Blue Highways: Holliston, Massachusetts

Unfolding the Map

We're in Holliston!  Why don't we wander over to the store and get a couple of Moxie's and some food so that we can wander with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) in the local graveyard.  Speaking of colas, I apparently have a few things to write about them.  Their history is pretty interesting.  To see where we are ingesting all that carbonation and sugar, pull your pop-top and check out the map.

Book Quote

"At Holliston, I stopped and took a sandwich and a bottle of Moxie (once advertised as 'the only harmless nerve food known that can recover loss of manhood, imbecility and helplessness') into the old town burial ground and ate lunch while I walked and read the slanting slate tombstones.  There were carved urns, hourglasses, and weeping willows; among the mors vincit omnia sentiments were some well-cut death's-heads and angels of redemption.  Often it's hard to tell the difference because the death's heads evolved into angels, the angels into cherubs, the cherubs into portraits of the deceased."

Blue Highways: Part 9, Chapter 4

Downtown Holliston, Massachusetts. Photo at the blog of Claudette Miller, buyer and broker, at Active Rain.com. Click on photo to go to host page.

Holliston, Massachusetts

I've never had a Moxie, though I would like to.  One of the most interesting stories of America, I think, is how all around the same time a variety of beverages were born that employed various natural extracts in their recipes to promote health, vitality and vigor.

Back in the day, soft drinks were considered elixirs and curatives.  Carbonated water was considered good for health, and soft drink companies added ingredients to bolster the health effects.  Coca-Cola, for instance, was named after the coca alkaloid extract used in its recipe.  After cocaine was declared illegal in the US, the alkaloid was removed but the use of coca leaf continued to be part of Coca-Cola's recipe.  Pepsi Cola mixed carbonated water with a digestive enzyme, pepsin, and kola nuts.  Dr. Pepper was sold as a brain tonic, and energizer.

To see this concentration on health, take for example some early Coca-Cola slogans:  "Coca-Cola Revives and Sustains." (1905)  "The Great National Temperance Beverage." (1906)  "The Hit That Saves the Day!" (1920) "Pure as Sunlight!" (1927). 

Or how about Pepsi's implications of health and vigor in its slogans?  "Delicious and Healthful." (1905) "More Bounce to the Ounce." (1950). 

7-Up used a mood stabilizer, lithium, in its recipe until it was prohibited by law in 1948.  It's slogan was "You Like It, It Likes You" and a doctor's testimonial claimed that 7-Up gave its drinkers "an abundance of energy, enthusiasm, a clear complexion, lustrous hair, and shining eyes."

Here's some of Dr. Pepper's slogans: "Drink a Bite to Eat at 10, 2, and 4 o'clock." (1920s-40s)  "When You Drink a Dr. Pepper You Drink a Bite to Eat." (1939)

Moxie, which LHM references above, claimed that it could help relieve the effects of "paralysis, softening of the brain, nervousness, and insomnia."  It claimed its main ingredient came from a rare South American plant with healing properties.  It currently contains ingredients of gentian root, which has been used as an herbal remedy for digestive disorders in South America.  The early popularity of the cola contributed to the English language.  One has "moxie" if one is energetic and youthful, as in "Boy, I like her moxie!" or "He's got a lot of moxie!"  It has the distinction of being the first mass-marketed American soft drink.

Of course, today this sounds like the patent medicine scams that were going on at roughly the same time that colas were coming into prominence as health aids.  Patent medicines promised to cure and bring about health, but usually didn't work and sometimes had deleterious health effects.  Even those that delivered on their promises did so with dangerous ingredients.  Syrups sold by salesmen across rural and urban areas of America, and in Sears catalogs as well, promised to cure whooping cough, revitalize bodily systems, relieve constipation and restore health to bowels, kidneys and liver.  Common ingredients used in such medicines and promoted as healthy were alcohol, radium, radon, mercury, and arsenic.  Medicines with opium and morphine were promoted as a way to soothe crying babies.  Herbs considered "abortifacients" were often promoted as being healthy to pregnant women.  Jolts of electricity were used to restore health and vigor, and even cure crippled people.  It is telling that many of the modern pharmaceutical companies began as manufacturers, promoters and sellers of patent medicines, and that the Food and Drug Administration, one of those government agencies so maligned by those on the right side of the political spectrum, was created in order to regulate such companies from making false claims and harming public health.

