(Edit note: I'm not sure how that cover illustration got there or how to take it down. It's AI; I clicked on the AI button out of curiosity, and it only showed up when I hit the "publish" button. Bad idea.)
Oscar had a 36-foot Jarvis Newman named Southwind, designed and built on Mount Desert Island back in the 70’s. Lobster boats in those days retained vestiges of crafts designed for sea kindliness; some hull features were reminiscent of sailing craft: graceful hulls with rounded chines and sterns that tapered like the seas themselves. That was back before huge work decks and huge engines and huge catches and complex electrical/computer systems.
But back then, Oscar’s Jarvis Newman was the huge boat in the harbor. And pretty sporty, being fiberglass among a fleet of mostly wooden boats.
My first year working for Oscar was 2006. I’d arrived after a dozen years of living in Montana and Idaho, and I’d come to work on a lobster boat. I’d just gotten a master’s degree in creative writing, and had finished up a summer and fall of pouring concrete in Montana.
It was a roundabout quest to find Oscar—not that I was looking for him. Over the telephone from Montana, I’d rented a cottage on the shore in the town of Steuben, about 50 minutes from South Addison. I’d never been to either of those places, and I didn’t know anyone.
After arriving at the Steuben cottage, I began hounding every lobsterman I could find for a job. From stopping at wharves to knocking on doors, I’d talk to anyone linked to the lobster industry.
But it was winter, and not a good time to be doing so. I’d moved from Montana with my girlfriend in December, and we broke up in January. Downeast in those days was a difficult place in which to move; there were zero places to meet people. No social avenues, especially for newcomers. The winter days were more dark than light, but the coast was beautiful and rugged, and I was infatuated by the lobster industry, and those things kept me in place when other factors, like logic and reason, may have lead me back to Montana.
During a frigid cold snap in the days following the departure of my girlfriend, I was out paddling my canoe in Dyer Bay. It was single digits at the most, below zero with wind chill, and my canoe and gloves and paddle and beard all held cakes of salt ice.
Nearing shore, I saw a guy sitting in his parked truck, watching. Exhaust puffed from his tailpipe. When I pulled-up and dragged my boat up the rock shoreline, the guy rolled his window down and said, “I had to see who was stupid enough to be out there in this.”
I looked out at the water. Sea smoke rose from the slight chop, and the rocks surrounding the bay were crusted with fresh ice; I could hear it crinkling as the tide rose along the shoreline.
The guy’s name was Skip, and we chatted for a while. A day or so later, he showed up at my house and asked if I wanted to take a drive. He showed me around the Pigeon Hill and Petit Manan area. Afterward, he mentioned that his son had been working as a sternman for a guy named Oscar, and he had quit the previous fall in order to move onto a bigger boat. Skip told me to call Oscar.
I did. But Oscar said he had some local guy he was going to hire.
I went back to my search and took a shit job for a shit carpentry crew building shit modular homes—I mean spectacularly shitty homes, even in some beautiful, coastal spots. The crew I was working with would actually cheer when they saw a Budweiser truck on the road.
One of the first friends I made was a guy named Dwayne from the Downeast Salmon Federation. He introduced me to a fisherman named the Big Tuna, who quickly agreed to “hire” me.
So, on weekends, I began helping the Big Tuna with his lobster gear, which meant standing in mud puddles and dog shit while picking through rusted traps and old, tangled ropes—preparation for the coming lobster season. The Big Tuna would sip Gorilla Milk, which was Allen’s Coffee Brandy and milk, while we worked. When we drove anywhere, he kept a gallon of milk on the floor beside his feet, and a half gallon of brandy wedged between his sweat-panted thighs.
I wasn’t being paid; the trap work was a down payment on what I’d make once we began catching lobsters. And, the Big Tuna promised me, we would catch lobsters. “I’m going to let them boys know that the Big Tuna is back.”
Despite these promises, it slowly dawned on me that the Big Tuna—a smart, funny, big-hearted guy—wasn’t someone to “work” for. One of the indicators was that his friends kept stopping over to see if there really was someone stupid enough to work for him. Then I saw his boat—which would soon be rechristened, Friend of the Devil—which appeared to be a derelict, rotting into a mud hillside.
