Wannaskan Almanac for Thursday, December 13, 2018

Excerpt from 2010 trip to Maine and the L.L. Bean Adventure

In 2010, I flew to Boston with friend Joe for his family reunion  in Stonington, Maine. Joe’s wife was unable to attend and he invited me along as I know the family well. This is a short excerpt from our trip.

As we left Hull and surrounding communities, Joe and his mother, Mary, offer play-by-plays of various neighborhoods, families, and businesses.“There’s a lovely hibiscus up in that ugly place,” Mary remarks as we pass a walled-in fortress-like residence. 
Signs advertise: Sword Master Martial Arts: Unleash Your inner Tiger, and mark places such as  Jolienne McDonnell Square, Neponset Bridge, and Quincy Bay.

Looking at me through the rear view mirror, Joe says, “There’s the Long Island Bridge we passed under yesterday.” I recognize it, sort of.

A large garden spider, suspended on its web between the passenger-side mirror and the body of the car, holds on desperately as Joe drives through traffic, the rain hits the mirror and the car bounces along on the pot-holed streets. 
“You’re going to Maine, buddy!” Joe shouts.

“O'Neil Tunnel is part of “The Big Dig” that was under construction ten years ago." Joe points out. “That’s where the Battle of Bunker Hill was fought ...
“There’s The Gardens where the Celtics and the Bruins play ... “This, is Chelsey, the smallest city in Massachusetts ...

“Chick Korea, the jazz player, came from Chelsey,” interjects Mary.

“No, I was mistaken,” Joe apologizes.“That wasn’t Chelsey, that was East Boston. This is Chelsey.”

After Mass on Sunday, we had gone to Steve and Jean’s house over on B Street for coffee and ‘bubkees’(blueberry) muffins, and ‘cahn’ muffins' (Recognize ‘cahn’ as ‘corn’ and you’re getting the hang of it.)

Visiting and laughing, the brothers joke with their mother. Jean, adds her two cents too. The resemblance of the McDonnells to my mother’s family, the Palms, was something that would play out through the whole of this trip. I’ve always felt the McDonnells are my family away from home. They even named me.

Well, Joe's mother did. She said there were too many Steve’s in the family that trip to keep them all straight, so she named me, “Jim,” a honorable tag that lives on. I doubt that by this writing that any of the younger members of the family even know my real name, but that’s just fine by me, so ‘Jim,’ to them, I’ll always be.

As Mary and I stood in the living room, Mary remarked, “All their children are grown, everyone’s just couples again.”
  
And isn’t that the way life is, I think. This wind-down from child-rearing when all the kids are grown and on their own and we are faced with just ourselves, with more free time, and perhaps, an emptiness that we feel obligated to fill somehow to stay productive. ‘The house is too big now. We’ve got too many things.’

You want the children to come and take what they want, feeling that it has less than to do with lightening the clutter, as it does to return the house to its natural ambience of space and light. No matter how it seems to change it, memories there are relived in each child’s mind their whole lives long, whether objects, rooms, or stairwells exists physically or not.

Steve brings an old book from his shelf, “The Story of Old Nantucket.” http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/new-englands-beloved-shipwreck-schooner-nancy/  Inside was a photo of the Stranded Schooner Nancy, that ran aground in a storm in 1927 in the mouth of Boston Harbor. Her keel still laying in the beach sand is uncovered at times by varying tidal disruptions.

True to form, Steve gave us both a little pocket book titled: Acadia National Park, a guide to where we’re heading near Stonington, Maine. It's a cool little book with two pop-out maps in the front and back that considerably enlarge the map area. I had never been to that part of the country, so I was eager to check out that book.

We cross the Piscaqua River between New Hampshire and Maine, into Maine. I remember reading about it in the book my daughter Bonny gave me for one of my birthdays,  
"How The States Got Their Shapes.” 

Traffic spreads out across six lanes, three of the same direction, the opposite lanes of people returning to Boston after the weekend, and were bumper to bumper. We’re all glad we’re over here.
Napping was out of the question for me. I yawn my head off but it’s been 100 years since I’ve slept in a moving car, and besides, I hate to miss anything along the road although the land looks like so much like Minnesota. It’s only what the signs say that makes the difference. ‘Portland,’ ‘Kennebuckport.’

“Kennebuckport. Isn’t that where President Bush went a lot?” Mary queries. Then ensues a conversation about George W., Iraq, and Republicans.

Brother Steve attended the Maine Maritime Academy: https://mainemaritime.edu/as a young man. Mary said when they would take him back, after he was home a couple days, Steve would step from the car in his dress whites to get into a waiting car, and people would stop and ask them if they were Kennedys, as Steve looked more like a Kennedy than a McDonnell. Now, I’d think that’d be something to capitalize on, myself.

