Sunday morning dawned muggy, a light fog clinging to the ground. Dawson was up and out of the house before they woke. He put a sandal cautiously onto the wet grass and looking up the hill settling his gaze on the blackberry patch as he licked his lips stemming saliva.
The way to get there is by the stone wall under the trees. She won’t see me getting in and then I’ll crawl into the patch on my belly. Then I’ll roll over and see all the berries the grown-ups missed and get back here before breakfast. Perfect.
Dawson’s trek took him around his dad’s barn out to the land forested by mature maple and fir with dense underbrush and ferns. He quickly found the stone wall and walked along it, the land rising towards the Waters’ property. He came upon the surveyor’s stake with bright orange ribbon motionless in the morning air and stopped to examine the territory ahead. Peering into the field he saw the dirt road leading from the Waters’ house, past his house, and down to the highway. Other side of it was open field, halfway across a path led to light from the big glasshouse. Looking up to the left Dawson figured that the garage between the Waters’ house and the greenhouse blocked their view of anyone running through that field. An awesome place to explore. They might see me getting there, but it’s dark enough and misty so no one will see, even if they are out of bed. Mom told me not to come up here, but I played here last summer when they built the place. Dawson made the construction site his playground, especially after working hours. He pretended to drive the bulldozer, dug into the piles of dirt, he and his friends played spies in the unfinished house, and he climbed around on the greenhouse frame before the glass came. He looked again at the lit-up greenhouse seeing whirling fans, masses of green leaves and bright flowers. He watched for a long time and saw no person moving. Deciding no one was inside he sprinted from cover, crossed the road, then slowed slipping into the field. He turned right to see his dark house and left sensing stillness at the Waters’ house. So far so good, he thought approaching the full glass entry door he reached out and turned the knob.
Even in the half-light before dawn he beheld a beautiful spectrum of flowers and greenery. The colors drew him in. Up close, one flower looked like all the colors in a sunrise. This was so cool he had to remember what to tell his friend Devin. No he had to get Devin to come in here with him. Playing spies while they built the house was Devin’s idea and now that the greenhouse was full it was perfect for spies. It was like the jungle in Jumanji. He felt there could be lions and monkeys right around the corner. He took a few cautious steps into the tangle of vines and leaves hanging from benches and baskets. Turning from the entryway to a large, high-ceilinged glass room his jaw went slack, eyes wide, peering into hundreds of light blue and purple colored stringy flowers. Some were wide open and others in varying phases of closing. He could make out the shapes like the sea anemones on the Discovery Channel, only still. He stood, taking in the immense room and host of flowers. The stringy flowers were not moving like the sea creatures on TV but something was moving out there in the room. Dawson stayed glued to the spot and now he heard, almost felt vibrations. As his senses adjusted to the room he realized the vibration and movement were coordinated. Darting among the stringy flowers were dozens of hummingbirds like the ones that visited the lilacs, only here were so many. Devin had to see this. Dawson filled with excitement anticipating the storytelling.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Theme Week 5
Floyd Albertsen daydreamed. He dreamed of fishing in his stream and he dreamed of the far away hunt. All this while he gently bounced his giant yellow Caterpillar loader straight down the broad main artery of his City of Junk. Plumes of dust billowed from the tires settling on every chrome and colorful painted part of the host of cars he presided over. The Albertsen parcel sat between two streams that each followed their own paths to the sea. On that part of the Washington County coast there exist many short streams that never organized into deep systems of tributaries, instead having short runs from low inland hillocks directly flowing to the bay. Beady Stream bordered one side below a sandy ridge that followed the stream for three miles. Between the ridge and the stream was low bog and on the other side other side of the ridge was broad, undulating ground covered with forest and the City of Junk. Creaky Stream flowed down past the junkyard, then through the collection of houses and trailers known to the sheriff’s department as Albertsenville, then into the bay. Floyd Albertsen always let his buddies and family fish the Beady Stream but not the Creaky Stream. No fish ran back up Creaky Stream and no clamming was allowed near the mouth of the stream. Floyd generally let it be known that the lack of wildlife there was due to all those relatives piping their poop down the brook, ignoring the putrid contribution from his junk collection further upstream.
