helping my dad in his car repair shop. He’s a good teacher 
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On my first day as a green deckhand on a commercial gillnetter, the captain told me “If I won the lottery, I’d keep fishing until I ran out of money.”
Don’t recall seeing a machine like that in Maine. How does that operation work? What other equipment are you using?
My roommate at Schuyler cadet shipped with USS and said the 2nd Mate on his ship made and sold maple syrup up in Vermont with his time off.
There’s a mate with MMP who works in a cemetery during his off time. From what I’ve heard those guys are in the Steelworkers Union and do quite well.
The cemetery workers are in the United States steelworkers union? I saw some cool YouTube videos of this guy who goes around and fixes old headstones and cleans them up. But I thought he did it for free but maybe not
That’s what he told us, the full timers were part of Steelworkers and earned $40/hr and double time on weekends and holidays. They had it pretty good, though the workload and stress levels fluctuated depending what cemetery you’re working in (size, plus responsibility for satellite cemeteries that are no longer in use, requiring travel off site to maintain them as well.)
Wow that’s cool and interesting. I am surprised that there is funds to pay to maintain the old cemeteries too. I guess I go down the YouTube rabbit hole too much and think that all old cemeteries are abandoned.
They had the equivalent of that in 1976 at the Diamond International stud mill in Passadumkeag, except IIRC it was fixed at the end of the log deck. Picked up limbed trees from a big pile and dropped them in front of the first set of 72" chop saws that cut them into the longest possible multiples of eight feet and sent them to a holding pen. Then they went through the Cambio rotary debarker that slipped the bark off at the cambium layer. Tree ends and bark waste went through a 250 hp hammer mill and then to big silos whence they were used to fire the kilns. Another holding pen. Then to the 60" chop saws that cut them to eight foot lengths and yet another holding pen. Then through a hole in the side of the building. Everything after that was continuous. On the way in they pushed aside a pair of rubber tires that set the width of a giant pair of bandsaws that cut off the first pair of slabs. Slabs and all other clean waste including rejects after the kiln went to 125 hp “salad slicer” type chippers and the chips were trucked down to Old Town to be made into facial tissue etc. The log was now tipped sideways and smaller circular saws made all the subsequent cuts as the various bits whizzed around the building. 72 hours in the kiln and then graded and bundled.
The whole thing was quite a machine, and of course astonishingly noisy. And all the operations outside on the log deck were controlled by pneumatic logic. The manager was all out for production and forced the kiln so they had a lot of rejects. According to my neighbor who was one of the graders he was always jumping down their throats for grading too strictly.
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When I left Maine after high school working in the woods meant crews (mostly French) working with chainsaws and skidders.
When I came back 20 years latter it was mostly mechanized.
Here’s the processor in our woodlot last fall.
Cut-to-length (CTL). Fells the tree, cuts of the top, delimb, cuts 8 foot (or as required) and stacks the log for the forwarder.
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I laugh at alot of these boat guys, working for Mac as an engineer is a vacation compared to cutting wood. Im headed to Lancaster NH when I get back, look at an 822C @ Monleys. CTL is coming but keep my full tree stuff. Cant beat a propac, Ive got 3x grapple skidders, my Tigercat 620C cant feed her fast enough.
I only came back to the boats after covid, fuel started for 6.00 gal and they offered me a tit local job, tugboat when I want, cut wood when i want.
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I’ve had numerous shoreside gigs over the years Bartender construction dairy farm worker medical van driver and Captain of the the world famous glass bottom boats at Silver Springs State Park Sorry for the lack of punctuation my keyboard is not working correctly
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Oh, that’s quite alright. I just imagined you saying it all in one long breath like Ace Ventura.
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Did some substitute teaching for the surrounding districts in the past…you could pick & choose subject/grade level each day from the available (if any) jobs. Beer, bait, and bullet money.
Usually if you have a given number of credits or a 4yr degree it was fairly straightforward to get a temporary teaching cert. After a greeting to the class, the next words out of my mouth summarized my “other” job and a statement I worked with a crew of 20-65 y.o. kindergartners so nothing they did could shock/surprise/set me off…I enjoyed it, actually. There are a lot more good kids out there than many have been led to believe.
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“I worked with a crew of 20-65 y.o. kindergartners”. . . .oh, yeah. I couldn’t have ever stated that better. In my day, as a 20 something old CE, it was quite an experience for me. . . .
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Looking for investors
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Those kind of things are everywhere on the Lakes…Cleveland runs tikiboats up and down the Cuyahoga (ick), a couple similar outfits in Buffalo and Milwaukee, too.
Cargo that talks back AND is drinking? Not for me.
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I used my family minivan and drove for Uber and Lyft on weekends. Wasn’t boat money but made $500-$600 on Friday and Saturday nights. Enough to cover my Costco bill with all the dang kids in my house.
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If there’s a six pack school in your city, look into teaching classes. I did so in Clear Lake (Houston); easy money.