7/10/98.. Tootling.

It finally stopped raining. Now we can get into some serious Summer. Cone flowers and black-eyed susans. Time to make hay.

We awoke yesterday in a state of disorientation. All our rushing mustdos were done. Work delivered. Current house projects finished in time for family visitations. Front room painted. Lawn mowed. Garden weeded. Company come and gone. Engines revved, but wheels disengaged. Momentarily. Time to whistle a tune or two. I decided to fix my old flute.

I replaced the pads in this old Bundy 8/10 years ago, and managed to get all the notes to play, after considerable tinkering. These Boehme-style whistles are fussy devices. Getting all the little cork stops, setscrews, and springs aligned so that the keys all work is aggravating in the extreme for impatient types like me. When it started to blowby again a few years back I took Shorey's advice, and rubbed bear grease on the pads to cure the ills. That sufficed, for a season. But even a liberal greasing only makes the dog more interested now. Below D it just gasps.

I had invested $15 in a new set of pads, and some shellac gasket compound for those pads without hold-downs. Yesterday morning I started disassembling and futzing with the windstick. And futzing. After 4 hours It was still showing the original symptoms, with a whole new set of pads. I laid the grease to her. NADA.

I was hot under the collar, and Peggy was just hot. I tossed the Bundy in the boat bucket, and we went downriver for a swim. Idyllic on the water. A light breeze, and a flood tide pushing into the marshes. Peggy doused her animal at Michael's dock, then we motored down to Shorey's houseboat, where Nina was baking in the sun.

Nina was living on the houseboat when she and Shorey got together, 16(?) years ago. She was recovering from a bad car wreck which ended her dancing career, and left her with plastic hips, chronic pain, and a parade of enduring symptoms. She had parlayed an insurance settlement into the TEN OF PENTACLES, constructed by a local carpenter/eel fisherman (Philip), and was living a romantic interlude on the Cathance. Shorey hired her to do flute repairs, and moved onto the water with her.

Shorey is in the antique flute business. Once a curator of woodwinds at the Smithsonian, he now wheels and deals in whistlesticks through antique music fairs, specialty mags, and the internet. He buys old flutes, generally in Europe, reconditions them, documents them in the trade, and sells them for fancy prices. Mostly to the Japanese, until recently. Last year he sold what he was convinced was Napoleon's crystal flute. Of course Shorey isn't above stretching his documentation. But who's to blow the whistle on him.

Once Shorey and Nina were river rats, he began envisioning houseboat colonies. Houseboat motels. Fleets of craftsmen. Amsterdam West. With more money than sense, he hired Philip and Bruce to start building the ultimate houseboat prototype. Incorporated the business as Kennebec River Houseboats. Cleared a site at his new digs alongside the Muddy River. Trucked in barrels of West System epoxy. Shorey had a bumper sticker on the tail of his pickup reading A FOOL AND HIS MONEY WILL SOON BE PARTYING. The local boys took him seriously.

When the cash hemorrhage began gushing profusely, Philip jumped ship. After all he'd built a perfectly good houseboat for Nina at $12,000, and Shorey's propensity for redesigning half way through each stage of construction gave Philip the willywaws. Bruce wasn't about to kill the goose.

It WAS a fascinating project. What is the perfect floating house? The MERRY B, as she became known, straddled two glassed plywood pontoons, forty feet long, and featured hardwood cabinetry, and full bathroom facilities aft. When all the redesign and construction was over, it had taken a year and a half and $140,000 to make a big splash.

The whole tribe turned out for the launching. Shorey demurred when I offered to help. In a previous year I'd clambered over the front of his pickup when it was door-deep in the river with the TEN OF PENTACLES hitched up, to adjust a cable, and I'd slipped and sat down through the windshield getting off. I often get nominated as official observer nowadays. We all cheered the Merry B down the ramp, and she immediately began to act funny.

The first week she was afloat Shorey loaned her to house guests, who left the tap running, pumped the holding tank full, and dumped the overflow septic into one pontoon, until she keeled over sideways. The tales went on from there. By the end of the season it was obvious that she was a bad luck boat. Not only was she unsalable, she wasn't the sort of ripe bait that would catch any future customers.

She found her calling as a party boat, however, and the sight of her waddling out to the sands with all the Jamaican field hands aboard, and a suckling goat roasting on the roof, was a grand vision. After her second year as the local sea lounge, with no new commissions, Shorey's creditor began making noises. They decided to give her to the College of the Atlantic, to use as a base for marine studies excursions, as a tax write-off. CofA was willing, so long as she was delivered to Mt. Desert in one piece.

