By Sheila Dassatt
In all my years, I never thought that it would come to this in our fishery or in our great State of Maine. I’m sure you are all familiar with the charges that were made against our Downeast Representative Billy Bob Faulkingham for child labor violations. When I heard it, I could not believe it. This is a case where political hatred has been carried way too far. We cannot run this country or our state on hatred, it just makes it all worse.
I feel sorry that we need to devote time and space to recognize that these kinds of things are actually happening. Everyone is reeling about this, so I thought that my article is a good place to start. I will get back to the fun things in my next issue. I have some suggestions lined up from readers that would like to share. Thank you so much for reading and participating in my articles!
To my understanding, this person (who doesn’t warrant the attention of giving a name), observed Billy Bob as much as two years ago with this observation. This person is also a native of Massachusetts and has been observing and irritating us for a while now. Forgive me, but why doesn’t he do this crap to the state that he is from? This is no reflection on the natives from Massachusetts. I have been paying a lot of attention to this, belonging to the Downeast Lobstermen’s Association as well and have been seeing this coming up the pike for a while now. First, why attack Downeast Maine? The fishery is the most that we can hang onto for our living and heritage. There are no shopping malls and sprawls of restaurants and strip malls in Downeast Maine. The fishery is our mainstay and I believe it always will be.
What do we have in Downeast Maine? We have blueberry season, clammers, lobstermen, bait dealers, boat yards and builders. There are also wood cutters and great supplies of wood for heat. I can’t leave out the wreath makers that so generously make these wreaths for “Wreath Across America.” We have one laboratory that is run by Brian Beal called the Downeast Institute. It is also called the School of Marine Sciences.
I am very grateful for all the Mainers that have shared pictures of their family working on the boat. This is very generational for most of us here. There have been pictures of boats with family, pictures of the potato fields in Northern Maine with families, blueberry fields that kids always had summer jobs raking blueberries. This was our mainstay here. Thank you for all of the suggestions from everyone that has participated with me. Going back in time, we had newspaper boys and girls, kids used to mow lawns (we didn’t use professional landscapers), and also shoveled driveways before plows became popular. I worked on a farm where we were transported to the farm by one of our mothers and picked strawberries, green beans and whatever else that needed to go to the local markets. This list can go on and on and I am proud of the work ethic that was instilled in all of us. The glory of this work was that it gave us kids spending money that we earned ourselves.
Let’s not get carried away with all of this political mumbo jumbo and ruin it for our kids and families. We do not need the infiltration that is happening at the Kittery Bridge. When they put Vacationland on our license plates, we did not mean to come here, vacation and then buy up all of the property and take it all over with political agendas. This is also why we had to establish an association to protect our waterfronts, called Working Waterfront. At this point, we have very little working waterfront that leaves access for our fishermen to work, pile their gear, access for the boats to ground out and even launch their boats in the spring. The boatbuilders need access to the waterfront to launch when a boat is finished and ready to go overboard. The need goes on and on and it is diminishing more each year.
If you’re reading this, I have one question about this, did you ever buy your newspaper and pay a young person to deliver it to you every day? Or perhaps you had a group of young people wash your car and you paid them for their cause? How about the little fellas that set up a lemonade stand and also had something like whoopie pies to sell along with the lemonade?
Here in Maine, we are going to teach our kids work ethic and try not to have their faces in a phone or I pad. This is what society is trying to do, brainwash our kids with all of this exposure to things that will actually deter them from socialization with fellow human beings.
I also saw a blurb about promoting safety. All of the student lobster license programs and our apprenticeship programs require taking a safety course. We have access to safety programs such as John McMillan’s safety program that also takes place at the Maine Maritime Academy. We also teach safety any way that we can. My daughter, Christy, grew up to be a safety manager at the International Paper Company in Auburn. This is the result of her working when she was a child growing up either on the boats or the trap shop. Our nephew Ed, also worked in the trap shop and grew up to be the Port Engineer in Portland, Maine with McAllister Towing. We are very proud of these “kids” that worked hard when they were young. If you ask them, I believe they actually enjoyed the work and having something constructive to do during the summer months.
Keep up the good work and we are proud of all of you!
