(mellow music) (sea gulls cawing) - [R. Beck] Fishermen are like farmers, they have to know a lot.

Their lives revolve around the seasons, the tides, the moon.

They have to be able to make and repair things as well as catch fish.

When you're 15, 20, maybe 50 miles off the coast, you need to read the weather, to fix an engine that doesn't run.

There are big consequences to what they do.

The fishing community exists in a seam of time between the past and the present.

Some aspects are 30 years behind what people in the Northeast Corridor are experiencing.

They might have iPads and electric plotters on their lobster boats for navigation, but when they pull up at the dock to get bait, it's lowered down to them in a bucket, just like it's been done for a century.

I spent summers in New England as a kid, and when I got older, I started going to Maine.

There's kind of a harmonic on the coast that really suits me.

One summer I decided to go farther north above Acadia and paint in villages that weren't influenced by the tourist trade.

When I first drove through Jonesport, one of the things that struck me was there are no sailboats in the harbor.

This was a working village.

Between Jonesport and Beales Island, which is across the reach by a bridge, there were 700 households which accounted for 9 million pounds of lobster.

I met someone who was able to connect me to a number of other people in town.

She told me about the Liar's table, which is where the lobsterman gathered an old dinner table in the variety store after they come home from their catch.

The first painting I did in town was the Liar's Table.

The lobsterman didn't talk to me while I worked, but by the next day, everybody in the village knew I was there.

(mellow music) (people chattering indistinctly) The more I painted next to the people as they lived and worked, the more doors opened for me.

(upbeat music) I've been called a documentary painter.

I paint the occupations, events and artifacts of my time, our time.

I don't try to duplicate what I see.

I'm more interested in the content than the way it looks.

I describe my encounter and try to reveal what the subject means to me.

♪ May you enter into light in Jesus' name ♪ ♪ Jesus, oh Jesus (congregants chattering indistinctly) ♪ Jesus, oh Jesus (drill motor roaring) - [R. Beck] Sometimes the subjects so big, it takes more than one painting.

I've created more than a hundred images of the main maritime community and I'm not close to having it covered yet.

I can't see myself running out of subjects or passion.

Of all the topics I've addressed in my career, this is the work that means the most to me.

It's straight out of my heart.

(upbeat music) (gentle music) (motor roaring) - [W. Beal] The first model boat I did was the first year in grammar school, seventh grade, and that was a boat dug out from a cedar log.

And I had cut that tree down myself and took the best piece of it to make the boat.

Doing the miniature boats prepared me for building the larger ones because it gave me an idea of the different techniques you have to use in building.

I cruised the boat shops with my father from a kid up.

And of course, I loved boats.

My father was fisherman and I was always with him when I could be, but I learned a lot just as a boy cruising the boat shops and watching.

But I can remember as a young boy going into Harold Gower's boat shop, and his boats were always facing the road.

Going in there just a little fella and looking up under the bow of that boat and it was just shining, just beautiful.

And you never forget those things.

Oh yeah, you can be taught to appreciate wood and how to put it together.

I worked for Clinton Beal a couple of winters as a boat builder here on the island.

And I worked for a relative in Jonesport, Freddie Lenfeste, and I learned a lot.

But in '66 I built a 23 footer for my brother in the basement of my home.

From that, I had got an order for a bigger boat, so I had to have a boat shop.

When we first built this shop, we didn't have a launch ways at the end.

We'd take 'em outta the front side and pull 'em over to a runway I had over here, west of the shop and launch 'em down that way.

The Silver Dollar was the first one to go out of the new launch ways down at the end of the shop.

It was like a fourth July celebration.

The shop was a full you could hardly get around in it.

We had a snub line on it, hoping to slow it down from going fast down the runway.

They gave her a push and we had it greased the whole way down.

That was a big mistake.

It went too fast to suit me, made a nice splash head first.

So after that, we didn't grease it all the way down.

The state tags we have to put on, we have a different color for each year, and this shows how many years I've fished this trap, by just counting the tags.

