"I must go down to the seas again,
To the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship
And a star to steer her by."
from SEA FEVER by John Masefield
Those lines by England's Poet Laureate remind me of Wiscasset. During every summer trip to Blue Hill, we stopped at Wiscasset on the way there and back. In an earlier blog, I mentioned the old wooden schooners lying derelict there. One could almost hear them rotting away. It seemed that each time we passed, there would be one less mast standing. Although I grew up around sailboats, these schooners were the first boats that really caught my interest. They were truly "tall ships." Soon, iron ships were to catch my interest.
The summers of 1957 and 1958 proved to be significant stepping stones toward my eventual career at sea because it was when I was first introduced to merchant ships. My father was the marine transportation manager for a large oil company. While in Blue Hill, he took the opportunity to visit company ships that regularly called in Maine ports and I went with him. We often went to Searsport and occasionally to Portland. I clearly remember walking down long, wooden docks to board T2 oil tankers (the nomenclature "T2" refers to the type and size of a
vessel). These ships were built in the 1940's for the war effort and were later utilized for private trade. I met old salts like O.T. Tonnessen and Charlie Hayes and was always given the grand tour. This was fun. As happenstance would have it, during my professional career at sea, I often called at the same Portland dock first visited years ago.
The drive up in 1958 lasted longer than normal. My parents had a brand new car, a Jeep Wagoneer. In those days, a new car was not supposed to be driven over a certain speed until the engine was broken in. We did not exceed 40 mph the whole way. Also, back then, radios were not standard equipment in cars. They were usually bought as an after-market item. Our radio was installed just before the trip. A couple of hours after leaving home it started to rain. My father turned on the windshield wipers and a rhythmic clicking noise began. It turned out that the casing of the new radio was too deep and was being clipped by the wiper mechanism on every stroke. The noise became really annoying so we found a gas station and had the radio removed. The corner of the radio case was hacksawed off and the radio reinstalled. It wound up taking us the better part of two days to reach Blue Hill.
We rented Guy Hayes's house those two summers. Pooh Hayes stayed in a cottage on the property. Bart Hayes's younger daughters, Hillary and Beena stayed with Pooh. There was a party-line telephone system in the area. When the phone rang, it was answered by people from several different houses. It always confused me.
One night the sky turned multi-colored.
I remember being outside with John, Hillary and Beena, lying on the ground looking up at the dancing lights above. None of us knew what this phenomenon was. As a group, we decided it had something to do with the Star of Bethlehem. It turned out to be the Northern Lights. During my seagoing career, I saw the Northern Lights multiple times but they never seemed as vivid as the first time. I wonder now if this has anything to do with the build-up of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere.
Down the hill from the house was Blue Hill Sound. There wasn't much of a beach but the clamming was great. Uncle Frannie taught me how to find clams by looking for bubbles in the sand at low tide. The clams we dug were pretty good size, probably six to eight inches long. Aunt Lalee, a talented artist, would paint seascapes on the insides of the dried shells. There was a rowboat moored a hundred feet offshore which we mainly used as a diving platform. We'd dive down to the bottom and find sand dollars, not the nice bleached ones you'd find on the shore, but live ones covered in fine, brown hair. Even though I was a good swimmer, my parents wouldn't let me swim out to the boat unless they were there. Occasionally, a bunch of jellyfish would wash up on the beach. They were clear with small, white circles in the middle and were just the right size to throw at somebody.
Blue Hill had a yacht club, the Kollegewidgwok Yacht Club. We weren't members but our cousins were so we went there occasionally. There were some really snooty members with even snootier kids but the important thing was that we got to sail. Some friends had an Atlantic-class sloop that my father would take out from time to time. We'd troll off the stern as we sailed and often catch mackerel. Doug Byers, whose house we had rented the previous year, had a 42 foot yawl named Abanaki. One day we cruised with him from Blue Hill to Bar Harbor and back. It was an all-day affair and was fun because I had never been on such a large sailboat before. The Byers's always had a big picnic on the 4th of July. Maybe picnic is the wrong word because the food served was salmon and green peas. Yuck.
Midway between the town and our house were the Blue Hill Falls. We called them the Reversible Falls because there was turbulent water present on both the rising and falling tides. We would fish for tautog (blackfish) in the calmer sections of the falls.
The Blue Hill Fair was always a big event. It was kind of a mix between a 4-H show and an old-time carnival. I remember the Gypsy-like hucksters trying to entice the young men into a tent to see the tattooed lady. Much to my dismay, my parents wouldn't let me see her.
