8/31/97... David’s Groceries.

Maine summers intensify to a crescendo on Labor Day weekend. You can go sailing in June and not see another sailboat. Pick up an empty mooring in July. But by August the harbormaster in places like Boothbay will harry you off, because THEY are coming. This summer the weather was tailor-made for THEM. It just got sunnier. Usually the denizens of Vacationland get the last laugh. The summer fog burns off in late August, and September is perfect. No bugs, and no tourists. This summer there was no July fog, and the season ended in rain and mist, just to keep us guessing.

Friday morning before Labor Day I was down at the dock in South Bristol by 7 o’clock, in thick fog and drizzle, waiting for David and Co. When Capt. Ken and I cruised through here in June I’d determined to return with a camera and sketchpad to catch a bit of the maritime muscle of the place. It’s thick with fishboats of all stripes, old wharfage, saggy buildings, the whole fish-smelling quaint. Plus a tiny swing bridge that lets you shortcut between St. John’s Bay and the Damariscotta River. Our neighbor, David, runs a market boat out of here on Fridays between the Fabulous Fourth and Labor Day. So simple arithmatic equals a morning in the mist.

Peggy had dropped me off with my old Olympus, my artkit, a thermos of hot tea, half a loaf of Crow bread, and a hunk of feta, stuffed in a sheetrock bucket. I shrugged into my foul weather gear, and started looking for angles. Nobody stirring. All those dripping pulleys, winches, booms, turntables, net rollers, barges and boats. I was standing on the end of a gravelled jetty trying to frame the bridge, when the operator scuttled out, lowered the traffic gates and started to swing the span for a lobsterman coming through. He never saw me in the fog, the bridge swung out over my perch, and I’d have taken a cold bath, if I hadn’t scooted for shore, tootsweet.

The first vehicle over the bridge after my quickstep was Eli’s pickup towing a trailerful of groceries, followed shortly by Alison’s wagon, similarly loaded. David got out of the pickup and climbed down to wrestle with his skiff, while Eli (his son), backed the trailer down to the end of the wharf. Alison began toting bagsful of bakedgoods to the pierhead, and I clicked away merrily with Olympus. When David brought the Beth Alison alongside the wharf, I stowed the artistry, and lent a hand to loading the boat.

The Beth Alison is the kingsized version of our little sharpie, and one of her inspirations. A 36-foot, two-masted, open cockpit workboat, with less freeboard than you’d believe possible, and a carrying capacity that’s astounding. These 19th century vessels were built to move mountains.. of hay, or lumber, or oysters.. across the shallow waters of Long Island Sound, or Merrymeeting Bay. This reproduction was built in the 70’s on Peaks Island for an owner with a dream. He intended to lobster out of her, I’m told, and didn’t want a massive centerboard trunk running down the middle of his workspace. So she has leeboards hanging on her sides, the Old World design. The centerboard was an American invention, as was the sharpie, and making her Dutchy with leeboards is very retro.

Trying to lobster in a sailboat is more so. When I lobstered in the Magdalens some of the oldtimers remembered how their grandfathers fished tremendous long trawls under sail. Sailing up to the uptide end, then under-running their gear. They had been dubious about the youngsters who put in engines and ran “dog-trawls” all over the place. It is true that there are fishermen in Casco Bay who run mile-long trawls of traps today, but they are not well-loved antiquarians. In the event, sharpie lobstering was a fiasco, and the owner gave the boat to the Bath Maritime Museum as a tax write-off.

David’s parents were in the chicken business in Bowdoinham. They reputedly invented the modern chicken-plucker which galvanized the Maine broiler industry.. now faded like the great north woods. David still owns some massive old chicken barns in town, and one of them became a storage shed for the Maritime Museum’s white elephant donations. Graceful launches, Dark Island one-designs, and a bastardized sharpie. When it came time to settle up the rent, David took possession of the sharpie and rechristened her Beth Alison. After his wife.

