Sagadahoc Story #62: 10/19/98

Mitch is happy as a pig in.. well.. manure. Last week one of the local dairy farmers went on vacation to Vegas, and left Mitch to milk the herd. "Help yourself to some manure," were his parting words. Turns out that another of Mitch's compadres left him the keys to a big wheeler, while he was off upcountry, and Mitch put two and two together. He just loves heavy equipment, and a free deal. He freighted the rig with the good stuff, and made repeated runs to the home acreage. After all the rain we've had, his fields were too wet to get on, so he dumped his loads on the front lawn. Penny is as amused at Mitch's antics as the rest of us, fortunately, so she's still laughing at the fragrant mountain out front. She knew she was getting into a world of shit when she took up with him.

The rest of us aren't quite as deep in it as Mitch, and try to stay upwind. The teachers have been bringing home this year's crop of viruses, though, and I managed to get downwind of Peggy the other weekend. Got to share the joys of secondary education. Two days of misery, filled with haunting dreams of THE WEB SITE THAT DEVOURED BOWDOINHAM. Got up from my bed of pain and started building a site in earnest. You have to follow your dreams.

It was time for the carver to crash and burn, apparently. I'd been procrastinating over a commissioned gift for another portrait artist, Bruce Kaminski, that his lady friend asked me to make for his birthday. He's actually working on a charcoal and tempera portrait of The Toymaker, another in his series of dubious characters. We pointed cameras at each other ages ago, to stockpile grist, so I had his face on file. She thought he'd be tickled to get a toy portrait, of sorts, and we designed a walking staff, capped with a Phoenix rising from a burst of flames. Kaminski in feathers. I didn't know I'd have to get all feverish to start the carving. Rise up from a smoldering bed myself. Sometimes you can get too involved in your work.

On my feet again, I found a nice long walnut plank tucked in the shed overhead. Too knotty and twitchy to be of use as flat stock, but just dandy for a tall staff to conjure with. I lined out a sinuous shaft around the flaws and fed it into the bandsaw. Kept thinking it smelled funny for walnut. I had the whole thing cut out before I realized it was aged cherry, gone all dark from the UVs. When I got the staff shaped and sanded, it revealed a lovely rippling mottle, like some strange metal just off the fire. I took a bit of yellow Osage orange left over from Marilyn's hair to make the flames, and a piece of the ruddy red Spanish cedar from the Softshoe Lobster to be the bird. The figure came out more two dimensional than three, with the caricature head in profile. He's got a nice long beak.

As is often the case I didn't like the carving at all during most of the making. It seemed too primitive, too crude. Only when it was coming to completion did I begin to feel a charge in the work. I caught sight of myself in a shop window, brandishing this implement from some arcane ritual, and got a tingle. The shaft is over 5 feet tall, so the Phoenix spreads his wings (12 inches across) at eye level , and looks at you sideways. The whole gizmo looks perfectly ridiculous. Comic magic: the best kind. Happy birthday, Bruce. I don't dare think what he'll do to The Toymaker.

The leaves are going fast now, and we're into the late bronze age of Autumn. The ashes have gone from purple into umber, and the oaks are moving through their leathery orange to brown. The north sides of the maples have blown away, and fill the ditches with their yellows and reds.

Delano and Sandy hauled the houseboat yesterday on their once makeshift trailer, welded up out of an old radio tower, that has done the job for a dozen years now. They towed the barge up the Post Road and offloaded it next to their "new" trailer. Sandy says she plans to go out and sit on the boat on fine days and dream of Summer. Her grandkids will play on it all Winter.

I've been cruising the backroads in Ebba, looking for fall shots, and I nosed in at Brindley's where the crew is moving a little quicker now that the hard weather is promising. When the fire gutted Brindley's antique brick cape last Spring, Tom took on the task of resurrection. Most of the precious furnishings, water damaged and otherwise, ended up in containers in the dooryard, and the boys shored up the masonry, then gutted the main house and pulled down the el. But not before Brindley and the insurance company went round and round. He was determined to restore the old pile to original condition, and had rather idealistic notions about what the place had been worth. It took months of negotiation before the work could begin.