Floyd was a pack rat but an organized one. The sandy roads drained well and he dutifully filled the potholes so he could scream around the yard on his articulated loader with the two long pipes sticking out the front like two lances carried by twin knights into battle. Right now he swung the loader around, put the twin lances trough the open windows of a 1994 Riviera and lifted it up on the top of Five-car-high pile of Buicks. Cars were piled by make and sometimes by model. The straight roads were laid out on a nearly perfect grid and in between the roads were nearly square plots dedicated to a given make and the case of really popular cars, whole blocks of one model. The squares were as long as three station wagons or four compact foreign cars lined up end to end. He usually had cars piled up four, five, even six high and stacked in rows of seven or eight across. Sometimes there was room on a block to make an end cap of cars on one or both ends. He liked to use real old cars for end caps so he could admire them as he whizzed around the streets of the City of Junk. . There were a couple of extended blocks of metal where he had been lucky enough to get a hulk of a 1962 Douglas Stratoliner, wings and all. That took up two city-of-junk blocks.
He figured he had enough 1980’s vintage Chevrolet station wagons alone to afford three years worth of chartered fishing trips and big-game hunting expeditions. As he whizzed past the Cavaliers and he thought of running over the savanna in a guided Landrover, head out the sunroof 30-oo-6 loaded in hand scanning the horizon for lions. Or maybe this year it would be helicopter ride into the high Canadian Rockies for mountain goat. He would just have to get the crushing company in here for one last big push. There was just the small matter in his mind of the town ordinance enforcement officer. But what could she really do? Only make him fix his fence or make the piles of cars a little lower so the neighbor Chester Howard could not see the cars in the winter after the leaves turned red and fell from the swamp maples. Six years ago when Floyd last crunched a lot of cars his neighbor had complained of noise and dust and finally got him to stop when he claimed to smell oil running down the ditch from the city down onto the Howard estate. Trouble was he got the state environmental cops down here with the sheriff’s department and they scared away the crushing company. None had dared to come back, until now.
Floyd heard through the recycled auto parts grapevine that there was a rough and tumble crushing outfit just this side of outlaw. They did not care one bit for the environmental enforcement, the cops or the district attorneys. Word was they had their own pack of politically connected lawyers and used them to hold environmental authorities at bay while they plundered the treasure trove of vintage cars accumulating for nearly a decade of strict supervision of car crushing operations. He knew the rebel crushers would not be around forever. They would run out of overstuffed yards and the profits would eventually be too small to justify the legal smokescreen so they would disappear into the warm and sunny places of the world with their loot. Floyd imagined all the happy and rich recycled auto parts dealer they would leave behind, the ones who were quick enough to recognize the opportunity and pounce. He stopped the loader and decided to make his daydreams into realities. His big thumb on the tiny cell phone keys dialed the crusher’s number as smiled his big silver-toothed grin.
Floyd was a pack rat but an organized one. The sandy roads drained well and he dutifully filled the potholes so he could scream around the yard on his articulated loader with the two long pipes sticking out the front like two lances carried by twin knights into battle. Right now he swung the loader around, put the twin lances trough the open windows of a 1994 Riviera and lifted it up on the top of Five-car-high pile of Buicks. Cars were piled by make and sometimes by model. The straight roads were laid out on a nearly perfect grid and in between the roads were nearly square plots dedicated to a given make and the case of really popular cars, whole blocks of one model. The squares were as long as three station wagons or four compact foreign cars lined up end to end. He usually had cars piled up four, five, even six high and stacked in rows of seven or eight across. Sometimes there was room on a block to make an end cap of cars on one or both ends. He liked to use real old cars for end caps so he could admire them as he whizzed around the streets of the City of Junk. . There were a couple of extended blocks of metal where he had been lucky enough to get a hulk of a 1962 Douglas Stratoliner, wings and all. That took up two city-of-junk blocks.