One thing leads to another. If you own a 19th century oysterboat, you might end up in the oyster-farming business. David co-owned an aquiculture lease in the Damariscotta for some years, rearing oysters from spat on trays set out below the reversing falls, where the Great Salt Bay dumps its warm nutrients into the estuary. Also hard by the outlets from the hospital and town septics. The oysters throve, growing fat and sassy on the rich organics.

The Beth Alison was the farm workboat, her after mast unstepped and replaced with a derrick boom to hoist trays and tubsful of oysters. Mature shellfish were run downriver and set out on unpolluted bottom at another lease to depurate before marketing. Oyster-farming in the Damariscotta was one of the success stories of the aquicultural New Age. Unfortunately, the town of Damariscotta built a new septic plant, to clean up the environment. Although the plant’s discharge is within regulatory parameters, it’s chlorinated output resulted in 90% mortality on the oyster farms downstream. David got out of the oyster business.

Meanwhile he’d started up the market boat run. Using the sorting tables installed on the Beth Alison as display bins for oysters, organic produce, and luxury comestibles, he made scheduled stops at the summer communities on the islands off Boothbay, between the mouths of the Damariscotta and the Sheepscot.

This morning we’re passing down plastic totes full of breads and beans, potatoes and onions and corn, baked goods and broccoli, arugala and cilantro, designer vegetables and organic preserves, ice, beer, chicken, oysters, and buckets full of dry and fresh-cut flowers. Eli and David are rigging awnings over the raised booms, and the four cylinder Gray is burbling an undertone. The vehicles are parked, and the Beth Alison cast off to drift down tide, as the crew fills the bins, makes up a price board, squares her away for customers to see.

I’m given the helm, slip into gear, and follow the loom of the shore along toward Christmas Cove. David’s steering rig is just as bad as I remember. Sharpies traditionally have a great long shallow balanced rudder, hung under the rockered transom, steered with a long tiller. Quick, easy, responsive. But that long tiller is a nuisance in a grocery store, and David rigged a rope and pulley arrangement, driven by a tiny wheel, with the rope wrapped around the drum. It slips and jams and takes forever to respond. On his first outing with the new rig, six-seven , years ago I was along as crew, heading around from Bowdoinham to Damariscotta. They had just issued new regulations about opening the Carleton Bridge at Bath, limiting it to twice daily at fixed times for pleasure vessels. When we sailed up at an unscheduled hour the bridgemaster wouldn’t open the span until David insisted she was registered as a commercial vessel. We continued circling as the bridge lifted, then couldn’t get the steering to respond and continued round and round until we shipped the tiller and overrode the jury rig. We finally passed under Rt. 1, redfaced. Now the same rig bucks and gripes as I try to dodge trapgear. The fog has backed off a couple hundred yards, but the humidity keeps right on dripping. We wonder if anyone will some shopping in all this.

David is an irrepressible entrepreneur, skating along the edge between New Age idealism and a cold-blooded bottom line. He’s built solar houses and Russian fireplaces, operated a maple sugar operation, is landlord for a cluster of yurts, leases space to grind Bohemian Coffee, and runs Bowdoinham’ recycling operation. Once, in his incarnation as a pig farmer, he was Seth’s first employer. He was raising porkers in one of his chicken barns where his sons, Eli and Seth, had built a skateboarders’ dream half-pipe. You could drop in from the third floor! His boys were off to college, and David let it be known that any young boarder who worked for him could have free use of the half-pipe. So our Seth signed on, and spent an afternoon wading in pigshit. At the end of the day, he told me, he stood at the top of the pipe, and was too pooped to drop in. That’s a typical David deal. You want to count your fingers after you shake hands with him.

He comes by the hustle honestly. As a youngster he made designer chicken runs along the gold coast for his parents, all the way to Beacon Hill, where his mother hailed from. His parents were counter-culture refugees before the war, who paid the bills selling succulent broilers by special delivery. David’s style on the market boat is a nuanced mix of huckster and old school tie.