After the fire

Brindley has the absent-minded manner of a college professor, but an unruly twinkle in his eye. He spent the early 60s in Haight Ashbury, and his distracted air may have blown in from that quarter. Brindley is a bit out of time. He still drives the type of vintage Volvo that everyone in town seemed to have a dozen years ago, back when Tracy the Volvo mechanic was still alive. How that car survives is a mystery to all of us. Brindley lugs the poor old thing up Main Street in 4th gear until it shudders. He has the gift of seeing every aged object in a youthful light. Maybe that works with Swedish automobiles.

It's a little hard on Tom, who has to work with the salvage materials that Brindley decides are appropriate for the resurrection. Tom relishes an implausible task, of course, or he wouldn't have stuck his head in this trap. He's traveled all over the state rounding up ancient lumber, and wrestled with massive carrying timbers when a post or two and lesser dimensions would have done the trick as well. The place will look wonderful when it's done, if it's in this lifetime

I stopped in to see about some walnut that Brindley said he might be willing to part with, and got a sense of what Tom's up against. The lumber was so rotted into a pile that it tended to disintegrate when I tried breaking out the boards. In Brindley's mind it was the same prime stuff he'd piled there last century.

Brindley puts his visionary gift to good use, though. When he's not in the library doing independent research, he works at the homeless shelter, where his timeless pace and his ability to see the best in things must seem like mana to the clients. Stephanie, his partner, has an ethereal quality, like a doe caught in your headlights, and Brindley's calm scholasticism seems to shelter her from the traffic. Being around them makes you feel comfortable. If you don't have to do contract work.

Young Terry has been working for Tom, and he's got to be tickled by the whole caper. In his spare time Terry has been building a new house for himself and his wife, and the baby who's due in January. It's all closed in, and finished on the outside already, but for the clapboards. A four-square mansard-roofed building with round dormers. Quite striking. Brent says it's the finest house built in the county in the last 20 years. The praise of the praiseworthy. When I suggested to Terry that it was a showplace that might bring him customers, he said," O God, I hope not. The framing was a nightmare in that place." At least he didn't have to use wideboard salvage and handhewn timbers.

While I was jawing with the crew at Brindley's, Albert the mason wandered in. He's in charge of tweaking the scorched masonry back into place, another daunting job. Albert has his own sense of time, too, and Tom must be using an occult tide calendar to schedule the work by. I asked Albert about doing a salvage job on the crumbling chimney in our house, and he begged off, but recommended an outfit in Randolph. When I called, the boss scheduled a consult, and arrived to peer down the flue this afternoon. I like outfits where the owner does all the face-to-face on site, and we made a deal to reline the main chimney.

Using the same one-on-one logic, I changed propane vendors last week. The outfit from Brunswick that I'd used since we moved in here has grown up to be a big and impersonal operation. Even adopted a smarmy advertising name and a stupid logo. When I went to them to shop for a heater for Seven Eagles, the salesman tried to sell me a gas hog because it was "cheaper." I got what I wanted from Maine Street Fuel in Richmond, and the owner delivered the bulk tank and checked the installation. Then the company in Brunswick was too busy running ads about their friendly service to bother keeping my household bottle filled. We ran out on Saturday night of the Columbus Day weekend, with a chicken in the oven, and the business closed until Tuesday. The response to my emergency call was very hohum, and the driver who called back made it clear he'd rather not mess with me until the morning. I called the folks in Richmond, and the owner came with a fresh bottle, installed it in the rain, and got us up and cooking. Almost like finding a doctor who'll make housecalls.

Somebody has been telling tales to the ladybugs, and they're all flying away home. To our home. The last three years we've had fall infestations of the gaudy beetles, and these last few balmy days the south side of the house has been acrawl with swarms of them. I've shrugged it off before. Those that get in seem to disappear into the suspended ceiling in the bedroom, and other inaccessible places, and then show up on the windows in the Spring. Probably good luck, I figured. Until I noticed they seemed interested in nesting in this computer. GAAAK. Now I've become anti-Buddhist, and squish any little buggers in the house on sight. They give off a pungent aroma, like chewing tobacco, which is probably their defense against predators. I kind of like it on my fingers.

Center Street Y

Oak leaves and ladybugs, chimneys and propane tanks, it must be Autumn. I found a split vacuum line in Ebba, replacing which seemed to cure her cold starting problems, so maybe I'll have wheels until the roads get icy. I might even go over and get a load of the good stuff from Mitch. After I send this one on.