Of course, now we know that Coke, Pepsi, and other soft drinks can be bad for health because of their high sugar content.  Overconsumption of sugar can, of course, lead to obesity and a risk of diabetes.  New York City has recently gone so far as to impose penalties on restaurants that serve soft drinks in containers over 16 ounces.  Yet there is often still a marketing around the supposed health benefits of sodas.  When I visited El Salvador, I saw in small type on a Coke bottle, written in Spanish, an implication that Coke was a reliable alternative to water in quenching thirst.  Of course, it is not.  Nothing is an alternative to water.

But there is a fascinating history behind colas, if you get into it.  And its curious that a new round of soft drinks are starting to revive claims of health and energy.  The whole energy drink craze, which advertises boosts in mental and physical energy, has created a whole new young population of adherents and, some might say, addicts.  These drinks contain either higher dosages of caffeine, and/or other natural stimulants such as guarana, ginseng, gingko biloba, inositol, taurine, and carnitine.

All of this makes LHM's juxtaposition of his lunchtime sojourn in a graveyard, sipping his Moxie, sort of funny to me.  When I lived in Milwaukee, I was part of a larger social justice community.  Some of the people I hung out with were very anti-Coca Cola, part of an anti-corporate attitude in general.  I sat in a movie once and cringed as one of my friends, upon seeing a Coke ad just before the movie started, yelled "Coke f***s the third world!"  There are many who would see the graveyard as an apt metaphor for what the giant soft drink companies and the giant pharmaceutical companies have done in the course of gathering wealth and growing to their current multi-billion dollar sizes.  Yet I'm reminded by LHM that mors vincit omnia, death conquers all.  Most likely even Coke, Pepsi, and all the others.  After all, Moxie was the biggest cola company in the world, and now you can only find it in New England and Pennsylvania.  The moxie left Moxie, the pep will someday desert Pepsi, and Coke will get coked up and flame out.

Until then, Coke will teach the world to sing, Pepsi will focus on Generation Next, and me and my RC will continue with LHM to the end of his Blue Highways journey, occasionally stopping for a pause that refreshes.

Musical Interlude

A slew of Cola songs!  First, I grew up with this Coke commercial, and I still think of it.

Pepsi hit it big when it landed Michael Jackson to shill its sodas.

Of course, when I got into high school and college, this is how I preferred my Cokes - maybe not with rum necessarily, but something hard.  Here's the Andrews Sisters singing Rum and Coca-Cola.

If you want to know more about Holliston

Holliston Reporter (newspaper)
Town of Holliston
Wicked Local: Holliston (news aggregator)
Wikipedia: Holliston

Next up: Taunton, Massachusetts

Blue Highways: Wellesley, Massachusetts

Unfolding the Map

As we leave the madness of Boston, we find walls in Wellesley.  Why do we need fences, walls and barriers?  It is the subject for a nice reflection on my part, as William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) heads southwest again through Massachusetts.  Linger here and reflect with me, or hang out with the accomplished women of Wellesley College.  Here is Wellesley on the map.

Book Quote

"...I found Massachusetts 16, a quiet road out of Wellesley, that ran down through stands of maple, birch, and pine, down along brooks, across fens, down miles of stone walls covered with lichens.

"Many New England stone fences built between 1700 and 1875 were laid by gangs of workers who piled stone at the rate of so much a rod.  Edwin Way Teale says that in the latter years of the past century, before economic and social developments began obliterating some of the walls, there were a hundred thousand miles of stone fences in New England.  Even today, for many of them, the only change has been the size of the lichens, those delicate rock eating algae that can live nine hundred years."

Blue Highways: Part 9, Chapter 4

Downtown Wellesley, with the Boston Marathon passing through. Photo by "redjar" and hosted at Nabewise. Click on photo to go to host page.

Wellesley, Massachusetts

One of my favorite cartoon strips in the 80s and 90s was The Far Side by Gary Larson, and one of my favorite cartoons in that strip showed a man pointing out the secrets of nature to his son.  "And now, Randy," the father says, "by use of song, the male sparrow will stake out his territory...an instinct common in the lower animals."  The pair are standing in their back yard, looking a sparrow in a tree in a neighboring yard separated by fences.

