11/1/97 .. A short trick.

Halloween morning I put on my yellow boots and marched the oars down to Jimmy’s dock at daybreak. I’ve been trying to catch the tide at dead low to lace down my winter mooring, and the ebb had just gone slack. I rowed the skiff out to replace my balloon buoy with a wooden spar. It has a big carved hand and arm at the top. A functional absurdity, my ambition in life.

Depending on how the ice makes, or goes out in the Spring, an inflated buoy can get gashed up, or picked up and dragged into a communal tangle, mooring and all. Down on the salt, where the fishermen have seen it all, winter spars are commonplace, but up here in sporting country almost nobody replaces their balloons. Now that newcomers have set 40+ moorings in the Cathance, the chance of mayhem has multiplied. It’s been a couple of years since the ice played prank with us, so I figure we’re about due.

If you tie down a spar so that it’s under water at high tide, the ice won’t make around, or under, it. At least that’s the idea. I can’t resist the chance to have my marker wave desperately on the rising tide, and disappear at the top. It IS Halloween.

When I tie the skiff back up at Jimmy’s, Guy and Philip are parked in the lot, passing a lie back and forth. I join them and we squint at the sun in the creeping mist, and laugh at Philip’s new dog, who’s just learning how to bark. More like a huffing noise, that makes her doberman ears flutter. Philip and the dog will make quite a pair. He looks like a bucaneeer, long bold face out of a Gauguin carving, with stringy hair to his shoulders, and an attitude to match. And now this pup with her uncropped tail coiled like a buggy whip. Whoo.. what a sight for the morning wakeup.

The day is coming on mild, and I decide to execute my seasonal transformation ritual. Samhain is the Celtic New Year, the time to haul your boat.. and put away the lawn ornaments. The World Series is over, so it’s time to take the Frog Pitcher (#47) off my mailbox, and conjure some seasonally appropriate tableaux for the coming chill. I pick up the flock of robins that have been feeding on the front lawn, and replace them with the wolfpack that’s been howling out back. The wolves will stand out nice and stark against the snow. This is important stuff, you know. It’s the responsibility of local artists to manipulate the scenery so we can see through it to the ideas beyond. Or something like.

I’m also feeling a bit embarrassed. Everyone else has creeped up their yard with Halloween decor, and I’m not doing my bit. Isn’t it astonishing how the ghoulish display has exploded in recent years? The big plastic leafbag pumpkins, the little ghosts with plastic heads in the trees, the strings of orange lights, stencil carved jackolanterns. Every fall there seems to be another mass market motif out there, celebrating the Big Gimme. Or the High Weirdness, depending on your take. Trick or treat. Is this a Celtic Revival, the fulfillment of some inner need in the culture, or just more opportunistic hucksterism? A high holiday of avarice? The shadow knows.

For whatever reason, I get the urge to dink the dooryard as the seasons turn . To mark the transition. And I want to make a gesture toward the kids in costumes. I haul out the bicycle, put a stuffed mask over the seat, gloves on the handgrips, boots on the pedals, and set it at the head of the drive. Catch me if you can.

I’m emptying the ceremonial circle out back, stowing Pan, Pogo, and Churchy, when Bob calls. "Anchors aweigh my boys..?" He sings. "Wanna go sailing?" My first reaction is no. A fine day for painting, and I still have hopes for doing some time in the shop. Trying to get the work rhythm right.

"I great day for the Joker and the Jester to get together," Bob persists.

That does it. I realize that trying to keep it to the grindstone on Halloween will probably end in a bloody nose, if this week's been any indication. Maybe a sail with Bob will discharge the confusion, for a spell.

Bob and I have been known to encourage the worst in each other. One April Fool's Day we ran the Sheepscot in his canoe.. right over the falls in Whitefield.. and over our heads. Folded the boat neatly in half, and about numbed our buns. A great hoot for a Fool's Day.

On another April 1 we tried to prove the ice was out in the Cathance by rowing my skiff to Brickyard Point at 11PM. We have an iceout pool here in town. We all kick in $5 and pick a day. Iceout is defined by being able to go by boat from the town landing to Brickyard Point, maybe a quarter mile downriver. I always try to get April first, and that year the ice broke up and sloshed back and forth with the tide on my day. But it didn't go downriver on the evening tide. I was determined I could work my way to the point through the loose ice, prove the ice OUT, and win the pot. Bob was game to come along.

