Red Burtts Storys

Our First Car

Westport Island, Maine:
The Lobster and My Wife, The Summer Of 1948:

In the late 1940’s there were very few young people who lived in the City of Cambridge Massachusetts that had ever eaten a fresh cooked Maine Lobster, I was one of the lucky ones who had the good fortune to spend most of my school vacations at my Grandmother’s home on Westport Island located in Midcoast Maine.
As a young boy on my summer vacations to the island my grandmother gave me my own lobster trap that she had borrowed from her brother who was a Lobsterman for most of his life.
Lobster traps need bait, I would have to get my own bait, I would do this by fishing down on the shoreline, I would first pick some mussels out of the seaweed at low tide I would shell them and then I would use these as bait to catch the bait for my lobster trap, I used a small salt water fish that were called “Cunners” they are a Sea Perch I don’t hear of them today, after catching one or two of these I would cut them in half and put them in my trap, I would set my trap just outside of Long Cove on The Sheepscot River, two days after setting I would row out and pull my trap there would always be 3 or 4 good sized lobsters in the pot, lobsters were plentiful in those days off the coast of Maine as were Cod and Haddock. Those were great days, gone in the blinking of an eye.

My last trip to Westport when I was a boy was the summer of 1939, in 1940 I was old enough to start working I was 14, I went to work driving a horse and wagon through the streets of Cambridge peddling Ice and oil my Mother was diagnosed with incurable Breast Cancer in the month of August 1941 she passed away, she was just fifty one, I was fifteen.

I married in 1947, my wife was a city girl and like most all of us came from a working class family who all had gone through some pretty bad times during the Great Depression, in September of the same year our first child was born, we were children ourselves at the time but we didn’t know it, on the day my first child was born my wife was just about to turn 18 and I had just turned 21.
Now, on our first vacation my wife was about to go through an experience that she would often talk about for the rest of her life, She Met Her First Live Lobster, A Whole Bunch Of Them.

The summer of 1948 was the very first time I had a “paid vacation” I told my wife to pack all the things she would need for the baby and herself that we were going to Maine she had never been out of Cambridge in her life, I drove over to my Aunts home in Braintree Mass and told her I wanted the keys to one of the houses on the island we had two them in the family, I told her I wanted “Uncle Arts House” this was the one right on the Sheepscot river, my grandmother was born in this little house in 1864.
Well we were all set now early Saturday morning we headed for Maine in our first car that my father had found and bought for us an old Hupmobile, it looked like one of Al Capone’s old cars, today the trip from Cambridge to Westport Island takes maybe three hours it would take us at least five, my wife would pack a picnic basket and a gallon of Kool Aid she insisted we stop and have lunch in some farmers apple orchard along the way I was always in a rush I wanted to drive straight thru there was always the possibility of a flat tire I had two spares on this Hupmobile they were located in spare tire wells right in the front fenders on each side of the car.

When we finally arrived at Westport we had to get onto the Island from the mainland in Wiscasset this was done at the time by boarding an old four car ferry that was pushed by an old time inboard motor boat sometimes called a “launch” attached to the side of the ferry, the ferryman at the time was an old family friend named Luther Cromwell, the two names that I mention in this story (Cromwell & Greenleaf) are both old time Westport Island natives as are my own family who were Tarbox and Kehail, back in those days many Mainers were “territorial” they didn’t trust people “from away” but they all knew who I was so they were never uneasy around me.

Now that I’m back on the island I had to do something, for the past eight years I would many times think about my “fresh lobster and corn on the cob” in the 1940’s I don’t remember any stores that were called “supermarkets” we had one large grocery store located in Central Square Cambridge called “The Manhattan Market” we all did most of our shopping in corner grocery stores such as The A&P or First National, I really can’t remember who sold lobsters I believe that you would have to go to a large fish store in Boston to get one, anyway nobody in our neighborhood had never laid eyes on a lobster let alone eat one my wife was one of them she knew what they were but had never seen one, I had a surprise for her, little did I know what it would do to her.

My great uncle Henry Tarbox the lobsterman who was my Grandmothers brother had passed away sometime in 1945 but I knew another old time lobsterman named Amos Greenleaf who was a good friend of the family he came to our house quite often when I was a very young boy to visit with my Mother and Grandmother, on my way down the island to our house I stopped at Amos’ place and when I saw him I know he didn’t recognize me, I said “you know who I am” he said “nope” then I told him I was Mildred Kehail’s son, he started laughing and yelling and said “you that little freckled red head” then he started telling me story’s about my family and his family and he went on and on finally I had a chance and I said “I want some lobster” he started yelling again and said “sure how many you want” I said “about four, I’ll get them tomorrow” he said “no I’ll bring them down” I told him I was staying at my Uncle Arts house and he said “ok I’ll see you tomorrow” I liked Amos Geenleaf, tomorrow would be the last time I would ever see him.

