Christmas in Maine

One of my closest friends moved to Florida last year to ease his arthritis. I’ve always thought there’s nothing like New England living, but you do feel the cold more with age. He sent me a postcard with a palm tree on it last week. “Merry early Christmas, you old fart,” it read. “And happy birthday.” I was one of those kids always hoping to get two separate gifts. I don’t think it happened once.

At my age, gifts are a strange thing. You realize stuff is stuff. When I’m gone, it’ll just collect dust and remind my wife to miss me. My friend left his lobster boat up here on the old pond where we used to ice fish. Frozen over now, it feels like a metaphor for our golden years. Franny says it’s not good to think too much about the past.

Thing is, I don’t have much of a future, though I'm proud to acknowledge my son does. Fourth generation New Bedford born and raised, I taught him everything I ever knew. In November we rig up the lobster boats for scalloping, and in December we skim up to Maine as a family for the holidays. Franny insists on decorating the cabin. It’s tradition for her to cook and serve up our fresh catch with her sugar cookies.

On Christmas Eve we all go out - me, my son, and my grandson - to harvest and shuck some fresh scallops for our evening meal. Fishing is a funny industry full of extremes. Boom or bust, feast or famine. During World War II when I was a young man, the industry skyrocketed because of the war. Demand for canned seafood went through the roof because it could be sent overseas for troops’ rations. As an added bonus, not as many commercial fishing ships could go out; many had been borrowed by the navy to locate sea mines. This meant skippers in charge of the ships that were left pocketed some heavy paydays.

But then after V-Day, the ships and troops started to return home. Demand fell as fish fell out of favor in the American diet. Times were lean for about 8 years, but then in the ‘60s the law of averages proved its validity. Georges Bank, a prime commercial fishing ground off the coast of Newfoundland, was teeming with haddock, hake, cod, herring, and halibut.

The problem was, as tools of the trade advanced, fishermen became so effective at fishing that everyone’s livelihood was in jeopardy. Originally the sport began in rudimentary fashion with bare hands, nets, and spears. Since the cradle of civilization, man pursued fish in a one-on-on battle. Over time, fishermen increased their efficiency, introducing nets and traps capable of yielding larger-volume catches. Then what began as small nets and traps providing for families and villages grew to accommodate entire seaports supplying multiple cities.

However, the true game-changing innovation was the trawler, which is exactly what it sounds like. Commercial fishing boats developed the capacity to roll out football field-long metal sheets with rings and hooks that would tow along behind the steamer, and they would either drag the bottom or hang suspended at mid-depth. They caught everything. Pelicans, turtles, trash, sea snakes, and every kind of fish imaginable... At every age. No fish was too small to escape the trawler, and that meant we were snapping up all the fish before they could reproduce.

We decimated the population. In the span of a couple years, I had my very best and very worst harvests on record. Of course, at that point came the famous sustainability-focused industry regulation and quotas. Some of those quotas became the impetus for the enterprising among us branched out from lobstering to scalloping. It’s funny because my newly Floridian friend’s son moved away to California and cultured himself. Works for one of those Big Tech companies now. He hated our industry with its unpredictability, dangerous Nor’easters, long hours, smelly fish, and the cold.

I guess he probably isn’t dealing with the cold, the storms, or the smell, but otherwise it makes me chuckle. Fishing and Big Tech have a lot in common... Just a bunch of chasing after the next big thing; the next trendy, exotic, strike-it-rich product consumers will gobble up. Well starting around the ‘80s, that product was the sea scallop.

“Pawpaw, is that a whale?” My 12-year-old grandson pointed off into the distance. Distracted from my musings, I strained my old fart eyes to locate whatever he was pointing at. I saw only waves. “Ehhhh, I don’t see anything Benji.” “Are you gonna let me drive?” I laughed. “It is Christmas, isn’t it?! Come on over here, Skip. We’ll make you a sea captain yet.” I had him overlay his sticky kid mitts on top of my hands as we both manned the wheel. The crisp, cold Maine wind cut across our faces, but the sun was out. I felt alive.

When we reached our diving grounds Benji scouted for seals while my son worked his neoprene suit over his long underwear. As he knifed into the ocean, a few beads of electrifyingly cold seawater splashed up on me and made me realize being the old man isn’t so bad. The old man stays topside. Waters off the coast of Maine are notoriously clear, especially in winter. I watched my son for probably 50 feet before he disappeared, thinking about Franny and me when we were my son’s age.

She went diving with me once when we were newlyweds, before kids. I think it was summer. Franny wasn’t one to tolerate the cold, and I didn’t want her out when bad weather might blow in. I had given her a stern education about the bends before we dove off the boat and we were exploring maybe 100 feet or so down when suddenly she tapped my shoulder. As I turned I sensed a shadow passing across me, and I realized Franny was transfixed at the sight of a humpback gliding by. It was an experience that surpasses words, equally awe-inspiring and surreal to be close to something so... Beyond us. Something so ancient that still commands the sea in modern times... An unflappable species, a natural king of its domain centuries after the whaling industry’s whale oil and blubber witch hunts came and went.

I guess it made me feel the timelessness of the creatures, the wonder of the natural world, and the beauty of the earth. With a clamor my son dropped the first bag of scallops onto the sea deck. As my grandson came trotting over, I handed him the shucking knife. He squealed with delight, wielding his new special sabre. “Who do you think will be the faster shucker, Skip here or Pawpaw?” I winked at my son.