Photo courtesy of National Sea Products

I left the fish plant because you were working under a boss, and some of the bosses wasn't too easy to get along with. I'd be on the skinner and in four or five hours I'd have my 133, which was 100 percent plus your 33 percent - you get full bonus. I'd always get 133. And then I'd probably be up on the weights helping, and I'd do a few pans for the other skinner. I'd say, "Pass us over a few pans, b'y,"or I'd say to the weigher, "Mark down a few pans in her name." We always tried to help everyone get the 133. I couldn't make another cent. I just had to punch time. They get hard on you if you're the one they can depend on, seem like that's the ones they push the most. They weren't satisfied, if they thought they could get 333, they wanted that out of you too. You'd prefer to keep yourself busy helping somebody else rather than working for the company. Once I just went on and I got 230 and that didn't make sense. And here is the next person scrambling and hardly getting 100 or really having it tough to get 133. You know, you get those old flounder, those yellow tails, they were hard to separate.

I used to say to Gerald, "Suppose if I quits the plant and goes out in the boat? If I can't do it, I'll gladly go back in the plant and step out of the boat again just as fast as I got in." That was up in the early part of the '80s.

He said, "I don't think you can do it. I know it's not hard work for me, but I think it would be a bit strenuous for you."

At that time we had to haul our lump nets by hand. I said, "I can give it a try - the most I can do. I can get back in the plant tomorrow."

I can remember when Gerald and his brother was at it, they used to haul 18 nets. They didn't have a lobster licence, they just had groundfish. They'd haul 18 lump nets and it would take all day to haul them. It was always three or four lump coming over the gunners all the time. I used to work the night shift, and in the daytime I'd get up and take off; we used to have to truck our fish then. We'd truck it to Grand Bank and some years we'd truck it to Fortune, depending on the prices and things like that. They'd come in dinner time, they'd probably have 1200, 1300 pounds. I'd take that to Fortune and by the time I came back it would probably be 3:00 or 3:30. I'd get the kids, get their suppers, and then be off to work at the plant soon as he come through the door. I wouldn't get home till 5:30 or 6:00 the next morning, go to bed for a couple of hours, up at 9:30. It wasn't easy.