Tony Gallace grew up in Waldoboro on Depot Street. He rode the bus, and when he was big enough, he rode his bike to Miller School, Friendship Street School, and A.D. Gray. His father Peter Gallace was a plumber in town in construction and knew everybody. He’d worked in everybody’s house, too. His mother Sherry Gallace worked for the Post Office. And she also knew everybody. So, anything Tony did as a kid, he was already scolded for before he got home. In high school, he played all the sports, but as Tony admits, he wasn’t very good. His brother was the athlete, and his sister, the socialite. Tony, in his words, was good at working. Fixing things and building things, the kinds of work his father did. He learned skills from his dad, and he learned to work hard, too – two qualities which have held him in good stead, whether he’s fishing, supervising repairs on foreclosed homes or any of the other projects he undertakes. And just like his mother, all along, he’s worked at the Post Office. The acorn indeed fell close to the tree.
Sometime, way before high school, I got a chance to be on a fishing boat. One of my dad’s friends needed help for the summer, and he’d take me out from daylight until 5:00 or 6:00 at night, and then we’d stay on the islands, and come back at dawn. I always remembered that.
The experience of being on the water…you might be out there in the middle of the porpoise migration, thousands of them. Or in the middle of flocks of flying sea ducks. Or see the deer swimming to the islands. And everybody out on their boats.
I was fourteen or sixteen when me and my buddies would take out a 14-foot skiff to go to a beach, have food, camp out for the weekend. We lived like kings in the middle of nowhere. Maybe there’d be an island, some sand, and we’d just pull up, set up a big campfire, and it felt like the 4th of July weekend when you’re out with all your friends, eating the seafood that you’ve just caught, having the time of your life.
Well, after graduation, I went tuna fishing; caught a whole bunch of tuna; went shrimping. I went on the ‘Candy Bee,’ to seine for herring. And then I felt done with that. Sometime later, the ‘Candy Bee’ sunk, and everybody on her died.
Around that time, my father died. He got stung by a bee and died instantly. He was in his forties, and I was in my twenties. I took over his business for a little while, but I didn’t really like it, so my mom suggested I work at the Post Office. And my father had always said, “Take a regular job because you can’t depend on the construction business.” He’d gone through the ‘70s and ‘80s when there was so little construction work that they almost starved to death. So, I signed on with the Post Office.
But I still went lobstering on the weekends with guys from school who were fishermen. I remember being with them on a boat, just when the sun was coming up and you could see about ten or fifteen islands, and I said, “Man, that’s looking pretty.”
My friends didn’t see what I saw. But then I realized it was the only thing they had ever seen. They didn’t see what I was used to seeing, working with my father and going under trailers, dealing with frozen pipes, face to face with rats’ ire, and raccoons, and feces and everything. They didn’t have that.
A lot of my friends are struggling with addiction. And it’s tough for them. They’re overdosing and dying. Two days ago, a friend overdosed. And I have a funeral to go to next week for someone else I used to work with.
In fishing and construction, there’s a lot of injuries. As a result, there’s addiction. It’s something I’ve faced after a series of injuries, at a time when I thought there was no other alternative.
In the end, I had to stop doing construction. But I have a job at the Post Office, and lot of people don’t have that luxury. They have to keep doing that kind of work that can injure them.
For me, in leaving that behind, it’s helped to know what I have. I think about my Uncle George. He was a fisherman in his mid-30s, in the prime of his life. Then, he went deer hunting, fell out of a tree stand, and got paralyzed the rest of his life. From the waist down. As a kid, I would see him sitting on the sofa and he would always sit off to the side.
I wasn’t a very good dancer when we had a party, but I’d still get up and try because he had always said to me, “I’d give anything to get on that dance floor. You have no idea what I would give to get up and dance, or walk, or whatever.”
Uncle George would have loved to have walked over there and sleep in that hammock tonight. He makes me think, “Geez, that guy – all the normal things we take for granted – he would die to do them again.” When my father died, I thought the same thing.
People don’t appreciate what we have any more. Like, when I go down Friendship Road doing the mail, I’m looking at the road but also at the water. People pass me, and I can tell they’re pissed off because they didn’t get their latte right at Dunkin’ Donuts. I can tell they don’t care about anything else. They are so angry about life. And they don’t know anything different.
Remember when we were kids? We were disconnected for the whole summer. We just went outside and played, and we came home when we were hungry. There was nothing about, “Why didn’t you answer my call? Why didn’t you press “like” on my Facebook post?”
People don’t know how to park and put their feet in the water. They don’t think to make a stop at Chickawaukie on the way to Walmart. The other day I went shopping with my grandson and we pulled up to the landing, fooled around a while in the water and had a little barbecue with hotdogs.
It doesn’t have to be go-go-go all the time. You don’t have to mad all the time because it didn’t work out as planned. It’s fine when it doesn’t work out as planned.
And having no plans is fine, too, like sitting outside of my house last night and having a cook-out with my family, with people going by beeping the horn and everybody wishing everybody well. For an afternoon, everybody’s happy. And without buying all this fancy stuff either. They’re just out in the day, enjoying it.
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