Memberships

A minor clash of cultures in a sleepy Massachusetts harbor village.

As Lester Doucette finished his dinner he complemented his wife on an exceptionally cooked meal.  

“Best schrod evah, Delores.  If you don’t mind, I think I’ll sit a spell on the sofa right now and read the paper.”   He slowly raised from his chair and carefully blew out the dining room candles, ensuring that his massive hands prevented any molten wax from landing on the table surface.  Delores began to quietly clear the large oak dinning room table, one which Lester had spent a couple of winter months making for his bride, nearly forty years prior.

Before he got to the living room she said, “Oh, Lester.  I forgot to tell you that Roger O’Brien might be stopping over this evening.   I ran into him at the fish market and he said he will be needing to buy a few more lobster pots for the spring.   He said he also had a few that needed repair.”

“Thank you, Delores.” Lester said.  The weathered Yankee picked up the evening paper on the coffee table and sat down to read.

As he drifted through the pages his face remained motionless, never changing its expression.  Lester Doucette was like that.   He had a stoic, but amused countenance.   His features were weathered but strong with a pair of prodigious white eyebrows framing two salt weathered cheeks.  The eyebrows matched the shock of hair that never lost its personality, even in a gale.   Lester was in his early sixties but any strong lad would have second thoughts about tangling with him.   He carried a six-foot four inch frame.  His forearms and hands were imposing.

Most remarkable about Lester were his eyes.  They were cunningly narrow yet full of beguilement.   They seemed to summarize his entire character by themselves.   Lester’s eyes always seemed smiling even though this tended to make some strangers nervous.

The grandfather clock struck seven o’clock.   Lester reached into his shirt pocket for his pipe, and it was at that moment that the door bell rang.

“I’ll get it, Delores.” he said.  “It’s probably Rogah.” 

He set down his pipe and walked to the compact hallway.  He peered through the screen and the spotted white moths dancing around the porch light.  He saw three people, only one of whom he recognized.   None of them were Roger.

Lester squinted with his nose on the screen, “Is that you Arthur?” he asked.

“Good evening Lester.”  Arthur Fitzgerald replied.  “Mind if we come in?”

“Well,” he said with a half-smile, “I don’t see why not.   We’re finished with dinnah.”

The three visitors were formally attired.  One was a tall middle aged woman wearing a polite dress.  Arthur and another middle aged man were wearing suits and ties.  Not typical for an evening visit.  Lester, still in his work clothes, gestured towards the living room where the men took off their jackets and sat on the sofa.

Lester picked up his pipe on the coffee table and walked over to his reclinable lounge chair.  He carefully tamped down and lit his pipe as he made eye contact with the three visitors.   His eyes were equal parts alert, curious, and amused.

Arthur appeared reluctant to speak but the silence seemed to beckon for it.  

“Lester, I don’t believe you know Mrs. Leary here, and Mr. Walsh.”

 Lester nodded as he puffed on his pipe.

Delores walked into the living room expecting to find Roger, and was somewhat taken aback by the presence of strangers in formal attire.   Arthur introduced himself as well as  his companions.   Delores responded with a warm smile and returned to the kitchen to put on some tea for the guests.

“What may I do for you young people?” Lester asked.

Mrs. Leary looked at her companions before speaking.  

“Mr. Doucette,” she said, “We represent the Winter Harbor Yacht Club and we’ve been asked to talk to you.”

“By whom?” Lester asked.

“By the yacht club commodore, of course.” she answered.

“I see.”

“Anyway,”, she continued, “to come straight to the point, we’ve come to ask you about what you plan to do with the land that you’ve recently purchased from the town.”

“The land under the harbor at Cow Lick Cove.” Mr. Walsh added.

Lester’s hand drew the pipe out of his mouth and frowned in a contemplative manner.
 
“Well,  I plan to use it.”  Lester replied.

The three people sitting on the sofa traded glances.

“How exactly do you plan on using it?” Mrs. Leary asked.

“I don’t rightly know yet.   There are a lot of things a person could do with the bottom of  a harbor.   I might put up a few landings.   Yes, that might be a good idea.  Then again it might be a place to put in some additional moorings. On the periphery of course, where at low tide the flats still have a few feet of water.   Enough to moor a dory or one of those fancy day sailors that the kids seem to like.”

Mrs. Leary was visibly relieved.   Mr. Walsh happily elaborated, “You see Mr. Doucette it had been rumored around the yacht club that you were planning to use the harbor bottom for creating some kind of artificial clam farm, or some other such ridiculous thing.”

“A clamming farm?” Lester interrupted.  “That certainly sounds like an interesting idea.”  Looking down and contemplating the braided rug, for a moment, he nodded.  “Yes, I’d say that might be a definite possibility.”

It was obvious to Lester’s company that they were being toyed with, but they retained their composure, focusing upon the crux of their concern.

“But Mr. Doucette”, Mrs. Leary asked in her most diplomatic manner, “how can you possible farm and dig up clams underwater?   It certainly doesn’t make much sense to me.”

Lester responded in a reassuring voice.   “Oh it’s possible if you own a part of the shallow harbor that I do.   It’s that shallow cove near your club.  It’s just a matter of timing.”

“You  see between early spring and late fall you wait for a neap tide that exposes the mud flats, and plant clam larvae in square sections where the mud is exposed.   Not much different than planting corn, except you have to keep track of which square is which.  Not hard to do.  Takes about three years to grow them.  After that it’s just a matter of harvesting the clams each month and doing another planting.”

Mrs. Leary became strident.  “Surely you realize that exposed area of the harbor doesn’t belong to you.  According to marine law the harbor-line is marked by the low-tide water level.  Any land exposed at low tide isn’t your land but is beach property.   Typically private property.”

