Heart's Island

My father, "Old Cony" named his lobster boat the "Gale Storm". I never understood why. Maybe I still don't. But I have a few more clues, the older I get, and having put 2 + 2 together, about Gale Storm the actress and singer who's name was originally Josephine Owaissa Cottle (born April 5, 1922 in Bloomington, Texas), and the boat my father kept, the "Gale Storm". He had her built up in Stonington, before I was even a gleam in his eye. And when his days were done searching for and hauling in lobsters around the rocky shores of Port Clyde, he and some companions towed the hulk of the "Gale Storm" out to Hart's Island on the tide, beaching her and burning her. (Have I told you I always understood in the way little kids understand things that to my way of thinking it was "Heart's Island", instead of H-a-r-t-'s Island? No? Well, consider yourself told as of today. I still to this day think it's its "real name", regardless of what the charts or anyone else says: "Long live Heart's Island!" Yeaaah! Right up there with friggen "Treasure Island," and never so far away, ye boogers!! Love that, "ye boogers" part).


"Old Cony" doused his boat with gasoline and set her afire and looked on as she burned down to the ground out there on the ledges of Harts Island. I still have a piece of her (Cony's boat, the "Gale Storm") that I found on a trip out there a few years later. Some of his lobsterman friends and relatives had to help, because by then "Old Cony" had to watch his ticker and the amount of exertion he put on it. It wasn't like now where you can go in and do all the stuff modern medicine does with coronary by-pass surgery in order to prolong your life. "Those were the days my friend", as that song went during the late summer of 1968. Just not the days for those kind of miracles. Though god knows I prayed for one in the way kids do for their parents when you want a miracle and you know they are awful sick. When you love someone you want 'em to stick around as long as they can. You want your dad, 'cos you got stuff you wanna talk over from time to time when you're just ateen-ager. Yeah, you do.

I can't even imagine what kind of thoughts run through a mans mind watching his boat burn like that. Up go the memories; up in smoke. Still and all, burning the boat in a bonfire is a tradition amongst mariners that goes back a long ways. Readily apparent as well as symbolically, its a signal to our maker we've reached our physical limits and the worldly labors are just about done. It's time to hang up the lobster gauge for this life. As far as burning your boat these days -- Ha!! -- irrespective of any such sea-farin' tradition you can bet the DEP would have the last friggen laugh, 'til they go to meet the maker themselves.

Like I said in yesterday's post, I like the internet for re-searching stories or articles I'm writing -- particularly my new high speed "jobby", beats the jalopy dial-up hands-down I had all those years that's for sure -- and now as I get to the meat and potatoes of today's blog, it's gonna be coming in handy again. With the internet, I can get information at my fingertips that would flummox the living daylights out of me if I had to go out-sourcing, library to library or otherwise having to look it up elsewhere. Some of it is minutia, and generally pesky details but there is THAT SIDE OF ME that is a "researcher" of things, that really likes getting to the nitty-gritty details. Mostly what I need it for today is for "fact checkin'". Well, you'll see, but as with any story teller, I don't want you to see too much. I'm not interested in some kind of biography or biographical sketch about Gale Storm, the famous actress and singer, or even a "just the facts, mam", piece. That has all the folksiness of an instruction manual.

What I'm getting at here is when I'm writing a story for instance about Rum Runners in Port Clyde, it helps with the authenticity of things to know (just as a random thought here) if saaaaay: Pepsi Cola was around during prohibition (-- and yes the answer is, it WAS, so happens)! And did you know that during the Great Depression, Pepsi gained considerable popularity following the introduction in 1934 of a 12-ounce bottle? Coca-Cola only had six ounces. The jingle of the times on the radio went: "Pepsi cola hits the spot, twelve full ounces, that's a lot -- Twice as much for a nickel, too -- Pepsi-Cola is the drink for you!"


I'll never use that information in a story other than this one, but there you go. Plus I learned something. That's not such a bad thing.


