| Original Full Text | Oral History Interview Transcript Course Title: Energy in World Civilizations Institution: University of Chicago Student Name: Owen Fahey Interview Date: May 19, 2024 Transcript of Owen Fahey interviewing Joseph Fahey on 5/19/2024 over ZoomO: What's your relationship to Woods Hole and with your background in the area?J: I was born there in 1966. There's a town called Falmouth and within Falmouth there are acertain number of villages. I don't remember how many… 11? or 13? The place that I livedinitially was really low status. Now it's high status, which is kind of funny, but it was calledFalmouth Heights. So I grew up in Falmouth Heights, but my favorite place in Falmouth wasWoods Hole and so I would go hang out there a lot. People knew Woods Hole because it'swhere the ferry goes to Martha's Vineyard. I was born there in 1966 and I lived there until Iwas 14 and then I spent four summers there after that. Two years in my own house, then wehad to sell it and then two years at my friend Geoff’s house. So that got me to 18. There's alot of things about it, but that's sort of the intro of why it's a place for me… there's a crazystory of how we got there.O:What do you mean?J:My parents were low-income school teachers. My father had a difficult life,but my mother was very ambitious and so my mother came up with this idea of buying ahouse. This was the 60s, so it was very much sort of a hippie community and what peoplewould do is they would live in a boarding house for the summer. So my mother got this idea.She bought this house with a bunch of bedrooms and they rented out rooms to people. Theyhad four [other] kids but they rented out rooms to people. But it turned out they took like theworst summer in the history of Cape Cod to do this. At the end of the summer, they hadn'trented out enough rooms. So instead of moving back to where they were from they ended upjust staying in Falmouth and selling their house and staying where they were. So that's howthey moved to Falmouth. They bought a boarding house but then they didn't have enoughmoney to move the family back to their old house, so they just stayed in the boarding house.O:Where were they before?J: It's a good question. It's one of the suburbs of Boston, if you said it I'd remember it. Theywere raising their children in this suburb of Boston and then my mom had this dream ofgetting rich in real estate and having this boarding house. And then of course it failed andthat's how that's the reason I was born in Falmouth is because my parents had ended uphaving to move there because they ran out of money.O: Could you tell me a bit about Falmouth and what the area was like? What was thecommunity like? What would people do? What was the way of life of the place?J: Yeah, so you were raised in Los Angeles and if you get in your car in Los Angeles andyou start at the ocean and drive for four hours, you're still in the outskirts of Los Angeles,right? It just goes on and on and on and on and on. My town was a very defined town. Therewas water on most sides and where there wasn't water, there was woods. The town was verydefined physically. It was I don't I'm gonna get this wrong but the wintertime population was20,000 people and then like the July 4th population was like 130,000 people. So most of thetime nine months a year, 10 months a year, there was nobody around.I would walk in the middle of the street and take my dog to the harbor, which was a centralpart of the town. There'd be nobody there. It was very desolate, not desolate. It's really notthe right word. It was like being in a museum piece, right? There's a song by Morresey called“Everyday is like Sunday.”1 It was like that. It was gray and nothing was going on andnobody was around in this small town and then come Memorial Day, there would be peopleeverywhere. The roads would be crowded and there'd be people in yachts, people asking fordirections and just a ton of tourists. There were advantages and disadvantages too, buttourism was really the central feature of the town. The defining feature found within Wood'sHole.1 Lyrics provided at the end of the documentThe other weird thing about Wood's Hole is that it's one of the most important places formarine biology. [U]Chicago has bought or is affiliated with one of the big research institutesthere. I always forget if it's Wood's Hole Oceanographic Institute or Marine Biological Labs.2There are dozens of people with PhDs who don't look like they should have PhDs who arethese marine biologists. I think Jacques Cousteau's boat was harbored in wood's hole.I'm just kind of riffing here, but water is obviously a central feature of the townThere's beaches everywhere, and it was created by a glacier as the ice age was retreating.This glacier pulled back really quickly and it left all these lakes and and we call them kettleholes which are these bodies of water that are wider at the bottom than they are at the top. Itwas a fun town to grow up in some ways. It created a lot of nostalgia. The 70s were a weirdtime. It was an interesting place.Terrible food across the board. Everything was fried right… fried fish, fried clams, frenchfries. When I was a kid we didn't eat out... I mean we maybe went to a restaurant