Small car, bloody red moon, runaway horse
Wed., May 1 – Temp. 50, wind WNW 6 knots, sun and showers off and on in P.M. Today is the day when the kids on the island, in my youth, would begin hanging or placing May baskets on each others’ doorsteps or porches, and usually rigging up an extra big one for their school teacher. As I gazed out the window early this morning, I spied our lady school teacher jogging by the house in the midst of a brisk rain shower. Some enjoy singing in the rain (and there is a song for that). But Rebecca goes out running in the rain – I wonder if anyone has made up a song for that. Maybe they will.
Monday, May 6 – Wind SW at 10 knots, temp. 55 at noon. The whistle buoy out south of Bakers Island is moaning this morning, from the rough seas of the easterly winds yesterday. The ferry boat SEA QUEEN is hauled out for her spring painting and repair work. We are using the boat DOUBLE B in the meantime and today we are on the interim schedule. Two boat trips from NE Harbor to the islands in the afternoon, 2:30 and 4:30 p.m. Amy Palmer, in our island store, has some new videotapes of “Islesford” on hand and will sell and also mail them to anyone who would like one. The men of the Chesterfield Associates, Inc., who have the contract to repair our town dock, are hard at work. Ted Jr. uncovered our dug well yesterday from its winter wrappings. It had 27 inches of water, about one inch more than last year at this time. Fog outside tonight. I recently ordered a new Cadillac car, a very small one. I have always liked Cadillac. I hope I am not disappointed.
May 10 – Temp. 60 at noon, wind SW 6 knots. Sunny and hazy. The school children went to Frenchboro, outer Long Island. They had a nice time. The teachers and a few parents went with them. They went on the Maine Sea Coast Mission boat, SUNBEAM, yesterday and returned today. Harvey Bunker and crew are building a new house on Sand Beach Road for Peter Rudolph. And Sam Shaw’s “Decagon” round house is taking shape in the deep woods SE of our school house.
Monday, May 13 – Temp. 42, wind E 12 knots at noon, bar. 30:10. A fine morning to start. I took a long walk along the north shore near noontime and saw Ted Jr. in his lobster boat, PANDORA, scooting in the Eastern Way bound for home. Quite a sea making up outside. It reminded me of a similar time back in circa 1934, when I was a young chap out fishing with Dad. We had started early but gave up and came back in, and as we passed by an opening in the woods on the shore we saw Mother standing there, looking out, and I guess hoping she might see GOOD NEWS passing by. Mother’s Day was yesterday and it helped me to think of this. Rain started up in earnest by 3 p.m. and blew hard all night. Norman Sanborn Jr. of Great Cranberry clocked gusts as high as 70 MPH on his wind instrument. Quite a bit of boat damage at SW Harbor, we later heard.
Wed., May 22 – Wind WSW 8 knots, temp. 60. The lob. men are doing a mite better than they did last year at this time. The boat price for lobsters right now is $4.25 per lb. and bait has been in good supply. Johnny Dwelley has arrived and will have his water taxi, DELIGHT, ready soon.
May 27 – Memorial Day. A fine morning and the lawns and cemeteries look nice. It was a full moon last night. The Full Flower Moon. Wind is SE at noon, temp. 57. We went off island to visit some family graves over yonder on Mount Desert Island, and to a family reunion at the new cottage at Dwelley Point, Franklin, Maine, built recently for my niece, Jean Coleman Forest, and her husband, Richard. It was also Ted Jr.’s birthday and one of his kinfolk gave him a telescoping fork. With this unique utensil at its full stretch, you can enjoy enough scope to grab most anything you want on an average table. My new little Cadillac arrived a few days ago. A fine 11-inch model of a 1932 V-16. A replica of a much larger one I admired as a boy, then owned by Mr. Guy Arault, an island summer resident and artist.