We had to round up witnesses, of course, and there was a certain amount of beer drinking and tongue-clacking as we slid the skiff off my pickup. John Ackley, the local deputy sheriff came down to see what was going on, and shook his head at us. But we were determined. The tide was slack, and we managed to poke and prod our way down the crooked leads until we were lost in the darkness, only the pale loom of the ice lighting our way. A couple of times I tried to get out on the plates to pull us along, but after I slipped in and had to be hauled back into the boat, I stuck with prying and polling while Bob rowed.

The tide had turned, of course, and the passages got narrower and narrower, until we were stuck fast, and likely to spend the night wet and frozen. We laughed so hard our clothes came undone. In the end I stood up in the bow on one leg and tromped on the loose ice ahead while Bob sculled in the stern. We made it back to the landing, bloody, but unbowed. Bob's that kind of companion.

I met him at the dock at 10 o'clock Halloween morning. Wild grizzled hair under a watchcap, unraveling sweater, and a glint in his eye to match his grin. He rows in from his mooring to get me.

Bob has a 24 foot wooden sloop, which he claims is a Herrishoff design, although I'm not so sure. It's a classic, in any case, now retrofitted with an aluminum spar and recanvased doghouse top. And she weeps, of course. Bob's had her up for sale most of the 25 years he's owned her, and thinks of her as an investment in the boat repair and resale business. He's certainly had the chance to practice repairs on her.

And the rest of his fleet. Bob has a keen eye for a fixer-upper's bargain, and waxes ecstatic over Uncle Henry's (our state classifieds weekly). He can see the magnificent potential in any old hulk. Show him a sweet wooden line and he's a gonner. Bob can calculate how many hours, and dollars, it will take to resurrect any derelict, and can envision her dancing on the waves next year.. and selling at a handsome profit.

This optimism has led Bob to invest in a flotilla of dream vessels. Maybe I should say a landtilla. It'll be a while before any of them float. He no sooner gets one wooden puzzle disassembled than he gets hot about another. Eight years back he became enamored of a 44 foot twin diesel cabin cruiser. Double planked in mahogany, voluminous accommodations. "Needs work." Bob rubbed his hands with glee describing how he could restore her, live aboard for a while, then turn a tidy profit.

I drove over to Bucksport with him the day he'd hired the boat hauler from Dolphin Marine to pick her up. Dead of winter. She was frozen onto her blocking in a pond of ice, but they managed to get the trailer under her, and brake her loose with the hydraulics. We followed the monster across Rt.3. Somewhere in Palermo the road was a little rough, and the keel fell out of her. We dodged it, barely, then went back and pulled the deadwood off the road.

When we got to Bob's he was sure that his road was frozen solid enough for the tractor and trailer to back in. The fact that it's a steep pitch down loose gravel for 100 yards didn't faze his optimism. It did give the driver pause, though. As it happened the trailer bogged down before the tractor got off the road, plugging the entry solid.

"That' s OK," said Bob. "Let's block her up here." And there she sat for a couple of months. Bob slashed another entrance to his road. "A much better one," he said.

Bob now has maybe a dozen derelicts disassembled in his dooryard, along with his collection of dead VWs, a backhoe that's "almost ready to run," and a host of other projects ongoing. His enthusiasm is limitless. No old wreck is so far gone that Bob can't see how to save it. He has the same attitude toward people. Nobody is a hopeless case. This makes him excellent company when you are plagued by self-doubt.

Self-doubt isn't one of Bob's predicaments. When I clamber aboard the boat Friday morning, he announces that the first thing he needs to do is go aloft to rereeve the jib halyard at the masthead. He's tied a loop in one end of the main halyard to put his foot in. "Just take up the slack as I climb up," he says, handing me the other end.

"Uh, Bob. You weigh twice what I do."

"No problem, just hang on."

I decided early on with Bob that it was more fun to let him run with an idea than try and reason around it. Like chasing a loose pig, running with Bob gets your blood moving. He gets up to the spreaders before his grip slips on the aluminum, and he hugs the mast to keep from falling.

"Maybe that's not such a good idea," he says, inching his way down.

"We don't need to go aloft," I suggest. When he looks questioningly, I say: "We could just run the jib halyard through a fairlead at the top of the mainsail, haul it up with the sail, then hoist the jib that way."

"OK!" Bob enthuses, "you rig it up." And I do. You'll notice I didn't offer to go aloft. Not that I wouldn't put myself in Bob's hands, you understand. I was just utilizing mind over matter.

Miraculously his kicker fires up without ado, except that it has no neutral or reverse, and his mooring pennant is jammed solid, so when he shouts "cast off" over the snarling Nissan, I almost pull the chock off the bow, and we go round in a circle until I jerk the line free. We're off on another sport.