two or threetimes a year and then if we got food it was a sub which is essentially Subway, or pizza. Buteven then it wasn't worth going because the food wasn't any good. Although it was worse atmy house because my mother was a terrible terrible terrible cook… so bad… [pauses andshakes head] oh my god… and then it was the 70s, right? So breakfast was Captain Crunchwith crunch berries and lunch was a piece of american cheese and two pieces of baloney onwhite bread. Fruit came out of a can. Literally. Fruit came out of a can. In our Christmasstockings we would get an orange or an apple because it was like, oh my god fruit! That'sworthy of a Christmas present. We'd go to a supermarket and you go to the fruit andvegetable aisle and there'd just be nothing. There'd be potatoes and garlic cloves and yams.And I like yams and potatoes, but we ate them every day.2 It is the Marine Biological Laboratory.O:Was this the same kind of food that the vacationing population was eating?J: So it was different in the summer, so there was more fruits and vegetables. Thestrawberries in my hometown were pretty good. There was a strawberry festival at theProtestant church that you'd go to over at St. Andrews and we had good strawberries, but notmuch else. We’d have clams and oysters and fish… when fish was cheap. Fish is nowexpensive.O:Would you describe there as being a two tiered food system? Was certain food cateredtowards the vacationing class versus the townie class?J: Yeah. So, I lived across the street from a restaurant called the Flying Bridge and when Iwas a child, I lived 200 yards from the Flying Bridge and 200 yards from another restaurantcalled the Regatta. Never in my life… never in my pre-adult life did I ever eat at eitherrestaurant. But what I did… There was a kid named Mark and Mark's dad owned the gasstation in town. So Mark came over to my house one day and we went dumpster diving. Sowe went over to the restaurant, we opened up the dumpster we got inside the dumpster andwe looked around and what we found was a bunch of restaurant stubs from the FlyingBridge. We sat there, Mark and I sat there at my house for two hours and just looked at whatthe rich people had been eating at the Flying Bridge, right? The bills were like 200 dollars.This is like 1976, 1978 and we were like, oh my god… They had a 200 dollar dinner wherethey got stuffed co-hogs, grilled bluefish, and corn on the cob. People like me and Marknever once ever ate at the flying bridge. Never once ever ate at the regatta, which was evenfancier. But if you went to the Regatta or you went to the Flying Bridge meaning you, O, youwould not be impressed by it. There's a family called the Lilies, they own the drugpharmaceutical company, Eli Lily. Yeah, yeah, so Eli lily lived in my hometown. Eli Lilywould drive up in his Rolls Royce to the fish market I worked at and buy lobster and buyshrimp. I never once in my life had lobster with my parents. I never once in my life hadswordfish with my parents, right? That was way out of reach of the local people.O: You mentioned sort of sparsity in grocery stores. Did the rich people go to differentgrocery stores or do they just eat out because they're on vacation?J: Yeah, so I grew up 300 yards from the A&P. There is now a rich person grocery store inmy hometown, but when I was a kid there was the bad grocery store, which was A&P andthere was the good grocery store, Stop and Shop. We were A&P people because we live soclose to it. When I had fresh seafood as a kid, it's because my mother would get a permit andshe would go pick, get clams out of the ocean. My sister, Mary, cut her foot pretty badly on arazor clam. But for us as locals, we had a lot of steam clams… My mother would go and goclamming for five hours. Come home. Boil them. Then we would eat them in the backyardwith a little butter and lemon. That was the only time we got to eat local food. The advantagewas that you could pick it yourself. When I was a kid, there were mussels on the rocks andwe would just grab mussels and eat them. The 70s were pretty depressed… You know,recession, Jimmy Carter and waiting in line for gasoline. The rich people in Cape Cod wereeating not great food. They were eating more expensive food and better food than I was, butin general the food was kind of bad everywhere. I mean, the food is still bad in Boston. It'snot a good food area.O: Can you draw out the connection between the oil crises and and and like what was goingon in Falmouth?J: I don't remember what year it was exactly. We hated the tourists or you're kind of raised tohate tourists even though the whole town is dependent on them, but when they were therethere was always a line and there was always issues. The couple summers that we had the oilcrisis, there were just massive lines to get gas. We sat in line for I don't know 45 minutes toan hour. Maybe that's hyperbole from memory, but you're doubly mad. Gas is expensive.You're waiting an hour for it and every tourist from Newton is in a fancier car that you'll everbe able to afford in front of you in line.The other weird thing about the town is there's a ton of gas on the water too. All those boatsrun on gasoline. I killed my dog, Spotty, by letting him swim in the harbor