“In the End”

In the end, which means now, our little fish house with its new addition turned out just fine. There was still a lot of work to be done. Interior walls, wiring and plumbing — rid of the outhouse at last. That did not deter us, however, from using all that wonderful new space. Once the door was cut through at Christmas time, there was no stopping the flow of people and things in there.

One job to be done was sanding all the logs. That chore fell to me. The logs were only debarked at the mill, leaving a rough surface. I started sanding away, by myself. The rest of the house got finished all around me. When the furniture began to be moved in, I gave up. What wasn’t done would have to stay that way until I got a “round tuit.” I haven’t got to it yet.

The best thing about log construction, besides its beauty, is you can drive a nail anywhere. We had all of those empty walls and big beams to hang things on. Twenty years of things adds up to a lot.

One of the first things to get nailed to one of the beams in the living room was the old man’s sawfish saw nose. He was gillnetting in Florida in the 70s aboard his 60-foot southern steel shrimp boat when a sawfish got caught in his nets. Five or six hundred pounds of fish with a saw three and a half feet long, studded with 23 sharp teeth on each side. The saw was all tangled up in the nets. He tried to free it, but there was no way to get rid of it except chop off its nose. So he did. The fish swam away. He said since that saw cost him $25,000 in ruined nets, he guessed he’d keep it!

One winter the old man’s next lobster boat was in the boatyard for six weeks and he was bored. He decided he would make some old-fashioned wooden pot buoys out of cedar log ends left over from building our cabins. He gathered up a pile of them, took them in his shop and started carving them out with a drawshave. He painted them various lobster buoy color combinations he remembered from old fishermen he knew. The idea was to sell them at the flea market next summer. He brought them in the house when they were done, hanging them over the windows in the living room. We liked the décor so much they never made it to the flea market.

There’s a birdhouse hanging from a living room beam that I’m quite fond of. It’s a little log cabin, complete with a stone chimney and a front porch. It was a gift the Christmas we ran away from home. We had had it with commercialized Christmas — cartloads of presents, worn out pocketbooks. We took ourselves off to the White Mountains for two nights, to a fancy condo high on a mountain. We no sooner got there when there was a blizzard. Christmas Day there was nothing open except a convenience store in the valley. We figured we’d better stock up and spent $80 in there. Got enough for three days, probably, and we were leaving tomorrow! Christmas dinner was hot dogs cooked on the mini fireplace in the suite. This wasn’t exactly what we had in mind! We called some friends. They came over to keep us company. With them they brought the birdhouse, a gift they had gotten from someone else, seeing as how they hadn’t expected us. In return, we gave them our box of food. Was this, then, the real spirit of Christmas? Well, not quite. Some things were missing. The kids. We will just have to put our foot down on cartloads. This was a holiday for home.

There’s lots of artwork hanging on our walls. At the top of the stairs there’s a big print done by Robert Indiana, world famous artist. Remember the Love stamp? It’s called Indian Nations, done in red and yellow circles and stars. Bob has been living on-island for many years. He loved coming to the clambake. Bought his wine and dogs and stayed `til closing many a night. One day a big timber tide walker washed up on the shore in front of our restaurant. We hauled it out and laid it beside the path next to the garden where it stayed most of the summer. By and by Indiana got his eye on it. He wanted it for his art sculptures. He offered to trade it for a print of our choice. I was ecstatic — what a deal! He dedicated it to us, signed it and it’s now a family heirloom.

One more thing I want to tell you about. Our cook stove. A 50-year-old Garland, black, with six burners, a huge grill and broiler, big oven and splash guard on the back with a warming shelf. This stove came up for sale by the Legion hall when they remodeled. We bought it. I needed a commercial stove in this house to cook for our ever-increasing family and anyone else who walked in the door. This stove was cooked on for many years by a group of women I call the “golden girls.” When I first came there, the Legion had breakfast every Wednesday morning. The old man and I took his grandfather every week for years, right up to the day he died in his 90s. I came to know these elderly ladies, who cooked there forever, for many different community functions and respected them greatly. Having cooked for the public for years myself, I know what that entails. When they finally retired from cooking, they came to our restaurant almost every night. I was delighted to cook for them, to give back what they gave so generously. The golden girls are all gone now. To have their stove here in our kitchen, with all its ambience, pleases me no end.

And that is the end of this story. Our house is well used now. Five generations of family have been coming and going, being fed and tended, since we hauled the fish house through town at noon that day long ago.