Boom Truck Heaven
Reprinted and edited from Fish House Opera by S. West and B. Garrity-Blake, Mystic Seaport Press, 2003
Sirens shattered the easy beat of waves lapping on the shore. Locals and off-the-beaten path curiosity seekers slid from the hoods of cars, called their children off the road, and checked their cameras. Everybody looked down the twisted lane between the gnarled oaks and longleaf pines. A boy popping wheelies held the bike still, his breath hanging in short puffs in the February air. A man wearing a flannel coat lifted a toddler to his left shoulder. Children stood on tiptoe or darted daringly into the empty road and back.
A herky-jerky monster rounded the bend and the crowd caught their first glimpse of the boom truck parade, a metallic blaze of vehicles festooned with banners, flags, and steamy smoke. The crowd sang out in hoots and howls as the motley procession approached, escorted by a Cedar i
Island Volunteer Fire Department engine. Unique spray-painted designs and crepe paper frills adorned each truck, but all the decorations in the world couldn't have masked the scars from punishing labor in the no nonsense world of fishing.
“For those of you who don't know what a boom truck is,” wrote Cedar Island reporter Ed Butler, “and that's most of mankind, it's a rusty old pickup truck in whose bed is installed a battery-powered winch used for heavy lifting. “The boom is usually welded onto an otherwise retired truck, but “Benny Styron once crammed a boom into the trunk of his sorry Oldsmobile and it worked just fine.”
Boom trucks are as natural to Carteret County fishing villages as skiffs in the yard, nets webbed between trees, and stacks of crab pots piled beside sheds. The mechanical workhorses tug heavy diesel engines out of vessels, toss pound nets onto boats, and yank tree stumps out of the ground. These street trawlers are the fishermen's jury-rigged beasts of burden, born out of necessity and kept alive by whatever it takes -- daily quarts of oil, baling wire, duct tape. Some boom trucks haven't seen an inspection sticker in years, and chug from house to dock in Cedar Island like junkyard refugees with a second lease on life. Despite their great utility, fishermen never considered the lowly, taken-for-granted boom truck worthy of celebration. That changed in 1996.
When he came to Cedar Island’s United Methodist Church, Reverend Bob Carpenter found himself charmed by the remote fishing village he now ministered. Six bridges from the town of Beaufort via a meandering two-lane road through the villages of Bettie, Otway, Smyrna, Davis, and Stacy, past wide expanses of marsh and knots of yaupon and myrtle bushes, lies Cedar Island -- the farthest flung and easternmost point of Down East Carteret County.
Down East is named from pre-bridge days when villagers sailed wooden sharpies and skiffs to Beaufort for supplies, then set their snow white sails for home eastward toward Harkers Island and beyond. “I'd ride all the way on the mail boat from Beaufort to Cedar Island where my grandmother lived,” recalled historian Thelma Simpson. First inhabited by Coree Indians, then English settlers, water-bound villages like Harkers Island, Marshallberg, Atlantic, and Cedar Island retain their uniqueness, especially in the villagers’ clipped Elizabethan brogue.
“One day when I was a little girl visiting, it was the lowest tide,” Simpson reflected. “My grandmother asked, ‘Why don't you go crabbing?’ She fixed me an old dishpan, tied a string on it, and said, ‘Just drag this along behind you. In every little hole you see rake that seaweed away and you'll find a crab.’ Directly I had that dish pan full of crabs and grandmother couldn't believe it. She supplied everyone with crabs.”
Cedar Islanders no longer survive solely on gardens, livestock, barters, and generosities. But a spirit of neighborliness and trust prevails. Few people lock their doors or bother removing car keys from ignitions. The tranquility of cedar island was briefly shattered in 1986 when retired postmaster Ralph ray Palmer was shot seven times. Local songwriter Red Daniels, heartbroken by his friend’s murder, immortalized Palmer in the ballad “Eureka I’ve Found It.” “The boy that murdered Ralphie wasn't from here,” Red Daniels said, his prized American National guitar in his lap. “He was imported.”