Yarmouth. Freeport. The Muddy Rudder Restaurant. Augusta.
Jameson Tavern Est. 1779.


Mary and I get out of the car at L.L. Bean’s so Joe can go park the car, and Mary says, without the slightest hint of mischievousness in her voice, “Let’s wait for him inside that door." And I, never one to counter a senior’s idle wish except in matters of security or nutrition, open the door at L.L. Bean Bike, Canoe and Kayak Shop, as she suggested, and we step inside to await the return of her eldest son--not 25 feet from where we exited the car. So we wait.

And wait. And wait. And wait.

In the long interim, Mary and I talk about my wife, Jackie, and her illustrious singing career in Minnesota--and Mary’s own singing career that I didn’t know or remember hearing about, and whether the roughsawn planks in a window display were real or not ...

People came in and went out in droves. We heard different languages, saw so many colors and shapes of dress. We looked at a mountain bike beside us that was marked down to $499.00. Kayaks in several colors stood tall and short across the aisle. One couple purchased a two-wheeled canoe carrier after the salesman described the unique features of an assembled floor model he had on display. A full 90% of people wore shorts and running or hiking boots and shoes, many of them L.L. Bean brand.

Bronze-tanned men and women, young and old, crowded in behind one another, some with cellphones to their ears that made me wish for one of my own so I could call Joe to find out where in hell he was!

“I’m starting to get worried,” Mary said. We had covered all the names of Joe’s elementary and secondary school teachers, his numerous roles in school plays and drama club functions, his aspirations to become a philosophy professor at Boston college, and while I was never bored looking into her blue eyes or listening to her lilting baritone voice, I was thinking of sending out an A.P.B. (All Pub Bulletin) to rout the scoundrel from his stool that I just knew he had to be spinning in the vicinity somewhere.
“Where is the bahstid??”

She looked sincere, so I said, “Lemme look outside here, to see if I can recognize his mug amidst the teeming populace (or words to that effect)". Walking half the distance to the curb from whence we had stepped from the car, I spied Joe with his arms crossed at his chest, a smile of sorts across his face, rocking from heel to toe waiting for who knows who.

“HEY YIZ!” I hollered, putting on my best Boston accent and gaining direct eye contact with not Joe, but a large burly man whose assembled-from-silicone-and-plastic surgery girlfriend stood beside him, her over-inflated breasts nearly obstructing her face. She teetered awkwardly on spike-heeled platform shoes, the seams of her sprayed-on pants hissing in pain, as the burly man glared right back at me, clenching his huge hands into fists.

Fortunately, Joe looked my way at the same time, and hurried by them before there was a confrontation.
“I’ve been all ova Freepaht, L.L. Bean, and all da pubs within two blahks,” Joe exclaimed, his native Boston accent leaping to the foh. “I just knew yiz wudnant go inta da bike shawp, so I dint even look in theh!”

“Why wud yiz go into da bike shawp?” he asked in disbelief, catching the door I opened, and looking in toward his mother, whose blue eyes shown with relief that all her ‘Hail Marys’ had helped. "It was her idea," I said. "We were just inside the door all this time."

“Shuh, go ahead an' blame me mudder," Joe said. "I'll bet yiz waltzed her around the Hunting & Fishing Department, then danced t'rough Sporting Guds til yust now," his Boston accent slipping back to a poor scandanavian imitation.

"Yeah, Ma, I’ve been all over L.L. Bean and Freepaht, lookin’ foh yiz two,” Joe repeated, (not mentioning the forty pubs he visited).

“We were beginning to worry,” his mother said, acting ready to leave the building for other locales. However, in reality, she was ailing more than she would let on, self-diagnosing what she thought was merely a gallbladder problem with infrequent bouts of pain, while lamenting the fact it had resurfaced now on the eve of the impending family reunion.

“We weren’t 25 feet from the curb here,” I said, in our defense, following the mother and son duo, negotiating through a large family of Chinese tourists and their children leaving the building about the same time. "Oops! Sorry! Sorry!"

Joe didn’t act put off by our missed appointment although I knew we had lost some travel time. Mary asked to sit the L.L. Bean tour out, and found a bench near the entrance. Joe asked her if she cared for tea and she accepted.

The place was a zoo. Too many people were pressed together upstairs and downstairs like swarms of bees in a hive. Joe said he decided not to buy boots there as he planned, because returning them would be a hassle, but I think he just wanted to get back on the road. He angled off toward an exit he thought would speed our return to where Mary awaited us. Seizing the opportunity, I hurried down the steps to the coffee shop as he sat down beside his mother, and took up her tea with her encouragement.

