Like they own the place
Tag: Downeast
Up to mustard
While most of Eastport’s sardines were packed in cottonseed oil, some brands boasted of mustard, too, or of even smoking them first.
Even those that weren’t still might be smothered in a mustard sauce.
In 1900, J. Wesley Raye, the 20-year-old son of an Eastport sea captain, founded his mustard business in the family smokehouse in 1900 and moved it to its current site in 1903 to meet demand from the canneries.
Not just Eastport’s, either. Much of the family’s mustard, as the Raye’s website touts, was shipped by both rail and steamship, two means of transport long gone from the city. But, as they boast, their mill remains the last one in America to make mustard the old way. Theirs is made in small batches from mustard seed they’ve ground slowly on millstones made in France.
If you don’t recognize the name, you might know the taste. It’s rebranded by some high-end labels.
Clouds are essential for a spectacular sunrise or sunset
You think it’s all about the sun, but I’ve found that without clouds in the right positions, it’s just lights on, lights off.
It’s best when the sunlight can angle up under the cloud.
And that’s before you see it mirrored in the water.
This was once the sardine capital of the world
Don’t laugh. Sardines were once big business.
The first sardine canning in America happened in Eastport in 1876, and at its peak, 18 canneries were packed in against the waterfront downtown, along with the fishermen’s dories and fishing boats at the docks.
The largest of them, the L.D. Clark and Son factory, extended far into the water from the north end of Shackford Cove only a block where I now live. It was the world’s largest sardine cannery, employing 500 men and women who packed 4,000 cases of 100 cans daily when the small Atlantic herring were available.
Heads and other parts were cut from the fish and dumped into the harbor, where they were devoured by bottom-feeders that then attracted whales close to shore.
Over the years, though, the fishery was depleted, though whales can still be seen in season.
And then the market and American tastes changed.
Does anyone eat sardines anymore?
Few signs remain of the city’s once flourishing industry.
Little Prince Cove has its charm
The inlet gets its name from an early family rather than royalty, even if the British Navy did land here when it captured Eastport during the War of 1812.
Another way you can tell it’s a scenic place
People with their cameras – or more often than not, their cell phones – are everywhere, taking pictures. Everywhere you turn, you find them visually captivated.
They even get in the way of some good shots.
Crow ambush
How about corporate naming rights for hurricanes?
Running out of baby’s first names for hurricanes and tropical storms has me wondering.
Can we turn to corporate behemoths, you know, for naming rights, like sports stadiums do?
Hurricane Amazon would be a natural. Or Geico, reminding folks of the need of home insurance. Victoria’ Secret Hurricane could be hot. You get the drift.
And let’s think about all the good uses we could put the money to, starting with relief for impoverished folks in those storms’ paths.
So how ’bout it?
What corporations would you nominate as the most amusing or fitting for the storms?
~*~
Full moon rising
Refined Japanese, I’m told, would gather with sake to watch the full moon rise. First there’s only the crown of the head, and then the brow and cheeks and chin before the moon lifts altogether in the air. The passage is both slow and fleet, maybe five minutes, if that.
The event would be celebrated with the writing of hokku on the spot.
Here’s how it happened one summer night in Eastport, looking over Campobello Island. And this is what you get rather than a cocktail or poem.
Bold Coast is an apt description
While Eastport and its neighboring towns are technically on Fundy Bay, they’re sheltered from the open ocean. Not so for much of Lubec and Cutler to our south, where the shoreline on the open Atlantic rivals anything Acadia has to offer. It helps to know where the trailheads and parking are, though. Here are some views from the trails in the Maine state public lands in Cutler.
Jnana's Red Barn 