Sheldon Morse was born on Allen Point Road on Harpswell Neck. And so was his father. And so was his grandfather. They’re all fishermen.
When Sheldon was young, his father said to him, “Go to school and learn. You can always come back and go fishing.”
So Sheldon did that. When he finished high school, he started to fish off the family wharf. He would catch lobster in the summer, then go out and drag for fish and shrimp in the winter. With a big boat and the state maximum of eight hundred lobster traps, he was living the life he expected since childhood.
Then the groundfish business crashed. He had to figure out how get a little more money out of those lobsters. He thought, “You go to a restaurant and see they’re getting twenty-five dollars for a lobster and we’re getting two. Maybe we oughta start cooking some lobsters.”
Together, Sheldon and his spouse, Kathy, started cooking and selling lobsters from a trailer by their wharf in the summer. They had a five year plan: they would work hard, but when it stopped being fun, they would stop cooking lobsters. That was twenty-five years ago.
Just after entering Bailey Island from the Cribstone Bridge, Morse’s Cribstone Grill is on the left. Cars park just off the road, nearly blocking the lane on a packed summer day. You walk in the front door to a bar on the left and a hostess’ stand on the right in front of double swing doors to the kitchen. The tables are small and quaint, most of them near windows looking east toward the water. The inside is finished with a dark wood and decorated with all things coastal.
There are lobster buoys, painted white with a bright orange stripe, hanging everywhere. On the side, 138317 is painted in black. Some might see it written as LIEBEI, just like how you can see SHOES by looking at 53045 upside down on a calculator. This buoy, and many of the other decorations, are from a Canadian who occasionally brings his wares through Harpswell. Kathy has bought many decorations from him including fish boxes, lobster buoys, and glass balls. The colorful glass balls, often the size of a globe and suspended by thick rope netting, are called Japanese fishing balls. Some Japanese fishermen use the balls in long line fishing for swordfish or tuna to suspend the line at different depths. On the east coast, they are only really used for decoration, though Kathy’s father did used to have some smaller, softball-sized balls for long lining.
The Morses serve fresh seafood and lobsters just like many coastal restaurants and lobster shacks, but they have also found a niche. A small shack sits on the wharf next to the restaurant to sell live and cooked lobsters to go.
“We probably sell more cooked lobsters than we do live ones,” says Sheldon. Often, people staying at camps in Harpswell for the summer won’t have a pot big enough to cook a lobster, or they’re a little intimidated because they’ve never done it before.
People will often come by in their boats for an afternoon drink either because it’s convenient or because of the novelty of boating over to the restaurant. One woman, upon arriving by boat at low tide, came into the restaurant furious. She said, “Why in the world would you build that ramp so steep? Somebody could get hurt!” To which Sheldon replied, “Well, if you come back in six hours, it will be nice and flat.”
For the restaurant, every six months the business changes. Sheldon and Kathy open up in April and don’t get a single day off from the first of July to mid September.
“One of the downsides of seasonal work is that it’s everybody’s part time job except for us, so it’s hard to get help,” says Sheldon. They hire mostly school teachers who work in the busiest times, July and August. But at the end of August, everyone goes back to their real jobs, and it gets difficult again.
“You get really tired,” Sheldon says, “We’re used to it.”
“Not really, not really,” retorts Kathy.
Both donning plaid shirts, clean work pants, and solid Keen shoes, Sheldon and Kathy have a clean and practical look. Kathy’s long silver earrings sway and her reading glasses sit perched on her head as a headband for her short, dirty-blond waves. Sheldon’s full head of white hair frames a pink, sun-kissed face with dark eyebrows, hinting at the color his hair once was.
They originally hoped the business would grow to where it could support a manager to give Sheldon and Kathy one day off each week. Then, they could relax a little, and Sheldon could also go out fishing again.
The problem isn’t a lack of business. The restaurant could support a manager, but there just aren’t many people who are able to work only six months out of the year. In the fishing business, that’s a schedule people are used to. But everyone else expects year round work.
“It’s definitely a lot of work, but the social part of it is fun,” says Sheldon. In the shoulder seasons, the customers are mostly locals, because they don’t want to wait in line for an hour for a cheeseburger or lobster roll on a hot summer day. In the middle of the summer, the place is packed with families mostly from the northeast.