What is in a fence or a wall?  A lot, I think.  I have been pondering this question recently as I have watched our (as in society) collective efforts to individually and in groups define our territory and establish and maintain boundaries.  While I understand this need and I know that reasonable boundaries are not only good but healthy, I find myself increasingly troubled.

I grew up in a world of fences.  My parents' property was fenced off from the neighbors and, while my father was alive, was well maintained.  There was a sense that this was OUR property, as opposed to our neighbors.   Yet there weren't many prohibitions.  We often walked through our neighbor's property and down their road as a shortcut to my grandmother's house. People walked through ours too on the way to someplace or another.

Yet, despite fences, my father was notoriously dismissive of others boundaries and fences.  He was a poacher, and would often go under or around a fence that was meant to keep him from hunting deer on other's land.  He was never caught, but he had a close scrape or two.  However, that was his modus operandi.  His personal fences were meant to keep people out but he was very good at crossing knocking down others' fences and disregarding their boundaries.  That's part of the reason why, at age 48, I am still in therapy.

As I get older, this conundrum of fences, barriers, walls, boundaries and borders becomes more fascinating and more troubling to me, especially the clash between our desire to mark off what's "ours" and provide us with privacy and protection and the insistence upon personal freedom regardless of whether it affects others or not.  We extol the virtues of the United States as if it still is a land where anything is possible, where free and open space is a resource to be exploited, and where anyone can do whatever they want.  Yet, we wall, fence, make boundaries and borders, and put up signs warning people off with the promise of deadly force if they don't comply.  I wonder if, in a land where once promise and reality were almost equal and where now promise and reality have a wide gulf between them, the freedom that we extol needs to be tempered or reimagined.

A few examples.  I grew up in the era of the Berlin Wall, a large barrier meant to not only keep the West out of Soviet-controlled East Germany, but even more so to keep the East Germans in.  Even as we exert our freedom to own property by fencing it off, East Germany used walls and fences to curtail freedom and limit their peoples' access to anything non-Communist.

Just down the street our neighbors fenced off their property in front with a large steel wall, about six feet high, that obscures a view of their house and front yard.  Certainly it's their freedom to do so, but what does such a fence say?  To me, it says "keep out."  It says "we don't want to know you."  To others it might say "we have something here that we want to protect." Or, "hey potential thieves, something valuable is here."  I know the couple, who are very nice and very introverted.  In reality, they probably just want their privacy.  But the fence is a message, and that message can be interpreted in many difference ways.

In the past couple of days, this article was forwarded to me which frankly made me angry.  The author argues that museums should not try to cater to young people's tastes because it is a waste of time.  Older people with, what I assume at least, an appreciation for the "right" kind of art are more important.  She is literally arguing for a kind of fence to be built that keeps young people away from the "good stuff," while not even deigning to think that perhaps young people are innovating and creating art of their own.  I know older people who are patrons of classical music that find nothing worthwhile in newer musical forms.  I know serious aficionados of certain types of jazz that are unwilling to give more than a passing nod to other forms, and God help you if you don't know what you are talking about with them.  I know people who collect art and keep it in their homes, unavailable to the outside world unless they decide to lend it somewhere.  Generationally, we all think that the ones behind us don't know anything, yet the vibrancy and the innovation of each generation is constantly recorded in history: a Warhol, pooh-poohed by the "serious" art lovers in the sixties are now almost priceless today among modern art aficionados; early recordings by The Beatles, considered "noise" by many music lovers of the time, are considered most valuable treasures today even as new forms of music are derided now though one day, they too may be considered classics.  It's all fences and walls, put up by one generation against the "garbage" of those behind them, yet many times that garbage becomes pearls and jewels over time.

Different types of fences, two physical and one virtual.  Two you can see before your eyes, and one you can feel in words and meaning.  Yet, in my mind, they equally send a message.  This is mine, keep out, you're not wanted unless I invite you in, whatever is in here stays in here.

The not-very-well-told and therefore unknown history of the western part of the United States has been one of fences, of free ranges divided and sectioned and protected by barbed wire.  In west Texas, a war over fencing developed in the 1880s as "gypsy ranchers," who owned lots of cattle but no land, found their grazing ranges and watering holes cut off by barbed wire.  Barbed wire went up with little thought to property rights and whole towns found themselves surrounded by barbed wire.  A pseudo-war erupted, with vigilantes cutting barbed wire right and left.  The "war" ended with the Texas legislature declaring fence cutting a felony, but it also meant the end of the gypsy ranchers and the idea of the free range so celebrated in American history.  And, it further constricted the freedom of movement of Native Americans, who considered it "devil's rope."