When Robert and I started lobstering, he was six.

He did the rowing, I did the hauling.

And one day he wanted to do the hauling and I told him he wasn't big enough and strong enough, but he thought he was.

We used to take the traps in over the stern of the skiff.

He pulled it up to the back of the skiff, but he couldn't get it in over.

I didn't know, but he was going to overboard, trap and all.

Finally, he got straightened away, so he decided he was going to do the rowing.

He couldn't take the trapping over.

- Thank you, Robert.

- Thank you, Robert.

(mellow music) (seagulls cawing) - Well, you know, it's sad to see that the interest in wooden boats isn't there anymore and I don't blame the boat owners because I know the maintenance is a lot greater on a wooden boat.

And they've got some very fine fiberglass boats, and they're doing things with 'em that we never dreamed they would do.

As I say, when I started fishing back in the '50s, we didn't have a fathometer, we had a compass and a watch.

Didn't have marine radio, we didn't have nylon, or synthetic twine or ropes, so you couldn't pull it as high.

You couldn't put as many on a warp.

This nylon coming in and then the styrofoam buoys and float, and the hydraulic pot haulers, and stearors and all that stuff.

It's just blown everything out proportion to what we were ever used to.

200 traps was a big gang at one time.

Who would dream you'd go out and haul 400 in one day?

But like I say, salt water's in my blood, you know?

It is a change from fishing.

Gives me a rest to do something different, and the same way back from boat building to fishing.

And I wouldn't want to leave the water.

Even though I don't have that drive to go fishing and I don't get excited about lobstering like I used to, I still want to be on water.

(gentle music) Yeah, there it is, right there.

That looks pretty much like the Doris A. used to look.

They were real narrow.

Looking at 'em head on, they looked almost like a butter knife, they were so sharp.

Of course they cut the waves easy, but on the following wave, the wave would fold around the stern, it'd splash up over.

I guess that was one reason to have them that way.

And we put a 454 Chevrolet motor in it.

I took Mark Carver on the sail and we went up through the bridge, and I came back down through full speed.

Tide was up and I swung right in toward the wharf here.

He was sitting on the seat in the stern.

I got to the dock and he said, "I guess you scared me almost to death."

And I said to him, "How's that?"

He said, "I thought you were going to turn that over.

My fingerprints are right on the bottom of this seat."

I got quite a life outta that 'cause Mark has always been quite a daredevil himself.

The thing is, enjoy what you're doing.

If you're enjoying it, you're going to be happy about whatever your success is in life.

If you're doing something you don't enjoy, I can't imagine it.

I've been fortunate, I've been able to enjoy what I do.

I've been blessed that I've had the help to do what I have and a good wife to help me and the family.

And I'm not poor and I'm not rich.

I could have made a lot more money in different ways probably, but money's not everything.

It gives me great pleasure to know that I can design and put wood together and fashion a boat.

I give the Lord the credit for my ability.

I've designed, built 26 wooden boats.

And like I say, in building wooden boats, you pick a piece of wood up.

It doesn't feel like an old coal rock.

It's got feeling to it, it's got the meaning to me.

And I think anybody that build with wood, whether it's a house, carpenter or a finished carpenter, whatever, they got feeling for what that wood is and how to place it in a good place.

(gentle music) It's been a wonderful experience.

I wouldn't change a thing about it other than I'd probably be wiser to do things easier sometimes, because when you stop learning, you are dead.

(gentle music) (mellow music) - Psst, you see that guy back there, working away at the bench?

He's got delusions of grandeur.

Yeah, yeah, he says that he made me from scratch.

Not only me, but everybody in this room.

Hey, but don't take my word for it, let him tell you.

- Well, I think I became interested in doing this kind of work when I was about six.

I kind of fell in love with ventriloquism because I saw a toy Charlie McCarthy dummy for sale in the mall, and I got it for Christmas.

Santa was really good to me that year, and that kind of lit the flame.

For some reason, I don't really know why, but I just became obsessed with, not just the art of doing ventriloquism, but the actual props and the dummies themselves.

