water was coming right up under the water on the very end of the wharf near the ledge. They didn’t dare to get down on the wharf because it was just splatter and right up in under it. You get a lot of breezes and things here. The snow. The snow storms are not like what we used to have. We used to have awful snow stones. One night, my husband and I took a friend and her husband, we all went to Ellsworth for the movies. She had children at home and left the baby salon. We went up to the movie and when we come out of the movies, it had been snowing something wicked we had shoes on we didn’t have boots on we have shoes. And we knew that we had to get her home, because they had babies. So we had to come down through our schools road and go down round. We got as far as Birch Harbor, and we couldn’t get up over the hill. He had to get out with the shoes on and put the chains on the car. We got up over the hill. And when we went down over Biden Moore’s hill over there, we went right down is struck a snowbank which we went right out of sight. The plow was just going over the (inaudible) road way up the other end. I said don’t worry. Jr sister live down there in the camp. That’s where he lived.  I said “we’ll get down there and you go to bed now sat in a rocking chair in the kitchen where it’s warm. I won’t freeze to death”. Because I said “I couldn’t stay in the car because I’d freeze to death. We’re going down then in the morning somebody will have it plowed out you can take me home”. When when he got up the next morning when he brought me home. There was the cars right above where I lived 1, 2, 3, 4. They never got home either, because they couldn’t get down across the brook. There was so much snow. So we had used to have snow galore. Last year, I think Tim plow just once out here, the driveway. So snow in the wintertime hasn’t been that bad for us. But it used to be; it used to be wicked. It was piles of it.

 

JB: [01:01:23] My last question is did you notice throughout your time on the water, lots of changes in the number of things you were catching?

 

MB: [01:01:42] Well, not really, because you could have a solid amount of different little animals and things that sit in the boat. I know I started saving the little pink fish that comes up on traps and things and I was kind of pushing them off so they could go back into the water. My husband got cross at me he said “don’t go near that those traps going overboard could grab your arm or something in you go overboard”. So I stopped, either that of I I’d have to come ashore. No, that’s the way we lived. Either you mind you or you take the consequences. You find all kinds of things, and even some of the kids would put tin cans and bottles in the traps just to find out if they would catch a lobster quicker. I don’t know whether they ever did or not. You never know some of them will put things in. You do get fish often and on in a trap, a cod fish, or some kind of Pollock. Used to go fishing for Pollock all the time here in the harbor when I was a kid. But I don’t know whether you’re supposed to take them anymore, flounders. They used to go for Mackerel fishing, and we used to go Mackerel fishing quite often. Things have changed, the government has changed so much.

 

JB: [01:03:22] What would you say if you could talk to the people that make policies? What would you ask them to prioritize?

 

MB: [01:03:33] I don’t know because there are so many things that you can think of. One wouldn’t take care of so many things. Billy-Bob Faukenhand, he’s up in government and when I turned 100. He came and brought me a beautiful folder where I can go to the government and see what goes on. He went out in the boat just a short time ago, when that last big storm was here and the waves were coming in hot there. He wanted to take a picture and a wave got him. Turned the boat over and the other board broke his arm. He said that it took his clothes right to down his ankles, he had to grab them. The boat turned over and he got the other boy back into the boat. They were sitting on the boat and evidently one of the boys in Winter Harbor saw him. He got a hold of somebody and went down and got him when the boat sank. He said he thought he was a goner. But he managed and Tim went over to help patch the hole in the bottom of the boat where it hit. He got his boat build it now to have it repaired. But he bought me a fancy leather thing with things like they have in the government written out (inaudible).

 

JB: [01:05:33] Well congratulations on your 100.

 

MB: [01:05:37] Yeah I didn’t think I’d get that far. Mama got 91, my sister got 95, and my brother got 93.

 

JB: [01:05:46] Wow.

 

MB: [01:05:52] Mary wrote a book for me. I had a piece my mother wrote about how Corea started and I tried to have it published. I couldn’t have it published because they said there wasn’t enough of it.

 

MB: [01:06:15] I had always sat down and written little diddy and things. Go in there in the stand its right there on the top.

 

JB: [01:06:24] Oh, is it the memory-

 

MB: [01:06:25] Yup.

