ACE – Trial by Fire

by Ben Robicheau ~ brobicheau@cogeco.ca
One of the aspects of living in a small town is that you get to know all of your neighbours extremely well. As a child it did not seem unusual to me that I would know everyone on Brier Island and that everyone knew me. Every person in town is a part of my growing up, but there are a few who tend to stick out a bit more in my memory all these years later. This story is about one of them. Remember, it is mostly from the long ago perspective of a young person, as far as I know, or can recall, this is what happened. It may or may not be entirely accurate.
"Ace" McDormand got his nickname because as a young man, he and his brothers had an obsession with playing card games. He was so well known by this name that few people knew his real one. One day a man from the Fisheries Dept. arrived looking for Bernard McDormand only to be told quite definitely by several people that there was no one of that name on the Island. Finally he tried the store by the ferry wharf where the men on the bench all said he must be mistaken, there was no Bernard McDormand that they knew of. Probably thinking that he either had the wrong island or there was some conspiracy to keep him in the dark, the man was about to leave when Gladys Baily spoke up. Gladys always seemed to know everything about everybody and she was more than happy to inform the visitor, as well as the crew on the bench, that Bernard was in fact Ace’s real name.
Ace had a talent for fixing the old car engines that powered most of the local fishing boats. His methods being somewhat free and easy, he often ended up with a few bits and pieces left over after completing the job. His philosophy was that: "if it would run without those parts then it didn’t really need them anyway". One year, a few days before lobster season, he spent hours tied up at the wharf, trying to get his engine running properly. Finally, in a fit of exasperation at his lack of success, he hoisted the engine out of the boat, swung it over the side and dropped it into twenty feet of water. The next morning it dawned on him that the season opened in a couple of days and he didn’t have power for his boat. At low tide he went down on the beach, hoisted the engine back in the boat, and a couple of days later had it running well enough to go fishing with it.
It could be said of Ace that in some respects, "if he didn’t have bad luck, he’d have no luck at all". Most of Ace’s bad luck involved fire and water, usually at the same time. I remember sitting in the Vestry one Sunday morning when people were suddenly distracted from the minister’s sermon by a long plume of black smoke which had appeared over the harbour. Sunday School was abruptly cancelled and we all rushed outside to see that the the oily cloud appeared to be coming from "up the road".
The source of the smoke turned out to be Ace’s boat. By the time I arrived on the scene it was lying half sunk on its side in the shallow water beside his fish shed. His son Donald sat on the wharf, obviously upset and in pain from a burned face and hand. The story emerged that Donald had gone out to the moorings to bring in a load of fish caught the day before. It was a hot, sunny day and a can of gas stored in the cabin had filled the boat with fumes. This being Ace’s boat, he had "temporarily" put his battery in the cabin and rigged it up with jumper cables leading to the engine. When Donald hit the starter button it created a spark which ignited the gas fumes, shooting a ball of fire out into the wheelhouse and setting the boat ablaze. Donald, frightened and in pain, jumped in the punt and headed for shore. Ace and some of his neighbours went back out to the moorings and towed the burning boat into shallow water where they sank her by chopping a hole below the waterline, putting the fire out and saving what was left of the boat.
The next episode in Aces’ fire related trilogy happened on a Sunday as well. I remember laying in bed wondering why I wasn’t being called to get ready for Sunday School. When I eventually went downstairs I found two piles of smelly, wet clothes in the middle of the kitchen floor. By now the rest of the kids were up and we went to our parents’ room to find out what was going on. There we found them still in bed and obviously exhausted, Dad looked at us and said, "Ace’s house burned down last night".
Ace had awoken sometime after midnight to find his house full of smoke. He and Donald started carrying furniture out while his wife Ileene alerted a neighbour. A phone call was made to Elsie the switchboard operator, who rang people all over the Island. When Dad got the call he headed for his store, where he gathered up all the buckets he could find, meanwhile a group of men headed for the barn where the "fire pump" was kept.
The fire pump was a trailer with a large pump mounted on it; power for the pump was supplied by an old car engine: it hadn’t been used for quite some time. By the time it arrived at the scene, a bucket brigade had already been set up, bringing water up from the beach in a futile attempt to keep the fire under control. Hoses were rolled out and the key was turned to start the engine. Nothing; the battery was dead. Quickly a battery was pulled from someone’s truck and now the engine turned over but still wouldn’t start. While the men worked feverishly to get the pump going, the fire continued to grow and the by now exhausted bucket brigade continued to toss water at it. Finally to everyone’s relief the engine roared to life, the pump started to pump and some men grabbed the hoses, ready to douse the now raging inferno. Noticing a lack of water pressure, they looked behind to see that the old hoses had split under the strain. Hoses were changed and changed again until some were found that could stand the pressure. Meanwhile the engine kept stalling and the fire kept growing until, in the end, Aces’ house burned to the ground. But the fire pump was instrumental in saving the Garron’s house next door from suffering more than minor damage.
Aces’ second boat-related incident took place a few years later. I was rummaging around in the back porch of our house when I heard what I thought was a rumble of thunder. After a minute or two it dawned on me that there was not a cloud in the sky, so it couldn’t be thunder. I ran outside to see, once again, a thick cloud of black smoke rising above the harbour. I took off on my bike, heading "down the road" to the ferry wharf. There stood Ace on the wharf at Dan Kenny’s fish plant and there, between Kenny’s and the breakwater, amid a litter of wreckage, lay what was left of his boat, adrift and on fire; it’s cabin and deck gone and it’s sternboard blown out. As I watched, a fishing boat hooked on a line and towed the burning shell away from the wharves and other boats and out into the harbour where it could harmlessly burn itself out.
Again the disaster had involved gasoline. Ace had been fuelling up at Kenny’s wharf and had wedged the nozzle open and left it running in the old oil drum that served as a gas tank and then gone below. He apparently lost track of time and only remembered the nozzle when he became aware of the overpowering smell of gasoline. He emerged from the cabin to see a fine spray of gas spurting into the air from the over-filled tank, pouring onto the deck and down into the bilge. Ace had left his engine running and quickly realised that he had only seconds before the fumes from the gas met with a spark from the engine. He made a flying leap for the ladder and was about halfway up when a terrific explosion blew him the final few feet onto the wharf.
Not one to be easily defeated, Ace had the burned and blasted hull of the boat towed ashore and hauled up into his front yard. There he went to work replacing the deck and cabin, putting in a new sternboard and re-caulking the boat all over. The interior of the hull was black and charred, and the whole boat needed a coat of paint. Luckily, Ace had recently been to a Government surplus auction where he had been the successful bidder on several five-gallon cans of paint. This now came in handy and the boat soon had a new paint job, in fact, at one point, his boat, house and car were all painted the same shade of Government Orange. Within a few weeks, Ace was back on the water, going fishing miles offshore in that same boat. Unfortunately, despite his continuous caulking and patching, the boat always ever after leaked like a sieve and Ace had to be constantly pumping her out. If he was going to be away for a few days, he would bring the boat in to his wharf and tie it as far up the beach as possible, where it could sink only a few inches until it was safely sitting high and (mostly) dry on the beach.