Fences that were prevalent in the east, in areas like Wellesley, were low stone walls which demarcated property lines and whose use was imported from England and Ireland.  I'll admit, there is something pleasing about the stone walls which make a statement of ownership and yet invite communication across them.  Yet even these walls have had their critics.  Robert Frost, in his famous poem Mending Wall, writes "Something there is that doesn't love a wall..."  He also addresses the conundrum that puzzles me when he writes:

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.

In essence, fences and walls may keep things out, but they also keep things in.  At what cost do we fence and wall?  Do "Good fences make good neighbors," as Frost quotes his neighbor in the poem, or do they deny us connection?  Are they neutral or do they rebuke or provoke?  I have no answers, just questions, even though I am just as prone, in times of stress or in response to perceived slights or danger, to put up boundaries, fences and walls.  I just question whether it is always the right thing to do.

Since my father died, much of the fences at our property are in disrepair.  It's a good reminder that fences only last as long as they are maintained.  Once someone stops caring for them or about them, they disintegrate.  As history shows, over and over again, everything, including fences, are temporary.

Musical Interlude

I found two songs for this post's interlude, one about fencing oneself in, and one asking for freedom from being fenced in.

This was the first song I thought of - Roy Rogers with Dale Evans and the Sons of the Pioneers singing Don't Fence Me In.

Then I went looking, and found this modern pop song by Paramore called Fences, about trying to keep the public out by fencing oneself in.

If you want to know more about Wellesley

The Swellesley Report (blog)
Town of Wellesley
Wellesley College
Wellesley Patch (news)
Wicked Local Wellesley (news)
Wikipedia: Wellesley

Next up:  Holliston, Massachusetts

Blue Highways: Boston, Massachusetts

Unfolding the Map

I didn't feel particularly inspired by today's quote, and it probably shows in the post.  I apologize, all of you visiting Littourati.  But, don't take that to mean that the quote, and maybe the post, might not bring something to mind for you.  If something comes, feel free to share in a comment.  Oh, and if you want to see exactly how far we've come in this Blue Highways journey, check out the map.

Book Quote

"Tractor-trailer rigs (using two-thirds more fuel per cargo-ton than a locomotive) blasted me all the way to Boston."

Blue Highways: Part 9, Chapter 4

Downtown Boston. Photo by "Nelson48" and hosted at Wikimedia Commons. Click on photo to go to host site.

Boston, Massachusetts

What kid doesn't like trucks?  I don't mean the little pickup trucks, but the huge semi-tractor trailer trucks that barrel down roads and freeways.  Well, I was one kid that tended more toward the trains than the trucks.

I think it had to do with growing up in a little logging town where the only links to the outside world were over miles of twisting, curving mountain roads.  As I mentioned in a previous post, I suffered motion-sickness a lot going over these roads, and trucks were kind of an enemy.  A car could travel faster over these roads.  Trucks would slow precipitously going uphill, thus prolonging my agony when we'd get behind them.  I could only hope that they would be kind enough to use one of the "turnouts" along the side of the road to let us pass.  Some did, some didn't.  Either way, logging trucks, lumber trucks and other types of cargo trucks sometimes literally made me sick.

As I got older, I became more aware that trucks were replacing trains as the primary mover of freight.  I had noticed that our freight train, which used to go out once per night moving lumber over to the Northwestern Pacific Railroad, started making less frequent runs.  Once a night became 4 times a week, became 2-3 times per week, and then became one time per week, until it ceased operation completely.  We owned property on the railroad where we had a cabin, and where in the summer we slept outside not 50 feet from the railroad tracks.  I have some vivid memories of waking up at night to the sound of the freight train, it's light appearing around the bend and seemingly illuminating the entire valley, then after the cacophonous sound of the engine the clacking and whistling of the empty freight cars, and then lonely clack of the caboose and the voices of the watchmen as the little red caboose light disappeared slowly from sight and I was able to fall asleep to the sound of the receding train.

