Where Is Crusader Rabbit?

The Passing Of The Timberwolves

2011-02-27T08:23:00.000-08:00

As is our custom now, my wife and I drove out to the assisted living facility where my parents now reside. On the table, along with other mail and magazines was a publication on slick paper, the size of an annual report, titled The Timberwolf Howl. Over the years, in different forms, be it tabloid newsprint or magazine, it would appear in our mailbox from time to time. It is the publication of the 104th (Timberwolf) Infantry Division Association.
The 104th, under the command of a rather flamboyant Maj. Gen. Terry de la Mesa Allen, was originally formed from men from Washington and Oregon and was sent to fight the Germans. My father, 90 day wonder lieutenant, joined it as a replacement while it was fighting in Holland alongside the British. In fact it was attached to the Brits, and so the rations and ammunition they received came through British supply channels. This caused some logistical problems, particularly in ammunition, which was not issued in clips for the M-1, but had to be broken down and individually loaded into the clips. Eventually the division was moved further south to team up with the American Army, fighting across Germany from Aachen, through Marburg, where I would eventually attend school at the university there, liberating the concentration camp at Nordhausen and on to link up with the Russians.
After the war, my father wanted to put what he had seen behind him, and avoided joining any veterans' organization. Nonetheless, I assumed he paid dues, and over the years received the Howl.
As I opened it, I read the inevitable. The 104th Timberwolves had had their last reunion, and the association was being disbanded, its assets being given over to a new one, The Timberwolf Pups' Association. “Pups” is what all us baby boomer offspring of these reluctant warriors were called as they settled back into civilian life.
It had to happen. The youngest of them would be in their mid to late 80's and there were too few physically up to traveling hither and yon about the country to attend.
It struck me as very sad. Not only is a piece of history fast disappearing, but as the generation ahead of you passes on, so too does a piece of your own life.
When I was small, these men were the young adults, the fathers who coached our elementary basketball teams, were our scoutmasters and were the hot dog cookers and burger flippers at those family gatherings that continue in our memory. They drove us to town to see Santa Claus at Christmas and read “A Visit From St. Nicholas,” before we tried to sleep on Christmas Eve. They helped us build tree houses, taught us to swim, how to catch grounders with our Scooter Rizzuto gloves, and how to make telephones out of string and tin cans.
Now those that are left are old, many infirm, and sadly many cannot even remember the great things they accomplished. Soon they will all be gone and the 104th and all the other men of that generation will be nothing more than ranks of moss covered stones. Their army will have passed into the shades of history.
Time passes, and soon my generation will be at that same point in its journey. I doubt that history will mark our passing as it will my parents' generation.

The Aroostook War: The Final Chapter

2011-02-19T07:15:00.000-08:00

New Brunswick’s Provincial Governor Harvey demanded the recall of the American troops, by announcing that he had been given authority by the British government to occupy the area by force, if necessary. The State Legislature immediately responded by appropriating $800,000 and a draft of 10,343 militia to be made ready. By the next day, troops were already mustering in the streets of Augusta.
It was mid winter and bitterly cold. Uniforms issued to the militia provided scant protection against the snow and freezing temperatures, which often sunk to -20 to -30 in the battle zone. Thick red shirts and green jackets were issued, and within a week 10,000 troops were either present in The County or on their way. Taking lumber confiscated from Canadian operations, construction was started at Ft. Fairfield.
All this activity finally caught the attention of the Federal government. Congress authorized the President to raise 50,000 troops should Harvey make good on his threat and appropriated $10 million to pay for the operation. General Winfield Scott was placed in command of any future military operation. On March 5, he and his staff arrived in Augusta and took up residence in the Augusta House Hotel.
Scott’s first mission was to avert an armed conflict, and to that end, he started communication with both Governors Harvey and Fairfield of Maine. His letter to Harey stated that he was authorized the use of significant force, and was prepared to use it, but preferred not to. The Canadian, being of a like mind, not wishing to be the one to inflict war on the area, agreed to back off. Governor Fairfield then agreed that he would withdraw the militia and keep open the lines of communication. Thus armed conflict was avoided.
The question was discussed for several more years, apparently without further incident until Secretary of State Daniel Webster and the British Ambassador Lord Ashburton arrived at an agreement, written into the Webster-Ashburton Treaty signed on August 20, 1842. Maine accepted it’s current northern border with Canada and received $200,000 from the British government in compensation for lost territory. The US government also awarded the state $150,000 and was ceded land from Great Britain along Lakes Champlain and Superior.
The Aroostook War ended as all should, with no combat casualties. A Private Hiram Smith died of unknown causes and is buried along Rt. 2 in the Haynesville Woods. A number of soldiers stationed at the Hancock Barracks died of various causes, mostly disease, and are buried in Houlton. Several troops are reported to have gone into the woods on patrol and never returned. Whether they met their ends or took the opportunity to leave the service is unknown.
For further reading, the author recommends The History of Maine by John S.C. Abbott. Written in 1892, it is available online.

