To the editor:
My goodwife Audrey and I always enjoy reading Barbara Fernald’s “Cranberry Report.” We have a few additions to Barbara’s last report that focused on Ricky Alley’s fishing boat diorama that he built for the Oceanarium.
The first addition is about when Ricky built the first artful diorama (with its six model boats showing different ways people could fish other than lobster fishing), his son Jeremy was three years old. When Ricky brought the diorama in to the Oceanarium from Islesford, he explained that it took him longer to get it made than he had expected. “Every time I made a boat for you,” he explained, “I had to make another one for Jeremy!”
Then, not too many weeks after that first exhibit was set in place, but before it had its Plexiglas covering it, we had a call from a local scallop fisherman who explained he had been arrested for dragging in a cable zone. The fisherman explained to me that while his boat was near the cable, the drag was well out of the forbidden zone.
The man was going to court to argue his cause, and had called to see if we had anything at the Oceanarium that would help him before the judge. One of the boats Ricky had made was a model scallop boat with a nearly perfect scale model of a scallop drag out behind it. We carefully disconnected that boat and drag from the exhibit, packaged it up, the fisherman took it to court where he set it up on a stool, and won his case! Blessings!
One other addition to the account of the original diorama, the Oceanarium was founded and is still being directed and operated by my goodwife Audrey and me together.
God bless the fishermen in all their skills and trials!
David Mills
Co-Director, Mount Desert Oceanarium