In high school, I worked in the lumber mill, and loaded both trucks and train cars though my primary job was to load trucks.  I worked on a team consisting of a tallyman, a forklift operator and me (the dog).  I would climb on the trucks, guide the lumber bundles into position, and then use a machine to band them together before binding them with straps to the truck itself.  It was good work in the coastal air, but I missed the trains.

I understand why trucks are used - moving freight by truck is cheaper, right now, than by train.  But they also cause a lot of wear and tear on the roads and can be threats in themselves.  I have been stranded twice indirectly because of trucks after I ran over a piece of shredded tire on the road which caused damage to my car.  I hear that as fuel prices rise, it may become more cost effective to ship more and more things by train again.  I hope so.

I am not going to write much this post about Boston.  LHM doesn't really stop there because, in Blue Highways, he does his best to avoid the cities.  And to tell you the truth, it is so long since I have been to Boston that I don't remember much about it.  The trips were always short, a weekend at the most, usually a day trip, so I really didn't get much of a chance to get a true feeling for the city.  I remember being in the area of Faneuil Hall and the market near there, I remember driving up from Connecticut after a wedding to get lobster at one of the lobster restaurants, and I remember the accents.

In fact, it's the accents that to me are the most intriguing thing about Boston.  It's rare in the United States to hear accents that are just so front and center as the accents in Boston.  Even Brooklyn accents, which can be pretty heavy, don't stand out so much to me as Boston accents do.  It's like the accent has a mind of its own and flattens vowels, eliminates the letter "r" in some words and stubbornly inserts it in others, despite the speakers intentions.  I have learned that accents that seem to hate the "r" so much are called "non-rhotic."  Wikipedia quotes Jon Stewart's America, incorrectly I might add, which states that John Adams drafted the Massachusetts Constitution but delegates refused to ratify the letter "R."

I love it.  I love accents, and I'm glad they occur because they give character to a region and by extension, our whole country.  I'm never happier than when I'm talking to someone with an accent.  I was recently watching a documentary that had an acclaimed scientist who wrote a book, and it was hard for me to concentrate because her Boston accent was just so pronounced that it hooked me.  Here is a National Public Radio piece on the Boston accent:

I also feel bad about spending time writing on Boston because, well, I've fessed up to it before, I don't know much about America's Revolution, and Boston played a big part in that struggle.  The Boston Tea Party, the Boston Massacre and Paul Revere, of course, were covered a little in my history classes in school.  But beyond these things, I didn't know much about Boston's history in the war.  For example, the Siege of Boston, a successful siege by George Washington that eventually drove the British out of the city after eleven months in the early part of the war, was something that I either never paid much attention to or I just didn't hear about it.

On one of my trips, however, I paid homage at what many Bostonians consider, with pride, their greatest shrine.  Yes, that would be Fenway Park, the home of the Boston Red Sox and one of the oldest stadiums in baseball.  I can say that it was a true honor to be there and I hope that one day, this baseball fan can return.

Musical Interlude

Here's a fun little song, by They Might Be Giants, that plays on the Boston accent and figures of Bostonian speech (i.e. "wicked," "scorcher," "critta," "pissah").  Enjoy Wicked Little Critta.

If you want to know more about Boston

There's a lot.  Here's a few basics:

Boston Daily
Boston Food Bloggers
Boston Globe (newspaper)
Boston Herald (newspaper)
Boston Magazine
Boston Phoenix (alternative newspaper)
City of Boston
Grub Street Boston (food blog)
Travel Blogs About Boston
Wikipedia: Boston

Next up:  Wellesley, Massachusetts

Blue Highways: Somewhere on the Atlantic Ocean

Unfolding the Map

William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) leaves Ghost Dancing on the shore and goes out on a fishing trawler from Cape Porpoise, Maine for a day.  The interest in fishing, or at least the more dangerous aspects of it, has skyrocketed since the success of the reality TV show The Deadliest Catch.  Since one side of my family is a fishing family, it brings back a lot of memories and reminiscences for me.  Warning, my spot on the map is probably not accurate, but it will do.  To see the area where I think the Allison E. may have been trolling around, sail on over to the map.

Book Quote

"Four o'clock:  On the open sea.  Making ten knots, fast enough to raise a wake as high as the transom.  The forty-foot Allison E. rides up the swells and down the other side.  Up, down, up, down...

