At Home On Piety Hill

We finally did it. Denise and I made an offer on a Maine property, which has been accepted by the owner. We are now in the process of buying a cute little cottage on 23 acres of gently sloping, wooded land on the Bucksport/ Orrington town line. The red boundary approximates the land, which is covered with a mixture of hardwoods and conifers. A natural gas pipeline crosses the corner, the railroad runs parallel to the River Road and the Penobscot River is on the far left. 

The house itself was built in the 30s, I think, and the current owners have been in it since 1955, the year of our nativities. It is quaint and the decor consistent with a vacation home / rental. Well, it looks as if we’re in for another adventure.

This post will take some twists and turns, but hopefully we’ll pass some points of interest for each reader along the way (all 3 of you).

We visited our friend, Joan, who was our next-door neighbor when we lived in the village of Sedgwick way back in ‘93. She owns one of the oldest, if not the oldest, homes in town. She was getting her wheel all ready for a spinning demonstration at the Blue Hill Fair. It seemed very appropriate to watch her at work in the parlor of the home, near the great brick fireplace and original paneling.

Joan also spins for one of my favorite artisans and former customers, Betsy Coakley of Mermaid Woolens fame. She designs some of the most beautiful sweaters I’ve ever seen. If you are a fan of woolen wearables, you simply must visit her site. I love this photo of a selection of her past designs — I think the backdrop of fallen snow make the warm, vibrant colors sort of leap out at you. She also paints stair treads and does a dozen other cool things. Be sure to read her bio, when you visit.

Now, speaking of the Blue Hill Fair, you probably remember it as the setting of the children’s story, Charlotte’s Web. Well, Charlotte’s Web was written by E.B. White, who lived in neighboring Brooklin Maine. Mr. White had two housekeepers, who I knew; Ethel and Tink. Denise and I became good friends of Ethel’s, so when we visit Maine we like to stay in the apartment above her garage. Sometime I’ll tell you about the wonderful conversations I used to have with Ethel and the stories she would tell. She is one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met! She grew up over to Brooksville.

Now, Brooksville is on the other side of Sedgwick from Brooklin and, when you go there you will want to visit Buck’s Harbor, where you will find Condon’s Garage. That establishment figures prominently in Robert McCloskey’s One Morning in Maine. I think we have most of his books and my favorite is Blueberries for Sal. I have to admit that I enjoy his drawings even more than the stories themselves. Denise and I read that the garage was closing down and I think we saw it come up for sale in the multiple listings a year or so ago. 

Mr. McCloskey died in his home on Deer Isle not too long ago. Deer Isle was the home of famous primitive folk artist, George Hardy. One of our favorite documentaries of all time is Portrait of George Hardy by Gabriel Coakley (sound familiar?). Gabe won the Cine Golden Eagle Award at the US Super-8 Video Festival in 1995 and let me tell you - I’ve never seen anything that captures winter on the Eggemoggin Reach like that film, with the sped up sequences of wind blowing sea smoke across the chilly waters and Mr. Hardy bustin’ up the ice on his stoop, so he can get his door open. 

So, there you have it. A bit of serendipity, combined with free-writing and a little nostalgia of our time on the Blue Hill Peninsula, brought to mind by our brief visit in August. More to follow…

Blueberries are native only to North America. Wild Maine blueberries, like Maine lobster, are the best — finest kind. They are small and full of flavor, unlike the larger ones that grow higher off the ground in places like New Jersey, Oregon and Washington. Our friends in Maine will sometimes eat the larger, inferior blueberries from away but that’s an anomaly. 

Blueberries are raked and it is difficult and back-breaking work. If you are good at it, you can make a big wad of cash during the season, typically the month of August. In the 90’s, that’s how teenagers in our town earned money to buy a car. Camille raked blueberries one day and that was enough. Sam did it for a while longer than that. 

Here in California, we have found wild Maine blueberries, as well as those grown in the Maritime provinces at Trader Joe’s, in the frozen section under their own brand. Generally, Denise uses them for baking and my personal favorite is a coffee cake recipe she got from the baker at a country store in Maine. She had a good rep in town and the gentleman was happy to share it with her, under the condition that she never used it commercially and with the understanding that we were heading back to California. The secret was the crusty, sugary, tart, blueberry top on the cake. 

You can buy blueberries in a variety of ways, but we prefer the roadside stand where you leave your money in a jar. By the way, this is a common practice in Maine for selling anything from camp wood to blueberries to pies or baked goods. Many of the stands will have a sign advertising blueberrys. Don’t be fooled by this marketing ploy — the obvious misspelling gives the stand or display a down-home, rural ambience.  Denise enjoys blueberries al fresco and one at a time.

