John N. Cole - In Maine: Essays on Lifes Seasons

In Maine

Essays on Lifes Seasons

Other Books by John N. Cole

Books

In Maine

From the Ground Up (with Charles Wing)

S triper: A Story of Fish and Man

Amaranth

Cityside/Countryside

Sun Reflections: Images for a Solar Age

Salmon

Breaking New Ground (with Charles Wing)

Fishing Came First

Tarpon Quest

Away All Boats

Fish of My Years

West of Key West

Life List

Anthologies

Coast Alert

Wonders

Crossroads; Environmental Priorities for the Future

Boats

Fathers & Sons

The Seaside Reader

In Maine

Essays on Lifes Seasons

John N. Cole

Photographs by John Ewing

Islandport Press / Yarmouth / Maine

Islandport Press

22 Lunt Harbor

Frenchboro, Maine 04635

www.islandportpress.com

Copyright 1974, 2001 by John N. Cole
Cover photograph copyright 2001 by John Ewing
Other photographs copyrighted by Blethen Maine Newspapers

All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A.

First Islandport Press Edition, May 2001

This revised edition of In Maine reprinted by Islandport Press Inc. by
arrangement with John N. Cole. In Maine was originally published by
Harpswell Press, a division of E.P. Dutton & Co. Inc., 1974.

ISBN: 978-1-939017-03-1

Library of Congress Card Number: 2001086895

Book jacket design by Karen F. Hoots/Mad Hooter Design
Cover photograph of Pierce Pond by John Ewing
Book design by Islandport Press Inc.

For my brown-eyed friend, now more than ever

Table of Contents

Introduction

I ts been almost 30 years since I wrote the pieces for the first In Maine a title, by the way, Ive always liked because its true and to the point. None of this work would have gotten done if we hadnt lived in Maine for most of those years. There was a spell there, at the end of the 80s and the start of the 90s, when the Boss and I spent some six years in Key West. Youd be surprised at how many Maine people we bumped into on that small, genuinely exotic, southernmost island. More than a century ago, a good many Maine sea captains sailed their wooden ships to Caribbean ports and Key West became one of their favorites. The link is long established, although I didnt know that when I decided to live in the subtropics for a while.

I did because circumstances quite unplanned and unforeseen gave me the opportunity and, as you will learn as you read further, fishing those sapphire southern waters has been a lifetime dream. Hey, Im a lucky man: I got to live it.

And the Boss never complained, not once, although her heart never left Maine, not for a moment. So after those few snowless years, we came home again. Sometimes I miss Key West, especially when I must deal with ice, snow, and slush. But I never miss it as much as I missed Maine when we lived among the bougainvillea, hibiscus, and frangipani.

I have not lived all my life in Maine, but Maine is the only place Ive lived my life. It was here that I became who I am. So I write about this place with great care. I love it far too much to do otherwise. And as youll see, that hasnt changed over 30-something years.

In case youre curious, not much else has, really. The children, of course, have grown; they are men and women now, not the boys and girls they were when this books first edition appeared. But we are truly blessed. Each of them is doing just fine, thank you. And now there are grandchildren to replace those boys and girls our children once were. Over the years, the Boss and I have called several different houses our homes, including one we built with our children and their friends. We still live in Brunswick, closer now to the river than the bay, but not that far from either. Its the boys who are now men who own the boats; we get to ride in them, which is the best part. As soon as we step ashore, the boat is theirs to care for. Each of the children, I firmly believe, is lucky indeed to have grown up on the Maine coast. I look around the nation and the world and I cant find another place where children are better raised.

Im still here, still writing, and still in love with Jean. Hey, as I said, Im a lucky man.

John N. Cole

Brunswick, Maine

January 2001

Beginnings

W ell, its March an anniversary month for me. The month my father was born, and died; the month my son was born; the month of the vernal equinox; and the month I first set foot in Maine.

With that cast of characters, March is assured of a starring role in my memories for the rest of my years. In a way, thats good, because March in Maine offers little else but time a gray stretch of it between the end of winter and hope for spring. March is no season; or it is a season unto itself, mixing winter, spring and parts of autumn as its whims decide, independent of the calendar and weather charts.

March had opted for 100 percent winter at the moment I chose to embark in Maine. That was at 3 a.m. on a mid-March pre-dawn precisely 12 years ago. I came to Kennebunk from Dayton, Ohio, with several jolting interruptions along the way. The first was on a turnpike near Buffalo. It had been snowing hard there a wet, heavy snow hurled from the Great Lakes. I was driving a blown Oldsmobile convertible a racy looking but totally impractical car which had, at one time, belonged to my sister in her years of flaming youth and monetary success as a New York designer. In a now unremembered change of life styles, she had abandoned her car, moved away and left the machine on blocks for two years in the garage where I found it when I was Dayton-bound and needed wheels.

The old Olds survived two years in Ohio, but it didnt last the return trip. Those days on blocks had rusted too many oil lines and corroded too much of the engines energy. Pushing through the soft snow of Buffalo, the Olds crunched two pistons and slowed to a mortally wounded, stuttering crawl. I nursed it off the turnpike, and into one of the first Buffalo garages I could find. I was in a bit of a bind. I had about $20 to get me the rest of the way to Maine, and that was the extent of my cash reserves. My family was in Dayton, and our furniture was being sold at ridiculous prices to finance their move.

I telephoned the only person I knew in Buffalo, a college classmate. I was told he was off playing polo in Del Ray, Florida a bit of information which only served to give another shake to the coals of bitterness already burning in my gut. The garage mechanic informed me the Olds needed a new engine. At least I was rational enough to be able to laugh at that diagnosis. In the end, I traded him a bottle of going-away-gift fine whiskey (which a Daytonian had laid on me as I left) for about 40 gallons of waste oil drained from oil-change crankcases as I hung around. I put the oil in five and ten-gallon drums that dripped over the snappy red leather seats and drove the wheezing Olds another couple of hundred miles, keeping my speed around 30 mph and stopping every 20 miles or so to fill the spewing engine with more of the black crankcase waste. It was, to say the least, an ignominious journey for a man on his way to be a Maine editor.

It was the last bus out of Boston that I got, and it was snowing there when we left. When we crossed the New Hampshire-Massachusetts border, we were greeted with a full-blown blizzard.

By the time we got to Kennebunk there was about six inches of new snow howling through the windy night, and more than a foot already on the ground a leftover from the storm that had crippled the Olds in Buffalo. The bus stopped on Kennebunks Main Street, I got off, shouldered my duffel bag, watched the bus leave and began walking through the dark blizzard down a street I had never walked toward a house I had never seen. My directions for getting there were on a letter in my pocket, and it was too dark to read. The snow drifts reached my knees, the wind was bitter cold and I thought to myself that I had come all this way to be frozen into a snow bank and found there the next day, an anonymous vagrant, casually abandoned and tossed to extinction.