Ed Metcalf is from Winthrop, Massachusetts, on the north side of Boston Harbor. He served as a police officer in Winthrop, and he then worked for the Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. He became the game warden on Nantucket, Massachusetts, in 1974, and he still lives there today. Born in 1933, his memories reach back to the late 1930s. Some of his visits to the harbor islands were guided by the popular historian and author Edward Rowe Snow.
He also frequented lighthouses in the harbor in the 1950s and ’60s, including Deer Island Light and Graves Light. He often brought newspapers, fish, and other things to the keepers. Deer Island, which is attached to Winthrop, was also home to a prison for many years. Ed also remembers visits to the range lights at Spectacle Island in the inner harbor before they were demolished in the 1950s.