Before I begin on this post, I have to make an acerbic comment. I just looked at my blog in Explorer and it doesn’t render properly. This is WordPress, for crying out loud. Why doesn’t Explorer play by the rules? I’m actually glad Google has come out with Chrome to compete with Microsoft in the browser battles. I prefer Safari now or Camino, the Mac version of Firefox. There, I said it and I feel much better now. 

As we moved south toward Portland, we found this wonderful place in Glen Cove Maine, the Oakland Seashore Motel. The cottages were cute, but we stayed in the motel.

I’m not sure, but I think we were looking across our little cove at Owl’s Head and the lighthouse there. The lodgings were simple, the way they should be, the grounds beautiful and the owners were very hospitable. We shared our blueberries with them and they were grateful. 

Denise and Emma passed the evening twilight reading and working on a needlepoint, of course. I sat on the ledge with my MacBook, taking advantage of the now ubiquitous wifi. 

The next morning we were out on the lawn and heard the familiar sound of a lobster boat coming around the point. Denise caught a few shots of the captain weaving his boat in and out of the buoys with the sternman hauling his traps.

Did I ever tell you about the time we went to our first lobster bake? We had just moved to Maine in August of ‘93 and were getting acquainted. Billy and Lorna took us out with about 20 people on their lobster boat at the end of the season, after Billy hauled all his gear out and cleaned it up real nice. We went out to Torrey Island and set everything up on the shore, including Ralph’s propane rig for making real french fries. That was wonderful. We had unlimited lobster, french fries that were salted and sprinkled with vinegar in a cardboard box, corn on the cob and red hot dogs for the kids. We left all the exoskeletal remains out on the shore and watched the tide recycle it all. Lorna showed the kids how to rake for quahogs that day. 

What trip to Maine would be complete without a lobster bake? And, why do they call it a bake, when you boil or steam everything? Well, that and other weighty questions of eternal consequence will have to wait until later. Right now, we’re talking about downeast cuisine.

We headed down to Brooklin to buy some lobsters from John Candage and found them for just over $5 a pound. 

We got together with Bruce and Terri, Paul and Mary, Leah and Emma for some lobster, steamers, fresh corn on the cob and, of course, pie. Mary made the best coconut cream pie, with a great whipped topping. 

It was Emma’s first taste of lobster and, oddly enough, she didn’t like it. Go figure! I prefer sea scallops, but I really like lobster, too. I’ve had lobster often, but learned a valuable tip this time. Clip the rubber bands off the claws, before you drop them, head first, into the boiling water. If you don’t do that, the taste of rubber will taint the delicate lobster meat. 

I also learned that:

Long ago, lobsters were so plentiful that Native Americans used them to fertilize their fields and to bait their hooks for fishing. In colonial times, lobsters were considered “poverty food.” They were harvested from tidal pools and served to children, to prisoners, and to indentured servants, who exchanged their passage to America for seven years of service to their sponsors. In Massachusetts, some of the servants finally rebelled. They had it put into their contracts that they would not be forced to eat lobster more than three times a week.

For those of you concerned about the inhumane practice of boiling lobster, consider it justice:

Lobsters like to eat a variety of fresh plants and animals like clams, sea urchins, and starfish. The four antennae located on a lobsters head along with the tiny hair that covers much of the lobsters body helps him to locate food; lobsters can detect motion but cannot clearly make out specific objects.   The lobster has two big claws and eight walking legs.  One claw is the crusher claw, which helps the lobster destroy something he wants to eat.  The other claw is called the pincher or ripper claw and is used to tear food apart. 

Before we sat down to our lobster feed, we needed to be sure the horses had something to eat and Leah showed us the correct way to feed a carrot to a horse. 

We decided to visit the Penobscot Narrows Bridge near Bucksport and take a trip up to the observatory at the top - 420 feet high, to be exact. Denise and I were vacationing and hunting for investments just about a year ago and happened to visit when the bridge was opened for the first public walk-across and Bridgefest. It was impressive.

While we were waiting, Emma was wishing she had brought her sweater. She did, however, bring a book along. It was one of about 8 she read in our 12 day vacation. Sidebar: Emma has always been a voracious reader. My memory of living in Maine is coming home to find Emma, dressed like a boy, sitting sideways in a chair, twirling her bobbed hair around one finger, with some sort of sucker or jawbreaker in her mouth, reading a book. Read, read, read… and, then, read some more!