Once a summer, we would drive to Bangor. There was a Sears store there, called Sears & Roebuck in those days, which was a big deal back then. I'd buy new fishing lures. We also visited Acadia National Park several times each summer. I remember sites such as Cadillac Mountain, the Thunder Hole and Jordan Pond. From
the top of Cadillac Mountain, you could often see the ferry, Bluenose, heading out of Bar Harbor bound for Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. I can still taste the pop-overs and strawberry jam from the Jordan Pond House restaurant. It was always crowded there, even in the 1950's. That should give you some idea how good their pop-overs were.
We ended our summer vacation earlier than normal in 1957 because my parents were going to Europe to see my brother Rob, who was studying at the Sorbonne in Paris. I lucked out, though. I was only home a few days before I flew back to Maine to stay with my cousins. This was my first plane ride. I flew from LaGuardia to Bangor on a noisy, twin-engine aircraft, changed planes, then flew on to Bar Harbor where Pooh Hayes met me. We stayed until the end of August then drove down to Andover, MA where they lived.
Davie, my oldest brother, had gotten married earlier in the year and his in-laws, the Bruce's, lived not far from Andover, in West Newton. They invited me to a Red Sox game. Dr. Bruce and I went to a double-header against the Tigers at Fenway Park, The Tigers won both games. Marty Keogh made his rookie debut for the Sox and I'm pretty sure Ted Williams played in one of the games; he was at the end of his career then. Dr. Bruce later sent me a signed Ted Williams photograph which, years later, my mother discarded along with all my other baseball cards when she was cleaning out the house in Bedford. After my parents returned home, my new sister-in-law, Joanna, drove me back to Bedford, NY. She was a neat gal and told me she could make it all the way home without stopping for a red light. Granted, half of the trip was on turnpikes and parkways but she did indeed make it all the way without stopping. Whenever she saw a red light in the distance, she would slow way down until the light changed then speed through.
In 1958, we bought another chinook, Nootka, from the Perry Greene kennels in Waldoboro. Like his forebear, Barra, Nootka was hit by a car at a young age and had to be put down. My parents had bad luck with chinooks, although my grandmother's chinook, Rowan, lived a long, happy life. Rowan was too lazy to chase cars.
1958 marked the end of our summer rentals in Maine. What followed were one summer on Block Island, one summer back on Martha's Vineyard, and four summers on Nantucket. However, the blogs about Maine don't end here since my parents were to eventually retire there.
"I must go down to the seas again,
To the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship
And a star to steer her by."
from SEA FEVER by John Masefield
Those lines by England's Poet Laureate remind me of Wiscasset. During every summer trip to Blue Hill, we stopped at Wiscasset on the way there and back. In an earlier blog, I mentioned the old wooden schooners lying derelict there. One could almost hear them rotting away. It seemed that each time we passed, there would be one less mast standing. Although I grew up around sailboats, these schooners were the first boats that really caught my interest. They were truly "tall ships." Soon, iron ships were to catch my interest.
The summers of 1957 and 1958 proved to be significant stepping stones toward my eventual career at sea because it was when I was first introduced to merchant ships. My father was the marine transportation manager for a large oil company. While in Blue Hill, he took the opportunity to visit company ships that regularly called in Maine ports and I went with him. We often went to Searsport and occasionally to Portland. I clearly remember walking down long, wooden docks to board T2 oil tankers (the nomenclature "T2" refers to the type and size of a 
vessel). These ships were built in the 1940's for the war effort and were later utilized for private trade. I met old salts like O.T. Tonnessen and Charlie Hayes and was always given the grand tour. This was fun. As happenstance would have it, during my professional career at sea, I often called at the same Portland dock first visited years ago.
The drive up in 1958 lasted longer than normal. My parents had a brand new car, a Jeep Wagoneer. In those days, a new car was not supposed to be driven over a certain speed until the engine was broken in. We did not exceed 40 mph the whole way. Also, back then, radios were not standard equipment in cars. They were usually bought as an after-market item. Our radio was installed just before the trip. A couple of hours after leaving home it started to rain. My father turned on the windshield wipers and a rhythmic clicking noise began. It turned out that the casing of the new radio was too deep and was being clipped by the wiper mechanism on every stroke. The noise became really annoying so we found a gas station and had the radio removed. The corner of the radio case was hacksawed off and the radio reinstalled. It wound up taking us the better part of two days to reach Blue Hill.
We rented Guy Hayes's house those two summers. Pooh Hayes stayed in a cottage on the property. Bart Hayes's younger daughters, Hillary and Beena stayed with Pooh. There was a party-line telephone system in the area. When the phone rang, it was answered by people from several different houses. It always confused me.
One night the sky turned multi-colored. 
