When Ralph Norwood was a boy growing up in the lighthouse keeper's house in Boston Harbor, his father told him the best way in the world to make a living was to become a fisherman.

The boy took that advice to heart and fished all his life Ð for shrimp, lobster and tuna, for pollock, whiting and cod, for scallops, herring and mackerel. He's purse-seined, stop-seined, trapped, dragged and towed. Even today, Norwood, who retired from commercial fishing in 1980 and lives in South Bristol, Maine, goes mackerel fishing in his 45-foot schooner most every day. There's something about being out on the sea that draws him there.

"Of course," says Norwood, "there's the independence, but the main thing was to be on the ocean."

Norwood was the middle boy in a family of five boys and four girls. He's Ralph Norwood II. His father was the first, and now there's a third and a fourth. Norwood's father yearned to be a fisherman like his own father, who fished out of a Friendship sloop, but with nine children he had to get a job that brought in money he could count on regularly.

"He never really liked his job," says Norwood. "He always wanted to go fishing. Norwood the elder easily convinced his middle son that fishing was the life for him, and he taught him how to set lobster traps. Norwood, the boy, hung on to his father's every word. It wouldn't have occurred to him that what his father spoke wasn't as true as the foghorn that guided the boats to safe passage.

"If he had encouraged me to become a lawyer or a doctor, I probably would have done that too," Norwood says. At age 70, Norwood stands straight and sturdy. A cap almost always covers his head and his eyes seem to be in a permanent squint, as if he's trying to catch a glimpse of the horizon.

Norwood is happy with the life he chose, a life filled with beauty and adventure on sometimes calm, sometimes rough seas, a hard-working life documented in photo albums stacked high next to his living room chair.

Norwood's wife, Kathy, selected some of the best pictures Ð nets bulging with shrimp, Norwood working the rigging on his boat, Norwood hauling hundreds of pounds of pogies. She had them blown up and laminated for use as place mats. The sepia tone of the pictures makes them seem even older than they are, from another era, another world even.

Sometimes it does feel like another world, Norwood says. It's a world that helped him find Jesus and pick up the banjo at the age of 42. He's been singing his praises ever since, composing and taping songs and even piecing together a video.

"I started singing," says Norwood. "After I found Jesus, I had something to sing about."

He titled the tape and video, "Glory Dory Gospel." The songs are about a mix of his grandbabies, fishing, the open sea, night and day, Canada geese, the Bible, the beauty of nature and heavenly glory.

"God inhabits the praises of his people," says Norwood, quoting scripture by way of explaining his impulse to create new songs.

Kathy helps him produce "Glory Dory Gospel" just as she's always supported his fishing way of life through good times and lean times. The Norwoods, high school sweethearts, have been married for 50 years. They've lived all those years in South Bristol near Christmas Cove, the subject of one of his songs, and a stone's throw away from his two boats, the schooner Shekinah Glory, and his fishing boat, Unity. Shekinah is a scriptural word that means a visible sign of God's presence. Kathy has worried about her husband before Ð "Remember the time you went to Jeffries and didn't come home for three days?" she asks. Today, if he's not back from mackerel fishing when she expects him she'll comb the shore and ask neighbors if they've spotted the schooner.

But Kathy says theirs is a good life, and they've always had plenty of good fish to eat. Even today, Norwood hauls in enough mackerel so that he has to pickle what they can't eat fresh.

Norwood started out fishing in a 16-foot dory with an outboard motor he bought from Sears, Roebuck and Co. on time. He taught himself how to fish. "It takes a long time to learn how to put everything together," he says. He found himself in dangerous situations from time to time. Once he was standing on a trawl door when it let go, carrying him under water. "It went right down with me on it," he recalls. There were also long, hard-working days when he hardly slept Ð days when fishermen joke they don't even bother to shut down their engines.

"It's pleasurable long days," says Norwood. He recalls a day when he hauled 2,500 pounds of fish in 25 minutes. "I was catching 100 pounds a minute," he says.

After his father retired as lighthouse keeper, Norwood took him fishing. It was the middle of winter. Ralph Norwood the first got awfully cold despite the sheepskin coat he wore. He went to live in Florida after that, Norwood says, and never went fishing again. Ralph Norwood II still believes his father was right when he told him there was nothing better than life on the sea.

"I'd do it again if I were to start out again," he says. "My sailboat's rigged up so I can go all year. When other people haul their boats out, I keep right on sailing."

Freelance writer Bernie Monegain lives in Brunswick, Maine. She is a frequent contributor to Points East.

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