|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Article |
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Dickey Had Love Affair With Wellfleet By DOUG FRASER STAFF WRITER, Cape Cod Times WELLFLEET - He was tough, good-natured, with an active intelligence and love of researching what he wanted to know. Richard Dickey, 73, the former Wellfleet shellfish constable, died last Monday of a heart attack at his home. Like Henry Fielding's fictional Tom Jones, Dickey's life was episodic. He lost his mother at age 3, then moved to the Cape during the Great Depression with his father, a railroad agent, sometimes living in the railroad station. When his father could no longer balance caring for the family with the necessity of work, Dickey was sent to Wellfleet to live with a sister and brother-in-law. That commenced a love affair with the town; with Betty, his wife of 53 years; and with the sea. Dickey spent decades scalloping offshore, but embraced aquaculture in his later years, becoming a tireless advocate for the burgeoning industry. Blessed with good recall, he always had a story to tell about growing up on Cape Cod and life at sea. On one occasion, he was the story. Thirty-three years ago Dickey was allowed to keep his boots. He and his five crewmen gave thanks for small favors. Languishing in a 17th-century dungeon in Jamaica, they took turns standing watch through the nights, using Dickey's boots to kill the king-sized rats that crawled over the sleeping men. The notorious St. Catherine's prison in Spanish Town, Jamaica was a true dungeon. No air conditioning, a bucket for a bathroom, and native Jamaican prisoners shouting death threats at the six Americans who had been caught off Freeport, Jamaica, transferring nine tons of marijuana worth $2 million from one vessel to another. "The average lifespan of a white man in that prison was a matter of months," said friend Bruce Norton. A former university professor, Norton is polishing up the final draft of a book he wrote with Dickey about what he wryly termed his "Jamaican vacation." The smuggling operation was an ill-conceived venture from the start. According to Norton, Dickey said he was hired to run a 95-foot-long offshore lobster boat. The trip down to pick up the boat in Louisiana included, however, a little side venture proposed by the boat owners. What no one knew was that an informant with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency was a member of the crew. Dickey, Norton said, was convicted of piracy (the lobster boat was not officially registered) and of "possessing a green vegetative substance resembling marijuana." He received a death sentence, later commuted by England's Queen Elizabeth. Because of appeals, Dickey and a Provincetown friend served the longest sentence, almost two years. Aquaculture advocate When he got out of prison, Dickey put the experience behind him like a rough sea voyage. Returning to a relatively quiet life in Wellfleet, he served as an advocate for expanding the town's aquaculture industry, maintaining fishermen's rights to access to the tidal flats and improving the town's herring run. Dickey survived the prison stretch, said Norton, because of his ability to relate to people and a toughness honed by three decades at sea on offshore scallop boats. That toughness was tempered with a soft side. The guy known to New Bedford shipmates as "Provincetown Slim" was no longer that when he took over as shellfish constable in 1998, promising to expand aquaculture. The big gray beard, leather cap and dark aviator shades were already a common sight on Wellfleet's productive tidal flats after Dickey did stints as assistant, then acting shellfish constable. Enforcement of shellfish regulations was part of the job, but Dickey was willing to give the working guy a break, shellfishermen said. "I think he remembered his roots, as far as being on the other side," said Bob Wallace, a Wellfleet aquaculturist and president of the Massachusetts Aquaculture Association. "As long as he reached his goal, he did it his way." Dickey was a quick study when it came to aquaculture and worked as a consultant with The Resource Inc., the former Orleans-based grant writing firm. Using federal grant money, he worked in a program that subsidized and helped plant tiny shellfish all over the county for aquaculturists and wild shellfishermen. "It's rare to see it in older people that are really died-in-the-wool fishermen to embrace something rather futuristic like aquaculture," said Wellfleet aquaculturist Richard Blakely, "but he was that kind of guy. He embraced things like that." Betty Dickey said her husband never liked school but loved learning on his own. "He told me he got all his knowledge from reading," she said. "He said he didn't learn anything in school, because he couldn't see the blackboard." Norton called him one of the best- read men he ever met. "He's spoiled," said Betty of the small brown terrier named Buffy that her late husband took everywhere with him. The little terrier sniffed, trotting into rooms, looking everywhere for the man who brought him Italian roast beef from the deli for dinner. Dickey met his wife at a movie when he was 20 and she was 18. Two weeks later they married. "They said it would never last, but it lasted 53 years through thick and thin," she said. "I really miss him." (Published: Cape Cod Times, June 21, 2004) |
||||||
|
Home | Community Forum | Photo Gallery | News & Articles | Photo Essays | Special Feature | Local Links | Contact Us
|
||||||
|
||||||