He figured he had enough 1980’s vintage Chevrolet station wagons alone to afford three years worth of chartered fishing trips and big-game hunting expeditions. As he whizzed past the Cavaliers and he thought of running over the savanna in a guided Landrover, head out the sunroof 30-oo-6 loaded in hand scanning the horizon for lions. Or maybe this year it would be helicopter ride into the high Canadian Rockies for mountain goat. He would just have to get the crushing company in here for one last big push. There was just the small matter in his mind of the town ordinance enforcement officer. But what could she really do? Only make him fix his fence or make the piles of cars a little lower so the neighbor Chester Howard could not see the cars in the winter after the leaves turned red and fell from the swamp maples. Six years ago when Floyd last crunched a lot of cars his neighbor had complained of noise and dust and finally got him to stop when he claimed to smell oil running down the ditch from the city down onto the Howard estate. Trouble was he got the state environmental cops down here with the sheriff’s department and they scared away the crushing company. None had dared to come back, until now.
Floyd heard through the recycled auto parts grapevine that there was a rough and tumble crushing outfit just this side of outlaw. They did not care one bit for the environmental enforcement, the cops or the district attorneys. Word was they had their own pack of politically connected lawyers and used them to hold environmental authorities at bay while they plundered the treasure trove of vintage cars accumulating for nearly a decade of strict supervision of car crushing operations. He knew the rebel crushers would not be around forever. They would run out of overstuffed yards and the profits would eventually be too small to justify the legal smokescreen so they would disappear into the warm and sunny places of the world with their loot. Floyd imagined all the happy and rich recycled auto parts dealer they would leave behind, the ones who were quick enough to recognize the opportunity and pounce. He stopped the loader and decided to make his daydreams into realities. His big thumb on the tiny cell phone keys dialed the crusher’s number as smiled his big silver-toothed grin.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Theme Week 4
My child thinks he is average and does not like the idea while I do not think he is average at all. He came in the other day to complain that he was "just average". I suspect that he heard from the doctor at his recent annual physical was how he was right in the middle of the range for weight and height. Then standardized test scores came home from school that set off this lamentation. I pointed out that he was right in the middle of scores in reading but was in the 80th percentile of math scores. He did not really comprehend what that meant and told me he was going out to ride his skateboard.
My child thinks he is average and does not like that idea while I see him as above the norm. He came in the other day to complain that he was "just average". He overheard the doctor tell me that he was in the average range for weight and height. I noticed at the time that the chart that only the doctor and I could see actually showed that his measures were within the norm but decidedly pushing the top of the envelope. When I told him about my observation he shrugged it off like it did not matter and went outside for some fresh air.
My child is a genius just like his dad. He knows it, I know and his doctor knows it. His doctor recently gave him an IQ test and when she sat us down in her office last week she was flabbergasted by just how high his scores were. My son overheard her gushings over his prowess and how her own child scored lower than mine several key tests. He asked "How did this happen?" Since both our children enjoy the same public school her only conclusion was that his great intelligence was inherited.
My child thinks he is average and does not like that idea while I see him as above the norm. He came in the other day to complain that he was "just average". He overheard the doctor tell me that he was in the average range for weight and height. I noticed at the time that the chart that only the doctor and I could see actually showed that his measures were within the norm but decidedly pushing the top of the envelope. When I told him about my observation he shrugged it off like it did not matter and went outside for some fresh air.
My child is a genius just like his dad. He knows it, I know and his doctor knows it. His doctor recently gave him an IQ test and when she sat us down in her office last week she was flabbergasted by just how high his scores were. My son overheard her gushings over his prowess and how her own child scored lower than mine several key tests. He asked "How did this happen?" Since both our children enjoy the same public school her only conclusion was that his great intelligence was inherited.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Theme Week3
I drove the 45 minutes north and into town for the twentieth time in as many months. A summer shower just ended leaving dry spots under trees and steam rising from sunny puddles. Most times I came bearing sample bottles so I could get the clean water tests back from the lab and use them to assuage the neighbors to the big oil spill. After several months of petroleum-free water samples it was time to cut people off from sampling. One particular neighbor was adamant that he was going to be contaminated at any time. I pulled into his driveway wishing I had brought a witness along.