When I asked him, Dwayne said: “I didn’t tell you to work for him, I told you he’d be good to meet.”
One day in the spring, Oscar called and asked me to come down to South Addison to talk to him. I showed up in my leather packer boots and Wrangler jeans (my only clothing at the time) and we chatted in his driveway, then drove down to his lobster pound. His traps and rope and buoys were a far cry from the junk I’d been messing with at the Big Tuna’s house; these traps were big and new, or close to it, and the rope and buoys were clean and organized, and the place was breezy and salty, perched at the mouth of the harbor, with a view out to sea.
I had my dog Henry with me, and Oscar took to him pretty quickly. ("You can tell a lot about someone by their dog,” he later said.)
By the end of that first afternoon at Oscar’s, he told me to come down the following day and we’d move his boat over to Beal’s Island where he had to haul-out for some work.
He looked down at my cowboy-mountain boots. “Wear your rubber boots.”
“I don’t have any,” I said.
He looked a bit shocked. “Get some rubber boots.”
Such a thing had never, ever occurred to me.
I was nervous, though, about abandoning the Big Tuna after committing to him; I mean, I was to be there when he announced to the boys that the Big Tuna was back. But when I told him that Oscar had offered me a job as his sternman, the Big Tuna blew a chestful of smoke out and said, “Oscar’s a highliner. Hell, I’d take that job.”
It would be years until Oscar would tell me that he’d hired me because that guy Skip, whom I’d met while canoeing that winter day—had driven down to his house and told him that there was, apparently, something “different” about me. Just like there was something “different” about Oscar. So we’d be a good pair.
Similarly, it would be years until Oscar would fill-in the missing pieces concerning Dicky Bill’s outboard motor.
That first spring, I’d get up at 3ish and drive the 50 minutes from my cottage in Steuben to Oscar’s house, which was perched on the harbor beside the wharf. I’d sit at his kitchen table while he poured coffee and pulled his socks on, and we’d walk across his driveway and the wharf’s small, dirt parking area, then down the ramp to the skiff dock. I’d hold the skiff while he climbed aboard and cursed the little outboard motor until it started.
This particular morning, while motoring out to the Southwind, which was moored right in front of the big bay windows of his house, Oscar pointed to Dicky Bill’s boat, a bit further out. It was a big boat, a Young Brothers 42’, I think. Oscar said, “Look at that,” and he motored a loop past Dicky Bill’s boat. A red plastic gas tank with its rubber hose and primer bulb (the kind used for outboard motor boats) hung from the steering wheel of Dicky Bill’s boat.
“Huh,” Oscar said. And that was it.
We climbed aboard the Southwind and went through our routines. I uncovered the baitbox and dug out a bucket of baitbags, the stink heavy and nasty in the thick morning harbor air, while Oscar ducked down-forward and checked the oil and did whatever else he did down there.
The engine was warming as Dicky Bill rowed out to his boat. I began stuffing bait into the bags, an art which my thesis committee had neglected to mention but perhaps had hinted at when telling me that I maybe wouldn’t get a good professorship if I didn’t change my attitude.
Joke’s on them, I thought as I blinked a splatter of bloody herring grease from my eye.
Oscar lit a cigarette, sipped his coffee, flipped through his secret little pile of notecards that held the GPS coordinates and compass headings for all of his trap strings.
Above his head was a VHF radio and a GPS, but the GPS wasn’t a chart plotter (i.e. no icon of our position set on an interactive nautical chart), just a set of digital coordinates. His was the only boat I’ve ever seen with a GPS like that. I don’t even know if you can get one like that anymore. But somehow, he was able to make sense of those numbers and visualize the dozens of miles of water that he fished with those numbers super-imposed upon it; no paper charts on hand. I don’t know what went on in his head—all I know is that he knew where all of the ledges and islands and shoals and deeps and canyons and buoys and ridges and everything else was in accordance to the numerical lat/long grid. When I’d take the wheel here and there if he had to sit on a bucket or check the engine, he’d give me a compass heading and say, “Down five, over three.”
He’d have been a great ocean navigator—the sextant type.