I thought it was so fascinating that there were these props that were multipurpose that had to be animated, and they had a jaw with two lines on the side and the eyes moved.

And so, I really just kind of wanted to figure out how all that worked.

Yeah, definitely the initial spark for me was very much the dummy itself.

I loved the performing aspect of it too, but I was never very good.

So I learned pretty quickly I was not gonna be the next Edgar Bergen, but I absolutely loved making the props themselves.

And in high school, I started to perform a little bit more regularly at retirement homes and that kind of thing and I needed some updated dummies.

So I kind of actually started making what I thought was a professional style of ventriloquist dummy carved outta wood.

So I started that first one when I was about 14 and then I finished it in college 'cause I took a few years off.

I really got so interested in making these in college that I started to seek out the, who I believed were the best craftsmen of my lifetime making these puppets.

And I would literally cold call these figure makers and just ask to come to their shop and see them, spend time with them.

And I really just kind of acted like a sponge, taking in anything that they would show me or tell me.

Yeah, so these figure makers were in the Seattle, Washington area and then all the way out in Wembley in England.

So I was able to use my dad's Delta Airline benefit of flying anywhere for free.

I bounced back and forth from West coast to all the way super east to England to learn this craft.

So I had amazing guidance from some of the best figure makers who ever lived.

Obviously I was kind of at an age and era where ventriloquism was not the height of popularity anymore.

But I grew to love ventriloquists like Edgar Bergen and especially this guy named Paul Winchell, who also, people know him if they don't even know him because he was the voice of Tigger.

He also, he invented the art first artificial heart.

This man was an absolute genius, but he was a television ventriloquist star and I think he was the most multi-talented, amazing ventriloquist I had ever seen.

He also had the world's perfect dummy.

He used this character called Jerry Mahoney that to me, and pretty much every other ventriloquist we'd bow down to, 'cause that's kind of the stereotypical dummy with a bow tie and the comb back hair.

So definitely Paul Winchell was my hero from a pretty young age.

I am actually the person now who is authorized to replicate exact copies of those under the Paul Winchell copyright, and trademark, and licensing.

So now, it's just amazing.

You know, I'm 30 years old and not that long ago I used to see pictures of this dummy in a book and drool over it, and now I'm the person who's allowed to make that dummy.

And it's absolutely crazy what's happened in the short span of time I've been doing this work.

And yeah, it's nothing short of a miracle that I get to go to work every day and make Jerry Mahoneys for a living.

So there's this one very special event that takes place every summer for me, and that's called the Vent Haven Convention.

And that's the world's only international ventriloquist specific convention.

And it happens every year in Kentucky because this convention started around the world's only museum dedicated to ventriloquist dummies, which is in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky.

So on average it's about a 500 person turnout for attendees.

I've seen it as high as about 750.

Happens every single year and it consists of seminars, breakout workshops.

It's the same on Charlie.

This is a glass eye, taxidermy bird I put down.

But that's a relief carving of an eyeball that's not an eyeball placed in the back.

So there's a flatness about it, there's something unrealistic about it, but that's a stylistic choice.

This is like in Egypt with the relief carvings.

It's the same idea.

It creates the effect, but it's an illusion.

But what that does is it gives him intelligence without being too scary or weird.

It's relatable.

Look at him like this, I hope y'all can see, I apologize if you can't.

But if he's looking down, there's a natural shadow that casts over that face and eyes that gives him a knowing.

But if he wants to wake up, you just tilt him back and he comes to life, that is magic.

And it's also, you know, this is my time of the year to, this is my Super Bowl.

So I get to nerd out for four days and just connect with people who equally love nerd now.

Yeah, yeah.

What I like is it gives them a little bit of weight because sometimes I found with the custom figures, they're almost too lightweight.

- Yeah, yeah.

- And so when you're manipulating, it's too fast.

Having this weight is more of a balance.

You can work the figure, there's a little bit more life in it, so it slows down the movements, which is what you actually want.