I remember being outside with John, Hillary and Beena, lying on the ground looking up at the dancing lights above. None of us knew what this phenomenon was. As a group, we decided it had something to do with the Star of Bethlehem. It turned out to be the Northern Lights. During my seagoing career, I saw the Northern Lights multiple times but they never seemed as vivid as the first time. I wonder now if this has anything to do with the build-up of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere.
Down the hill from the house was Blue Hill Sound. There wasn't much of a beach but the clamming was great. Uncle Frannie taught me how to find clams by looking for bubbles in the sand at low tide. The clams we dug were pretty good size, probably six to eight inches long. Aunt Lalee, a talented artist, would paint seascapes on the insides of the dried shells. There was a rowboat moored a hundred feet offshore which we mainly used as a diving platform. We'd dive down to the bottom and find sand dollars, not the nice bleached ones you'd find on the shore, but live ones covered in fine, brown hair. Even though I was a good swimmer, my parents wouldn't let me swim out to the boat unless they were there. Occasionally, a bunch of jellyfish would wash up on the beach. They were clear with small, white circles in the middle and were just the right size to throw at somebody.
Blue Hill had a yacht club, the Kollegewidgwok Yacht Club. We weren't members but our cousins were so we went there occasionally. There were some really snooty members with even snootier kids but the important thing was that we got to sail. Some friends had an Atlantic-class sloop that my father would take out from time to time. We'd troll off the stern as we sailed and often catch mackerel. Doug Byers, whose house we had rented the previous year, had a 42 foot yawl named Abanaki. One day we cruised with him from Blue Hill to Bar Harbor and back. It was an all-day affair and was fun because I had never been on such a large sailboat before. The Byers's always had a big picnic on the 4th of July. Maybe picnic is the wrong word because the food served was salmon and green peas. Yuck.
Midway between the town and our house were the Blue Hill Falls. We called them the Reversible Falls because there was turbulent water present on both the rising and falling tides. We would fish for tautog (blackfish) in the calmer sections of the falls.
The Blue Hill Fair was always a big event. It was kind of a mix between a 4-H show and an old-time carnival. I remember the Gypsy-like hucksters trying to entice the young men into a tent to see the tattooed lady. Much to my dismay, my parents wouldn't let me see her.
Once a summer, we would drive to Bangor. There was a Sears store there, called Sears & Roebuck in those days, which was a big deal back then. I'd buy new fishing lures. We also visited Acadia National Park several times each summer. I remember sites such as Cadillac Mountain, the Thunder Hole and Jordan Pond. From 
the top of Cadillac Mountain, you could often see the ferry, Bluenose, heading out of Bar Harbor bound for Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. I can still taste the pop-overs and strawberry jam from the Jordan Pond House restaurant. It was always crowded there, even in the 1950's. That should give you some idea how good their pop-overs were.
We ended our summer vacation earlier than normal in 1957 because my parents were going to Europe to see my brother Rob, who was studying at the Sorbonne in Paris. I lucked out, though. I was only home a few days before I flew back to Maine to stay with my cousins. This was my first plane ride. I flew from LaGuardia to Bangor on a noisy, twin-engine aircraft, changed planes, then flew on to Bar Harbor where Pooh Hayes met me. We stayed until the end of August then drove down to Andover, MA where they lived.
Davie, my oldest brother, had gotten married earlier in the year and his in-laws, the Bruce's, lived not far from Andover, in West Newton. They invited me to a Red Sox game. Dr. Bruce and I went to a double-header against the Tigers at Fenway Park, The Tigers won both games. Marty Keogh made his rookie debut for the Sox and I'm pretty sure Ted Williams played in one of the games; he was at the end of his career then. Dr. Bruce later sent me a signed Ted Williams photograph which, years later, my mother discarded along with all my other baseball cards when she was cleaning out the house in Bedford. After my parents returned home, my new sister-in-law, Joanna, drove me back to Bedford, NY. She was a neat gal and told me she could make it all the way home without stopping for a red light. Granted, half of the trip was on turnpikes and parkways but she did indeed make it all the way without stopping. Whenever she saw a red light in the distance, she would slow way down until the light changed then speed through.
In 1958, we bought another chinook, Nootka, from the Perry Greene kennels in Waldoboro. Like his forebear, Barra, Nootka was hit by a car at a young age and had to be put down. My parents had bad luck with chinooks, although my grandmother's chinook, Rowan, lived a long, happy life. Rowan was too lazy to chase cars.
1958 marked the end of our summer rentals in Maine. What followed were one summer on Block Island, one summer back on Martha's Vineyard, and four summers on Nantucket. However, the blogs about Maine don't end here since my parents were to eventually retire there.
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