The next photo is Denise and Emma from the observatory with Verona Island in the background and Blue Hill in the distance. For you history fans, the bridge overlooks the location of one of the most strategic towns in American history, Castine, and the site of the greatest single American Naval loss before Pearl Harbor. Paul Revere was court-martialed for his role in the debacle. 

Finally, we have a photo of me reeling after my trip to the top. I do not like heights and when you get to the observatory, you exit the elevator and the glass is about 3 feet from the door. So, if you are prone to vertigo, it comes on you all at once. After exiting the elevator, you take a couple flights of stairs, which are right up close to the glass, to the top. I was a bit wobbly until we reached the observatory, where I got acclimated and was able to operate the camera. Actually, I was fine by the time we got down and I am really looking towards Bucksport from Fort Knox, wondering where in town we would be able to find a decent whoopie pie, red hot dog or pizza. 

One of our favorite places to visit is Camden Maine, which most people know as Peyton Place. We know it as the home of Cappy’s Chowder House and the site of a wonderful webcam.

I love the library there. The town outgrew the old library, so they built a new one under the park out back, down by the harbor, and connected it to the original. Most of the holdings are in the new addition, while the original library provides a wonderful place to relax and read, as well as some wonderful views of town.

The first photo is of Denise and I in the underground addition, under the skylight that sits in the center of the lawn in the park. The interior of the original library is bright and airy. The views of the town from the southeast window are spectacular.

When you’re in Maine, there are a number of rare treats you’ll want to track down besides the best lobster in the world. Emma and I love two Maine staples, common to the working class downeast; red hot dogs and whoopie pies. The best place to find them in Hancock County are at the Eggemoggin Country Store or, as the natives call it, B&L’s (it was established years ago by Billy and Lorna… but, that’s another story).

Danny makes the best whoopie pies, bar none, anywhere in New England. He also serves up the most righteous cookies and baked goods. Finest kind!

Red hot dogs are unique to Maine and they do taste a bit different. Authentic red hots are served in a split-top roll, the same as any good clam, crab, scallop or lobster roll. I like dogs steamed along with the roll, in the glass and stainless steel dispenser, common to any reputable Maine market or general store. Yes, red hots are some good!

Other mandatory items in a real, downeast Maine country store are pizza, Italians (the Maine name for a hoagie or sub), picked crabmeat, old VHS movie rentals and plenty of humor, laced with bits of town gossip. “Yes, deah!”

On one of our trips to B&L’s, we drove by the home of our friends, Don and Jane. They offered us their typical brand of downeast hospitality and we sat in the kitchen for a couple of hours, exchanging bits of news about family and friends in town, as well as our opinion of Obama’s choice for a running mate. When we left, Denise snapped this pose of what could pass for two Maine male models, whose bodies have been sculpted by years of hard work, red hot dogs and whoopie pies. 

When we moved to Maine in ‘93, our first home was down on Naskeag Point, site of the famous Revolutionary War battle. Denise and Emma’s passion for beach glass was born there. We ran straight down to Naskeag, as soon as we arrived on the Blue Hill Peninsula. Emma wanted to bring home a lobster buoy for a souvenir and immediately found a pink girl’s buoy on the shore. Unfortunately, the buoy she found is still an active, licensed color. It’s never a good idea to mess with someone’s lobster gear, so she left it at the shore. She didn’t find much beach glass this time, but plenty of clam shells.

I’m sitting in a very comfortable motel room in Wolfeboro New Hampshire, which I’m sure you know was the first resort town in the United States. We found a wonderful little place on the lake, where Emma and Denise are relaxing in a gazebo, on the lawn, watching some kids being delightedly dragged and tossed about the lake on some big rubber boat by their irresponsible parents.

We finished some takeout for lunch and two pints of hand-packed Morrissey Ice Cream, followed by a nap. Now, I’m ready to get down to some serious Bible study, following this post.

Ever since our first trip to New England, Denise and I have trained our eyes to detect each and every dairy bar along the road, in search of the best soft serve and homemade or local dairy’s hard ice cream. Maine abounds with the stuff, as does New Hampshire. The Morrissey mocha almond fudge was just right, but I think the peppermint stick was just a bit too sweet. I like the peppermint “hot.”

Last Sunday, I preached at a small church in Bangor. Following the service, pastor Joe, Tricia and their grandson Austin took us all out to Nick’s for lunch and we followed that up with a trip to the Gifford’s stand on Broadway, over by the Bangor Mall. They serve up some of the best hard ice cream I’ve had, in a variety of flavors. I’m a bit of a purist and go for something simple for evaluation and review. Their chocolate chip is a superb blend of rich, creamy vanilla and semi-sweet chocolate chips that are just the right size. They tend to be on the large size, which other chocolate chip fans will agree is the proper way to make it. As you can see from the photo on the left, Austin’s decision for chocolate lover’s chocolate was an excellent choice.