too much and thegasoline that gets dumped into the harbor basically ate at spotty's stomach and we had to puthim down because of that. That's a random tie into gasoline in the town. There's gaseverywhere, right? All over the town. It's not just at the gas station. There are fueling pumpssurrounding the harbors.O:Were there less people during the oil crises?J: That's a really good question. I don't know. I don't know what the population of my townwas then versus what it is now. It feels like there's a lot more people there now, but I thinkthe wintertime population hasn't changed much. There's a lot more money… there's so muchmore wealth in the United States. There's so much more wealth in Boston. The Lilies werethe richest family you could imagine at the time. They had a 50-foot yacht. It was across thestreet from my house. This is part of my mother's aspirationalism… we shouldn't have livedwhere we lived. We lived in a stupid stupid house on the harbor. We should have had anormal house not on the harbor. It would have been much better for the quality of life. As aresult, from my kitchen table, I looked at Eli Lilly's yacht. Eli Lilly had a 50-foot yacht right?And now the guy who runs Boston Scientific, he's got an 180 foot yacht and then he's got a90-foot yacht. He's got like six boats in Falmouth Harbour that are worth hundreds ofmillions of dollars. The Lilies who were rich rich rich had like a medium-sized okay yacht.But so the wealth in the town has exploded and the rich people don't just have one yacht.And now my grocery store, the A&P has been converted into some fancy market that hascilantro and turmeric and saffron, which is shit we never saw or dreamed of. At some point inthe 70s, they introduced Ben and Jerry's ice cream and that was a culinary event.O: Can you clearly differentiate the kinds of people and the sorts of industries that were atplay?J: There's a really terrible TV show called the Outer Banks. But it makes a good distinction.There's the locals which when I was a kid were called townies. Then there's the summerpeople. But some people are different like my best buddy, Geoff is a summer person. Geoffcame down for 10 weeks and lived there the whole time and knew the town and knew stuff.Then you have people who come for the weekend, so like, if you go to Cape Cod or July 4th,you can't get over the bridge because there's so many people coming down for the weekend.Those are kind of your three classes.When it's September 15, everybody, all the summer people are gone. The weekend people aregone, the people who own the big homes are gone. So what we would do is we'd go get anice cream and we'd drive around the rich neighborhoods just to look at the rich people'shouses. I used to break into… I spent my childhood breaking into people's houses and gettingon people's yachts. I have been on to Eli Lilly's yacht a dozen times.To circle back to industries… It's a big retirement community. There's a lot of old peoplewho've saved up. It's a nice town and they live there, and then they go somewhere likeFlorida for the winter. Tourism has to be the number one industry and it’s serving the summerpeople and the people who come down for the weekends in the day. Then you have marinebiology. There's probably 10 or 12 organizations that do marine biological stuff and then youhave a shocking amount of farming. There's cranberry bogs and strawberries everywhere.We're not a big fishing town… the real fishing happens in New Bedford. Now back in theday, it was a whaling town. Nantucket was your big big whaling place, where a lot of theguys got really really rich. Nantucket makes sense because you're further out there, right?New Bedford, you can read Moby dick, is a big whaling town. Falmouth was a whalingtown. If you go to the center of town near the Protestant churches, there are big mansionswith widow's walks up top where the wives would wait for their husbands to come home. So,there's a little bit of fishing. There is more sport fishing for tourists than there is actualfishing. When you and I would go to Woods Hole, we would fish on the dock. There were sixto eight boats that did were actual fishing boatsThe other one of the other industries… Your friends' parents were things like, venturecapitalist, studio directors and studio owners. My friends parents were like the mailman,the substitute teacher, the hostess at a restaurant. I had one friend whose dad was a doctor.And then one friend whose dad owned the local construction company. But for the most part,it's a small town life doing small town stuff.O:We have touched on this a bit already, but what changes have happened over time?J: I mean I was born there in ‘66. It has been 58 years… The value of the town to an outsideris the amount of water. There's literally water everywhere. People have this desire to be nearwater. My parents probably bought our house for $12,000 to $14,000. When we moved to thehouse with a view of the harbor my parents probably paid $50,000 for it. The value of anyproperty proximate to water has just exploded, right?Geoff called me up when his mom decided to move to an old folks home in 2008 or 2009. Heoffered to sell me his childhood home with private beach rights. An acre and a