The War In The North Part 3

2011-02-01T16:27:00.000-08:00

In June 1837 as a consequence of the closure of the Second US Bank, a determination was made that citizens in the disputed area had overpaid their taxes and were due a refund. To that end, a government agent was sent out to accomplish this. A zealous British constable arrested him and hauled him off to the nearest English jail. When he arrived, the local sheriff, alarmed at something so potentially inflammatory, promptly had him released. The Provincial Governor, Harvey, convinced the payments were in fact a bribe to keep the locals loyal to the United States, had the unfortunate man rearrested. A letter from President Van Buren eventually affected his ultimate release.
As tensions remained high, Governor Kent sent General Wood to inspect the fortifications along the Kennebec, Penobscot and St. Croix Rivers, and in a secret session, the Legislature authorized a force of 200 volunteers to drive out the trespassers, seize their equipment and destroy their camps.
In the County, meanwhile, things came to a dramatic head. On December 29, 1838 a group of New Brunswick men were spotted cutting timber on a local estate. When they returned on New Year’s Eve, they were met by an informal, hastily formed militia group, the Eaton Guard. Lines and weapons were drawn, probably with much shouting, cursing and testosterone laden threats. The sudden noise aroused a female black bear with her cub from their winter nap. Suddenly beset by an irate beast, the Canadians let loose a ragged volley. The Americans, sure they were being fired upon returned the favor, at which point they returned the favor. The Canadians immediately retired taking with them two wounded by the bear, but otherwise unscathed. Both sides probably ended the evening around a warm fire with a drop of the cure.
The first company of volunteers under a Captain Rines left Bangor on February 5, 1839 and reached Masardis on the 8th. Caught unaware, the New Brunswickers were captured along with their logging equipment and teams. Rines continued on to the mouth of the Little Madawaska, where the tables were turned and he was captured along with his men, loaded on a sleigh and hurried off to jail in Frederickton.
The remnants of his party retreated to Masardis where they began to fortify the place.
While the elated Canadians began arming a counter-force of about 300 men, Gov. Harvey issued a proclamation stating that sovereign British had been invaded and ordered out 1000 militia.
Things were now looking serious. Fifty more volunteers set out for the scene of action from Augusta.