 

JB: [01:06:27] Oh we wanted to look this. I’m so excited you have it.

 

MB: [01:06:34] She got it for me, and got it signed. We had all kinds of pictures in it. That is what she had but she didn’t take all of that to it, but you’ll see a lot of the pictures in there. She write it but she didn’t write it all, but you’ll see a lot of pictures in there.

 

JB: [01:07:03] Wow this is really cool. You aut to get it in the library at Dorcas.

 

MB: [01:07:10] Now that’s my wedding picture right here. This is my brother, my sister, and her husband. This is my husband when we got married. This is my sister, brother, and I when we were younger. And that’s my dad.

 

JB: [01:07:33] Beautiful.

 

MB: [01:07:36] See that’s my grampy holding me and momma and her son. That was my father’s mother. And that was Dad holding me. Now this house right next to the store. This was grandmother and grandfather. These were her kids and their husbands. They’ve got this house up there for sale.

 

JB: [01:08:15] Wait, so remind me again, where your family–

 

MB: [01:08:20] They come from over at this side of the island.

 

JB: [01:08:23] Oh, I didn’t know that.

 

MB: [01:08:27] That was daddy, grandmother, aunt Vira, and I think Grampy and his father, and that’s Momma and Lilian, the first one. That is Lilian, my sister. I think this is a lot.

 

JB: [01:08:51] Well, thank you so much, I think we are going to turn off the audio but we loved hearing from you.

 

MB: [01:08:58] Now, this is my dad. This is how he is on the boat.

 

JB: [01:09:08] Bait $1 a barrel? I think it’s 35 a bucket now.

 

MB: [01:09:14] Did too much trap building.That was my father’s sister, but she died before I was born. She had, she had two boys, one was in New York and one was over in Blue Hill. And she got rid of the first husband. She married again and I think she had either five or seven kids. She died at 42 or 41. I guess that’s the same call for cemetery. That’s the yellow store down there. That’s a post office I guess. This is where when we had a hurricane here, this is how the water come right across the road over there. Put the punch right up in our driveway, up in our on our lawn. This is the old weir that used to be down there and that’s gone. And this is looking across to the house up there. That’s when my husband and I went to get the new boat he build, daddy had taken us. Now this the people that was over the southwest harbor that- and this is the house up there, the (inaudible). That was my little couch that I own over there. This was our old house that we had, the first part of it. And then daddy built this one.

 

JB: [01:11:22] Wow.

 

MB: [01:11:25] When I graduated from high school, we slept in a tent and I landed in the hospital for sleeping in a tent. The oil got me. Now this is this house here. When we first started, it was putting the picture windows in. There’s some pictures of the harbor. That’s where, this one here was when they dredged the harbor, they’ve dredged the harbor a couple of times some of those aerial views I guess. This one is over-crossed over in front of the house there, the cove.

 

JB: [01:12:17] When you first started lobstering, were there a lot of were there were you one of the only women in the harbor?

 

MB: [01:12:23] Oh no no Jean was here and well I guess Jean and I was the one of the first two I guess went. But no there’s quite a few of them in there now and a lot of the kids own the house.

 

JB: [01:12:49] I read a story about a woman that went out- would go out in her small wooden rowboat out towards the lighthouse with her baby and hauled traps. Do you know about that? It’s in Louise’s book, The Peninsula. But I thought that was quite the story.

 

MB: [01:13:13] Shouldn’t take a little one out in a boat like that.

 

JB: [01:13:16] I know. I was, I was very surprised and I read that.

 

MB: [01:13:21] I wouldn’t take a baby out in the boat. Because my god if something happens to you, you can’t keep the baby up above your head and try to swim ashore. No, I wouldn’t want anything like that. No, those are some of the, that that was the first wall that was down in front of here. That’s all gone. Now that was either grampies boat or dads I think it was grampies. For those that are some of the first ones that… I’ve got pictures. Ready from soup to nuts. I’ve even got pictures of where you going to school. That was that was my three kids. You just went out bring this was —

 

JB: [01:14:22] So Terry’s the older one.