Nowadays, there’s a lot of talk in the state of Maine about thinning out the lobster gear because it’s so damned thick out there. Lots of traps and lines underwater, and the buoys atop the water look like someone spilled a bag of skittles. As a lifelong Jonesport fisherman said only a couple of weeks ago, “Want to thin out the lobstering? Take away their fancy electronics. That’ll thin ‘em out. Most of them couldn’t get out of the harbor without their chart plotters.”
That was the same thing Oscar had said countless times. The older generation had come-up in a fishery without the fancy electronics, and Oscar used to talk about the old days of shutting-off the engine in thick fog so to listen for surf crashing on rocks to figure out where you were. Do that often enough, that’ll sculpt something within you that a computer screen never will.
By this time on the day in question, Dicky Bill was motoring his Young Brothers 42’ toward us, and when he neared, he pulled her out of gear and came alongside. He was a big dude, his face red and his hair wild and his voice booming.
“How we doing this morning?” Oscar said.
Dicky Bill shook his head and arms at the same time. “I don’t know. Been two things happen this morning that I don’t like. My sternman didn’t show up. My outboard got stole off the skiff, and I find this tied to my steering wheel.”
“That’s three,” Oscar said.
Dicky Bill reached down to his feet and picked up the gas tank and fuel line and bulb that we’d seen slung over his steering wheel. From how he held it, we could see that the fuel hose had been sliced off with a knife.
“That yours?” Oscar asked.
Dicky Bill’s boat was slipping past us now so he yelled louder. “No it ain’t mine.” Oscar held his arms out and hunched up his shoulders in one of those, “I got no idea,” gestures.
Dicky Bill motored off.
Oscar and I went fishing.
When we got back that afternoon, we had to go down to Oscar’s pound at the end of the peninsula to get some redfish he had stored in pickle. We used the redfish to supplement the traditional herring bait. Something special for the lobsters.
On the way down the small, winding, forested road, a car approached from the opposite direction. I’d seen that same car around, but I was still new to the harbor and didn’t know or recognize many people.
Oscar knew everybody so he pulled his truck across the road, blocking its entirety, reached into the back seat, grabbed a baseball bat, said, “Wait here,” and got out.
The guy in the oncoming car, whom I now know as the famous local petty thief and drug peddler, Twisted Tea, looked back and forth as if seeking an exit, and then just held onto the wheel with both hands as if Oscar were going to make him walk the line.
Nothing but spruce and fir woods on both sides of us.
Oscar held the bat at his side, mid-shaft. He was a big guy, all chest and arms from a lifetime of pulling lobster traps. He put a hand on the car roof, tapped the door with the bat, and leaned down. I don’t know what he said, but Twisted Tea wouldn’t look at him, and he kept shaking his head up and down, then side to side, as his mouth moved.
Oscar came back to the truck, and we drove down to the pound. He didn’t say a word to me about what had just happened.
The lobster pound is where they store lobsters through the fall and winter, feeding them and waiting for the price to go up before selling them. Like a feed lot, but pretty cool instead of nasty as hell. But then again, I’ve never been on bottom with the lobsters, where they burrow into the mud and do their thing.
Inside the pound building, which sat atop a dam that separated the pound (like a small saltwater pond) from the harbor, was a forklift, a hundred or so fish crates, an Elvis poster, and an antique refrigerator. Oscar took two Shipyard beers from the refrigerator while I hung my torso into the massive tub of pickled red fish and tried not to gag as I fished them out. Having arrived from Montana, I was quickly missing the smell of alfalfa, horse, leather, and mountain. I still do.
The beer tasted pretty good after that.
That was early on in my work and friendship with Oscar. He didn’t know me much, and didn’t trust me much. As I said, it would take a couple more years before he’d fill me in on what had transpired that day.
This is what he told me.
It had started the previous morning. Someone had stolen a gas tank out of a skiff that belonged to a close friend of Oscar’s. The skiff was down at the town landing, on the town dock, and at some point in the night, someone had taken the gas tank.
So Oscar and his friend had decided to find out who did it, because they couldn’t let people go around stealing gas tanks from boats.
Now, I haven’t been around down east Maine very long; not even 20 years yet. But, as Oscar and others explained to me, there’s been a significant cultural shift underway in these past couple of decades.