It was October before Shorey got around to setting sail for Bar Harbor. There was a nip in the air, and the seas were heavier. Going outside Pemaquid in a hard Northwester the Merry B began rolling deep and taking seas clear over her roof. Shorey and Nina turned tail and ran into East Boothbay. While he was getting her secured, Nina went up and paid for haulout and storage. And there she sat.

The College wouldn't take her without delivery, and nobody wanted to take her outside again. Eventually, after some years, another Bowdoinhamian, Crazy Ed, offered the College $10,000 for her, as is. They were delighted with the cold cash, and the Merry B returned to the Cathance, with Shorey at the helm.

Crazy Ed runs programs for inner city kids, when he isn't indulging in harebrained pranks, like swimming in hurricanes. One minute he has Rasta locks, and is dandling an infant child on his knee. The next he's shaveheaded and running with a male partner. One life is just a little too slow for Ed.

Under his command the Merry B was repainted in baby blues, and pinks, and lavenders. His daughter Jessica is one of Seth's lot, and their last years in high school saw a lot of serious teen partying on the Merry B. Her tendency to drag her mooring, and wander around the estuary only added to the fun.

One year Ed plotted to take a gang of city youths for a cruise, and hired Shorey to skipper the adventure. They took her outside around Popham and Small Point, and up to the waterfront in Portland without incident. Coming back to Bowdoinham the kids decided it would be fun to moon the stopped traffic on the Bath bridge. When Shorey tied up to the gas dock, unaware what had been happening on the roof, the sheriff was waiting for them. Of course there weren't enough life jackets aboard, and generous fines were handed out, with a grin.

But maintenance and the inevitable costs of boating finally left the Merry B on the beach. She sits high and dry, up on the Ridge Road, just the way she was dumped off the trailer, motor and all. Jessica lives in her when she's home from Boston, or Ireland. Mostly she's just the biggest lawn ornament in town. You could probably have her for a song.

Nina and Shorey still live aboard the TEN OF PENTACLES in the Summer, when the kids take over the house. We motored alongside, and tied up. Just about perfect. Mid 80's, bit of cloud cover, light air. I asked Nina about tuning up this damned Bundy, and she shrugged.

"I never could get them to play right, after they got old," she said. We talked flutes. She broke out her latest instrument, a wooden Boehme-system flute. Wooden flutes have such lovely tone. Shorey actually gave me an old wooden flute years ago, but it has weird fingering, and I've never mastered its idiosyncrasies. I tootle it now and then, just for the wonderful sound, but have decided that I'll stick with a modern whistle for the little music I make. I asked Nina what brands I should consider, if I were to buy a conventional device. How much I should pay.

About that time Shorey motored up, having sailed to the garage to discuss ongoing auto repairs with George, and pick up some cold beer. Being the salesman he is, Shorey immediately suggested I look at what modern flutes he had in stock,and we climbed the hill to Chalet Shorey for a consultation. He gave me the expected razzledazzle. Millimeter measuring and gram weights. Computer tuning and referencing. The first two instruments he produced both need work, though they had lovely tone, as far as it went. Then he uncorked a silver flute made in London in the early 1950's. The easiest playing flute I've ever blown into. He offered it to me for cost plus repairs. Sold.

Nina and Shorey are packing up, slowly, for a big move, and a bit of cold cash was appreciated. In September they are resettling in Amsterdam, for an extended removal. They spent a winter on a houseboat there a few years back, and have dreamed that dream ever since. Their immanent departure was precipitated by a drawn out court case following a pot bust. Nina has always grown a few plants for self-medication, and a couple of the local teens did a sneak and grab in their garden one night in September. They had also kifed a car, which they put in the ditch, and the cops bagged them for possession. They claimed to have been given the weed by Shorey, and the SWAT team descended.

Nina and Shorey have been vocal protesters of the current prohibitions. They circulated the legalization petitions, write to the press, etc. So the chance to bag them on a trafficking charge was irresistible for the local heat, who were particularly hamhanded in the bust. So it's been in and out of litigation for three years. Nina is more than a little paranoid on her best days, and this bust sent her into a deep corner. They are hoping that the more enlightened climate of Amsterdam will brighten the gloom. Shorey is selling off his inventory, and they hope to reinvent themselves abroad.

We carried CG, the new flute, home, upriver. That's what's stenciled on his case. I was kinda hoping for a Coast Guard inspection, when I'd break it out with a flair, but we glided into Cathance Landing without a confrontation. Now I can tootle at will.