Many of the Morse’s customers have been coming for twenty years and are almost like part of the family. They’ve seen their children, Ashley and Josh, grow up. Ashley used to wait tables when she was twelve, and now has four young children. Josh used to help out fishing, and now he has taken over Sheldon’s big boat, eight hundred traps, and the fishing part of the family business. They even remember the different dogs and boats the Morses have had.
It truly is a family business. Ashley put a lot of time in both waiting tables and in the kitchen before she got married. Josh supplies most of the lobster for the restaurant, though Sheldon’s father, Sheldon Sr., still has about fifty traps and sells them some lobster too. Kathy makes the pies and desserts, and everyone pitches in to do what needs to be done.
After six months, mid-October rolls around, and business goes flat. In the off-season, they budget out enough money from the summer to pay the bills and focus on neglected maintenance projects. Sheldon used to fish in the winter a lot more, but unpredictable weather and harsher storms mean fishermen often just can’t get out on the water. Because of that, many fishermen plow snow, take care of summer cottages, and work at L.L. Bean in Freeport. Some, including Josh, work as carpenters or boatbuilders during the winter months. Something to get them through.
With all the tourists gone in the winter, it’s also much quieter. And that’s not a bad thing.
The winter is when Sheldon and Kathy finally get to take a summer vacation. They try to go down to Florida or the Carolinas each winter because they don’t get a chance to enjoy the summer in the north. In the summery warmth, they can go fishing and golf a little, “like normal people do,” says Sheldon.
If you’re driving to Harpswell in the summer, you likely won’t drive more than twenty-five miles per hour. Coming from Brunswick, the Orr’s Island Bridge is the first time you are next to the water, with the sea breeze wafting up and sun gleaming off the bays’ rippling seas. At this spot which connects Orr’s and Bailey Islands to the rest of Maine, people slam on their brakes and just sit there. Tourists putting along the coastal roads makes it hard for residents to get into town when they’re in a hurry. A line of twenty cars going twenty miles per hour with bicycles and sightseers in the shoulder is Harpswell’s version of city traffic.
Six months later, you might not see a single car on the half hour drive to town.
When Sheldon was growing up, his father had a long drive to go fishing in the winter. Before the inland waters froze, he moved his fishing boat from their wharf on Allen Point Road to Mackerel Cove down on Bailey Island. Before 1974, the only way to get to Bailey Island was by driving all the way up to Cook’s Corner and back down through Sebascodegan and Orr’s Islands to Bailey Island. Sheldon Sr. would leave early in the morning, drive all the way up and back down to Mackerel Cove. There, he would check on the boat and talk with the other guys checking on their boats. They’d talk about the weather and if tomorrow would be good for fishing. They’d talk about how the lobsters are and whatever other fish they were catching at that time. By the time he drove all the way up and around back home, it was already night time. The 1974 construction of the Ewing Narrows Bridge cut that drive in half. By connecting western Sebascodegan Island to Harpswell Neck, the bridge connected the different communities of Harpswell.
As a child during those winters, Sheldon would go to school at the West Harpswell School. There weren’t many kids there at the time. The class above him had only a dozen students so they would have two classes in the same room.
He had his grandmother as a teacher there one year.
“That was a long year,” he says.
But now, there are so few students in the town that they had to close the school. It has recently become the Harpswell Coastal Academy charter school.
The school closing is rooted in the town’s aging and declining population. There aren’t many full time natives left. And those who are still around all year are mostly retirees, meaning there are few children in the town. Many people will spend July and August in Harpswell, though some stay half the year. People often have a second house in Costa Rica or Florida or somewhere else warm to escape the Maine winter. Many southern New Englanders have also retired in Maine after getting tired of the fast paced lifestyle to the south. In some ways, the old and new folks in the Harpswell community mesh together. Some of Sheldon and Kathy’s good friends have moved up from other places.
When Josh finished high school, Sheldon said the same thing that his father had said to him, “Go to college and learn to do something else. You can always come back and go fishing.” So he did. He studied boatbuilding at Husson University downeast in Eastport. While there, he made a meter long model boat hull. He considered putting a weed whacker motor in it and racing it around, but instead, the sleek blue painted hull hangs in the restaurant office. He graduated in 2007 when the economy nose-dived, causing many boatbuilding places to go under, and leaving very few jobs for people like Josh.