And these are built to be performing figures.

You know, I didn't want these put on a shelf, so you want to have the weight right, you wanna have the animations work right, and you want the artistry to really pop.

I like putting on a big show for everybody.

I think it's a really special time of year and I love having brand new stuff there available to purchase and try on, and try out hands-on.

I think that's really important.

But the halls are full of other vendors of different types of puppets.

More soft style puppets like Jim Henson type stuff, or hard dummies like I make, but also loads of ephemera, antique books on the subject, courses on how to do it, sound systems, everything.

All the way to hard cases for transporting your puppets in.

So it's a one stop shop for everything you could ever need for this art.

(upbeat music) (people chattering indistinctly) - You're welcome to get in the photo.

(upbeat music continues) (camera clicks) - So if you're looking for an opportunity to break out and try ventriloquism yourself, the convention's one of the only places in the world where you should feel absolutely comfortable to do that.

They do these open mic nights pretty much daily where you can try out your stuff to a fresh audience of eyes.

You can workshop this stuff, you can go out there with no experience at all.

Or you can go out there doing this stuff all the time and just work on new material.

- What's more magical than a bunch of people walking around talking to dolls?

(audience chuckles) - It's this great comedy club workshop type atmosphere if you want it to be that as well.

And again, that's so important is having an opportunity to try this stuff in front of a live audience that you may not have the opportunity to do from where you're from.

The participants of the open mic, I think, yeah, probably as young as six all all the way up to 85 plus, I've seen it.

So it's really incredible that on that stage everybody's kind of at the same level and having the most fun they can have.

So when I'm not in the dealer's halls, a lot of what I love to do is reconnect with either old friends or new friends, and kind of breaking off into more private sessions and really kind of having really intimate talks with these people about the nuts and bolts of what we do, and just sharing ideas.

And also, it's amazing for me to kind of check up with past clients and performers who use my products to see how they're liking it.

So there was one particular project that was a very special project to me, but also one of the biggest headaches of my life to do.

And that was a puppet called Sergeant Major Boorah, which was for my good friend Dave Pendleton.

- I helped to set up puppet governments.

- David was very patient with me and he had this idea of making, not just a dummy, but something that was very realistic.

So in incorporating animatronic controls, but also a really unique system of how the head moves, so... - [SGT, Major Boorah] That's what I said.

- [D. Pendleton] I guess I can make this a bit of a challenge for you.

Okay, so... (audience gasps) - I believe that anyone who brings 20 items into a 15 item or less line should be shot.

- [D. Pendleton] No, I wouldn't say that it's unique, but it's rare.

- Yeah, but I would say the way you use it in your act is unique.

Because typically what people do is they'll set this up as a gag at the very end of the show and somebody, the magic of it is, oh, you're walking off and the figures still on, and then there's a blackout after that.

- [D. Pendleton] Yeah.

- David does it in the middle of the act where he kind of walks away, but then the figures alive throughout the rest of the act.

- Don't you think it's time to get something new?

- Never.

- [D. Pendleton] This was super fun to bring out the first year going through TSA, this thing looks like a bomb.

- Yeah, and it's a remote control.

- [D. Pendleton] Oh yeah.

Yeah, you're doing a good job, dude.

- No, he's not.

(all chuckle) Wow, you taught him pretty quick.

- I played a lot of video games.

(all chuckle) - So it was about two and a half, three years tO completion.

It was a pretty amazing project and it was really amazing to see it performed at the convention this year.

So the Vent Haven Museum over the past years has been fundraising to build a new facility and they finally did it.

There's this brand new facility now, it's a professional establishment.

The museum this year was nothing short of amazing to see it, walk through and just be a part of.

- So a question that people often ask us is, why is the world's only museum dedicated to ventriloquism in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky of all places in the world?

Well, it's because of our founder.

His name was William Shakespeare Burger.

He was a Cincinnati businessman and this was his home.

His house is still on the property.

And for years he collected dummies.

