1 August 2024 Almost Forgot

On Tuesday evening, I was leaving on a two day road trip to Red Cliff, Wisconsin to pick up my grandson Ozaawaa and his friend Auna for a few days stay with us in the middle of nowhere, when my lovely wife, Jackie, asked me if I had my Wannaskan Almanac blogpost finished for Thursday to which I answered, 

"Forgot all about it. I'll do it when I get back." 

And she said, "You're coming back on Thursday, it'll be kinda late. Don't you have something written already that you could just pop in?" 

"Reckon you're right about that," I may have said affirmatively. "I'll see what I can conjure up."

 Here she be, an excerpt from 2010 trip to Maine titled:  The L.L. Bean Adventure.

     In 2010, I flew to Boston with friend Joe, for a McDonnell family reunion to be held in Stonington, Maine. Joe’s wife was unable to attend and so he invited me along, as I know the family well these past 35 years of our friendship. Although this trip ends dramatically, all is well in the end. This is a short excerpt from our trip.

     We’re on our way to Maine, with Joe driving and his mother Mary, riding shotgun, we leave Hull and depart through surrounding cities, as the two of them offer play-by-plays of various neighborhoods, families: businesses.

“There’s a lovely hibiscus up in that ugly place,” Mary remarks as we pass a walled-in fortress-like residence.

     I see signs like, ‘Sword-Master Martial Arts: Unleash Your inner Tiger,’ ‘Jolienne McDonnell Square’, ‘Neponset Bridge,' ‘Quincy Bay.’

“There’s the Long Island Bridge we passed under yesterday,” Joe says, looking at me through the rear view mirror. 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 Quincy traffic. The rain wetting the mirror. The car bouncing along on pot-holed streets. “You’re going to Maine, buddy!” Joe shouts when I tell him of the spider.

     “Oneil Tunnel was part of “The Big Dig” that was under construction ten years ago," Joe points out, and goes on as though a tourist guide:

“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, looking out her window.

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

     I didn’t take any pictures of the city. Any predominant city place or building is so documented these days that there’s no reason for photographic redundancy.

     We had gone to Joe’s brother, Steve’s house over on B Street after Mass on Sunday for coffee and ‘bubkees’/ blueberry muffins, and ‘cahn’ muffins (Read ‘cahn’ as ‘corn’ and you’re getting the hang of it.) He’s heading to Maine too, but without his wife Jean, as she’s unable to get off work. Visiting and laughing, the brothers always joke with their mother; Jean adding her two cents.

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 were my family away from home. They even named me.

     Well, Mary 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 to this writing (of 2024 too). I doubt that by this time any of the younger members of the family even know my real name, but that’s just fine by me, so ‘Jim,’I’ll always be. (Until I become, 'Jim' who?)

     Mary remarked, as she and I stood in the living room, “All their children are grown. Everyone’s just couples again.”

         And isn’t that the way life is? 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 perhaps, and perhaps, equally, an emptiness that you 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, and more than just to lighten the clutter, but to return the house to its natural ambience of space and light. Memories are relived in each offspring’s mind and will be there, their whole lives long, whether objects, rooms, stairwells exist physically or not, you begin to see.

     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, run aground in a storm in 1927 in the mouth of Boston Harbor and which later was salvaged, then dynamited, her keel laying in the beach sand and uncovered at times by varying tidal disruptions.

     Steve gave us both a little pocket book titled: Acadia National Park, a guide to where we’re heading near Stonington, Maine. It has two pop-out maps in the front and back that considerably enlarge the map area. We were to see him later.

     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 my birthday, “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 were bumper to bumper, and we’re all glad we’re over here.

Napping was out of the question. I yawn my head off but it’s been 100 years since I’ve slept in a moving car--besides I hate to miss anything along the road although the land looks like Minnesota. It’s only what the signs say makes the difference. ‘Portland.’ ‘Kennebuckport.’

     “Isn’t that where President Bush went a lot?” Mary queries.

Then ensues a conversation about George W., Iraq, and Republicans.

     Steve attended the Maine Maritime Academy: https://mainemaritime.edu/as a young man. Mary said when they would take him back to it, after he was home a couple days, that 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 ...”

     I recall a question in some life-fulfilling message I heard before the trip, “Are you missing the time of your life?” and I’ve been pondering that, “Am I?” Even as I ride in the backseat here on the way to L.L. Bean, now that we’re in ‘Freepaht,’ I ponder this.

     Jameson Tavern Est. 1779.

     I see a Victory motorcycle ahead of us. (The toy factory in Roseau helped develop Victory Motorcycles)

     Mary and I get out of the car at L.L. Bean’s so Joe can go park the car, and Mary says, innocently, “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, for the above mentioned senior, and 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 interim, Mary and I talk about Jackie and her singing career--and, Mary’s own singing career that I didn’t know or remember hearing about, and whether the roughsawn-appearing 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 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, which made me long 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??”

     Sincerity was in her eyes, 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 a Boston accent and gaining direct eye contact with not Joe, but a large burly man whose girlfriend, standing beside him, was assembled-from-silicone-lyposuction-and-plastic surgery and whose over-inflated breasts nearly obstructed her face. She teetered awkwardly on spike-heeled platform shoes, the sewn seams of her sprayed-on pants hissing in pain almost to the bursting point. The burly man glared right at me, clenching his huge hands into fists.

Fortunately, Joe looked my way at the same time, swiftly moving in front of muscle man and his reconstructed gun moll to circumvent the blood bath that could’ve possibly occurred.

“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 fah. “I just knew yiz wudnant go inta da bike shawp!”

     “Why wud yiz go into da bike shawp?” he said catching the door I opened, behind my head, and looking in toward his mother, whose blue eyes shown with relief that we had been rejoined. All her ‘Hail Marys’ had helped.

     “Yeah, I’ve been all over L.L. Bean and Freepaht, Ma, lookin’ foh yiz two,” Joe began, 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, she was actually ailing more than she would’ve preferred, citing a self-diagnosed gallbladder problem and infrequent bouts of pain, lamenting the fact it had resurfaced now on the eve of the impending McDonnell family reunion.

     “We weren’t 25 feet from the curb here,” I said, following the mother and son duo, negotiating through a large family of Chinese tourists and their children leaving 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, finding a bench near the entrance. Joe asked her if she cared for tea and she accepted. I ventured off to find a toilet, but when I couldn’t find one as soon as I thought I should, (even with directions), I returned promptly, just as Joe trudged up the steps from the coffee shop.

     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.

     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...

        I don’t take 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, bays, shrouded by towering bluish tree-covered hills, appear north of Seaport and Belfast.

         The road is rough and well-traveled with concave wheel tracks embossed in the worn asphalt. The car, although comfortable, pitches and rolls in undulations. Conversations from the front seat is about kayaking and boat yards. 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 & jams, and garage sales. Logging trucks at idle. Saltbox housing designs.

“‘Blue Hill,’ Mom’s favorite town,” Joe says.

“Guess it wasn’t right there,” he adds, corrected.

Winding two lane blacktop roads with pitched banks and curves, deep ravines, high 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 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.”