He promptly answers the knock on the door saying, "Good morning can I get a cup a coffee. I just made it with the last of the water I hauled up here from the spring on the Mudgett Road. I’ll tell you what, that is getting old. I want to know when you fellas are gonna drill me a new well."
"No thanks, but I’ll have a glass of water" I said with a serious face.
"No you don’t want to drink that water" he says pointing to the kitchen sink.
We sit down at the kitchen table as he clears several inches of old newspapers, phone bills, unopened credit card pitches, and dirty dinnerware. "How about a can of V-8"
I detest vegetable juice but don’t say so. "Did you get the letter from the Department?"
"I got that report form the water lab that looks to me like there’s still chemicals in it even though they say it’s OK."
I did not bring much patience along that day and broke in while his mouth was open taking in breath for the next sentence. "Mr. Maynard that chemical is reported on every sample the lab analyzes, it is labeled as a surrogate right on the.."
"I don’t care what you call it it’s a chemical I don’t want in the water and it comes from right over there." He points out the window to the next-door garage and lot filled with logging trucks.
"They put that chemical in each sample at the lab to make sure the equipment is working right."
"That oil is coming straight at my well. I watched them drill that well over there 10 years ago and they hit the same vein as me. They have the oil in the well and if it’s not in mine yet it will be any day. You said so yourself when I met you"
"That was almost two years ago when I thought you might be at risk."
"I’m more at risk now. That oil’s seeping over towards me all that time."
"Well, like I said in the letter the standard time for sampling a neighbor after a spill is one year, four seasons. We’ve sampled you well for almost two years and found no oil."
"You still haven’t told me when you’re gonna drill me a new well."
The conversation went on fruitlessly for nearly an hour before I ended by saying, "Here is my supervisor’s phone number. If you have any further questions call her but you will get the same answers."
Driving back to the office over the mostly dry road I called the boss but got a busy signal. Great I thought, now two people to call me and complain.
He promptly answers the knock on the door saying, "Good morning can I get a cup a coffee. I just made it with the last of the water I hauled up here from the spring on the Mudgett Road. I’ll tell you what, that is getting old. I want to know when you fellas are gonna drill me a new well."
"No thanks, but I’ll have a glass of water" I said with a serious face.
"No you don’t want to drink that water" he says pointing to the kitchen sink.
We sit down at the kitchen table as he clears several inches of old newspapers, phone bills, unopened credit card pitches, and dirty dinnerware. "How about a can of V-8"
I detest vegetable juice but don’t say so. "Did you get the letter from the Department?"
"I got that report form the water lab that looks to me like there’s still chemicals in it even though they say it’s OK."
I did not bring much patience along that day and broke in while his mouth was open taking in breath for the next sentence. "Mr. Maynard that chemical is reported on every sample the lab analyzes, it is labeled as a surrogate right on the.."
"I don’t care what you call it it’s a chemical I don’t want in the water and it comes from right over there." He points out the window to the next-door garage and lot filled with logging trucks.
"They put that chemical in each sample at the lab to make sure the equipment is working right."
"That oil is coming straight at my well. I watched them drill that well over there 10 years ago and they hit the same vein as me. They have the oil in the well and if it’s not in mine yet it will be any day. You said so yourself when I met you"
"That was almost two years ago when I thought you might be at risk."
"I’m more at risk now. That oil’s seeping over towards me all that time."
"Well, like I said in the letter the standard time for sampling a neighbor after a spill is one year, four seasons. We’ve sampled you well for almost two years and found no oil."
"You still haven’t told me when you’re gonna drill me a new well."
The conversation went on fruitlessly for nearly an hour before I ended by saying, "Here is my supervisor’s phone number. If you have any further questions call her but you will get the same answers."
Driving back to the office over the mostly dry road I called the boss but got a busy signal. Great I thought, now two people to call me and complain.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Writer's Autobiography in Three Persons
In the last few years I took up fiction writing in a group down in the Belfast area where we used to live. I figured that after writing technical stuff for a couple decades I could take on fiction too. I spend a lot of time driving, a little less now that I cut my commute from 50 to 10 minutes, and I listen to books on tape. Mostly adventure, mystery, or crime fiction. I am on a Dick Francis kick right now. He has a nice simple formula that entertains. I also carry a voice recorder so I can keep all those ideas I get while driving and listening. Periodically I download and type in those little insights for future use.