half. Not agreat house, but kind of beautiful. It was like $850,000. Now it is worth three million dollars.The value of real estate with water views and proximity to water and beach rights has gonecrazy. This might be true in a lot of places, but it is especially true within Falmouth heights.It is now trendy and fancy.What other changes were there? I'll bet you the winter is not much different. I bet you if yougo there in November. It's super quiet… the other big thing that's happened is there's a ton ofuh drugs.There's lots of stories about, I guess it's meth. I don't really know my drugs verywell. There's a special, I think you can watch on Netflix, that talks about the amount of drugsdevastating the community and it's pretty bad. People sneak to the church and do drugs anddie. Die in the Dunkin Donuts bathroom. In a lot of ways it's changed a lot. In a lot of ways,it hasn't. It's still pretty and there is still a lot of traffic in the summer.O: Are there any specific attractions or events that people come for like the Fourth of July?J: Yeah, that's a good one. So you’ve seen me run it – the Falmouth Road Race is a big deal.It starts in Woods Hole and it ends in Falmouth Heights. In the original race, you weresupposed to drink a beer at the Brothers Four and go outside and run along the water untilyou got to the casino, which was the fixture of my childhood. It is about seven miles and thenyou're supposed to drink a beer at the casino. Now, it's a famous race and really elite runnersrun it as a warm-up for some marathon. I forget which one. July 4th. All the big holidayweekend. Memorial day. Labor day. A big feature of the town is people coming to WoodsHole to get on a ferry to go to Martha's vineyard. For a lot of people, it's a waystation to getto the vineyard, which is even more famous, prestigious and fancy.O: Yeah, could you say a bit more about that? Do you have an idea of how many peoplewere going to the vineyard?J: I have no clue, but you could sit there and say the ferry goes this many times and takes thismany people. Now there is a ferry from New Bedford and there was always a ferry fromHyannis. The advantage of the ferry from Woods Hole was that you could take a car. Allthese people would line up in their Saabs and their Volvos and line up in Woods Hole. Thisresulted in a lot of traffic. People just piling in to get over thereWhen I was a kid, my dream job was to be a captain of one of the ferries. One of the things Istarted doing before I could legally work was I started delivering newspapers to Martha'sVineyard on a fishing boat called the Patriot Two. I would get up very early in the morning.You had to have so many hours on a commercial vessel before you could train to be acaptain. I was 12 or 13 years old… I didn't know what I was doing. I spent a bunch of timetrying to get hours on a boat so I could train to become a fishing captain or a captain of theferry or something like that.I don't know if you remember from when we stayed in Wood's Hole, but there was a piece ofland called Penzance Point. There's a bike path that goes through town and it goes all the wayto Wood's Hole. It goes all the way to the end because Penzance was a guano factory. It waswhere the ships would deliver bat shit then the factory would turn it into fertilizer. Then theywould put it on trains and send it up to Boston. Ironically Penzance, I believe, this may behyperbole, but I think it's the most valuable real estate on all of Cape Cod. So, the housesroutinely go for 15 to 20 million dollars on Penzance, which is really high on Cape Cod.O: Were most of the tourists from Boston?J: Yeah, I would assume the high volume of tourists came from Boston and the surroundingtown. At the beach where I grew up in the heights we had, we called them the Quebecoiswho were French Canadians. They would wear speed-o bathing suits and were very funnyand very different from most americans. The other thing to know about the town is that it hasa very large Portuguese population. They teach Portuguese in the high school. Most of theelected politicians now are Portuguese, so there's a lot of subcultures in the town. I grew upwith a family that were Cape Verdean, which is an island, that was famous for I think theslave trade and it's essentially has all African and spanish Population. So, there is a big CapeVerdean population. It was colonized by the Portuguese… There were some interesting racialissues and religious issues. There is a Jehovah’s witness population.Lyrics to Everyday is like SundayTrudging slowly over wet sandBack to the bench where your clothes were stolenThis is the coastal townThat they forgot to close downArmageddon, come ArmageddonCome, Armageddon, comeEveryday is like SundayEveryday is silent and greyHide on the promenade, etch a postcard"How I dearly wish I was not here"In the seaside townThat they forgot to bombCome, come, come, nuclear bombEveryday is like SundayEveryday is silent and greyTrudging back over pebbles and sandAnd a strange dust lands on your handsAnd on your faceOn your faceOn your faceOn your faceEveryday is like Sunday"Win yourself a cheap tray"Share some greased tea with meEveryday is silent and grey |
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