He came back and said, “Ok, I’m ready to go fishing.”
When Sheldon was young, his father said to him, “Go to school and learn. You can always come back and go fishing.”
So Sheldon did that. When he finished high school, he started to fish off the family wharf. He would catch lobster in the summer, then go out and drag for fish and shrimp in the winter. With a big boat and the state maximum of eight hundred lobster traps, he was living the life he expected since childhood.
Then the groundfish business crashed. He had to figure out how get a little more money out of those lobsters. He thought, “You go to a restaurant and see they’re getting twenty-five dollars for a lobster and we’re getting two. Maybe we oughta start cooking some lobsters.”
Together, Sheldon and his spouse, Kathy, started cooking and selling lobsters from a trailer by their wharf in the summer. They had a five year plan: they would work hard, but when it stopped being fun, they would stop cooking lobsters. That was twenty-five years ago.
Just after entering Bailey Island from the Cribstone Bridge, Morse’s Cribstone Grill is on the left. Cars park just off the road, nearly blocking the lane on a packed summer day. You walk in the front door to a bar on the left and a hostess’ stand on the right in front of double swing doors to the kitchen. The tables are small and quaint, most of them near windows looking east toward the water. The inside is finished with a dark wood and decorated with all things coastal.
There are lobster buoys, painted white with a bright orange stripe, hanging everywhere. On the side, 138317 is painted in black. Some might see it written as LIEBEI, just like how you can see SHOES by looking at 53045 upside down on a calculator. This buoy, and many of the other decorations, are from a Canadian who occasionally brings his wares through Harpswell. Kathy has bought many decorations from him including fish boxes, lobster buoys, and glass balls. The colorful glass balls, often the size of a globe and suspended by thick rope netting, are called Japanese fishing balls. Some Japanese fishermen use the balls in long line fishing for swordfish or tuna to suspend the line at different depths. On the east coast, they are only really used for decoration, though Kathy’s father did used to have some smaller, softball-sized balls for long lining.
The Morses serve fresh seafood and lobsters just like many coastal restaurants and lobster shacks, but they have also found a niche. A small shack sits on the wharf next to the restaurant to sell live and cooked lobsters to go.
“We probably sell more cooked lobsters than we do live ones,” says Sheldon. Often, people staying at camps in Harpswell for the summer won’t have a pot big enough to cook a lobster, or they’re a little intimidated because they’ve never done it before.
People will often come by in their boats for an afternoon drink either because it’s convenient or because of the novelty of boating over to the restaurant. One woman, upon arriving by boat at low tide, came into the restaurant furious. She said, “Why in the world would you build that ramp so steep? Somebody could get hurt!” To which Sheldon replied, “Well, if you come back in six hours, it will be nice and flat.”
For the restaurant, every six months the business changes. Sheldon and Kathy open up in April and don’t get a single day off from the first of July to mid September.
“One of the downsides of seasonal work is that it’s everybody’s part time job except for us, so it’s hard to get help,” says Sheldon. They hire mostly school teachers who work in the busiest times, July and August. But at the end of August, everyone goes back to their real jobs, and it gets difficult again.
“You get really tired,” Sheldon says, “We’re used to it.”
“Not really, not really,” retorts Kathy.
Both donning plaid shirts, clean work pants, and solid Keen shoes, Sheldon and Kathy have a clean and practical look. Kathy’s long silver earrings sway and her reading glasses sit perched on her head as a headband for her short, dirty-blond waves. Sheldon’s full head of white hair frames a pink, sun-kissed face with dark eyebrows, hinting at the color his hair once was.
They originally hoped the business would grow to where it could support a manager to give Sheldon and Kathy one day off each week. Then, they could relax a little, and Sheldon could also go out fishing again.
The problem isn’t a lack of business. The restaurant could support a manager, but there just aren’t many people who are able to work only six months out of the year. In the fishing business, that’s a schedule people are used to. But everyone else expects year round work.
“It’s definitely a lot of work, but the social part of it is fun,” says Sheldon. In the shoulder seasons, the customers are mostly locals, because they don’t want to wait in line for an hour for a cheeseburger or lobster roll on a hot summer day. In the middle of the summer, the place is packed with families mostly from the northeast.