He was the epicenter of the ventriloquist world.

During his lifetime, he amassed a collection of 500 figures.

It was wonderful.

His attorney helped him set it up as a private museum.

And when he passed away in 1973, we officially opened as Vent Haven Museum Incorporated.

So the collection includes anything and everything having to do with ventriloquism.

Everybody is represented here, from the amateurs to the greats.

We have displays on Edgar Bergen who was at our official opening in 1973.

We have a fabulous Paul Winchell display.

He did Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smith.

He was also the voice of Tigger.

We have a Jimmy Nelson display, you might know Jimmy Nelson from Nestle's commercials, the N-E-S-T-L-E-S Nestle's makes the very best and then Farfel would go, chocolate.

We have a Sherry Lewis exhibit, which is brand new this year on display.

We are thrilled to have those figures with this lamb chop hush puppy charlie horse.

And then we also have modern ventriloquist who are currently performing like Terry Fader and Jeff Dunham.

The thing I love about Van Haven Museum is that everybody is welcome and everybody is included.

And even if you're just interested in the art of ventriloquism, you don't necessarily wanna be a performer, you should come check it out because it's a great community and it's an interesting, quirky, fabulous art.

So we're definitely seeing a resurgence in the art of ventriloquism with young kids coming to the art form, having seen people perform on, "America's Got Talent," which is wonderful.

But you know, there is the figure making side as well.

You know, the two sides, the two artists.

You know, and when we talk in the museum about the great figure makers of the past, I think, you know, down the road from now, people are gonna be like, I have an Austin Phillips puppet, that his puppets are gonna be the ones that are sought after because they're just such beautiful creations.

- Ventriloquism I don't think will ever really die.

And currently, there's been a big uptick in interest.

You know, people like Jeff Dunham and Darcy Lynn Farmer and the, "America's got Talent" contestants who have kind of competed in one over the years, have really brought ventriloquism back to the forefront.

And I think what's so incredible about this art form is just magic in some of these old pantomime type things.

What's old is new again, and it will never fully die because we're always still drawn to the real basic, basic bones of theater and entertainment.

And ventriloquism completely encompasses that.

And it's a wonderful art form if you use it well.

So I don't know what the future holds for me in ventriloquism, I hope the future holds me still in the art of ventriloquism doing something.

I think no matter what happens, this will always be a part of my life.

If it can't be full-time anymore, I'm appreciative of the ride that I've been on and my ability to make the impact that I have.

But I see ventriloquism, I see it just getting a little bit bigger and you know, attracting more people who weren't probably originally interested in this.

And I try very hard in what I do every day to bring this to a modern light and a modern audience, to really outreach to these people who are gonna be the people to pass the torch onto.

It's really important to set the pathway for other people to kind of come up and do this.

I find myself in a very big and small world at the same time with a lot of responsibility, but at the same time, it's a lot of fun and it's just what I do.

It's second nature to me.

So I just feel incredibly fortunate that I get to do this every day.

And to think that what I'm doing has an impact that will help propel this to the next level is something really unimaginable.

Good night.

- [Puppets] Goodbye.

(gentle music) - [J. Fawcett] Overwhelming, incredible, astounding, magnificent is what I hear from so many people when they walk through the museum for the first time.

When I was four years old in 1944, my parents took me to see Snow White.

And this is magical moving drawings on the screen, and I thought it was absolutely wonderful and I would go home and draw what I saw to save the experience.

Most people are familiar with the Disney stuff from television, but they're not familiar with actually what he did.

And the difference in Disney material was art and the extension of art, the beauty of the stuff.

It was entirely different from the other cartoons.

And Disney kept saying to his animators, we're not making cartoons here, we're making art.

I've always been interested in the artists who did this work.

I taught at the University of Connecticut and I love teaching.

And teaching was one of the things, you know, when you do it right, nobody learns as much as the teacher.

And it's one of the more exciting things to do.

It was a joy to teach for 32 years.

And I retired in 1986.

I opened the museum in spring of 1987.