"Another day on the water," Bob yells.

I've had some memorable days on the water with Bob. Pitch-polling in a pea-soup fog at the mouth of the Kennebec, bailing for dear life outside Harraseekit, rowing from Whitehead to Tenant's Harbor with a dead auxiliary in an evening calm, waiting for the tide to lift us off the bars in Merrymeeting Bay. Bob's impulsive nature often gets him in over his head, and you have to expect to get wet in his company.

I find that running with Bob teaches me how to let go of anxiety. You could be scared all the time with him, or laugh yourself foolish, take your pick. He's the kind of guy who'll run off in a puff, when you're already on your ear. Whooee. I used to wonder if he was testing me, pushing me to my limit of insecurity, and I'd find myself "whoa-whoa"ing and grabbing for a handhold. Once I decided to ride with it, to find out Bob's limits, if any, I found that all the anxiety evaporated. He WILL slack off before I throw up.

Today there's a moderate southeasterly, and the sky is hazing over as a front moves through. With any luck we'll have a good breeze on the bay, but we'll have to motor right into it, and against the tide, until we clear the river. It's just cold enough as the sun fades that I wish I'd brought another layer. You simply don't move around enough on a sailboat to warm yourself, and I've metabolized my last ounce of fat. Brrr.

The migrant birds don't seem to be in a hurry to depart, though. Kingfisher, osprey, marsh hawk.. we see them all out hunting.. along with that coven of crows, still ganging up and being raucous. The bright reds and yellows in the woods, the vibrant oranges, have faded now, and most of the hardwoods are bare. But the oaks are in their glory. A subtle spectrum of orangey-umbers straight-armed among the yellowing pines. You don't realize how prevalent the oaks are along the riverside until late autumn. And it's Hack Fall. The hackmatacks have gone yellow and are casting their needles. Such writhing delicacies among the darker evergreens. The winter postures of the wood are uncovering.

I no sooner remark that I haven't seen an eagle for weeks, when a huge immature drops out of an oak, and glides across the marsh to Wildes Point. At the mouth of the river a flock of shorebirds is rafted up on the matted grasses.. white-rumped sandpipers, perhaps. Gulls and terns are fishing in the bay. Bob eagerly points out the birds of passage. His speciality is rare birds.. in the school system.

Bob is a contract social worker who does rescue work with misfits. He'll take the 6 worst cases in your middle school and put them in a different context. Bob's World. No matter how outrageous a kid's acting out may be, Bob is bigger and wilder.. as well as caring and kind. When Bob acts out he inflates to mythic proportions. We used to play volleyball on Tuesday nights here, and Bob can take up the entire court, make the rafters echo.

With a team of teens he puts them in situations where they have to depend on one another or endanger themselves, and he coaxes them into mutual self-respect., bellowing in delight. He's rigged highwire acts in the trees behind Mt. Ararat and taken his gang whitewater rafting. Because his own life skates on the brink of chaos he's the best kind of counselor for kids on the edge. They know he knows. It's OK to be outrageous with Bob.

When Bob first came out of Penn with a masters in social work he took a job at SingSing. But he quickly decide it was too late to counsel those guys. If he was going to make any difference he had to catch kids before they ended up in jail. He bought this old sailboat on the Hudson, patched it enough to sail away, and wended his way downeast to Freeport, where he lived aboard her at Harraseekit. There was an alternative school starting up nearby, and he joined the fray. His mission is to keep the misfits from flipping out, or ending up in jail. He wins some and he loses some.

Like catching the wind. There's a good stiff one out in Merrymeeting and we hoist her canvas at the second dogleg. After we get the sails untangled, my rig works, but the day is so chill we simply turn tail and swoop back for the river. Bob threatens to play tag with the spoil banks, just to make us breathe faster. The tide is near full and we're all alone out here. Bruce and Jimmy have hauled boats and gear, and there'll be nobody by to yank us off a bank, if we put her on ground. Which is easy enough. She draws four feet, and has visited every shallow spot hereabout. His eyes sparkle, and I laugh. Not today, Bob. We're flying home.

Just a parting taste of the sailing season. Running wing and wing at hullspeed up the Cathance with the last of the flood. Little Sharpie is the perfect bay boat. You can pull up everything and sail on a heavy dew, but there's no comparing to the way a fullbodied boat rides the water. We ghost through the switchback between Michael's and Bernard's, catch the easterly slant up to the double bridges, and have an easy tack right up to Bob's mooring. Nobody even got wet.

The Joker and the Jester shook hands on it. Happy Halloween.