In Christmas Cove the weather proved no obstacle. We hadn’t been tied to the float long enough to scoff some stickybuns and have a mug-up before a crowd was trickling down the ramp. Alison’s prediction that this last run would be a slow day had proved wrong, and already she could foresee a shortage of pies and non-sweet breads. The boat has attracted certain habitual customers who always get two pies, or a couple loaves of nutbread, or whatever. Alison keeps a mental checklist. When there’s and unexpected rush, customers at the end of the run get short shrift, unless Alison hides some inventory away. This farmer’s market type of selling is a constant balance act between too little and too much.

Alison grows most of the vegetables and flowers on the family farm, bakes sweetbreads, makes preserves. David raises chickens and tomatoes in the recycling barn. In his piggery days he ran a composting operation where he mixed town wastes, kitchen garbage from Bowdoin College, and pigshit, into a soulful soup. David is nothing if not creative. He shredded mixed paper, AND disposable diapers, into his composts. He then built a three-story plastic greenhouse along the backside of the old chicken barn, filled it knee-deep in compost, and turned it into a tomato factory. It’s a bit disconcerting to see bits of white plastic film poking through the soil, but the fruits are amazing. By training the vines (and you see that tomatoes really are vines) onto vertical ropes, and cutting off the suckers, David grows gigantic tomato trees, bearing the biggest, lushest tomatoes you can imagine.. and they produce from early summer on. His broilers are also as succulent as you could dream of, fresh-killed and iced the day before the market run. Corn, potatoes, oysters, specialty breads, and some of the other inventory come from other local producers. Alison picked up the other baked stuff on the way to the boat.

Freshness and selling off a boat are both a matter of timing. The Beth Alison has an announced schedule, and tries to arrive at the dock close to that time. When the crowd disperses we restow the moveables, cast off, and cross into the Damariscotta fog.

David is poking at his hand-held GPS, hunting for the waypoint to get us round Ocean Point. In fact he habitually cuts in behind Green Island, a chancy dodge when there’s a sea on, as they discovered last week. It was blowing hard onshore, and the Beth Alison did a bit of side surfing toward the booming ledges. Retelling the tale the crew is quite animated, but we take the same shortcut, notwithstanding. And cross the mouth of Linekin Bay to Squirrel Island. David brakes out the bag-phone half way across and dials up one of his customers on the island. He still has Eli ring the old school bell as we run alongshore, to alert cottagers of incoming groceries, but now he also uses cellular to insure trade. His contact calls the neighbors, and the float is aswarm as we touch alongside.

After helping Alison unstow her displays, I climb up the ramp to sketch and look down on the action. These summer isles are comfortably incestuous. The same families cottaging together for generations. I hear one young matron-with-babe address a tight-skinned elder as “Mrs.....” The old girl corrected her. “Muffy, you’re old enough to call me Mary.” There were choruses of “haven’t seen you all summer,” and “just down for the weekend?” Everyone knows everyone, except me, and I get odd looks, and occasional queries. “Do I know you?”

“Probably not. I’m on the boat.” Which probably relieves them. One gracious islander comes over to examine my sketches, and must tell me the names of all the artists she knows, and all the important art gossip from her part of Massachusetts. I’m suitably impressed. I get the feeling she’s not.

Squirrel Island, Mouse, Capitol, Southport.. we zig and zag. Laying out stock, filling bags, passing money, and restowing. The crew chaffering with familiar customers, making a low-key pitch for this preserve, that sweatbead, the exotic beans. Ladies in khaki shorts and gold jewelry come down for a loaf of bread and drop $40 on incidentals. Gents in trenchcoat and bumbershoot trade pleasantries with hearty types in topsiders and tans. One bald endomorph at Capitol Island actually shucks off on the adjoining float, and plunges into the brine. We all gasp sympathetically, then stand agape as he leisurely swims out among the moored boats. A pair of State Street lawyers make collegial noises sotto voce. It’s all very.