Before I opened the museum, the majority of this material was in the house and I had it in my rooms upstairs and so forth.

A lot of it was in storage, and boxes, and stuff.

And my wife was fairly happy when I bought a building that was large enough to, so she could have her own rooms and not have it overtaken with my stuff.

The toys transferred from the material in the films, and in the books, and in the movies and everything into dimensional objects.

So the early Disney stuff is just plain, pure art, absolutely beautiful stuff.

Disney doesn't even realize what they have.

I think it's essentially an American interest, an American specialty that went worldwide.

Ernest Trova, who was a pretty famous painter and sculptor said, "The three most important graphic symbols of the 20th century were the swastika, the Coke bottle, and Mickey Mouse."

- [Reporter] In the Hollywood home of movie land's, Mickey Mouse artist, Walt Disney orders his famous cartoon characters into battle dress.

They're in popular demand as emblems for the armed forces.

- Hank Porter was a name I knew nothing about, and this guy worked at the studio.

He was the person who did all the military insignias during the Second World War for any group that asked.

In through here or some of the World War II, anti Hitler stuff.

That book in the background over there, the Victory Parade is a Hank Porter cover.

This is Hank Porter art up here.

It was a supply station in Alaska.

And they wrote in and said, "We'd like Donald Duck and we'd like an insignia, please."

And Porter did this one with Donald in a parker with hot water bottles on his feet, mittens on his hands, and a stove on his background.

And the Northern Lights above him.

Der Fuehrer's Face, Ward Kimball designed that cover up there.

But the thing that's interesting is, see just below Hitler's shoulder on the lower left hand side there?

The Disney signature is there, Walt Disney.

Disney got credit for it all, even though there were several hundred people working for him.

- [Reporter] Here's how an Air Corps insignia is created.

(upbeat music) - Mickey was used not too extensively in all these insignias that Hank Porter designed, mostly because he wasn't too aggressive.

Donald was always kind of aggressive and they would always use him instead of Mickey.

Mickey was too nice.

The Kix Adam Bomb Ring as one of the major premiums of all time, was given away in the Lone Ranger Radio Show in 1946.

And you would pull off the red tail fins and see Adams exploding inside the ring.

This came out just after we bombed Russia and Nagasaki to end the Second World War.

And two and a half million were given away.

And the ring is on eBay every day of the week.

The rare stuff are the cereal boxes.

(gunshots) - [Reporter] The fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty, "Hi-Yo Silver," for Lone Ranger.

- These paintings came directly from the radio station in WXYZ in Detroit.

And this is from the original Lone Ranger Show on the radio.

These were painted in 1938.

There was an attempt to do five different paintings for fan pictures so they could have something to mail out when kids wrote in.

This is Frontier Town, 1948, they took the whole program out there.

Pictured in the back the corners over here is Brace Beemer.

And they went all, everybody went out to Cheyenne, Wyoming.

And to me, it was very interesting to have this thing sit up on the dining room table all the time and follow it as the radio program was on.

This is a piece of original art in here that was done by a man named Charles Steinbacher who did the bubblegum cards for the Lone Ranger movie serials in 1938 and '39.

- [Reporter] Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, the Lone Ranger rides again.

- Do I like it visually?

Yes, it is a search for images I like.

It's not about nostalgia, it is about aesthetics.

It's interesting, it's not about the money either.

The money's irrelevant.

You can always get money, you can't always get the stuff because the stuff disappears over the year.

People throw it away, put it out for tag sales, things like that, and it all disappears.

The problem is now that the material that I'm collecting, generally it's 50 years old, and how many people are interested in the Lone Ranger or even Mickey Mouse?

The one thing that most people relate to in that time is the Jean Shepherd story of The Daisy Red Rider, BB Gun and Ralphie wanting it.

Shepherd did a radio program in New York City five nights a week.

And he actually wrote the story for his radio show.

He sent that into Playboy.

Playboy printed it, and from that came this book, "In God we trust, All Others Pay Cash."

And Shepherd is the one who does narration in the film.

