If it wasn’t for “Old Ducka” the clambake would have disappeared, never to be seen again. It was too much, having to deal with wind and rain and knocks on the fish house door. We were either going to get a reasonable facsimile of a restaurant, with a roof, or forget the whole idea. So Old Ducka definitely has got to get his due, with his own story, and here it is.
Once upon a time there was a little old man who lived in his house by the sea. In his retirement years, he made his own wooden traps in his shop and went lobstering by himself in his little boat. He would get up and out there before dawn so he could be on the lobster ground when the sun came up.
He was about 70-odd then, spare and wiry except for a little paunch from his fondness for good food. He was mostly bald, with some wispy gray hairs around the edges. He always wore his cap slightly askew, with his blue eyes twinkling behind his glasses. He walked with a jaunty gait — Charlie Chaplin style, with his chest thrust out and a rolling stroll. He reminded me very much of his namesake — namely a drake on his way to the ocean for lunch. That was Old Ducka, or Drake (Raymond Drake, to be exact) as he was always called — one, or the other or both.
Drake lived alone in his one-room house on the shore of Sands Cove, with a spectacular view of the cove, the Reach and the outer islands. He had lots of friends and befriended lots of kids in the neighborhood. Many a day Drake would bring home a mess of crabs and cook them on the rocky shore for the kids. He took the Old Man under his wing when he was five or six years old, taking to haul. Nothing could have endeared him more to a little kid who loved the sea.
Old Ducka was a character and a half, always smiling, with a trick or two up his sleeve for the unwary. He loved to round up beached pot buoys and shells and stuff gleaned from the dump. He would set them on a little table in his yard and dicker the pants off unsuspecting tourists — delighted when he made a good deal — chuckling and jingling his pockets as they drove away. He was a font of information about all sorts of things and liked nothing better than to tell you all he knew!
Now Drake was a kind-hearted soul, who had known the Old Man since he was born. One day we went to visit him, as we often did, and were talking about the clambake. Drake was there the very first day we started this scheme and maintained it was a good idea. We were bemoaning the “wind and the rain and the knocks on the door” and wishing fervently for a place to build a “real” restaurant. The perfect place would be on the shore, if there was any shore to be had for nothing!
Drake pondered this for a while and then he said “why don’t you build your restaurant in my front yard, there on the grout bank on the shore?”
“What — do you really mean it?”
Yes, he really meant it, and then and there gave up his spectacular view for the next six years so that we could have our restaurant. In turn, we provided him with plenty of company, plenty of tourists for his table, and all the seafood he could possibly eat, in addition to monetary remuneration, of course. That was the moment The Sands came into being. Old Ducka really didn’t know what he was letting himself in for, and neither did we!
The view from our soon-to-be-deck was unsurpassed anywhere on the waterfront, and it would draw people from away like a magnet. Drake’s view, however, would be blocked by our building. That didn’t seem quite right, so we made a bargain. We promised that when we were down, down the road, we would make the building disappear so he would have his view back, and we did.
In the meantime, between the appearance and disappearance of The Sands, Drake, and us and all the people who came there, had lots of fun and good times (plus plenty of hard work on our part). Needless to say, those six years produced a lot of good stories — amusing, maddening and exciting.
Old Ducka will make his appearance again in these stories about The Sands. He is gone now, but I have no doubt that he knows what a good thing he did for all of us.
— Rusty Warren
Vinalhaven