This is what's buried beneath the case of Pearl bronze.

Her fingers ached from another long day at the fish processing and packing plant.

She wondered again to herself if the distinctive scent of raw and rotting fish would ever fully wash out of her hair.

But where she was headed, it didn't really matter.

Everyone was nose blind to the smell anyway.

After work, like always, 41-year-old Pearl Smith walked up the pier and towards Commercial Street on Portland's

working waterfront, turning on to the brick sidewalk and making her way into her

favorite bar. It was the 1980s and Portland and the old Port were very different than you might know them today.

Portland was a local city, locals like Pearl, who made their living in the fishing industry alongside so many others.

Though I don't know for sure, I imagine Pearl's favorite bar to be $3 doe's, a staple in the old port even to this day. In the 1980s it was located on Four Street,

not Commercial Street where it is now. In a 2015 piece by Olivia Gunn for Portland Monthly

titled 1980s Redux, she wrote,

Cheezy maybe, but it was the place where everybody knew your name

and if no one knew your address,

they could send your post to Dewey's.

Pearl slid up to the bar, and with a knowing nod, the bartender placed a glass of her usual in front of her.

Stools filled up around Pearl, other men and women salty from a day's work.

Among them was a man named William Bruns.

He introduced himself to Pearl as Bill.

Bill was 13 years older than Pearl, but she found common ground with him.

She, a fish packer, and he owned a fish hauling company and he drove that fish from Maine up to Montreal

into New York. They both enjoyed their time at the bar and they'd

...