One writing goal is to create entertaining fiction in the first person. Another is to explore voices for entertaining, persuasive, and informative non-fiction that I can use at the DEP. We publish a weekly article called “In your Backyard” that often aims at changing behavior around an environmental issue. This week it talks about the Pacific plastic garbage gyre, a slowly moving whirlpool twice the size of Texas and 30 feet thick of plastic stuff. The piece goes on to encourage the Maine citizen to recycle plastic.
I would like to learn and refine skill in this creative non-fiction class to meet both these goals.
You have a problem. You want to write fiction but you have little time to devote outside of work and family. You write lots of technical stuff at work. You write a piece for the weekly column at work but it comes out really dry and technical, not the way you wanted at all. You have the time to make creative non-fiction at work but you need some new voices, different approaches to grab attention. So you join up John Goldfine's class and you're off and writing.
He's one of those would-be writers with a few chapters of a novel in the current equivalent of the bottom desk drawer, the thumb drive. The words can be easily cut here and pasted there into some other work so he saves them. He heard that a writer should start the morning with 1000 words, then move on to the rest of the day. When he hits that goal he'll probably be 65 year old. At that age it will be a great hobby but he hopes to be surfing a little when the writing is done.
One writing goal is to create entertaining fiction in the first person. Another is to explore voices for entertaining, persuasive, and informative non-fiction that I can use at the DEP. We publish a weekly article called “In your Backyard” that often aims at changing behavior around an environmental issue. This week it talks about the Pacific plastic garbage gyre, a slowly moving whirlpool twice the size of Texas and 30 feet thick of plastic stuff. The piece goes on to encourage the Maine citizen to recycle plastic.
I would like to learn and refine skill in this creative non-fiction class to meet both these goals.
You have a problem. You want to write fiction but you have little time to devote outside of work and family. You write lots of technical stuff at work. You write a piece for the weekly column at work but it comes out really dry and technical, not the way you wanted at all. You have the time to make creative non-fiction at work but you need some new voices, different approaches to grab attention. So you join up John Goldfine's class and you're off and writing.
He's one of those would-be writers with a few chapters of a novel in the current equivalent of the bottom desk drawer, the thumb drive. The words can be easily cut here and pasted there into some other work so he saves them. He heard that a writer should start the morning with 1000 words, then move on to the rest of the day. When he hits that goal he'll probably be 65 year old. At that age it will be a great hobby but he hopes to be surfing a little when the writing is done.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Theme Week 2
In those pre-Watergate days of innocence I first remember writing in second grade when the teacher showed us how to make a little book out of manila paper stapled together. She gave us crayons to illustrate and I remember the coat had a plaid pattern of fall leaf colors which I drew on the book’s cover. It was the "Mystery of the Missing Coat" inspired by the lady who thought our coatroom was part of the thrift store across the hall and filled her bag full for a dollar. When she brought her bag to the register it included my coat. Shoot, now you know the ending. In fourth grade I remember Mrs. Wadsworth sent home a note about my language in an essay. I thought that the word friggin' was an acceptable substitute for another f-word. Not so for a fourth grader in 1970. That summer the town recreation program took a bus of us kids the 50 miles along the Mass. Pike to Boston for the day. From that day I carry two vibrant memories, smushing my banana on the seal engraved into the floor of the state house rotunda and being offered some cool-aid from a group of disreputable looking revelers on the sun-baked common. I left the banana behind to be trampled until a kindly janitor mopped it up and we refused the kind invitation to imbibe.
A few years and several school compositions later the Watergate story broke and coincidentally my life was never the same. Our father died at the age of 40 leaving my mother and three siblings to mourn. I grieved far too long ignoring consoling voices. I took time off from grieving to write a few essays and speeches about the natural world for agriculture classes and graduated from high school. Jump ahead to State College freshman composition where the professor said to me after reading my first composition "You're not such a clown after all.” I was positively inspired.
