In the spring of 1980, we bought Cardinal Cushing’s villa in Gloucester, Massachusetts. It became Morning Garden. It has over twenty rooms. It’s a big mansion, the pride of Gloucester. That made Gloucester mad. Later, Father bought Bob’s Clam Shack. It was a magnet where all the young people went. He also bought a marina that had about 30 boats in it. Then those people got nasty.
Every single day there were people demonstrating in front of the restaurant. In the beginning without fail, there were hundreds every day. Six months later it was about 20 people, but they kept it up. They were so negative. It looked like Father was buying up Gloucester.
They had signs, "Honk if You Blah Blah Blah...." Some people doing security at night got shot at -- stones were thrown at us. Gloucester became the center of anti-moon madness in America, the soul of the anti-moon sentiment. Then we started tuna fishing. They knew our cars, they knew our boats. They knew everything. There were some bars on the main street, and they had lookouts. If they saw a moonie car, they would yell, "Moonie car!!!" They had rocks prepared and they would come running out and throw rocks and would yell and scream at us. They threw stuff at the boats, yelling and screaming. It seemed to be the entire town of Gloucester.
The people who went to sea in Gloucester were the most vulgar you can imagine. The big thing to do was to "moon" us. They would drive and pull their pants down and show us their butts.
They would yell, "Moonie sucks!" They would yell that all season long: "Moonie sucks!" They would yell that again and again. Father was sick of it. We were all sick of it. Father said to us, "You’re dead moons. They just call you all kinds of names and you don’t respond. You don’t yell back!"
Every day, the entire fleet was so negative. We were so outnumbered. We caught tuna and the rest of them caught nothing. We hooked up and caught tuna every day. God’s blessing came to us no matter what they did to us. We caught tuna and they didn’t. That made them madder.
Once Father was anchored and a negative guy came along and said, "Move! Move!" and Father said right back, with the same intensity, "Don’t move!!" to the brother driving. Our brother was quiet, but Father said, "Don’t move!"
Then of course we had fights on the ocean. One time I caught the biggest fish I ever caught. Then the nasty guys picked a fight with me. At that moment I hooked a fish. Then we took off and they picked a fight with someone else.
In 1981, it intensified. They were ready to kill us. There were anchor lines cut, and an anchor was lost. The fleet was so negative. I was the head of our fleet that summer. Father wasn’t there. It was like the old west, with Custer surrounded by Indians.
One of the seminarians called on the radio, "Maybe we should call the Coast Guard." And that stopped them. The Coast Guard is the police of the ocean. If people tried to lynch the moonies, and someone called the Coast Guard, they would interfere with it, and might press charges. They backed down, but made an appointment to meet us at a restaurant at night. The Seagull Restaurant. All the fishermen gathered there, to talk it out. The problem of the moons. A couple hundred Gloucester people. And us. The media came, and the next day it was in the paper. All the yelling and screaming. We did talk with some of them, but some crazy ones really screamed. They said, "You do this and this and this...." We just took it and swallowed it.
Once that meeting was finished, we went home. We stopped the car and someone said, "Look at all the fluid under the car." It turned out they had cut the brake lines. They tried to kill us that way. That is how Gloucester treated us.
From 40 Years in America, pp. 258-59.