We’re going right through the French beans, although they’re twice the price, and running out of mesclun. And nobody thought to put aside a loaf of ordinary bread. It’s noon already, and the crew is grumbling about having to eat cinnamon swirl sandwiches. Alison smiles as she jumps ship in Hodgedon Cove, where her sister is waiting, and I break out the Crow bread. I get a cheer all round. Arugala, feta, fresh tomato, hot pepper sauce, and Crow bread.. bottle of Katahdin brown.. ummm.

The Beth Alison mutters away from the float, and is escorted by ospreys toward the Isle of Springs. I’m pressed into duty as salesman in slot three, but most of Alison’s stock is gone. Only a few sunflowers are left, and two bunches of dry flowers, we’re down to it in the bread department, but there’s still lots of vegetables. And a handful of customers. David says it’s hardly worth the run for these last stops. I remember from my streetcorner days how trying to sell the dregs of an inventory on a busy day made me feel foolish, but I kept at it as long as people would stop and browse.

“We’re already out here, we might’s well touch all the bases,” David says, as we head across mouth of the Sheepscot, aiming for the south end of MacMahan. The fog is scaling up, but it’s still gray and lowry, wind in the east. We turn up into the Little Sheepscot and come alongside the MacMahan dock. It’s definitely worth the trouble. The crowd is more cheerful with the rain stopped, and boats are converging on us for weekend supplies. A bit of coaxing by David sells off the flowers, and he unloads armloads of veggies. He’s offering discounts for last minute impulses, and we linger while he chats up the trade.

Then it’s for home. Or South Bristol. Eli and I brail up the awnings, weigh out and pack up the loose stock, get everything in tubs to hoist over the dock, sluice down the decks and platforms, and break open another brew. David runs up the revs, and the Beth Alison pushes her plumb stem into the headwind. We’d talked about sailing home after everything was packed up, but it’s late and the wind is foul.

“Haven’t sailed yet this year,” Eli complains.

When we crossed Townsend Gut to drop Alison, the Southport Island bridge attendant had thought we were planning to go through, and had stopped traffic, opened the swing. Now as we motored up on the bridge David told me to toss him some stickybuns, and I lofted them up onto the catwalk, as David apologized for not using his radio.

“Have to get his phone number,” he says, revving up the Gray. Then, just as we’re opening out Boothbay Harbor, steam gasps out of the cooling discharge, and we quickly shutdown. When we pull off the engine cover you can hear the block boiling. The three of us stare down on the malefactor. Squeeze hoses, poke, and tap. This is a perennial problem David thought he’d cured last year with a new impeller, but here it is again. After pulling off the intake and draining that side, she starts pumping OK again, and we scoot across to Ocean Point, telling lies. The engine boils again off Green Island, but we repeat the drill and make it into South Bristol without more adieu.

The wharf the Beth Alison has used all summer to load and off-load is owned by a clam buyer, and the tide is now making, bringing diggers in its wake. As we winch everything aboard onto the wharf, the boys are lining up with their rollers to weigh out and get paid. Clammers ARE a hard-looking bunch. Wider across the shoulders than across the eyes, if you get my drift. And their knuckles drag on the ground. Well, almost. I go into the buyer’s shed and ask if I can buy some fresh clams. They sure look good.

Of course I haven’t a clue what clams are now going for, and I gulp when I find the diggers are getting $80 a bushel, even this late in the tourist season. I quickly downgrade my request for half a bushel to $20’s worth. I give him the bill. But the buyer is busy, and we are still packing the truck and trailer, which Eli has backed down the wharf. When we get through emptying the Beth Alison, David says, “Let’s give Mike some groceries to thank him.” So Eli and I take two armloads of goodies into the shed.

“Geez. I almost forgot your clams,” Mike says, and gives me a full bushel.

David moors the boat, rows ashore, and retrieves Alison’s wagon. Eli and I chat up the long miles to Bowdoinham, talking about house designs (he recently built a two-story yurt house in northern Washington State), and about sled dogs (which he used to twitch out the lumber).. and about environmental design. He dumps me out across the road from our house in Annie’s truck stop, just before 8PM. I give him half the clams. Peggy and I feast on steamers until our eyes bug out.