On the road again. Look at all this traffic! It’s like the Minnesota State Fair! Cars with kayaks and bicycles on top, runners, trucks, campers, big motor homes lumbering about in a small space with first time drivers behind the wheel...

I don’t take many pictures as we drive along. I write instead, looking up occasionally or when Joe points out some interesting scenery I note signs: Augusta. Belfast. Thomas Farm Est. 1826. Belfast Curling Club. Crab & Potato Leek Soup. Bucksport.

We drop off a hilltop that leaves us weightless. When the trees allow, hidden bays, shrouded by towering bluish tree-covered hills, appear north of Seaport and Belfast. Frequent are views of fjords, stone-laden pastures, antique shops, mansions in bad need of repair, hemlock, spruce, pine, cedar, blueberry farms, signs for split firewood, jellies and jams, and garage sales. Logging trucks at idle. Saltbox housing designs dominate.
  
The road is rough and well-traveled with concave wheel tracks embossed in the worn asphalt, that you just know would be even worse to drive in if it was raining. The car, although comfortable, pitches and rolls in undulations. Conversations from the front seat are about kayaking and boat yards.

"Blue Hill", Mom’s favorite town,” Joe says.“Guess it wasn’t right there,” he adds, navigating the winding two lane blacktop road of high banks and curves, deep ravines and steep hills.

Signs for Bangor 19 miles. Stonington, Sedgewick, Deer Isle.
“Thirty miles to Stonington, now, Blue Hill,” Joe says at the wheel.

Mary tells of getting nabbed for speeding on Nantasket Road.
“He asked me what I was trying to do,” she said,  
“Were you speeding?” Joe asked, his full attention on the road.

“I had passed him,” she said. “It was an unmarked car, a van with dark tinted windows. Then he turned his lights on.”

Joe laughed.

“I didn’t care,” Mary mused. “They only write warnings.”

Joe got a call on his cellphone from Bill, his brother who lives in Stonington, telling him to get a move on as there was a Noel Paul concert in town that night at $25 a head for which their mom had a ticket.

Although we had an hour to spare even at the speed we were going, Joe stepped on the gas, petal to the metal and all that, muttering something about not wanting to get Bill mad if he didn't get Ma to the concert on time, and so I became alternately plastered and deplastered to the back of the seat, rising and falling, leaning to and fro, my cap lifting from my head then falling atop my nose, and in- between I'd have to push my cap back up out of my eyes, and throw one arm out to keep me from slamming into the back of the front seats.

Ah, I felt sorry for poor Mary, bless her, sitting up front riding shotgun next to John Wayne in the movie, “Stagecoach,” careening around corners, standing straight-legged on sheer downhills, her frail hands splayed against the sunvisor, her face distorted by G-forces known only to upper stratosphere test pilots, her lips and nose flattened--no, smeared into one fleshy orifice. 

Flecks of loose saliva spiraled dizzily about the car's interior reflected in the headlights of oncoming vehicles, appearing around corners like apparitions whose high beams swept the treetops like lasers, and rocket over hilltops straight at us then swerve back into their lane at the last possible second.

“You alright, Ma?” Joe manages, through gritted teeth, his freckled hands in a death grip on the steering wheel, his knees leaning into corners like a motorcycle racer, tight against either the driver’s door or center console depending on the curve, the rear wheels breaking traction in the gravel along the shoulder, tree boughs grazing the car windows with such rapidity it sounded like a fast freight at a railroad crossing.

“La-a-a-n-d s-s-s-s-akes ...... yessss .... J-J-J-J-Joe,” Ma says assuredly. “Doncha be worryin’ about me now ..... Reminds me of the time .... when yohah father and I weh comin’ up heh and we got behind a cah tha’ was goin’ so slooooow, but Joe cudnaht pass ‘im. Finally, with his undershorts in an uproah, Joe ... passes ‘im beloah tha top of a hill ... and anathah cah was comin’ ovah tha hill an’ we was closin’ ah eyes an’... ,” Ma takes a breath, moving her seatbelt back across her chest. “We pass ‘im, three cahs in a two cah space, the uhtha cah swuvun’ onto tha shodah, gravel an’ dust in tha headlights, Joe’s eyes big as dinnaplates. We neva said a wud to each uhtha until we got to wheh we was goin’.”

Suddenly, we veered into a short driveway against a house with all its lights on and people milling about us as if waiting for someone in particular. . . .

Then the shout went up,
“UNCLE JOE! NANA!!”