The old guard of lobster captains—of which Oscar’s generation was the last—had become fisherman, as mentioned, in the days before big boats and fancy technology; they had to learn about the ocean and how to not only survive upon it, but how to work upon it. Which meant going out in bad weather and thick fog and hauling traps when all they had in order to find their way was a compass and a watch and what was in their heads.
So they had to be smart, savvy, and confident. These traits carried over to life on shore. The “high liner” captains were respected in their communities, and they’d earned that respect because they were smart, savvy, and confident. And with that respect came a duty to the community.
The difference now being that a guy can get a big boat and a chart plotter and go out on the ocean most any day and be fine out there; it doesn’t take brains or much else. All of which is to say that perhaps these small communities are losing some degree of local leadership, though that’s probably not a good word.
And again, mind you, I ain’t been here long; I’m just repeating what Oscar used to voice.
Hence: Oscar felt an obligation to deal with the fact that someone was stealing shit in his harbor.
So what he and his friend—another top-tier captain—did was drive up and down each little dead end dirt road and pull-off around the harbor until they found the stolen gas tank.
The gas tanks are taken for the gas inside of them, not the tank itself, so the stealer of the tank would drive to some hidden spot, dumps the gas into his or her car or truck, and toss the tank in the bushes.
Somehow, Oscar understood that this was how it was done.
A little deductive logic told him that it was very probably Dicky Bill’s sternman, a local villain named Honk (a cohort of Twisted Tea’s) who was the culprit; and if not the culprit himself, he’d know who was.
So, after finding the tank, Oscar had done what anyone would do.
In the middle of the night, he’d motored his skiff out to Dicky Bill’s boat and lashed the tank to the steering wheel.
Thus sending a message to Honk, and perhaps provoking the captain into righting the situation, because a captain is responsible for his sternman, be it at sea or on dry land.
The art of navigation.
But what Oscar could not have anticipated was that Honk would choose that same night to steal the outboard motor from his own captain’s skiff, thus ruining Oscar's surprise, and Dicky Bill's day.
After sneaking down to the wharf and pulling the outboard motor off of Dicky Bill’s skiff, Honk—who was Oscar’s neighbor—apparently took Dicky Bill’s outboard to a local blackmarket pawn shop of sorts, where he sold it or traded it for, most likely, opiates. This was in the pre-heroin days, back when everyone was getting prescription opiates. Very expensive, so lots of local petty theft to support those habits.
But, as they say, the thieves around here only steal from those they trust, like friends and loved ones.
The outboard: See, Dicky Bill had bought the motor from his new girlfriend, who’s name I don't know. Tammy, maybe. Tammy had gotten it from her old boyfriend, Bobby the Third, who lived over in Milbridge.
Tammy had stored Bobby the Third’s outboard motor in her basement because the two of them had had the brilliant idea that he could file an insurance claim on it, saying it had been stolen.
But in the midst of the insurance process, the two of them broke-up, and she began dating Dicky Bill. And Dicky Bill needed an outboard motor.
So Tammy sold the outboard to her new beau, and he stuck it on the stern of his skiff at the start of the season. Things were looking good for Dicky Bill; he had a new, big boat, a sternman, a skiff with a motor, and he was ready to go. Until that morning when his sternman didn’t show up, his motor was gone, and a gas tank was hanging from his steering wheel.
Because Honk ran out of both oxycodone and the gasoline he would need in order to drive the 15 minutes to the blackmarket pawn shop slash drug dealer to refill the oxy order.
Confusing, I know. So, to recap: the outboard motor was hidden by Bobby the Third, cited in an insurance claim, stolen from him by Tammy, sold to Dicky Bill, stolen from Dicky Bill by Honk, then traded for a fistful of oxies.
From there, the outboard trail was lost.
But, in the wake of the baseball bat on the car door and the tank hanging on the lobster boat’s wheel, Honk and Twisted Tea didn’t steal any more gas tanks from skiffs in the harbor, and Dicky Bill, oblivious to all of these goings-on, remained so.
Nowadays, both Honk and Twisted Tea are cleaned right up.
I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone this shit. But I might have made it up anyway.
Great to read some Oscar lore