![]() ![]() Minot’s Ledge Light in a Storm (Harper’s Magazine)Įlson and Connie Small were stationed in Maine lighthouses for 29 years–without electricity until 1946. The keeper told the visitor, “The trouble with our life here is that we have too much time to think.” In the 1890s someone visited Minot’s Ledge Lighthouse, which sits on a rock off the coast of Scituate and Cohasset in Massachusetts. ![]() In the days before Netflix, boredom posed a serious problem for lighthouse keepers. “If my husband doesn’t have an opportunity, on account of weather conditions, to get his hair cut at either of the islands, I have to get up the courage and try.” Lighthouse Keepers Fight Boredom It may be amusing to those who can have a choice of numerous barbershops at any hour of the day,” she wrote. “I am enclosing a photo of a lighthouse haircut. She was married to the lighthouse keeper at Matinicus Light, well off the coast of Rockland, Maine. Fletcher, who described her lonely life to a newspaper reporter on Jan. Getting a decent haircut, for example, can be hard when you live 25 miles out to sea. The problems faced by lighthouse keepers, in fact, sound very much like the challenges faced by people under shelter-at-home orders during the 2020 health crisis. Some lighthouses are said to be haunted by the ghosts of lighthouse keepers driven mad by the monotony and isolation. The work offered a steady income and a place to live, as lighthouse keepers had to work from home to keep that light going from sundown to sunrise.īut lighthouses often stood on barren ledge far out to sea, and life could get lonely for the keeper and his family. ![]() For many years, lighthouse keepers got their job through political patronage. ![]()
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