Don and I were out for a night of bar-hopping – septuagenarian/octogenarian style bar-hopping – which involves a drink at one place, a burger at another and home, though one night we really did it up right and ended the evening at Riverducks. If you’re bar-hopping I’ve learned, you sit at the bar and talk to people. So there we were at Cuzzy’s the other night, and he struck up a conversation with the guy next to us. After a few minutes, the fellow looked hard at me and said, “I know you.”

“You do? Who are you?” That’s not an unusual scenario these days; someone comes along in Hannaford’s or wherever to talk or hug –“how are you doing?” – he/she may say, and I try to come up with a name. Since this may have been a student of Wally’s or even of mine, it’s hard to see the twelve-year-old in a bearded, gruff-looking guy or solidly middle-aged woman.

“I’ll give you a clue,” the guy said. “You wrote about me.” Ah. And then I remembered Larry Wade. He’d shared his memories with me of his grandfather, Osborne Wade, in 1994 when I was writing Ducktrap: Chronicles of a Maine Village. Larry had been a little boy in the 1960s when his grandfather was already an old man. It had been years since I’d re-read the book all the way through, so of course the next morning I found it, the last story in the book, and here it is:

It’s blowing a gale outside tonight; icy pellets of snow spatter against the windows, wind-driven up the bay. The kitchen, though, is warm and smoky, dimly lit by a 40-watt bulb overhead. An old man sits in the corner by the crackling woodstove puffing on his pipe. Across the room a small boy is hunched up on the wood-box, diligently whittling a stick. Suddenly headlights flare across the ceiling, then the sound of boots stomping off snow on the front porch; the door opens and a visitor enters.

The old man is Osborne Wade, and the boy is his grandson, Larry Wade; Raymond Oxton has just arrived with a bottle of milk, the kind with a cardboard pull top and cream on top, still warm from the cow. As the two men visit, Larry watches and listens from his perch on the wood-box. They swap stories, warmed by the fire, while the snow builds up outside. Years later Larry won’t remember the stories, but the image of that kitchen and house will have indelibly marked him.

Osborne knew how to do things. He’d been a fisherman and a carpenter, knew the woods, knew the Bay. Once on a picnic to Job Island he ran out of pipe tobacco. Larry watched him find a weed, tall brown stems with seed pods all around it. He broke the top off, and crushed it up, jamming it into his pipe and smoking it. Indian tobacco, he told Larry. Later, when their wherry ran into six foot seas out in the Bay coming home, and the little 3.5 horsepower motor was lifting right out of the water with every wave, Osborne just sat there, riding along, smoking. “Didn’t faze him a bit” says Larry.

One cold November day Larry accompanied his father and grandfather when they replaced a piling in the dock at Crow’s Nest in Northport, the summer place where Osborne was caretaker. First they cut down the tree, hauled it out with a tractor and put it up on sawhorses. Using a drawknife Osborne peeled off all the bark, then they dragged it down to the shore and floated it into place. They were soaked through by this time. Up at the house they hung their pants by the woodstove, and sat at the kitchen table in their long johns. Catherine, the housekeeper, gave them tea and crackers, while their pants steamed by the fire.

Osborne lived simply. He ate simply too; beans, bacon, Campbell soup, fish chowder, fig bars, molasses cookies, “bananas were a big staple of his.” He drank a lot of tea, never coffee, typical of many Mainers at the time. A single cold-water faucet at the kitchen sink came from the well down cellar. When that got too low he’d have to throw down a bucket and haul up the water.

“Very basic. Heat the water, read the paper, watch the world go by.” Osborne never had a television, and only rarely listened to his radio. He was an avid reader, and was a lifetime member of the National Geographic Society, took the Bangor Daily, the Portland Press Herald and the Sunday Telegram and read them through.

 There was a big, extended family that even though had scattered to their own pursuits, still came back to Lincolnville and the old man at Ducktrap.

“We always had lobster bakes when my Uncle Bill would come down, and Aunt Edith, down from Pennsylvania with my cousins Billy and Jeff and Stanley, Kathy and her husband. We always got together and had some pretty good whoop-de-dos down to the fish house, listening to some of the old country and western stars like Hank Williams Sr. on a battery powered phonograph. Beer and whiskey pouring everywhere, and stories and laughter, and us kids having fun, and Uncle Billy telling war stories about the service, and Grampy telling all these stories. I wish I’d had a video camera back then. Having bonfires on the beach, and we’d always have a big lobster feed. I remember that little fish house, it was probably only about 14 x 18, and I remember a few times there’d probably be fifteen people…”

 In 1974 after Larry graduated from high school, he went to live with his grandfather who was in his mid-eighties by that time.

“I lived with him for a couple of years, had a room up in the attic. Our schedules were different because I was in the party mode then. You know, eighteen, nineteen and motorcycles and coming and going. I just basically kept my clothes there and slept there. It never bothered him at all. I wasn’t there to take care of him, just really for a place to live. I’d hear him in the morning splitting kindling, getting the fire going . . . He was pretty much self-sufficient right up until he was about 95. He lived to be 100, two or three months short of 101.