Regan got elected for the first time that year as I transferred to the small liberal arts Marietta College on the banks of the Ohio River across from West Virginia to study geology. I remember the story of Regan campaigning at the campus with snipers manning the rooftop of the field house where he spoke. American Literature professor Ms. Steinhagen encouraged me to pursue myself into that dark wilderness place I wrote about in a Hemingway essay. I do not believe I really have reached those wilds on paper. What I really began writing there were scientific papers. My senior project took 40 or so pages to report findings, measurements of footprints in lithic sand, and compilations of past scientific literature on a 300 million-year-old lizard named Dromopus. After graduation I wound up in Orono as a graduate assistant in geology where I earned a master’s degree with a thesis all about dirt bands on an Antarctic ice shelf. That thesis process gave me enormous confidence in writing and presenting technical and scientific work. That year of 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and many died in Tiananmen Square. The geology field camp I worked at that summer had a few extra openings as Chinese scientists were barred from travel. After graduate school I landed at the state Department of Environmental Protection where I wrote countless reports, presentations, letters, emails, standard operating procedures, and memos for the next decade right through 9-11 and to this day.
On 9-10-01 I was interviewed by the Bangor Daily at the site of a gasoline spill along the banks of the Penobscot River just north of Indian Island. The electronic media visited to interview us; it was big news that day. After the next day they never modulated another wave or a spilled a drop of ink about our project, which was just as well. My post 9-11 writing life took an imaginative turn when I enrolled in a creative writing class at Searsport adult education with Steve Allen, enjoyed that and took Steve’s advanced creative writing. That continued as a writing group meeting at members’ homes. The group gave me confidence in writing then reading the work for others and accepting criticism. Two years ago we moved house to Orono and I lost touch with that writing group and my creative writing. Fall 2008 started a new chapter with a web course in creative non-fiction writing with Professor Goldfine.
A few years and several school compositions later the Watergate story broke and coincidentally my life was never the same. Our father died at the age of 40 leaving my mother and three siblings to mourn. I grieved far too long ignoring consoling voices. I took time off from grieving to write a few essays and speeches about the natural world for agriculture classes and graduated from high school. Jump ahead to State College freshman composition where the professor said to me after reading my first composition "You're not such a clown after all.” I was positively inspired.
Regan got elected for the first time that year as I transferred to the small liberal arts Marietta College on the banks of the Ohio River across from West Virginia to study geology. I remember the story of Regan campaigning at the campus with snipers manning the rooftop of the field house where he spoke. American Literature professor Ms. Steinhagen encouraged me to pursue myself into that dark wilderness place I wrote about in a Hemingway essay. I do not believe I really have reached those wilds on paper. What I really began writing there were scientific papers. My senior project took 40 or so pages to report findings, measurements of footprints in lithic sand, and compilations of past scientific literature on a 300 million-year-old lizard named Dromopus. After graduation I wound up in Orono as a graduate assistant in geology where I earned a master’s degree with a thesis all about dirt bands on an Antarctic ice shelf. That thesis process gave me enormous confidence in writing and presenting technical and scientific work. That year of 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and many died in Tiananmen Square. The geology field camp I worked at that summer had a few extra openings as Chinese scientists were barred from travel. After graduate school I landed at the state Department of Environmental Protection where I wrote countless reports, presentations, letters, emails, standard operating procedures, and memos for the next decade right through 9-11 and to this day.
On 9-10-01 I was interviewed by the Bangor Daily at the site of a gasoline spill along the banks of the Penobscot River just north of Indian Island. The electronic media visited to interview us; it was big news that day. After the next day they never modulated another wave or a spilled a drop of ink about our project, which was just as well. My post 9-11 writing life took an imaginative turn when I enrolled in a creative writing class at Searsport adult education with Steve Allen, enjoyed that and took Steve’s advanced creative writing. That continued as a writing group meeting at members’ homes. The group gave me confidence in writing then reading the work for others and accepting criticism. Two years ago we moved house to Orono and I lost touch with that writing group and my creative writing. Fall 2008 started a new chapter with a web course in creative non-fiction writing with Professor Goldfine.
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