Many of the Morse’s customers have been coming for twenty years and are almost like part of the family. They’ve seen their children, Ashley and Josh, grow up. Ashley used to wait tables when she was twelve, and now has four young children. Josh used to help out fishing, and now he has taken over Sheldon’s big boat, eight hundred traps, and the fishing part of the family business. They even remember the different dogs and boats the Morses have had.
It truly is a family business. Ashley put a lot of time in both waiting tables and in the kitchen before she got married. Josh supplies most of the lobster for the restaurant, though Sheldon’s father, Sheldon Sr., still has about fifty traps and sells them some lobster too. Kathy makes the pies and desserts, and everyone pitches in to do what needs to be done.
After six months, mid-October rolls around, and business goes flat. In the off-season, they budget out enough money from the summer to pay the bills and focus on neglected maintenance projects. Sheldon used to fish in the winter a lot more, but unpredictable weather and harsher storms mean fishermen often just can’t get out on the water. Because of that, many fishermen plow snow, take care of summer cottages, and work at L.L. Bean in Freeport. Some, including Josh, work as carpenters or boatbuilders during the winter months. Something to get them through.
With all the tourists gone in the winter, it’s also much quieter. And that’s not a bad thing.
The winter is when Sheldon and Kathy finally get to take a summer vacation. They try to go down to Florida or the Carolinas each winter because they don’t get a chance to enjoy the summer in the north. In the summery warmth, they can go fishing and golf a little, “like normal people do,” says Sheldon.
If you’re driving to Harpswell in the summer, you likely won’t drive more than twenty-five miles per hour. Coming from Brunswick, the Orr’s Island Bridge is the first time you are next to the water, with the sea breeze wafting up and sun gleaming off the bays’ rippling seas. At this spot which connects Orr’s and Bailey Islands to the rest of Maine, people slam on their brakes and just sit there. Tourists putting along the coastal roads makes it hard for residents to get into town when they’re in a hurry. A line of twenty cars going twenty miles per hour with bicycles and sightseers in the shoulder is Harpswell’s version of city traffic.
Six months later, you might not see a single car on the half hour drive to town.
When Sheldon was growing up, his father had a long drive to go fishing in the winter. Before the inland waters froze, he moved his fishing boat from their wharf on Allen Point Road to Mackerel Cove down on Bailey Island. Before 1974, the only way to get to Bailey Island was by driving all the way up to Cook’s Corner and back down through Sebascodegan and Orr’s Islands to Bailey Island. Sheldon Sr. would leave early in the morning, drive all the way up and back down to Mackerel Cove. There, he would check on the boat and talk with the other guys checking on their boats. They’d talk about the weather and if tomorrow would be good for fishing. They’d talk about how the lobsters are and whatever other fish they were catching at that time. By the time he drove all the way up and around back home, it was already night time. The 1974 construction of the Ewing Narrows Bridge cut that drive in half. By connecting western Sebascodegan Island to Harpswell Neck, the bridge connected the different communities of Harpswell.
As a child during those winters, Sheldon would go to school at the West Harpswell School. There weren’t many kids there at the time. The class above him had only a dozen students so they would have two classes in the same room.
He had his grandmother as a teacher there one year.
“That was a long year,” he says.
But now, there are so few students in the town that they had to close the school. It has recently become the Harpswell Coastal Academy charter school.
The school closing is rooted in the town’s aging and declining population. There aren’t many full time natives left. And those who are still around all year are mostly retirees, meaning there are few children in the town. Many people will spend July and August in Harpswell, though some stay half the year. People often have a second house in Costa Rica or Florida or somewhere else warm to escape the Maine winter. Many southern New Englanders have also retired in Maine after getting tired of the fast paced lifestyle to the south. In some ways, the old and new folks in the Harpswell community mesh together. Some of Sheldon and Kathy’s good friends have moved up from other places.
When Josh finished high school, Sheldon said the same thing that his father had said to him, “Go to college and learn to do something else. You can always come back and go fishing.” So he did. He studied boatbuilding at Husson University downeast in Eastport. While there, he made a meter long model boat hull. He considered putting a weed whacker motor in it and racing it around, but instead, the sleek blue painted hull hangs in the restaurant office. He graduated in 2007 when the economy nose-dived, causing many boatbuilding places to go under, and leaving very few jobs for people like Josh.
He came back and said, “Ok, I’m ready to go fishing.”