- [J. Shepherd] Oh, there it is, the holy grail of Christmas gifts, the Red Rider 200 shot range model air rifle.

- And here's the original Daisy Red Rider BB Gun.

We have Red Rider on the stock and wood here, right behind Ralphie here, there is a wooden grip behind Ralphie.

And on the front of that is a copper band.

The other thing on the story was, if you notice up here, this is one of the rarer guns.

The original story Shepherd keeps talking about the Red Rider BB gun with a compass in the stock, and the sundial.

- What I want for Christmas is a redwater BB gun with a compass in the stock, and this thing which tells time.

- And they never made one.

Daisy only made them for Buck Jones back in the 1920s.

And these parents would be writing into the company saying, where's the one with the compass in the stock and the sundial?

And they finally had to put one out.

It is been interesting to me to see the people who I knew who were collectors who have died off and what happened with their material when they died.

And there's only about, I don't know, three or four of us probably left that are still collecting.

One of the auction houses has offered me twice.

One, it was like a million bucks and then 2 million bucks for everything.

And I said, I don't want your money, I don't need the money.

At the moment, everything, when I die, has been going to the University of Connecticut and it will all turn into scholarships for art students.

I don't know how much longer I can go, you know?

Physically, myself, I'm starting to have some health problems, but I'm gonna go as long as I can.

(mellow music) - My family's been going to sea since the 1630s probably.

And in fact, there was a Bunker in the crews of the people that repelled the Spanish during the armada invasion of England in the 1580s.

I think I was eight years old.

I was on a Collier, my dad was the chief and I was the ship's boy, essentially.

I got $3 a week, but we used to get into New York and I would go ashore with the scullery crew or the messman, and they would buy groceries.

Well, once we'd loaded up this day, particularly the guys, they were all feeling, you know?

Getting a little dry on the throat.

So before they went back to the ship, they wanted to slick their thirst a little bit.

They had a favorite gin mill they would go to, and they kind of cut me loose on the street.

And I had seen down the street, there was a cannon sitting on the sidewalk.

And I thought, no, that's neat, I want to go see that.

Well, it turned out to be a historic arms dealer who dealt in all kinds of antique weaponry, antique arms, armor, great stuff.

And he had a barrel full of swords.

And he took a shine to me and he gave me a sword for whatever money I had in my pocket, which I think was probably four or $5.

It wasn't a lot of money.

So I took the sword and went and found the guys in the bar, and went back to the ship.

And as I was going up to my father's cabin to show him my new sword, somebody stopped me in a passageway and said, "Boy, what do you got?"

I said, "I got this nice sword."

Well, I sold it to him.

I sold it to him, I think for 20 or $25, which was all the money in the world for a young kid in those days.

So that was my first sale and I've been doing it ever since.

I come from a long line of crafty Mainers.

Most Mainers in the old days, working people had to do five things to make a decent living and to raise a family.

My father used to say, if your hands can do what your mind envisions, then life will always be good for you.

You'll always have some money in your pocket, you'll always have a meal.

You can always take care of your family.

So make your hands do what your mind envisions and the rest will be easy.

When I got a little older, I was too old to be a ship's boy and too young to get a Z card as a merchant seaman.

So I ended up working on fishing boats and charter boats down in Florida and shrimpers.

And then I worked a couple of big schooners and sail caught me at that point.

And I only worked big ships, freighters and so forth a few times after that.

And the rest of the time has been pretty much on the sail.

In the 1820s, 1830s when the old sailors were retired and had lost a limb, of course they didn't have the programs like they have now, but you could get a government issued leg.

And these were used right up into the Civil War.

And of course after that, modern prosthetics began to come in.

But that was used for many years.

I went to Vietnam, I was in Vietnam for a year and that was enough.

Vietnam changes everybody.

Anybody that went to Vietnam, particularly in a combat arm, you're never gonna be the same again.

So I couldn't wait to go back to sea after three years.

You know, a job in my life was, a two week job was a career.