Denise usually gets something with maple in it while we’re in the area and Emma generally goes for the peppermint stick ice cream. Gifford’s excels at both.  Dutch Treat, on the road to Bar Harbor, makes their own ice cream right there and it’s a Salisbury favorite. We all like soft-serve and found Lodie’s on Deer Isle for the first time. It’s creamy, firm and comes in a variety of flavors and swirls. Of course, we still love our Blizzards at Dairy Queen and even McDonald’s will do in a pinch.

This is the cape we made an offer on, sight unseen. It’s a quaint little home, built in the 50s, out in the Sunshine area of Deer Isle Maine. The owners thought our offer of $90k was way too low (starting at $139k and lowered to $125k when we got interested). They countered high, so we waited to see it. 

The property is beautiful, near some nice ledge and it is a short distance from the Eggemoggin Reach and swimming, as well as the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. We had hoped to make it a vacation home and rental for students / faculty / boaters. 

When we finally saw it, we realized that it would need about $50k of work to repair the failed septic, update it some (not much for our mid-century tastes) and deal with the moisture problems. I have allergies, so that’s an issue. We decided against going any higher than $80k. A comparable newer cape, the same size, would only fetch $120-135k in the current market, so it wouldn’t be a great investment and would require a lot of labor and headaches. We’re opting toward new construction or very recent, perhaps even a manufactured home.

So, we met some new friends in Sedgwick Me — Joanne and Doug. They told us that Pushcart Press, the world’s smallest bookstore, is in the building at the back of what was once Donny and Eleanor’s garage and auto dealership. We stopped by to check it out. The Pushcart Prize is a prestigious literary project, pioneered by Bill Henderson over 30 years ago. As it turns out, Mr. Henderson is now a resident of Sedgwick, where I once served as Postmaster and our family wintered for a year before moving up to Blue Hill. From the PP website:

The Pushcart Prize - Best of the Small Presses series, published every year since 1976, is the most honored literary project in America. Hundreds of presses and thousands of writers of short stories, poetry and essays have been represented in the pages of our annual collections. 

Writers who were first noticed here include:
Raymond Carver, Tim O’Brien, Jayne Anne Phillips, Charles Baxter, Andre Dubus, Susan Minot, Mona Simpson, John Irving, Rick Moody, and many more. Each year most of the writers and many of the presses are new to the series.

I’m sure you’ve all been wondering why the blog posts have dried up. In fact, I’m just sitting down to answer the backlog of thousands of email messages. We are winding up our trip to Maine and are finally relaxing on the shore of Allamoosook Lake. Emma is in a canoe, Denise is sitting in her Adirondack chair with a needlepoint and I’m doing what I like to do to unwind… writing. So, here are a few shots of the view from the lodge and a preview of posts to come.
There is a very picturesque island out in front of the lodge and it appears to have a camp with a dock out into the lake. It’s very quiet here, the loons and ducks are paddling by and there are only two boats out on the lake. I just heard some folks at their camp about a quarter mile across the lake discussing supper plans for the evening — Chinese food in Bucksport.
Emma is really enjoying her vacation and is now out in a canoe, trying to find an anchorage, so she can stop to read her book. I’ll plug away on a few posts about the house we let go out in Sunshine, the one that interests us in Lamoine, lobster supper, whoopie pies and, best of all, good friends.

Okay, so I’ve been a little nostalgic lately and I scanned some old photographs of our family. When Denise and I began dating, she had long blonde hair… naturally blonde. I had long hair, too. 

Denise also bought a brand new Landcruiser FJ40, which I loved to drive and she snapped this photo, as we drove by the 76 station at the corner of Painter Avenue and Lambert Road in Whittier.

In the Spring of 1974, after Denise graduated from Sierra High School, we drove north to pick up Denise’s brother at UC Davis and brought him home. We stopped in one of our favorite destinations from our desert days, Virginia City NV, and I took this photo of Denise. Wow!!! 

If you ever decide to take a trip to Africa, you need to buy and read this book! If you hope to make friends you will keep in touch with, it’s an absolute necessity. In the West, the minute a friend asks for money, things get weird and the friendship probably won’t last long. In Africa, if there is no exchange of money or resources involved, things will get weird and the friendship probably won’t last long. East is east and west is west and there will be no meeting of the minds on the issue of money (and a lot of other customs) without help from someone like David Maranz, a linguist working in Africa since 1975.

