How I lived in a story book

When I was very small, I loved the Golden Book, Scuffy the Tugboat, by Gertrude Crampton. Scuffy, a red painted toy tugboat sulked away in the toy store where he was awaiting a home, refusing to straighten up his blue smokestack, and complaining, “A toy store is no place for the likes of me.” The man with the polka dot tie, who owned the store, brought Scuffy home to his little boy, where they placed him in the tub, but Scuffy still will not sail upright, as it is no place for him.
Finally, exasperated the man and his boy took Scuffy up into the hills and put him in a brook, where he escaped from them, happy to finally be where he should be. As he sailed along, driven by the spring runoff, he became dissatisfied with the size of the brook, and rejoiced as it joined with others and formed a small river, which joined again with other rivers. Because it was spring the water ran high and fast, and Scuffy was driven along until finally he entered a large harbor and before him lay the sea. “There is no beginning and no end to the sea,” he lamented, realizing that he should have been careful for what he wished. It is at this place where the man in the polka dot tie found him and brought him back home to the bathtub, where he realized that was where he should be.
When I was small, I also lived in Plymouth, NH which was my father’s home prior to the War. It lies on the west side of the Pemigewasset River where it joins the Baker. It rises up to the top of a ridge and looks across the river at a parallel ridge occupied by the Town of Holderness. As a child, the view across the Pemi, from Kite Hill, was to heavily forested slopes. Those heights, I was sure, was the mountain the bear, of which my mother used to sing to me, went over. Like the bear, I wanted to see what was on the other side, but when we would get their on Sunday rides, one side looked pretty much the same as the other: steep slopes covered with maples, oak and pine. I saw no curious bears, even though I was convinced Bongo, from one of my other books was up in there with his girl, Lulubelle.
Out in the hills to the north and west of town the streams came tumbling down out of the hills, running quickly with the warming spring. They babbled through the woods and down into the small rivers, the Beebe, and the Mad, where they joined with the Baker and the Pemi, flowing through fields where cows came to drink, just as on Scuffy’s voyage and then into the forests where the wild animals drank or fished. The villages along the streams grew increasingly larger with little mills and factories until it became a larger river in Plymouth. The Pemi there was not like the larger rivers I knew nearer the coast, but I was convinced it would become that way further south, perhaps past Ashland, the next town downstream.
When I would visit my grandparents on the coast of Maine, my grandfather would take me in his 14’ skiff down the bay through the narrows at Gun Point and out to where the sea widened to horizon three sides and the ground swell made the little boat rise and fall. This is what Scuffy had seen at the end of his journey.
Whether specifically chosen by my parents to reflect my life, I do not know, but much of my early life was lived in my story books. I still have them, and I’m still convinced Scuffy started somewhere north or west of Plymouth, NH.

Things We Don't Say Anymore

Shirley Thompson, stopped by the Harpswell Anchor office the other day. Irritated by some “damned fool,” she referred to him as a “piss pot.” Now back in the day before profanity ran rampant, “piss pot” was about as nasty a name a kid could call another. No one uses that insult anymore, even though it is actually used in one of Shakespeare’s plays. (Don’t ask which, I don’t remember). That brought to mind a whole host of terms, one never hears any more.
Does anyone go down street or over town to visit Dr. Green? For those of you too young to remember, does anyone go to town to the liquor store? Do you get there by suburban wagon? And while you’re there, do you stop at the five and ten? Come to think of it, will a nickel buy anything anymore?
My mother used to suffer from “sick headaches.” Does anybody get those anymore or have they been replaced by migraines or something else more exotic, some syndrome, perhaps? Maybe we don’t get them anymore. I certainly hope not, they were not a good way to spend a day unless projectile vomiting happens to be your thing.
How many parents stay awake rubbing Vicks or Bengue or their kids’ legs to alleviate “growing pains.” Maybe kids these days don’t exercise enough to get them?
Stan Freeberg, once named some colors for an automotive manufacturer as “Come and get me copper” and “Thanks vermillion.” Back in the day anyone describing a vague color would tell you it was “sky blue pink.” Haven’t heard that in a long time. I still have a Stan Freeburg record that I can play on the Victrola, though.
How come we don’t go to the pictures on Saturday afternoon or cough up a dime for a funny book? If you didn’t know what flick was playing back then, you probably didn’t know shit from Shinola, but then again, who polishes shoes anymore?
When is the last time you saw kids play a game of alleys? The finger dexterity required would certainly aid their performance on a play station and at the same time teach them about the joys or hazards of gambling and the laws of economics.
As old timers die off and technology changes, so does speech and life. We don’t drive uptown to shop for everything we need on Maine St. Soon, among the many things we won’t hear will be the drone of the planes taking off from the Naval Air Station. Life will go on and someday, someone will write an article about how we don’t hear the term “cell phone” anymore.