"Four-fifty:  Lights of Cape Porpoise gone from the horizon.  Eastern sky cold and gray.  Tom says, 'We can fish in a good year only about two hundred days.  Whatever income from dragging we'll earn, we've got to earn then.  We can't ever make up for a day lost...

"Five-thirty:  Rain stops.  Ten miles offshore and towing at three knots over an area in the Gulf of Maine known as Perkins Ground of Bigelow Bight.  Two hundred forty feet below on the mud, sand, and gravel, the net rouses bottomfish as they bump up into the 'sweep' and on back into the rear bag called the 'cod end.'

Eight o'clock:  Sun out....The weight of the net pulls the boat backwards until we are above it.  An aura of anticipation.  A crew gets paid only for its share of the catch.  There are no salaries."

Blue Highways:  Part 9, Chapter 3

Stern of a Cape Porpoise, Maine fishing trawler. Photo by Michael O'Brien and found on his Flickriver page. Click on photo to go to host page.Somewhere on the Atlantic Ocean

In my previous post, I made reference to going out on the ocean in a boat.  I would love to say that, given the fishing and oceangoing history of my family on my mother's side, I would take to the water.  Unfortunately, that has not been the case.

I have referred before to my uncles and perhaps to my grandfather.  They have all been fishermen.  My grandfather was originally a fisherman, and only left the sea for a while during the Great Depression when he became a logger and, when the logging wasn't good, worked for the Works Progress Administration.  His sons, Elwin and Bob, both became fishermen like their father.  My uncle Elwin fished halibut and other bottom fish on his boat Norcoaster much like is described by LHM on his time out on the Allison E. in Maine.  My uncle Bob, still fishing today in his 80s on his boat Kristy, concentrated on salmon and crab.  I remember when they would go out fishing, and the whole family waited for news - did Betty hear from Elwin or has anyone heard from Bob?  My aunt Betty communicated with uncle Elwin via a shortwave radio, as I believe my aunt Cecilia did with uncle Bob.

The lack of any major incidents on the high seas always masked the fact, to me at least, that fishing was tough, tough business.  I suppose I always thought of my uncles piloting their boats through pristine waters at all times.  Sure, other fishermens' boats sometimes sank, but not my uncles' boats.  Very occasionally, a fisherman would die.  But my uncles always came back from their trips.  I remember them often having good trips, and coming back with full holds.  Unlike the Allison E., whose captain tells LHM that the boat is too small to make overnight trips, my uncles would spend a week or more on the water.  They even took part at times in experiments conducted by the government, which paid fishermen to try new fishing techniques such as long-lining for tuna.  On those trips, they would fish their way across the Pacific to Hawaii and back.

As overfishing led to regulations in California, my uncles began to fish farther and farther from home, first off Oregon and Washington.  Uncle Elwin bought a home on the San Juan de Fuca Strait, and fished from there up to Alaska.  When the season went to a week, then down to three days, Uncle Elwin and his crew, which often included his son Bob and even his daughter Gina, cruised up to Alaska and then fished in deep and rough waters around the clock.  I have seen some of their home movies, showing enormous fish on the deck, and crew cutting and carrying them to the hold.

My uncle took my father fishing once or twice up to Alaska, in an attempt to dry him out and keep him away from the booze.  I think it worked as long as my father was on the boat.  When the trip was over, my father just went back to drinking again.  I thought about doing one of those trips myself, signing on as a crewmember with my uncle and earning some good money fishing.  I heard the stories about the poker games on board at night, after dinner and, if a crewmember was off duty, even some alcohol.  There were also stories about "exotic" fishing towns, rough bars, and lusty women.  I just had one small and minor problem.

I have always been prone to motion sickness.

I grew up in a small coastal town where the only way in and out was on winding, twisting roads.  As a child, these roads were torture to me.  We'd carry a coffee can lined with a plastic bag in the car so that I could puke in it as needed.  It took me until I was at least nine or ten years old before I could get past those roads with a reasonable chance of not vomiting.

While I outgrew my car sickness, I suppose I should have been surprised when I discovered, on a cruise vacation to Alaska that my family made on a Soviet cruise ship, that if I was inside and the ship rocked a little, I would get nauseated.  And if the ship rocked a lot, I would be full-flown seasick.