 “We got along great; he was someone I had a lot of respect for. He kept pretty much to himself, never had much to say. Once in a while he’d be setting in the corner reading the paper, and I’d get up, come down and maybe fry an egg or two, something like that, make a sandwich… because I was out partying until two or three, and didn’t get up until noontime. And I’d bring in wood for him, and just get the mail for him, because it was kind of treacherous for him to cross Route One there. On his 95th birthday I took my guitar up and played “Happy Birthday” to him. And he goes, “Hey, sounds pretty good, you oughta be in an orchestra.” Orchestras were long gone, as far as the kind he used to go dance to. Then he asked me, ‘You got yourself a girlfriend?’ and I said, ‘No, I don’t have a girlfriend at the moment,’ and he says, ‘Well’, he goes, and he waves his pipe in the air, ‘You’re just as well off, just as well off.’     

Larry saw Osborne a month before he died at the Camden Health Care Center. “And I asked him about the space program. ‘Grampy, what do you think of the space shuttle? They’re up there exploring the planets, being able to send three or four people out to orbit the earth and the satellites and everything?’ And he goes, ‘They got no business being out there. They oughta leave well enough alone,’ he goes. ‘Can’t do anything once you’re out there. I don’t know why they want to go out there.’”

Larry thinks a lot about his grandfather and what he represented in his life.

 “As soon as the eldest one dies the family sort of disappears, everyone goes into their own little bubble. Before the family would come back, rally around the eldest, like he was the fulcrum of the family. I got a taste of that era, hauling water, wood fires and living simply, and it pulls at me inside. I would have given anything to be born when my grandfather was in the late 1880’s. I was lucky to have lived with my grandparents on both my mother’s and father’s sides. I gained a lot of ethics and family values from my grandparents, a lot of knowledge. I got my basic side, the laid back, earthy, mellow side from my father’s side. Now I have a son, Alexander John Wade; he’s six and a half. I hope I can pass all I have inside, and all I’ve picked up from my elders, and somehow keep the family beliefs, values and name alive. The fisherman and the farmer, they’re both in me, they’re what Maine stands for. I have a feeling I’m going to be a lot like my grandfather…”

School

As every parent (and grandparent-living-downstairs) knows next Tuesday, September 3, is the first day of school for grades 1-8, as well as high school students. Kindergarten registration is on Tuesday with their first day on Wednesday.

With a new music teacher, Susan Iltis, and two new Ed Techs – Samantha Bragg and Hannah Burke – joining the staff everyone’s ready to go, and that includes School Secretary Marie Pierce, starting her 31st year keeping everything running smoothly. She is surely the LCS employee with the most longevity!

Marie suggests parents check the school’s new website for this year’s bus routes (find those under parent resources) the lunch menu, and much more.

Practice has begun this week for both soccer and cross-country, the two fall sports offered at Lincolnville Central School. According to the LCS website the cross-country team competes in the Busline League with up to 22 other schools from the mid-coast area, Woolwich to Searsport. Athletes run five days per week during the season, including league sponsored meets each Thursday. Races are for a distance of between 2.1 and 2.3 miles depending on the location of the meet.

The soccer team for grades 6-8 also competes in the Busline League. Athletes are expected to be available to practice and play five or occasionally six days per week throughout the regular season. Players may also run cross-country.

Library

Knitting and Needlework meets Tuesday, September 27, 4-6 p.m. This is an open group—everyone is welcomed to drop in, have a cup of tea, and make new friends. Bring a project and come enjoy the charming space and the friendly, helpful group of yarn lovers.  

Librarian Elizabeth Eudy writes: “If you always wanted to learn to play Mah Jongg or wish to refresh your skills, we have the perfect event! 

Thanks to a generous grant from Aging Well in Waldo County and AARP, and in preparation for starting an ongoing Mah Jongg program, we are offering a very special FREE 4-hour instructional workshop on Thursday, September 19th from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m.

“We must limit the participants to 12, so be sure to call and leave a message at the library (706-3896) or send an email questions@lincolnvillelibrary.org and leave a phone number.  We will respond to confirm your place in the workshop and will take additional names for a waiting list in case of cancellations. 

“This brown-bag workshop (bring your own lunch or snack) will include a break for lunch.  The library will provide coffee, tea, water and lemonade. 

These spots will go fast, so don’t delay!”

A Confession

So one day last week Conrad, my son’s dog, went missing. They, my upstairs family had gone to Montreal for a week leaving their newly-adopted dog in my care. I’d been weaving in the attached shop for a couple of hours, and when I came back into the house Conrad was gone. It was possible he’d been gone the whole two hours since I hadn’t seen him all that time.

I did the usual after reluctantly calling Ed and Tracee on vacation to tell them that the dog they and their children had fallen in love with was gone. Once it was on FB someone would tell them anyway. The message flew around our friends and family: Conrad is missing.  I posted it to the L’ville Bulletin Board, to Facebook, and to the Maine Lost Dog Recovery FB page, left a message with Heidi Blood, Lincolnville’s animal control officer, and called P.A.W.s where Conrad had come from just a short while ago. Got in my car and drove all the roads he might have taken from the house, and paced around helplessly, waiting to hear if someone had found him.

Nearly three hours into this I happened to go back into my shop to be greeted with a big doggy smile from Conrad, who apparently had been there all along.

Reminds me of a recent LBB post alerting us all to the theft of some valuable garden tools which this fellow had left out. Naturally there was a flurry of concerned posts about a thief in our neighborhood. “Lock up your rakes and hoes!” Then, a day or two later came the confession: the gardener was ashamed to admit he’d forgotten that he’d put those tools away himself!