Cattails.
Takin’ a country train
Thorndike, traffic jammed before the train station.
I park on grass down the line
hope the engine sans heat plate doesn’t ignite a fire
one train pulls out just before I can buy my ticket
but sunny, definitely – a 25-minute delay
Old Swedish dining car
meaning prime cutting-edge 1950s
cardinal tattoos on somebody
what faint blue mountains were in the distance
before the 220 turnoff?
return trip train car sinks on one side
before leaving the festival stop
worrisome, slows the run back to terminal
its sharp curves especially front car’s detached before final run
to fairgrounds and back
Not the Red Barn
This one is far more spacious and majestic than mine was. Oh, yes, and much less packed.
Ten big prize winners I’ve known or at least met
- Elinor Ostrom, Nobel Prize, economics
- Clarence Page, Pulitzer Prize, commentary
- Dick Locher, Pulitzer Prize, editorial cartoonist
- Gary Snyder, Pulitzer Prize, poetry
- Jeff MacNally, Pulitzer Prize, editorial cartoonist
- Jesse Haines, Baseball Hall of Fame, pitcher
- Jesse Owens, Olympic gold medalist, runner
- Marcy Nighswander, Pulitzer Prize, photography
- Ritter Collett, Baseball Hall of Fame, sportswriter
- Steve Curwood, Pulitzer Prize, investigative reporting
Wobbly rail run
The volunteer-run Belfast & Moosehead Lake Railroad can be an adventurous ride. Here are its tracks in Thorndyke, Maine, as seen from a passenger car door.
Acid test novelist and critic: Nicholson Baker (1957- )
You can add Baker to my elite circle of treasured novelists who began publishing after I graduated from college.
Start with his ability to look in depth where others haven’t gone – the phrase “literary microscopy” fits him to a T. Sometimes what he investigates is right in front of us, perhaps an escalator in an office building or a thermometer for a daughter’s baby bottle or a common book of matches on a sequence of icy winter mornings. Other times his focus is on portent issues in world affairs like Human Smoke in the buildup to World War II, the outbreak of Covid-19, where he was the first, in “The Lab-Leak Hypothesis,” to argue the coronavirus was manmade and spread by accident, or the destruction of paper archives in major libraries.
I like the way he generally alternates a volume of fiction with another of nonfiction before returning to fiction, works of originality and high quality in either vein. As a craftsman, he’s impeccable, whether with 250-word sentences that flow seamlessly or fiction that’s footnoted. He writes with cool passion and an irrepressible conscience, even in the three volumes of erotica that led the New York Times magazine to dub him the Mad Scientist of Smut.
My favorite novel is The Everlasting Story of Nory, where nothing seems to happen in the first 50 pages, befitting the thoughts and expectations of a nine-year-old girl spending a year with her parents in England. Brace yourself for the tension that follows, though.
Kinisi 227
RODE
RHODA
ROAD
On Eggemoggin Reach
just passed an old sardine carrier
turned private yacht
Local traffic
sardines as a reminder of where I’ve settled
when the Louis R. French was based out of Lubec
and owned by American Can in Eastport
she had an engine and no masts
faring something like this
Now, for some background
While we wait for the continuing renovations to catch up with these weekly reports, let’s change the focus to the history of this old house itself. Give us a better idea of what we’re working with, too.
When we bought our full Cape at the end of 2020, the real estate listing dated its origin in the 1860s. As we became familiar with the home’s bones, we saw details suggesting construction as early as the 1830s. While the pedigrees of a few neighboring houses have been catalogued by local historians, ours was not one of them. The dwelling did appear more modest in comparison.
We did have to wonder if the dwelling had been rebuilt after one of the catastrophic fires swept the downtown and its fringes in 1886, 1864, and 1839. Some of our stone foundation is 18 or more inches thick.
The house did appear on a widely reproduced 1879 map of Eastport, one that gave a birds-eye view of the city. The two dormers may have come later – it’s hard to tell from the map.
An earlier historic map of 1855 not only had a house fitting the footprint of ours on the lot, but with two wings, accompanied by an identifying script “Shackford Est.” The difficulty came in trying to figure out which Shackford that would have been — the family was prominent and prolific.
An earlier Plan of the Village of Eastport, 1835, by William Anson presented rough designations of the structures in town, including a house where ours is and only a few others in the blocks around.
Thus, we do know the house was here before 1886, as the charred rafters affirm, reflecting the great fire that destroyed the downtown. Local history dean Ruth “Ruthy” McInnis, owner of the Todd House bed and breakfast, had primed us to look for that detail when we were considering whether to bid on the place. Other dwellings, as we’re learning, share similar damage.
What I’ve uncovered is that this house is even older than we suspected, and more historic. In many ways, it tells the story of the town, too.
Ahoy, mates! It’s a small world, indeed
I’ve been caught off-guard several times while wearing my gray Louis R. French historic schooner hoodie around Eastport. (Well, one of them. I now have three, but that’s another story.)
The first encounter was at the county courthouse in Machias while researching the deeds to our home. A registrar asked what I knew about the boat and I started replying with the history. She smiled and said, “My dad worked aboard it,” back when it was a sardine carrier based in Lubec, the town just south of Eastport. During that stretch, the masts were removed and the vessel was powered by an inboard motor.
The second time was when a friend, a legendary ship pilot, smiled and said he rode many times aboard it as a kid. Bob did correct me, saying the French wasn’t a sardine carrier but a freighter carrying cat food to Canada. (“Cat food to Canada?” Sounds like a title to me.) His family did own canneries in Lubec, Eastport, Portland, and a few other places. That’s yet another history to consider.
The next incident came while leaving my dentist’s office and his wife ( a.k.a. center of operations) Mary, blurted out, “Lewis R. French? That was my family’s boat.” For 50-some years, in fact, or the time it was based on our waters, when her Burpee and Vose families possessed the vessel. From her I learned that during the Prohibition, the French was an active rum-runner. Sardine carrier? Huh? The missions do get more interesting, no?
She also said something about ghosts. Well, if they could talk.
She does have the book published later, but I do suspect some of those details are missing.
The most recent account came while watching a big cruise ship come into Eastport. A woman standing nearby saw my hoodie and then told me she used to work in the office when the French belonged to Seaport Navigation. (She confirmed that my dentist’s wife’s families were among the owners). The headquarters was on the second floor of a waterfront building that she pointed to, one where friends of ours have their gallery and apartment, and said she never got tired of the view. She remembered typing up many documents regarding deliveries of canned sardines to the railroad line in St. Andrews, New Brunswick. Shipping them from there rather than by truck from Maine was much cheaper. By this point, the French was Seaport’s backup ship.
So sardines were still part of the story.
Jnana's Red Barn 