I thought the answer was being outside, on a boat's deck, in the fresh air.  A ferry trip across the San Juan de Fuca Strait from Victoria, British Columbia to Port Angeles, Washington led me into that little fallacy.  It was very windy and wavy, but I had a great time on the prow of the boat as it went up and down, up and down, like LHM describes.  The only time I had trouble was when I went inside, but as long as I was on the deck I had no symptoms at all.

But then, a whale watching expedition out of my hometown that I took with my wife dashed that belief.  On the deck of the little boat, I sat in the back, only occasionally glancing at the flukes and the spouts of the whales as the boat bobbed in the water matching the whales' speed.  I probably should have allowed myself to heave over the side, but instead, I held back the nausea and quietly rejoiced when we got back into port.

I'm afraid that I would not have made a good crewmember for my uncle unless I could have outgrown my seasickness the way that I outgrew my car sickness.  And until then, any fishing trips would have been torture.  I still think twice about taking a boat on the open water, just because I don't like feeling nauseated.  Given all the dangers of fishing, the inconvenience of seasickness seems like a small one, but my uncles always seemed larger than life to me - men who tamed the sea.  It's enough, and amazing to me that they tamed their inner ears and their stomachs while working an immensely dangerous occupation.

Musical Interlude

One of my favorite songs, is about Maine and fishing.  The song is called The Reach, by Dan Fogelberg, who lived in Maine and died of cancer only a few years ago.  At the end of the video, you can see him on the sailboat he owned in Maine, the Minstrel.

This next song is a whimsical one by Lyle Lovett called If I Had a Boat.  I don't know why I include it, except that I like how it mixes two things that are almost mutually exclusive - riding ponies on boats.

If you want to know more about the Maine fishing industry

Fishwatch - Maine Haddock
Historical Maine Commercial Marine Fisheries Landing Data
Maine Commercial Marine Fisheries
Mapping Maine's Commercial Fisheries
Saltwater Fishing in Maine
State of Marine Fisheries in Main 2008

Next up:  Boston, Massachussetts

Blue Highways: Cape Porpoise, Maine

Unfolding the Map

This is the farthest east on land that we will travel - we still have to get on the water a little - but after this Ghost Dancing will be pointed south and east and we'll begin the last phase of the Blue Highways journey.  But for now, we'll sit on the bluff over small cove with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) and reflect on the ocean and how it is a balm for the soul.  To reach the end of our eastern journey, point your finger toward the water on the map.

Book Quote

"...I bought two pounds of steamed quahogs (also called 'littlenecks' and 'cherrystones' when small), walked to Bradbury Brothers grocery for a stick of butter and two bottles of Molson Ale.  I packed up my dented aluminum pot and Swedish stove and headed down through the sumac and wild beach roses to a rocky coign of vantage just above a tidal cove Vikings likely saw.  While the tide went out, I melted the butter and warmed the clam broth, dipped the steamers into the broth and hot butter, and ate, sitting against the granite, drinking the Molson's, watching the water.

"....A westerly had blown in strong, and the little Cape Porpoise fleet was returning early, each boat carrying into the pier an attendant flapdoodle of gulls circling as sternmen gutted the catch, then swooping the water for the pitched entrails."

Blue Highways: Part 9, Chapter 2

Pier at Cape Porpoise, Maine. Photo by Paul Simpson and posted at his Amused Cynic blog. Click on photo to go to host page.

Cape Porpoise, Maine

I know I'm not alone in this, but the ocean is one of my happy places.  In about three weeks I'll be heading home for a long overdue visit to see my mom and to attend my 30th high school reunion.  During my ten days or so on the coast of Northern California, you can bet that I will be spending a lot of time by the ocean.  I probably won't get as ambitious as LHM and cook seafood on the bluffs, but I will walk the cliffs, scamper in and out of the coves, check out the tidepools, visit the seal colony north of town, and soak in the sight, sound and smells of the Pacific Ocean.

Being born and raised by the ocean, sometimes it's hard to believe that I now live in a desert, where water is scarce and the air is dry.  The ocean's character, changeable and moody, translates to the weather which itself displays many moods.  On the other hand, the desert presents one with the same face most of the time.  Where I live, in Albuquerque, the sun shines on average 320 days per year.  When I lived near the ocean, I valued sunny days.  Fog and clouds were often the oppressive norm on the coast.  Now, when I talk with my sister and mother and they complain about the clouds and fog, I secretly wish that I were there, soaking in the moisture through my skin and feeling the sea spray and the rain upon my face.  I never thought that sunshine could be oppressive until I lived in the desert.