June 6, Thursday – Temp. 56 and wind about 15 knots from the NE. A NE wind: when I was a boy and later a young man on the island, the old timers and younger ones too always pronounced this heading or direction as “no’theast” or called it a “No’theaster.” The old Cape Cod stories by Joseph C. Lincoln did also, as did Ruth Moore’s Maine novels. Dad this way of saying it, as did uncle Archie Spurling, Arthur Fernald, Edson Stanley and others back then. I asked Lee Ham, our oldest fisherman in town, recently how he said it. And he replied, “Why, ‘No’theaster,’ of course!” Nowadays you hear if often said as “nor’east,” which to me doesn’t fit the tongue just right…although pronouncing another intercardinal direction as “nor’west” does. But each to his own (I suppose it could be ‘either’ or ‘eye-ther’). Gary Gould is drilling the well for the little CIRT house in the town gravel pit site and is now down to 350 feet. He plans to stop at 425 feet if there is no satisfactory flow before that.
June 10, Monday – Wind WNW 18 knots at noon, temp. 66, bar. reads 30:06. Cara and I went to a potluck supper at the Neighborhood House this evening, followed by some skits and a play put on by the school children as part of our granddaughter Christina Spurling’s graduation. There were many friends, relatives and well-wishers present. A video of island scenes and happenings was also shown. Christy graduated all alone in her class. I saw fit to mention that 66 years ago, back in 1936, I had graduated all alone in my class too, and 33 years later, my daughter, Serena Lee Spurling, graduated alone from hers in 1969. Going ahead yet another 33 years we come to Christy’s graduation in 2002. Three generations from the same Spurling family, each graduating alone and each from the same little school house – 33 years apart.
We received the school’s newspaper yesterday (The Cranberry Press) and their school picnic will be held tomorrow.
Saturday, June 15 – Wind NE at 15 knots, temp. 48, raining at noon. Spring lobstering is still holding fairly good if the traps are set over for a while. This used to be a good time of year to set a few haddock trawls as a fill-in until the lobstering really picked up in the early fall. While your trawls were setting you could handline and pick up a fair amount of cod and haddock. I hope those days will sometime return!
Steve and Amy Philbrook have been moving into the house they bought a while ago, that originally was built and owned by Alonzo J. Bryant, who built many of our buildings and large summer homes, many of the latter in the early 1900s. The Philbrooks’ new home sits on the highest spot of land on Little Cranberry, 62 feet above sea level according to a topographic map of our area. Much work and many repairs have been made on this fine old structure by Steve and others. Steve is a lobster fisherman now and Amy once taught I the school and also played the pipe organ in our Congr. church. The church, also, was built by Alonzo.
Bentley Howard and Letitia Baldwin are the proud parents of twin girls, born June 12 in Bangor. Their names are Blue Howard and Skye Howard. Letitia and Bentley and the baby girls live on Garden Point, Gouldsboro, Maine. Bentley was skipper for Beal and Bunker Boating for several years and Letitia is editor of the Style section of the Bangor Daily News. Her mother, Mary Baldwin, owns a large summer home at Islesford.
Friday, June 21 – Temp. 68, wind SSW 15 knots, a sunny summer day! And summer did arrive at 9:24 a.m. Ample mosquitoes about too, whenever you step outside. Cara has fixed up her rock garden with new soil and lots of mulch to hold in the moisture. She enjoys working the garden and mosquitoes enjoy her. When we have a brisk breeze Cara likes it better, for this holds them off from landing and drawing blood.
June 23. A light SSW wind and temp. 62 at noon. At 3 p.m. a fine concert was given in our Congr. church. The pipe organ was played by Anoinette Herzel, Annette Luther and Roland Herzel with a hymn sing-along. Among those attending was Mrs. Charles Fisk, whose husband had restored and installed the organ, which was given to the church by Mrs. Herzel several years ago.
A Sunday brunch was served at the Islesford Dock Restaurant this morning. It is open now, as is Marion Baker’s pottery shop and Sue Hill’s gift shop. The Islesford Museum is in operation now also. Courtney Chaplin has completed some work on the wharf, improving the walkway and adding a few more spiling beneath it. Dan and Cynthia Leif, the dock’s owners, have been good to us islanders and to the ferry boats coming to and from with freight and passengers, while our town dock was being repaired and there were times when we needed another dock to use. Davies Allan and his crew at the town dock, likewise, were very thoughtful of us and ofttimes would plan their day’s work to let freight and folks come and go during the regular mail and ferry schedules.