If not for the state ferry terminal at the end of Cedar Island, launching loads of people to Ocracoke and Hatteras Island, few tourists would run across the boom truck capital of the world. But Cedar Island’s salty flavor impressed Reverend Carpenter. He had been transported to a place and time where no one had much money but everyone knew the names of each other’s in-laws, children, and dogs. He noticed that the Islanders communicated with few words, throwing a couple of fingers up to wave at a passerby, speaking well-worn short shorthand at the general store, and reading volumes from each other’s glances. But the community's idyllic surface did not blind him to a hint of unease that played around the eyes of villagers.
“Every day I look into the faces of these people, the fishermen,” Carpenter reflected. “It is if I can see the end of them.”
It did not take the Reverend long to sense an undertow beneath the stillness of Cedar Island life. It pulled strongest in the winter months when harsh nor'easters kept boats tide to docks and restless men home. “Supposed to clear up directly,” husbands say to wives, trying not to think about unpaid Christmas bills and depleted bank accounts. Most fishermen, raised to make do with what they have, wait out the bad blows and choppy seas. Others, driven by the salt water in their veins and unbearably thin wallets, do not. “If you listen to the weather you'll starve,” fishermen say. “If you don't listen to it, you'll drown.”
The Josephine had seen better days. She was a rickety wooden trawler whose swelled hold had been filled with fish and shrimp a thousand times over. Some say the Pamlico County boat had no business plying the unfriendly February seas off Beaufort, while others say the captain had little choice.
“People may wonder why the crew of the Josephine were out in such weather,” said fisherman Doc Saunders of Atlantic. “The answer is the system. Short seasons on flounder fishing have caused a rush to work in the few winter days that are allowed.” Saunders referred to a federal management system that apportioned each state a quota on the pounds of flounder that could be landed. The quota could be filled in a matter of days. If fishermen did not catch their share, they would be shut out until the next season. They no longer had the luxury of waiting for smooth seas and clear skies.
“Either work, regardless of weather conditions,” said Saunders laying out the choices. “Or don't work at all.”
The captain and crew of the Josephine were towing for flounder when the sky threw a tantrum and the seas cranked up. The vessel, tossed about like a bathtub toy, simply came apart. No one survived and one body was never found.
“She broke up about 15 miles off Cape lookout,” said Carteret County storyteller Sonny Williamson. “A 40 foot section of the boat washed ashore a few weeks after hurricane Bonnie. I had the honor of transporting the family out to Cape lookout to see the remains of that vessel.”
“Who's to blame for this?” asked Doc Saunders. Tough questions always followed a tragedy at sea. Could the captain have used better judgment? Could policymakers be a little flexible in their rulings especially for winter fisheries? Could the Coast Guard have acted faster? “I guess all of us are to blame,” he concluded.
Only days before the Josphine went down, the boom truck parade took place. Reverend Carpenter chose a Saturday in February as a diversion for restless Waterman.
“We wanted to give the fishermen some way of breaking the February monotony,” he said, explaining the odd parade. “Fishermen are workaholics and the wintertime is tough. We needed to do something to overcome their cabin fever.” Time seems to crawl in February when the cold leaches the color out of the sea and turns the marsh brown -- all the better to set off the garish colors of a dressed-up boom truck.
Like a scene out of The Road Warrior, the boom trucks, tires screeching and engines groaning, chugged towards the crowd. One truck bumped into another and nobody seemed to care. A blur of rust, busted headlights, missing doors, and swinging hooks and chains rushed past the crowd. Wet paint, plastic alligators, “area closed to fishing” signs, and Confederate flags were the regalia of the day. Some entrants barely met the contest’s only rule: trucks had to be self-propelled, not pushed, dragged, or rolled.