The ocean always did more for me, however, than just provide character to my environment.  Each night, when I went to sleep, I could hear the waves crashing on shore a mile away.  I could hear the warning buoys anchored offshore, mourning their low sounds with the movements of the waves, and occasionally the bells attached to them.  The sound was background noise to lull me to sleep in the cold and damp night air.

As a kid, I didn't appreciate this aspect of the ocean, though sometimes I would find myself in contemplation of the ocean as we drove next to it on our way to someplace or another.  Now as an adult who lives away from it, I find myself drawn to it in a way that I never was when I lived next to it.  The ocean has become a temple that I don't often get to visit.  It has become my equivalent of a mountain Buddhist retreat.  My trips to see my home are my version of a pilgrimage to a saint's final resting place,  or to the Holy Land.  It is my undertaking of the Haj.  It is not that I worship the ocean...it is not my god though like a god it is filled with moods, mysteries, and is something to be celebrated as well as feared.  But the ocean also provides me with emotional, physical and psychological nourishment and sustenance.  I cannot be anything but contemplative when I visit the ocean.  It puts me in that sort of way.  The sounds of the waves lapping against the shore on a calm day, or the roar of the waves on a stormy day, is a symphony to my ears.  The various forms of light from the sun as it makes it's way across the sky, or the colors that ocean turns, from the deepest blues to the grayest grays and everything in between, is the best mood lighting that has ever been devised.

If standing on the ocean shore, or along the bluffs that overlook it, has a balm-like quality to my soul, then I often wondered what I'd find out there on it.  I'll get into more of that in the next post, but I would sometimes watch the fishing fleet go out of the harbor.  As the boats filed out through the jetty and into the small cove, sometimes a fisherman would wave from the prow.  If it were a foggy day, they would then vanish one by one into the mist, slowly fading from boat to outline to mere suggestion until they were gone.  I used to wonder where they went.  I fantasized what the fishermen might see out there on the gray water beyond the horizon.  I speculated if they would be perpetually stuck in the fog, close in around them, with only a small circle of water that they could see while the rest of the world was gray.  Or, I wondered if they would come out of the fog into bright sunlight, so that our world and our reality was revealed as gray and while out there the real world was bright and sunny and filled with blue water.  My thoughts populated that ocean, just beyond the horizon, with small islands that only the fishermen knew about - little worlds of their own beyond my sight but not beyond my imagination.

Of course, the fleet would eventually come in and, on good days, with their holds brimming with their catch.  My uncles were part of that fleet, and when they had plenty they would share with us - a salmon here, a halibut there, sometimes a couple of crab which my mom would make me clean.  I would stare at the dead crab, its size often about as big as a large manhole cover, and crack it open with my fingers and remove as much meat as I could get out of it.  I imagined that not too long previously it had been wandering about on the sea floor and that only chance and bad luck had led it to the crab cage that my uncle had left on the bottom.  Then, I would take the crab into my mom and would enjoy crab meat on my salad and somewhere in my mind I would be thankful I lived near the ocean, and thankful that I had fishermen uncles who shared some of their catch with us.  As night fell and then settled, I would fall asleep in my room again to the gentle roar of the ocean, a mile west of where I lay, singing me to sleep again with its soft lullaby and the mourning of the buoys.

Musical Interlude

Since Cape Porpoise is a seafaring village, with a fishing fleet, and is closer to Newfoundland than anyplace else in Blue Highways, I decided to throw in something from the band Great Big Sea.  I remember first hearing this "Newfie" group about 10 years ago, and loved them.  Here they sing about Lukey, and his boat, accompanied by the Celtic supergroup The Chieftains.

And for a double shot - much of Taylor Swift's video for her song Mine was filmed in Cape Porpoise.  Enjoy!

And how about a triple shot?  There are a lot of Italians in my hometown, and many of them were fishermen.  Combine Italian musicians with an Irish tune about the sea, and you almost have perfection!  This is the Modena City Ramblers, with their Canzone della Fine del Mondo.

If you want to know more about Cape Porpoise

Wikipedia: Cape Porpoise

Next up: Somewhere on the Atlantic Ocean