It would have been my maternal grandfather's 131st birthday today. I've managed to make a collage from the old photographs that very lucky to have. The photos range from his childhood, in skirts as was the custom in the early 1890s to how I remember him, holding "Bam" the cat, by the old pear tree. We still cherish that partially hollow tree in it's old age.
Gordon set sail in masted vessels from the village of Machiasport on the far Downeast Coast of Maine in his teens. From 1912, to1913 he was as a member of the United States Lifesaving Service, serving as a Surfman at Burnt Island Light off the Maine Coast. A surfman's job was extremely dangerous. He served as a member of a rescue crew, patrolling the coast alone on foot, rowing a surf boat in heavy seas with the other surfmen, responding to the rescue of shipwrecks along the rocky coast. From there he became a Quartermaster in the Zizania, a Lighthouse Tender, setting buoys at sea and delivering supplies to the lighthouses that dot the Maine Coast. All the while he worked on his Captain's License, and courted my grandmother who grew up in Lubec and Machiasport. He sailed in and out of the port of Boston while she went to work after Business school as a stenographer at the Waltham Watch Company in Massachusetts. He then captained vessels that hauled coal from Boston to Virginia for years. After that then served on the Lightships, Handkerchief and Pollack Rip off the Massachusetts Coast. LIghtships are anchored off dangerous shoals at sea in places where there's not enough land for a lighthouse tower. That was also a very perilous job as well. Grampa finished his maritime career at the Chelsea Naval Yard at Constitution Wharf as a member of the US. Coast Guard from 1936 to 1951.
I only remember him as a landlubber, helping him raise bantam chicks, growing glads and nurturing blueberry bushes here at Dogcorner Cottage. He worked on ship models, ships in bottles and bought me a transistor radio when I turned 13, a big deal in those days. I still have it and it works perfectly. I loved him very much. He passed away in 1967 after a surgery just as I was going off to college and my mother was going back to teaching first grade. It was my first great loss. I miss him still.
My favorite photograph in the collage is the one with Nora, his wife to be, courting off the coast of Machiasport.
I retired from public school teaching after happily spending twenty eight years playing in Kindergarten. Now I fill my days watching cat antics, taking endless...
