Screwpiles: The Forgotten Lighthouses

“Four huge 200-gallon cisterns one in each room, were used to store the rain water which fell on the metal roof and was guided to the reservoirs by a series of gutters and leaders. I don’t remember the tanks being completely filled or overflowing. And I don’t recollect ever having cleaned them. Each tank had a spigot which was located about a foot from the bottom of the wooden vat. This prevented us from siphoning the sediment from the bottom, e.g., seagull excrement. The rainwater was excellent for washing our hair and for bathing and cooking.

“Bottled water was nonexistent in those days and our water supply had to be boiled before we drank it.

“A great deal of time was spent in the kitchen with our ears glued to a battery operated portable radio. We listened to shows like Red Skelton, The Great Gildersleeve, Gangbusters and most of the radio shows produced in the early fifties. Most of the soaps, like The Romance of Helen Trent, and Young Dr. Malone, weren’t our bag. The Baltimore Group office, whose call sign was NAN MIKE NAN, and which was next in our chain of command, provided us with enough dry cell batteries to get us through months of radio entertainment. Heaven forbid should a battery go dead in the middle of one of our favorite radio programs. There was a time when we thought of appearing on What’s My Line, a popular show at that time. Who would guess that three skinny, pimply-faced, snot-nosed kids were lighthouse keepers? We didn’t have an unkempt white beard, nor a pegged leg. Shoot! We didn’t even wear yellow oil slickers. And we often wondered how those olden-day geezers managed their way up and down that winding, spiral staircase to maintain the light and polish the Fresnel lenses. Our call sign was NAN MIKE NAN 18. I guess we were given that number because we were eighteenth in the chain of lighthouses that dotted the Chesapeake. “Personnel at each lighthouse anywhere were required to keep a log and we were no different. The only communication we had with the mainland was by way of a radiotelephone. Each day we would transcribe notices to mariners which covered an area from Block Island, R. I., to Cape Hatteras, N. C. A great deal of time was spent trying to hear our messages over the static. Most of time we had to relay our messages through Point Lookout, which was across the bay. Our log included who was on comp liberty and who was manning the light. Sometimes we exaggerated a little. Our log was the greatest piece of fiction you ever read. I’m sure the group office in Baltimore knew this but they always looked the other way, mainly because of our semi-isolation. “After a while I didn’t have time for my life in the lighthouse to fill me with loneliness, boredom and monotony. There was so much to do and no one to push you. You wanted

Don Bishop. Lighthouse Digest

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