Tommy Marr
Age: 87
Hometown: Portland, Maine
Profession: Retired Fisherman
Drink of choice: Miller Lite
Bar of choice: Byers & Sons Long Island Bakehouse
If you’re one of the 200 year-round residents of Long Island in Casco Bay, there’s only one place to go off-season if you want to see your neighbors. Seriously. One place. That place is Byers & Sons Long Island Bakehouse.
Catlin Byers, whose family has summered on Long Island since 1904, bought the building in 2020 with her husband Matt and transformed it into a lively community space that’s now open all winter. The Bakehouse has big windows with water views, a limited (but tasty) menu, plenty of beer and wine, and one regular everyone wants to talk to.
“Tommy has been here forever,” said Catlin. “He and his late wife started the Changing Tide Foundation, which supports the islands. They’re just amazing people. … He’s a character, a salty old fisherman, but also so artistic.”
How long have you lived on Long Island?
I first hit the island in the ’50s. I married my wife from this island. We lived here off and on for years. I fished here for quite awhile, and then I got out of fishing. I ended up with Casco Bay Lines and then on tugboats for fourteen years, so we had to move back to the mainland. My wife’s folks still lived here. In ’86 I got back into fishing, so we moved back here full-time, into her parents’ house. I still got the house today.
What do you like most about living here?
I love it here. We’re one big family. This island’s like a big house with two hundred–plus rooms in it, and people living in it and looking after each other. I think it’s a rarity today. Even the other islands aren’t quite like us. We’re getting more out-of-staters. They buy in, and the houses are getting big. Whether they understand island living, I have no clue, but some have integrated very well. Some, you gotta keep working on them.
How did you become a regular at the Bakehouse?
We never had anything like this in the winter before. This used to be a store, so it opened for gas, and the people who owned it before did the same thing. It was open only so many hours a week or so, but they had nothing going on. Thank God for Catlin. She’s really got something going on here. It’s open Tuesdays and Friday nights, so we come up here and we socialize. It gets you out of the house and over that cold winter. It’s the best thing that has happened for the winter. Once in awhile I’ll play cribbage with somebody. In summertime I try to keep my schedule still Tuesdays and Fridays, because in summertime it’s busy with people coming off boats.
Tell us more about your days as a fisherman.
I was a lobster fisherman. I’m done. I’ve just sold my boat this winter. I went big time ’til eight years ago, and I sold the big boat to my helper, and I got a small boat. I’ve been doing that during the summers for the past seven, eight years. This past year it wasn’t working out and that was enough to say, Time for me to get out of there. I still like rowing and fishing with rods, though.
How did you decide to become a fisherman?
My family’s from Down East, Southport Island, near Boothbay Harbor. I remember summers down there, and I remember when I was five years old, my father was going out to get some lobsters. I’ll never forget this, he says, “We’re going to haul traps, but just make sure we take the small ones.” Which is illegal of course! I grew up on Munjoy Hill, and at ten years old I built myself a lobster trap out of an orange crate, and at thirteen or fourteen I started lobstering with a friend. That’s all it took. I’ve been doing it for the past forty-six years full-time. I’ve had a good career, and I’ve actually enjoyed my life, so I can’t complain.
What are you up to now that you’re retired?
I was thinking about building myself a rowboat in my garage, and when I was cleaning things up in there I found a book about carvings, like miniatures. So I started fooling around with it and, to this day, I’ve done over three hundred and fifty carvings. I mostly do miniature ducks and birds, but now I’m getting into fish. I did it for nothing and people starting telling me that I should sell them. People call me to order them and I sell them out of my house. Some of the wood I have to buy, but oftentimes people will drop off nice pieces of driftwood for me to use. Catlin bought a half dozen of my carvings, and some are here at the Bakehouse.
Also, we have a writers’ club on the island, which is another talent I didn’t know I had. I’m writing a novel — almost done with it — but we have seven great writers in the club, and three of them are getting published. My novel is about a tugboat going down the coast of Maine — just what I know, right? I’m on the last chapter and I’m trying to review it. If it’s worth publishing, fine. If not, I can say that I finished a novel.
What got you into writing?
One Christmas Eve I went out to haul traps in. Two o’clock in the afternoon. Beautiful, calm day, sunny, cold, a flat cap, no wind. I was five miles out and my engine quit, and my CB didn’t work. I started sculling for Hussey Sound hoping a ferry would see me. It’s a long, slow process. There wasn’t a boat in sight. I decided I wasn’t going to make it to the sound, but I did have a summer mooring here on the back side of the island. Even though I didn’t have a skiff to go ashore with, I’d at least be in safe refuge.
Around eight o’clock and after about four or five snow squalls I started sculling again and the tide pushed me to the back shore. There were no lights and it was supposed to get down to zero degrees that night. I’d freeze to death. I dropped anchor and there was one little light that I could see, so I took a shot. I had some gas in a bucket and got a nice flare going and that light flickered.
Ah, they saw me! I sat down next to my cold engine box, had a cold beer and a candy bar and waited to be rescued. Next thing I know, the whole harbor lit up. Everyone on the island knew I was lost. Everyone thought I was gone.
So, after that story, I survived, as I’m here. A few years later a magazine had a writing contest about things that happen at sea. I wrote my story, sent it in. I won third prize, got seventy-five bucks for it. I said, Well, I’m a published author now, and that’s what led me to keep on doing it.
What’s next for Tommy Marr?
I’m eighty-seven. I feel good. I just went to the eye doctor yesterday: 20/20 vision. So I’m going for the big one. They got this place booked for my hundredth birthday! I said, “I think that’s pushing it but that’s OK, I’ll try.” I think God still has plans for me.
Know an interesting bar regular? Send them our way at theregularsmaine@gmail.com.