Tuesday, June 25. Wind SW at 6 knots and cloudy at noon, temp. 65. Full Strawberry Moon last night. A nice morning. Danny and Katie Fernald have some hens and a large red rooster that crows to greet the new day. When I was a child my next door neighbor, Frank Bunker, used to have one too. And they give a pleasant morning call. Cousin Irving Spurling also had a large white rooster named “Amos” (for Amos of Amos ‘n Andy) a very popular radio program in those days. Irving also had a horse and his name was Frank. I believe he was named for Frank Bunker, his farmer neighbor; Irving and Frank Bunker were friends most of the time but would occasionally quarrel and not be on speaking terms for a spell. Frank, the horse, was a large, gentle black farm horse and once he got loose from his pasture and galloped off. Coming along the road directly in his path was Annette Bryant, a child’s nurse at the time, who lived here then. She was pushing one of the little Sawtelle girls along in a stroller. (This girl is a grown woman now, for that was back in the mid-1930s.) Frank was at a full gallop and he did make a pretty sight with flowing mane and rippling muscles – what wasn’t so pretty was Irving running hard after him, swearing and throwing rocks to make him alter his course because he was on a heading tight for those coming down the road. Annette snatched the little girl out of the stroller and tried to push her up a nearby tree, as Frank whistled and snorted past, enjoying his newfound freedom. Frank was not a hostile horse and wouldn’t intentionally hurt anybody, but it was a scary few minutes and I have always remembered it. There were five small farms on the island at this time and several cows and lots of chickens. But Frank was the “onliest” horse. It is Cara’s and my wedding anniv. today and our young granddaughter, Hanni, who is visiting us with her mother, lit off some sparklers tonight in celebration.
June 26. Temp. 62. A rainy morn. Wind SSW light. Day sunny and hazy. An electrical storm took our power away for about an hour, from 9 to 10 p.m. the moon rose a while later, a bloody red, just past the full.
June 28, Friday. Wind SW 15 knots, temp. 72. The repair work on our Islesford Town Dock is coming along fine. The float is rigged, ready and in use now. And the new stairway is being built. Davies Allan, owner and president of Chesterfield Associates, Inc., designers and engineers, of Westport Island, Maine, is doing a fine job here. His 74-foot, 100-ton barge, LC-8) is well equipped and also brought what supplies and equipment they need and can go get whatever else they need when necessary. His capable crew of men are the project manager, David Patterson, and Zachary Hurd, Benjamin Mulligan and Richard Simpson. Richard and Helen Dudman have generously allowed them to use their field, which is handy to the dock, to lay out and let stand a lot of their material and equipment. Davies is boarding with Jim and Sally Parrish and the others are in Susie Krasnow’s town house. The company has been in business since 1968 and will travel to any job site along our east coast, from Eastport, Maine, to the Delmarva Peninsula. Westport Island is west of Boothbay, Maine and is an island about 10 miles long with a bridge on its northern end, which exits onto the mainland near Wiscasset. Davies is used to islands, for his business is located on one, and he himself owns Bareneck Island, a small 15-acre island near there.
June 30, Sunday. Temp. 66 at noontime and wind south at 10 knots. Day is sunny and mild. The last day of the month and now we are really easing into summer. More people arriving, both touristers form the day and folks who have summer homes here and have come to stay a while. Church services this morning, and three golf wagons and a few cars are parked outside the church. Many of the congregation usually walk, as no point is too far from another here. Let us hope for a good summer and a bit more rain would help. Joy, our postmaster, is again renting kayaks, and Dan and Katy’s art gallery is open and active. And the 4th of July is fast approaching. Our country was born 226 years ago on that date. Happy birthday, everyone!
– Ted Spurling, Sr.
July 1, 2002