 

MB: [01:14:24] Yeah and Tim is next and then I lost two. Now that was Daddy on the bow of the boat again. You know, these were some family pictures that we had taken.

 

JB: [01:14:49] Beautiful

 

MB: [01:14:51] No, I saved all the pictures that mama had. Now this is something right here that you probably never saw. This is a way that they used to come around and catch and you could go out and get your meat and vegetables and things. He come around on a Tuesday I think every week and you can go the car and whatever kinds of meat you wanted you could have cut up and then this is a one that daddy went and got for me that I carried a lot of the women over to the factory in.

 

JB: [01:15:33] Wow. So you would drive everyone to work early in the morning?

 

MB: [01:15:36] Yeah go pick them up, take them in work. You’re set those pictures there’s fishing wier, that was the weir that  I told you that we weren’t up to seining around but they usually take it when the tides down more that way dad had two weirs, one on one side and one on the other. Now this is another loophole right, when you hit the flagpole over there when you go to Corea– I mean no Prospect over there- this was the little store that was right across the road from it. This was Luke Cold store and they always had that and you’ll see two or three men sitting in there too in the (inaudible).

 

JB: [01:16:32] So that flagpole has been there a long time?

 

MB: [01:16:35] Yeah that’s been there a long time. Yes, he’s dead and his I think he’s daughter’s dead. I don’t know what the heck it is. Now that is the old original house that sat up there where that square one is now. That square one up there now. And this is one right here is just like the one up here and that was grandmother’s mother and father one come from down east and one came here. I think Uncle Joe her son I think that was his apartment but I don’t know (inaudible) but that burned and then they put this other one up. Now this was over the Bar Harbor with one of the girls that I played with over there. Now it was our front lawn. One squeak over Birch Harbor, Jonesport across from Beals island I don’t know those. Now here’s a lot of them. This is Jean and I, Jean works up to the town office. She has classes that you can go to somebody will say– well if they will crochet — somebody will say that they want to put on that week for it. And everybody will go paid what’s the word? That’s what she runs up there she comes down to see me. That Mabel I think, was over at Bar Harbor living over there. The hands.. And  that’s when Jean had the little store down there. Down on the end. This is one of the draggers. that’s the Army boat. That’s up to Gouldsboro; that was a store at one time. I think that was daddy’s boat. Now so waves you see them?

 

AX: [01:19:19] Do you remember what’s the name of the boat?

 

MB: [01:19:20] Now that’s another thing when they give me that old cane.

 

AX: [01:19:28] Do you remember what the name of your dad’s boat?

 

MB: [01:19:32] Dad’s boat? I think the first he had Lilian May that was the daughter. I don’t know whether he had changed or not. No they put it on for usually the first daughter and Jr had it on mine then he changed it. He put on something else when he– I think he put on the the kids name– but mama wrote how Corea was started in the back end of it here. That was what I was more interested in. To have… Yeah, I think that starts over here somewhere. But don’t know just exactly where but that’s what I had that sided for was to get what mama had said how they started here. The men would take their boats and dinner pails, they’d go out in the morning. That left the women to tend the animals if they had cows or anything milk, take care of the kids, keep the fires going, get the wood, and all of that. And then when they got in at night, then the men would take over and help out a little bit before he went to bed and get up to strike out the same way every morning.

 

JB: [01:21:21] Well, thank you so much for sharing your wonderful life with us.

 

MB: [01:21:25] Well that’s good if it was any good.

 

AX: [01:21:26] Yeah, for sure. There’s so many interesting story as well. Thank you so much for sharing with us.

 

MB: [01:21:36] We all go as far as I go. No, I love when I was younger, I love to paint. And I did all these pictures. The two pictures in there. I did by hand when I was pregnant or something like that I’d sit down and paint pictures and do things like that.

 

JB: [01:22:01] You’re an artist as well.

 

MB: [01:22:03] No, those was the kind that you buy. That’s all mapped out. But yet you go over them and kind of fix them make sure that they look like that I got another one of their of things I did.

 

AX: [01:22:20] Are you still painting?  Are you still doing the painting?