Lester tapped out his pipe into an ashtray.  “Well,” he said, “that law holds true for most places, but have you evah heard of mossing?”

“Of course. Everyone knows about mossing.” she replied.

Everyone did know, either because it was considered a unique and integral part of the town’s proud maritime heritage, or it was an ungainly, leaky, odoriferous traffic hazard that tied the town’s narrow windy seashore road into knots at least once every summer day.  Depending upon who you talked to, and when you talked to them, you would get one opinion or the other.  Sometimes you would get both from the same person.

For some unknown reason a unique species of seaweed grew only on the local coast.  It was dubbed Irish moss and was valued by chemical companies for its preservative value in foods and medicine.  Lester Doucette paid young men to row their dories out to the shoreline rocks and to harvest this moss at low tide.  They used custom made twenty foot rakes to pull the moss off the rocks and collect it within nets straddling each of the dory's hulls.  When the tide started rising each mosser would row his dory and its curious harvest to the harbor landing.  There Lester would carefully lift and weigh each net with a specialized crane attached to body of a customized oversize dump truck and carefully and slowly release the contents in the net into the back of the truck.  Each would get compensated for the amount harvested. 

This process was not without the occasional skulduggery.   The slow release was to allow Lester to visually ensure that the load of sea moss didn’t include some fifty pound rock that “mysteriously” fell into the mix.  Such incidents resulted in a mosser being docked ten percent for his day’s contribution.

One time, Lester noticed a creative mosser, queued up for weighing, reaching over the side and pouring sea water on his harvest.

“What the hell are you doing there?”  Lester barked.

“Who me?”, the mosser asked sheepishly, trying to hide his bail bucket. “I’m just keeping the moss fresh!” he replied with an innocent smile.

“You are...”  Lester replied cryptically.

The mosser looked confused. “I am what?”

“Fresh.  Just like your moss.” Lester said.  “You’re docked ten percent.”

Lester’s truck had to carry tons of wet sea moss from the landing to a stretch of commercial property where it could be unloaded.  Lester customized it to be a manual transmission with only very low gears.  Depending upon the time of high tide, one could expect to see Lester’s unhurried contraption poke across the narrow windy sea-shore road that connected the entire town, leading a disgruntled parade of backed up commuter traffic.

Once Lester reached a processing facility, he would carefully dump the moss over a large swath of land so it could be bleached by the sun.   Afterwards it was ready to be sold to various chemical companies for processing.

Following up on Mrs. Leary’s remark, Lester explained why mossing was relevant to the evening’s conversation.

“It’s because of mossing that the county seat passed a statute in 1932.   According to this statute the shoreline is marked at the high water mark.   This is so the mossers can work close to shore and harvest the moss without private property restrictions.”

Mrs. Leary began to talk faster, more deliberately.  “But Mr. Doucette, you must realize that any clamming you do will be high distracting to the members of the Club.  It would be unsightly to have men digging on the mud flats just outside of our doorstep.”

“Oh, there won’t be any men digging.  I’m working on a clamming machine that will be much more efficient.” he stated enthusiastically.   “Actually it is really an oversize roto-tiller with customized blades that slowly surface the hard shell clams.   Flings a lots of mud though in all directions.  Delores insisted that I figure out how to put on some suit that will keep me clean enough to come home for dinnah.”

Mrs. Leary was flummoxed.   She was trying to reconcile the notion of this ungainly man in a makeshift moon-suit trudging through the mud-flats while wrestling with his loud, gas guzzling contraption.   All within ear shot of the Club veranda and her cherished five o’clock cocktails.

Mr. Walsh, spoke up.   “Have you considered our situation.  Some of the most distinguished people of our community belong to the Club.  If you were a member...”.  

He caught himself too late.

Mrs. Leary intervened after casting a frustrated glance at Mr. Walsh, “What Mr. Walsh is trying to say is that we would be privileged to make you and Delores members.   Then perhaps you could see our point of view.”

Lester remained silent for a moment and then asked, “Why would I want to join your yacht club?”

Mrs. Leary sat upright while Mr. Walsh cleared his throat to continue.  “Our club offers many things, Lester.   You can tie your boat up there and use our pool.”

“No thank you, Mr. Walsh.  I have a place to tie up my boat, and I like to swim at a beach.”

Mrs. Leary had lost all patience.   “Mr. Doucette, I think you are being highly discourteous to ignore the concerns of the Club.   Why Father Connelly said last week that your scheme would be a travesty.”

“Father who?” Lester asked.

Arthur leaned over to Mrs. Leary.   “Lester belongs to the Congregational church, Margaret.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Mrs. Leary said. “We obviously aren’t getting anywhere.  Good evening Mr. Doucette.”  She got up from the couch put on her coat and walked out the front door.   Both Arthur and Mr. Walsh thanked Lester for his time, and followed her.

Lester stayed in his seat.  “Do you have the tea yet Delores?” 

“In a minute.” she replied. 

“No hurry.   Rogah isn’t here yet.”

Delores walked into the living room.  “Where did your company go?   What did those people want?”  

“They were interested in my clams.” Lester said.

“Oh for heavens sake, I thought you gave up on that foolish scheme.”

“I have.” Lester responded.

“Good.  Personally, I thought it was a crazy idea.  Even for someone like you.”

“So I hear.”, Lester said while picking up the evening paper.  “Doesn’t matter anyway.” he continued.  “For some darn reason clams just don’t want to grow in those harbor flats.”

Reviews

[Beccy]

So glad I found this. The detail was totally believable and thus, I take it, well researched; and what an ending. That'll teach 'em!" I thought. :))

I'm sort of mostly poetry really, but I loved this, really did.

Beccy.

PS. And yup, you can spell pritty good. :))