I traveled to Uganda twice before I read this book and each page offered at least one “aha!” moment, as perplexing scenes and situations I had witnessed in Africa were given context and clarity. The style makes for a very enjoyable read and the iillustrations by African artists are insightful, amusing and familiar. Even if you have no interest in traveling to Africa, the book is a collection of anecdotes that will keep you riveted for hours.

Reading the book was sometimes uncomfortable as I realized how I had insulted and misunderstood my African friends during my previous visits (though they tell me they understand and knew we were acting out of ignorance). It was also a tragic revelation into the mindset and harmful attitudes of westerners I met, who were living in Africa. For missionaries and Christian workers - next to the Bible, this book is compulsory reading!

The author presents 90 examples illustrating the differences between African and western thinking on:

• Use of Resources
• Friendship
• The Role of Solidarity
• Society and People of Means
• Loans and Debts
• Business Matters

Here is a list of some of the most colorful and crucial examples — I’ve seen most of these first hand and could comment endlessly, but I’ll spare you:

• The financial need that occurs first has the first claim on the available resources
• If something is not being actively used, it is considered to be “available”
• Africans readily share space and things but are possessive of knowledge
• Precision is to be avoided in accounting as it shows the lack of a generous spirit
• Budgeting, in a formal accounting sense, is not an accepted way of handling personal finances
• A network of friends is a network of resources
• People constantly work at maintaining and enlarging their network of friends
• Africans are more hospitable than charitable. Westerners are more charitable than hospitable
• Compliments are frequently given indirectly in the form of requests for gifts or loans and often formulated in questions
• Africans find security in ambiguous arrangements, plans, and speech
• Giving preference to the employment of kin over nonkin is a normal expression of family responsibility and solidarity
• The reputation of people of means is enhanced through the frequent visits of their clients. Foreigners are typically frustrated and inconvenienced by frequent, uninvited visits of African friends and acquaintances
• Old debts are forgotten and are not expected to be repaid, neither by the debtor nor by the lender
• The value of a development project is not to be measured by its long-term success
• The use of the word loan when requesting money from someone is often a euphemism for gift
• Bargaining for a better deal in any transaction involves important social as well as economic factors
• When a customer is told that an ordered article or service will be ready on a specified time or date, it is unlikely to be ready at that time

This is, by far, my favorite and most personally uncomfortable observation in the entire book:

It is also true that Africans readily share space with others… they are with others almost constantly. They avoid being alone… If an individual has a preference for being alone to a noticeable extent, he or she is considered strange, antisocial, or even to be feared.

You never know what you will see on your way to Camptonville. I found this fellow moving to a new turnout each day and stoking up the woodstove to warm up each morning… a mobile commune of sorts. Forget about the Highway Patrol and vagrancy laws — wait until the ecoNazis catch him smokin’ up the South Fork!

On Tuesday, Denise and I said farewell to New York and flew out of La Guardia at 4PM. By 1 AM, we were back in Nevada City and I arrived at work in Camptonville by 7:30 AM on Tuesday. What a great time to be alive and who can deny that the United States is one of the best places on the planet to live?

The last morning in Brooklyn, we decided to take a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. It was chilly. On the Manhattan side, we looked around and thought we would see if anything piqued our interest. If so, we’d just take a train back to our apartment. If not, we’d walk back across the bridge. We kept finding promising places and things to see until we stumbled right up to the World Trade Center. Frankly, we didn’t remember how close it was to the bridge, having visited the WTC and the observation deck about 18 years ago. It was impressive then and it is just as impressive now, but for different reasons.

I won’t go into our reflections, except to say one more time that I like living in the US, where a working-class couple can travel, enjoy visiting friends and family, dine on all kinds of great food, see the sites and spend Sunday morning, worshipping God along with a bunch of people we never met before. Thank you Jesus!

On Sunday, Denise and I went with Sam to the MOMA. She got in free with Sam, because he’s a member… they even bought a couple of his pieces, but he doesn’t know what they are or when they were shown. How do you like that? Anyway, hope you like the photos here.

Our travels took us to visit our dear friend Dolly on the Mainline in Narberth PA and then on to Park Slope in Brooklyn NY. We had a great time and I will go into a bit more detail later, describing the restaurants and other attractions. I’ve posted a few photos at Next Stop Narberth and Park Slope.

With that said, doesn’t Denise look cute?

Boy, have we been going ever since we flew into Manchester NH! We’ve been looking at land, while squeezing in visits with friends, whoopie pies, red snappy hot dogs and some haddock, followed by pie at Helen’s! Our friends, the Websters, have been great hosts. I’ve published a few photos here.