 

MB: [01:22:25] Oh, they’re the same thing. So they were all mapped out. The one on this side. My son painted. He’s an artist too. He does awful good work. He told me some of the things I had in that he said “thrown out mama, there no good”. So when he took him I got him put them in a frame and put them on the wall.

 

AX: [01:22:25] Like what do you do now in your daily life?

 

MB: [01:22:57] Who?

 

AX: [01:22:59] What do you do now in your daily life?

 

MB: [01:23:01] Terry’s a hair stylist.

 

AX: [01:23:04] What about you? Like, do you do crochet or something?

 

MB: [01:23:08] Oh, I’m not very good at right now. Because with my hands and arms, the way that I’ve had trouble with them, I’m having troubles following–  I’ve got a pattern there that I’ve made before. And I’ve gone on it, but I am still having to study to get the way that it’s supposed to leave one part of it and went to another one. But I crochet– Well yes, that’s all crochet work: bedspreads, tablecloths, anything that I’ve done. And I do holder and embroider them. I knit dish washers. I’ve got lobsters made out there. And I don’t know there’s all kinds of things that I’ve got all kinds of animals down in the bottom there that I’ve made for kids. But I’ve never put them out for sale.

 

JB: [01:24:15] I brought some cash with me today (laughter).

 

MB: [01:24:18] Now, the other day a girl came, she came they were going home and she wanted 10 holders and I said to Terry, I said you’re going to have to lift some of the boxes and things to see if you can find it because I said I can’t do it. And he said well yeah, it was the last one way over and back. So he took him down, she got to 10 holders that I had made. I’ve crocheted shade traps and boats and stuff like that or animals a lobster or something like that on these holders that I made. No, I’ve tried everything like that crochet, knit. My first program in into that field, mama had an old afghan and I said Mom what are you going to do that old afghan?

 

MB: [01:25:17] She said “I don’t care what do you want to do with it?” I said well, if you’re not going to use it I like to have it. I’m going to take it all apart and put it different different colors in rolls. Daddy come along he said what are you gonna do that? I said I’m gonna make me sweater, I did all colors the rainbow and put a zipper in it.

 

JB: [01:25:44] Gorgeous

 

MB: [01:25:49] Yeah, I had mama down in bed for six weeks– blood clot in her leg that I had to take care of her– when she got up and then when dad and I had taken between us and get her to walk again. That I took care of her, gotta meals, bathed her and everything in bed. So you see, my life is not really for nothing, it’s for helping somebody: my mom, my dad, anything like that.

 

AX: [01:26:32] And I think that’s beautiful life, right? Like you are able to help and support the people that you love.

 

MB: [01:26:40] Yup. When you’re doing something for other people you don’t stop and think what you’re doing. I crochet Afghans and then my son come home. He said, Mama, what did you do? There’s something wrong with your afghan. No, I said Yeah, I see what what you’re talking about. Instead of putting that one stitch and then going into the stitch again and going along. I skip that stitch it she was gone right off sideways. So I unraveled it did the whole thing over again.

 

MB: [01:27:17] So you’ve got kids that will tell you what you’re doing wrong. No Terry is really a good artist if you want it to be. But he said there’s no money in it. You can draw pictures, but unless somebody’s and paint pictures, but unless somebody wants them you’re stuck. So he said “I can do hair and get paid for it”. He’s a tall guy. He’s tall a lot taller than I am. And you’d be surprised if you come home, when he’s cooking here, what kind of meals he gets. Everything from soup to nuts all thrown in together. You put a sauce over it. You eat it. That’s not my way of cooking. Now, have a good life.

 

AX: [01:28:25] Yeah, and you’re so happy to like, get here and talk to you. Thank you so much again.

 

MB: [01:28:33] Yep

 

JB: [01:28:34] Thank you.

 

MB: [01:28:35] My husband and I went rollerskating every Sunday night up in Bangor.

 

JB: [01:28:41] Oh that’s fun!

 

MB: [01:28:43] Always went rollerskating.

 

MB: [01:28:45] That’s the blast.

 

MB: [01:28:46] We’re going on day dancing on Saturday nights and roller skating on Sunday and  it was an active life. It wasn’t stationary. We like to go.

 

JB: [01:29:01] Thank you. Thank you.

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