But, you know, whatever I was doing, I was a blacksmith, a short order cook, I did all these crazy jobs, but I always ended up with a seabag on my back.

I always ended up going back on the water.

And I'm not the old man of the sea.

There are much better ship handlers out there than I am.

There are people with a multitude of years and miles of experience at sea that I'll never have.

Where they have this locker here, there used to be stacks of lobster traps.

And when I would come to Maine back in the '70s and well into the '80s, and I would take the lobster traps that were here and I would rearrange 'em a little bit so I could get right in the middle of the lobster traps.

And I always carried my seabag with me, and I would lay my seabag down as a pillow, and I would have a nice jacket I could put over me and I would sleep here at night.

Because, I had enough money to come up here and to kick around and to buy gas.

But I didn't have enough money to buy hotel rooms.

And so this was where I stayed.

Everybody has their own astrological sign.

Well mine, I was born under the sign of the scrounge.

I keep salvaging and gathering things and they have to go somewhere, so it piles up all around me.

In Baltimore, they hired me as the curator of Inner Harbor Historic Properties and Exhibits, which is a $2 title for the city's maritime historian.

Baltimore was a great town to find stuff in in those days 'cause they were closing a lot of the old shipyards.

And so, all kinds of great stuff was coming to light.

And I began gathering it and I'd been gathering stuff for years for other dealers.

So I thought, why don't I just do my own shop?

This sword, it's probably late 18th or early 19th century.

This was used to execute pirates on the beach in Hong Kong.

In 1897, a large group of pirates were beheaded on the beach they were called the Namoa pirates.

And I still have photographs of it.

And when the Japanese invaded China during the fight leading up to World War II, and they used it to execute prisoners.

And this was being used up until it was surrendered to the American Army, Japan in 1945.

The years went on and I had the business going and I was doing quite well.

And friends of mine, they took me off to a bar and I met this nice girl, and we just hit it off.

And so we ran off to the Caribbean together and spent some time and formed kind of a bond.

I just wanted to come home, I wanted to come back to Maine and Sharon said, "You're going to Maine, I'm going with you."

So we both came to Maine and I found a house.

I found a 225, 250 year old house here in Maine and finally, after being together for 30, 35 years, we finally got married.

It's the best thing I ever did.

We set up over on Dana Street where the chandlery had been for Chase Levitt and Company, an old marine business.

But they eventually had to sell the building.

When they sold the building of course we were out.

So we closed up downtown about 10 years ago and I worked out of the barn here for some time.

But we never really set up a store here.

The idea was to build another building on the other side of the house.

And I built the barn and of course, you know, we had this 240-year-old house or whatever it is, and we built the barn that kind of went with it.

But I built that as workshop and studio.

So that's where I do my painting, that's where I do the restoration work.

But I always have things to fix.

I always have things to restore.

Also, I still do carving.

I still occasionally do a ships figurehead.

I do name boards for ships.

Lately I've been restoring 17th and 18th century firearms.

That's just kind of weird.

But I love the technology of it.

I love the primitive technology.

(gentle music) (bang) Does a ship have soul?

The ship by itself?

No, it doesn't.

It has what you put in it, it has what people put in it, it has what it does and how it changes life around them.

You know, it's only just a bunch of wood and metal if that's what you let it be.

There's a stack of telescopes over here, including probably the oldest telescope in America.

The things those scopes have seen, they can't tell you.

But when you get to know them and when you end up using them, when you end up researching them, finding out more about them, when you end up restoring them, that's when you get to know them.

And you realize that the soul that ships, and artifacts, and tools have is largely what you and I put in them.

History is so important.

We need to know what the past was for our own future.

The material culture of the past.

The things that we've created are pretty important for where we're going.

This is from, "Youth" by Joseph Conrad.

"We all began life in the merchant service.

Between the five of us, there was the strong bond of the sea and also the fellowship of the craft, which no amount of enthusiasm for yachting, cruising and so on can give, since one is only the amusement of life and the other is life itself."

(mellow music)