How I Got Into The Flag Day Parade And My Father's German American Flag

June 14, 1978 found me riding in a jeep as part of a convoy headed to Ft. Drum, NY for two weeks active duty. The unit, an Army Reserve infantry battalion from Portland, ME had left the day before stayed overnight on the floor of an armory in Vermont, and was on the final leg of the trip. We were stretched out with a proscribed distance between vehicles, trucks, jeeps, ambulances, and fuel tankers, extending for several miles along the road, probably irritating local drivers, as the military was still suffering from its poor Vietnam era image.
At once the radios crackled with a message that we should all pull off to the side of the road as a problem had developed at the head of the column. The problem was that in planning the convoy route, no one had considered the possibility that any of the towns through which we had to pass, would be holding a parade in honor of Flag Day. I doubt that it had occurred to anyone that June 14 was Flag Day at all.
But here we were, outside the town of Gouverneur, NY, and our lead elements had come down upon the start of their parade. Being somewhat far back in the marching order, I have no idea what actually transpired only to know that with some quick thinking, probably on the part of the local officials, we would simply blend into the parade and pass on through town as part of it.
The commander sent a radio message back along the line, that we were to put on our web gear, that is to say our harnesses which held canteens, first aid and ammunition pouches, and replace our caps with our helmets. The convoy was then to bunch up.
When all this was accomplished, we fell into the parade behind the high school band. Ahead in one of the ambulances, Tommy Mullen, a somewhat irreverent medic, who had been awarded the Silver Star as a corpsman with the Marines in Vietnam, substituted a paper Burger King crown for his helmet, much to the delight of the small children.
Several of us practiced our best beauty pageant waves as we progressed through the town, and many surprised residents asked us how we knew about the parade, and what brought us to it. The answers, they received were varied, I’m sure. And so we passed along out of town and on our way to a cold, wet, “fun-filled” two weeks of playing soldier at Ft. Drum.
Which brings me to my father’s story. Toward the end of World War II, the 104th Infantry Division was in an area where combat operations had ceased. The US Army had linked up with the Russians, and everyone was starting to breathe more easily. Not having an American flag, my father thought it would be nice to have one flying over his platoon command post. A local German woman, who spoke English and had relatives in Chicago, volunteered to make an American flag, if he would show her exactly what it entailed. He explained the 13 stripes, the blue field, and told her it would require 48, five pointed stars. To help her, he took a piece of paper and cut out a star as a pattern. She promised to return with it the next day.
True to her word, she returned, but, as she explained, it took longer to make, and she had been up all night to finish it. The flag, she said, did not require 48 stars; it required 96! My father had forgotten: the flag has two sides!
When the unit returned to the states, my father decided the right thing to do with it, was to have everyone in the platoon put their name in a helmet, and the person, whose name was drawn would get to keep it. To this day he has wondered whatever happened to that flag.