Well here we were our own little house no neighbors just sea gulls ocean water and our own big lawn, green grass, my wife was going nuts I don’t think I ever saw her so excited this was a whole new world to her she had known nothing but city streets, subways, trolley cars, railroad tracks and tenement houses now she was in a house right on a large saltwater river where if she went a few steps out into the yard she could look right out to sea, there it was, The Atlantic Ocean.
During the 1940’s there still wasn’t any electricity on the island we used Kerosene Lamps at night and a kitchen oil stove that you lit with a wick, my grandmother used wood in her kitchen stove, no running water we used to fill buckets from a well in the back yard and now the big one for her to think about, an outhouse, at night we never went out to the outhouse we used large “chamber pots” if we needed them. My wife adapted very quickly, when she was young she would try anything she loved adventure, I don’t think she slept at all that night as we lay there in the pitch dark all she did was talk, I think the last thing I remember before I fell asleep was her babbling something about Wildcats breaking into the house and eating us, she didn’t know what a wildcat was.

Well this is it, today is the day my wife would meet a lobster, most people aren’t introduced to a lobster the way Amos Geenleaf brought the lobster into my wife’s life, I told Amos we wanted them sometime in the afternoon, I was in another room when I heard my wife yell at me “that guy is here” I looked out and there was Amos coming down the driveway with a big burlap bag, I invited him into the kitchen and introduced him to my wife then he said “got your lobster” this was it my wife was about to see her first lobster, I told Amos I only wanted three or four he opened the bag and emptied it onto the kitchen floor, these lobsters were lively they had been out of the ocean for only a few hours, out came seven or eight scrambling fresh Maine lobsters, my wife said nothing she ran into the living room, grabbed the baby and bolted out of the other door into the front yard then she started screaming and yelling she called me “a stupid idiot” and was screaming something about “bugs” she thought they were big bugs. Poor Amos didn’t know what to do he probably thought she had something mentally wrong with her, I told Amos that she had never seen a lobster before then he understood. We put the lobsters in a box I had ready and then Amos took one and we went out into the yard, as I said earlier my wife would try anything when she was young, she knew what a lobster was and she knew what they looked like but she never had imagined a whole bunch of them running around on her kitchen floor holding their claws up ready for a fight. I took the baby and then Amos showed her how to pick them up (behind the claws) then he told her to put them in the boiling water head first because he said that would knock them right out (I wanted to tell her that they scream when they hit the hot water) but this wasn’t the time to fool around with her, Amos handed her the lobster and she took it, she stood there holding it I knew it wouldn’t take her long as I said before she would try anything, Amos told her to bring it in and put it in the box I put the baby back in the playpen, well that was that, Amos wouldn’t take any money, we all smoked back in those days I had just bought a full carton of Camels I took three or four packs out and stuffed them into Amos’ pocket you would have thought I gave him a thousand dollars.
My wife was hooked I couldn’t even try to imagine how many lobsters she has eaten over the years of our marriage wherever we were whenever we would go away for a week end she would always look for her lobster.
Later that afternoon we stuffed ourselves, we ate as only young people can like starving wolves, we shelled the few remaining ones I then put all of the meat in a stainless steel container that my grandmother used to keep her perishables fresh for a couple of days as we had no refrigeration or ice, I then cut a long piece of clothesline and tied it onto the pail I took this out to our Well and lowered the container down into the water until it hit bottom and secured the line to the top of the Well this would keep the food fresh for a day or two, my wife was already talking about how she wanted to eat it, for all the years of our marriage she has eaten lobster in every conceivable way known to mankind, boiled, fried, baked, roasted and grilled, that night she decided what she wanted to do with her new found love “the lobster” she fried the boiled meat in butter for a few minutes, it was delicious.

During the 1970’s we owned a Camper and spent a lot of time on Cape Cod down in the Brewster, Orleans, Truro area we would buy a couple of them and make our own lobster rolls, fresh hot dog rolls packed with lobster meat with just a touch of mayonnaise we would then take a bottle of white wine put it all in a small cooler then go out and sit on the beach at The Cape Cod National Seashore many times just before sunset we would be the only people for as far as you could see on this large section of beach, the good times come and go far to quickly but you never realize it until they are long since over.

My wife passed away a few months ago, I miss her terribly, but the lobsters are still around and every time I see one in the supermarket I smile, I can still see that pretty young teenage girl with her motherly instinct grabbing her baby and running out of the house because she thought these big bugs were going to attack her, a strange thing to say but “seeing a lobster today reminds me of her” and I have to smile.

That One Day, The Day Of My Wife And The Lobster Took Place 65 Summer’s Ago.
Red Burtt.