With all that information so readily available on the internet, I have to say sure as heck the Encyclopedia Britannica set I unearthed the other day from the attic where they've been stored some 8 years now ain't gonna hack it. I mean, what am I going to do with 'em? They are worse than relics, and make no mistake about it, with all the activity going on here at the house, with roommates getting ready to move out, I've got spring cleaning fever. I'm in the mood to get rid of anything and everything that doesn't serve the spartan lifestyle around here. A few paintings and some pictures on the walls, some antiques, a few plants, and a few chairs, and a kitchen table, and it's lookin' like home to me! Simplify, simplify, simplify, and as Thoreau says: "As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler". I'll be the first lead off to give an ol' fashioned tent revival hoot-n-a-holla "Amen Brother!" on that account!


So here's a "for instance" on the internet researching gig. This dip net I've put in the internet water concerns dredging up info about one Gale Storm. Gale Storm was a popular movie actress/singer, whom I never heard of until I was somewhere along in 7th or 8th grade down to T-Harbor, in the building they demolished to make way for the new town office & fire station facilities. Even then, having heard about Gale Storm, she was a blip on my radar screen. Back then I had more important things to do, like making sure I had the entire Detroit Tigers baseball team in my base ball card collection, then the Boston Red Sox, and after that the NY Yankees. Making enough money to get Alice Cushman to pick me up a Neil Diamond album at W.T. Grant's where she worked as a clerk. That was what concerned me.

I wasn't even born when "My Little Margie", premiered as a summer replacement for the "I Love Lucy" show in June of 1952. And when the series was cancelled in 1955, I still wasn't born yet, for that matter. I was however born by the time The Gale Storm Show , a tv sitcom came along; but of course I don't remember THAT, either. Still and all The Gale Storm show ran between 1956 and 1960 (initially on CBS and during it's last year it was on ABC) -- and in it's later syndication by the way -- (so says the dip-net into the internet quick research I can do with all this high speed at my command), it was retitled Oh, Susanna! According to the internet, Gale Storm is still alive and kicking. Not so, Lucille Ball, or my father, or my mother, or Alice Cushman for that matter.

What you can't find out on the internet, is that Gale Storm was the name of my father's "Old Cony's" fishing boat. When I was a kid I went along not knowing a thing about the movie actress/singer Gale Storm. I simply had no consciousness of any such person. Now Patsy Cline I knew, because when I was a kid you'd hear her voice in every fish shack on the cove. There weren't all that many stations on the radio to choose from back then, lets not forget, so as a kid you could actually go from one fish shack to the next, to the next, to the next until you made your circuit around the entire cove, and hear an entire Patsy Cline or Hank Williams or Ernest Tubb honky-tonk song, except for the time you spent running along the path to get there. It's likely Gale Storm was singing her heart out in old Port Clyde back in those little kid days walking shack to shack as I listened to the fishermen tell their gossip and stories. I'm sure Gale Storm was in the background providing the vocals. I didn't even have a television until the summer of 1968. Then of course like how it was with the radios scattered in the fisherman's shacks along the cove, there were but a few scant channels available on tv down to Port Clyde. For tv, we all had rabbit ears to get the thing to come in. Basically all we had was channel 5, 6, 8, 13, and sometimes 2, and occasionally channel 10 which in those days most successfully was known for it's steady test-pattern.

However, now I can see why and understand and certainly appreciate WHY "Old Cony" named his boat the Gale Storm. (Now-a-days I even know a few women that have become friends of mine that were named "Gale" after the actress -- same spelling and all, not the more "traditional" if you will, "Gail"). But as far as "Old Cony" naming his boat the Gale Storm, I get the picture. I don't need rabbit ears to scope it in. "Old Cony" was "crazy like a fox" on that one. He got to go out with her every day -- Gale Storm -- the boat that is. But in a 2 + 2 way symbolically I'm quietly pleased to think he went out with Gale Storm the spirit woman too, since as we all know, boats are "notorious she's". Well however you slice it, here's a tip and a nod to you, Cony, Gale Storm's got my vote too. Very lovely lady. If before my time. I still can appreciate it, and now I understand a little bit more.

your son,

cwo