“Oh, you mean like ‘Haddock, Will Travel’?"
“Clam yer trap and listen to me, will ya, Gil? Stop harrying me. His name was Marlin Sammon.”
--
See there was this landlubber--a visiting doctor, a sturgeon--perched on the dock who was holding his nose because he smelt all them fish. But then he sees the Quaker Marlin coming his way and asks, “Where you travelin’? Do you seek a porpoise?”
The old Friendly sailor looks over at his empty ship next to the dock and says, “Whale, yes…sea, it cod up with me. It takes a lot of mussel to live by the water and waves...With contrary winds, a ship sometimes flounders about. But we just say, ‘Seal on.' Like Simon says, and Garfunkel.”
“Who's that, a new type of fish, like a mackerel? Com’on, I bet you’re urchin to tell a sea story. Now don't be koi and silent like most of you Quakers!”
“Let me mullet over. Maybe I shell (or is that 'shad') lob a stirring tale your way.” The Quaker pinched his eyes deep in thought and tugged at his long whiskers.
But then he suddenly glances at the rising sun rays above Nantucket Island, heaves himself up, saying, “Nope, I otter get to work, tuna much to do. Better stop gupping—and trout on over to my ship. Sorry, don’t take me for a crab.”
Disappointed, the landlubber turns and strolls away, the sole one on the quay. He mumbles, "Well, he could have at least told me about that famous Quaker scale--"That of Cod in every Man."
"Buoy, was he frustrated, not finished at all."
Nothing boats well for any more,
Daniel Wilcox
Historical Fact:
"The Quakers on Nantucket were strong politically and financially; many were involved in the lucrative whaling industry. They were in the majority for most of the eighteenth century, and their devotion to simplicity and strict adherence to traditional ways influenced Nantucket’s architecture, home furnishings, clothing, and social behavior.
Mary (Coffin) Starbuck (1645–1717) and her husband Nathaniel led the Quaker movement on Nantucket. The Nantucket Meeting was formed in 1708 with Mary serving as an elder and her son Nathaniel Jr. as clerk. The first meetings were held in the Starbuck home ….John Richardson wrote of a meeting at which Mary 'Spoke trembling. . . .Then she arose, and I observed that she and as many as could well be seen, were wet with Tears from their Faces to the fore-skirts of their Garments and the floor was as though there was a Shower of Rain upon it.'
In the forty-year period after 1708, the Meeting outgrew a series of meeting houses and expansions. By the late 1750s, the Friends meeting house at the corner of Pleasant and Main Streets served 1,500 persons. In 1762, with the Quaker community having grown to almost 2,400 persons, the much larger Great Meeting House was built at the crossroads of Main Street and Madaket Road."
Nantucket Historical Association
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