My Grandmother's Memories

In November 1898, my grandmother was nine years old, living in Lexington, MA with her family, which had recently moved back to the US from Nova Scotia. With strong ties to the sea, her father’s father and an uncle had disappeared while on a voyage. Her father’s brother, much older than he, became his guardian and took him aboard the ship he captained as the cabin boy. Great grandfather Cann, was so sea sick that by the time the ship reached Europe, he was nearly dead from malnutrition. Upon return to Nova Scotia, his brother apprenticed him to a carpenter named Crosby, hoping he would outgrow his motion sickness and be of value to the crew. Accordingly, Bowman Cann signed on as ship’s carpenter aboard his brother’s ship which sailed a route to Ireland, Liverpool, Bremerhaven and back to Nova Scotia. Once again his sickness rendered him practically useless, so he returned to land and married one of the Crosby daughters, started a family and moved to Massachusetts to leave the then bleak Nova Scotian economy behind.
As Thanksgiving weekend 1898 approached, a massive storm began moving up the east coast, which was to become one of the worst winter storms the area had ever or up to this time would ever experience.
In Boston harbor the steamer Portland awaited its departure time for the overnight run to Portland, Maine. Warned of the impending storm, the captain decided to risk the trip. It is thought he believed he could run ahead of it, and make port before the storm hit the area. He was wrong. The doomed steamer was battered throughout the night by high winds, blinding snow and mountainous seas. The passengers and crew must have been horrified as the captain tried desperately throughout the night to keep the ship afloat. Waves destroyed the superstructure, and most assuredly many passengers were injured as well as extremely ill. Around five AM the Race Point Lighthouse station on the tip of Cape Cod heard four faint blasts of a ship’s horn as a distress signal, and a little later another ship saw the Portland trying to gain open ocean through a break in the weather. She was never seen afloat again.
Bodies began washing up on the shore, clad in life jackets identifying them as from the Portland, but it was days before the disaster was fully known. As the passenger list was aboard the ship, the final death toll was never known, and it is estimated to have been as high as 190.
Meanwhile, my grandmother’s family was huddled in their house in Lexington. Her father brought everyone into the center of the house, as he was sure some of the windows would be blown out. She remembered the family huddling together as the house shook on its foundations. As long as she lived she never forgot the Portland Galee as it became known.
In 1982, as she lay nearing her final days in a nursing home, we went to visit her on a summer day. The room was stifling, and the sweat was pouring off her. We could tell she had been crying. I asked her what was wrong, did she need some water, was she too hot? “No,” she said, “I was just thinking of all those poor people on the Portland.”

D-Day

June 6, 1944. My father was a 1LT, stationed at Ft. Leonard Wood, MO as part of the cadre training up the 97th Infantry Division. As part of the build up for the invasion of the continent, thousands of men, of all ranks, had been levied to be sent to Europe as additional troops and replacements for what was feared would be horrific casualties.
He sailed to England as part of the largest convoy to cross the Atlantic up to that time.
As the invasion began, he was waiting in a replacement depot in England, while his older brother was already ashore, before H hour, assigned to an amphibious engineer unit, whose mission was to destroy obstacles on the beaches to allow for the passage of the landing craft and tanks.
My mother was home in Harpswell, Maine, living in her parents small camp, tucked into a thick woods of beech and fir trees. Communication with the outside world was by radio broadcast, perhaps WBZ from Boston and party line telephone. Communication in the small hamlets, which made up Harpswell, was by telephone or by special signal. Most families had a bell or whistle by which neighbors could be notified in time of emergencies. My grandmother’s happened to be the hand bell from an old one-room school house. Woe betide the child that rang it for a lark.
From across the road she could hear Marion Williams whistling as I remember her signal. My mother rushed out to the road to hear the news she had gleaned from the radio. “The boys are going in,” she called.
With mail taking weeks to arrive, my mother had no idea of my father’s whereabouts. That would come later when his first letters arrived, and she would learn that he had not been levied yet. That would come later in the fall, when he was brought across and assigned to the 104th Timberwolf Division.
I was not born at that time, but the memories of those who survived those times, whether overseas or at home, were so strong I sometimes feel like I actually remember them.