Imprisoned children waved from their cage on the back of “Jail Boom Truck,” a white pickup bedecked with black spray painted bars “Prisoners of commercial fishing regulations” was written on the doors. The young jailbirds tossed smiles and hard candy to the crowd, their prison-on-wheels covered in black balloons and a sign that read, “keep us free.”
The “Honey Wagon” was a ribald display featuring a septic pump ridden by a life-sized inflatable woman. The doll, popping out of a toilet seat, looked shocked to be wearing a bikini in February.
“Boom Truck Heaven” won Best in Show. The truck was an unearthly mix of angel wings, greasy cables, halos, and heavy chains. It roared past a dejected and disqualified entry parked in a side yard. “That truck was kicked out of the parade because of what it said, I reckon,” explained an observer. “Hellbound,” was blazoned on its side.
Amid the entourage of burning oil and roaring engines rolled a sports utility vehicle carrying Miss Seafood Festival. “I thought we could get her into a boom truck,” said Reverend Carpenter. “But the locals said, ‘This is Miss Seafood Festival! We're not going to put her in a boom truck! We will get her a nice car.’” Accustomed to the carefully orchestrated North Carolina Seafood Festival in Morehead City, the tiara-crowned beauty smiled stiffly, unable to conceal her wariness over this unconventional escort through the marshlands.
The parade was over in a matter of minutes. A wake of diesel fumes, mingled with the smell of spray paint, hung over the crowd. “Last year we got here late and missed the parade,” said Brenda Pigott, whose husband Crawford had died in the fall of 1996 while at the wheel of his trawler Bay Rambler. “This year I made sure to be here on time. I don't want to miss out on the deer meat although I never have cared for duck strew with rutabagas.” She joined the rest of the spectators at the Cedar Island Community Center where a feast of roast pig, venison, wild duck, clam chowder, and oysters awaited.
After the judging, with prizes awarded and all bellies full, Reverend Carpenter sat at a picnic table staring at the second piece of cake an elderly woman had brought him. The flotilla of boom truck sat quietly in the gravel parking lot, decorations drooping and cooling engines ticking as their day of glory wound down.
“Oh Lord,” Carpenter groaned.
“I'll take that cake if you don't want it,” said 17 year old Charles Garner. Garner was jazzed from winning “worst in show” for his skeleton of a jalopy held together by rust, rope, warning signs, and day-glow paint. “This is only the second year I’ve entered,” said Garner, a clammer’s son and himself a seasoned fisherman. “Winning worst ain’t bad.” He proudly showed off his plaque engraved with a poem.
Lord, thank you for this wrecked old truck
The scratches and dents bring me good luck
The boom in the sky is the source of my pride
As me and my truck keep watch o’er the tide
We all know my truck ain't what it was, Lord
The sad day is coming when it won't start
The boom I will move to adorn my wife's Ford
But no dumb car is comin’ close to my heart
Reverend Carpenter slid his slice of cake down to the kid. Now that the festivities were over, the minister's boyish face looked tired. It had been a tough year. Not content to stay within the quiet confines of his island congregation, Carpenter had begun testifying at fisheries hearings. One year earlier he had accompanied busloads of families to the capital city of Raleigh for the biggest protest march in anyone's memory. To Down East fisherman, who put a lot of stock in faith and prayer, the Reverend was nothing short of a gift from God. But Carpenter, newly baptized in the fiendish fires of fish politics, was not so sure
“In my 18 years of ministry, I have never seen anything to match what the government has been doing to small-scale commercial fishermen,” he reflected. The preacher looked out over the thinning group men in work boots, kids racing around trees, women chatting and smoking cigarettes. Cedar island was one of a whole constellation of tiny Carolina fishing towns tucked into the marshes and behind beaches, shining small and steady amid the ever-changing push and pull of resort cities and high-dollar developments Carpenter worried about the future of places like Cedar Island, full of people who didn't ask a lot of the world and who found heaven in a boom truck.
“I feel,” Carpenter said, waving to a departing member of his congregation. “like a witness to a killing.”