The War In The North Part 2

2011-01-27T11:19:00.000-08:00

The original settlers in the St. John Valley were Acadians, Brayons, who were nominally British subjects, but considered themselves, at least in their hearts, to be citizens of the Republique du Madawaska, which comprised the northwestern corner of New Brunswick within the disputed region. The more recent settlers to the Aroostook Valley were Americans coming up from the south.
In 1825, one such settler, John Baker, petitioned to have the area annexed to the State of Maine. To this end, he and his wife raised a homemade American flag at the junction of Baker Brook (named later for him) and the St. John River, which is now in the town of Ft. Kent. On August 10 he and a few others announced their intention to establish a formal Republic of Madawaska. Acting swiftly, the local British magistrate had Baker arrested on charges of conspiracy and sedition and jailed for two months until his fine of £25 was paid. And so passed the attempt at creating a separate republic. However in 1938 a flag was designed, which hangs in the city hall of Edmundston, NB, and the mayor assumes the honorary title of President of the Republic of Madawaska.
Meanwhile, in New Hampshire a similar situation developed on that state’s northern border, where the boundary was also in dispute. With both Canada and the United States sending in tax and debt collectors, the citizens formed the Republic of Indian Stream to stop it. In 1835, in response to a request from the Republic’s congress, the New Hampshire militia moved in and occupied the area. This request had followed an incident in which some of the Indian Streamers had “invaded” Canada to rescue a fellow citizen arrested for unpaid debt at a local hardware store. In the process, the “invaders” shot up the local judge’s home. Horrified, the British ambassador in Washington negotiated a settlement, and in 1840, the Republic of Indian Stream entered the U.S. as the town of Pittsburg, NH.
Back in Maine, as winter closed in, farmhands, freed from that work entered the woods as lumberjacks, becoming a source of contention as both Maine and Massachusetts moved to protect their resources.
In 1830, in an attempt to ease the growing tensions, the U.S. and British governments asked William, the King of Holland to arbitrate the dispute and develop a border suitable to both sides. His solution, which ironically, was very similar to the current border was accepted by the British, but rejected by Maine and Massachusetts because it gave away territory inhabited by tax paying Americans. As an incentive, to offset the loss, the Federal government offered one million acres from the territory that was to become Michigan. What Maine would have done with that if accepted can only be left to conjecture. And so the dispute remained unresolved.

The War In The North Part 1

2011-01-03T11:44:00.000-08:00

If you journey to the roof of Maine, The County, as the residents proudly call it, the traveler is greeted by endless forest or rolling farmland reaching to the horizon. Across the rivers and valleys to the north and east nestle the farms and villages of New Brunswick. The people, be they Franco speakers or English tinge their accent with a Canadian lilt. The broad “A” and dropped “R” of what stereotypes Maine speech are absent. In this friendly and peaceful place it is hard to think that approximately 170 years ago the military might of Great Britain and the United States was in readiness to turn Aroostook County into a war zone.
The 1783 Treaty of Paris ending the Revolutionary War left the northern border between Maine, New Hampshire and Canada in doubt. Some interpretations brought the Maine border close to the St. Lawrence River Valley, which would have made land communication between the Maritime Provinces and the rest of Canada difficult. Others brought the border south of the St. John River into what is now Northern Maine. In 1815, after the British withdrawal from eastern Maine at the end of the War of 1812, a collaborative survey was accomplished to determine the eastern border of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ District of Maine and Canada along the St. Croix River. (See July-October 2010 Harpswell Anchor)
After the separation of Maine from Massachusetts in 1820, the latter still had claim to 50% of the public land in the disputed northern territory. In 1825 both states had agents in the area issuing timber permits, taking censuses and recording births, deaths and marriages in the St. John Valley.
Then in October of that year tragedy of epic proportions struck the region in the form of the Miramichi Fire, one of the three largest ever recorded in North America. 1825 had been a particularly dry year, and a Massachusetts timber agent traveling through the area recorded that it was initially sparked by lightning. A firestorm swept through New Brunswick destroying one third of the homes in Fredericton, and on October 7 the town of Newcastle (now Miramichi) was almost totally destroyed with only 12 out of 260 buildings left standing. Many residents took refuge, along with their livestock in the Miramichi River, but when the flames subsided 160 people were dead including the prisoners in the local jail. Estimates of casualties, including lumberjacks caught in its path were set at 3,000 souls, and 20% of New Brunswick’s forest was destroyed. The Provincial Governor’s journal noted that the damage was so extensive, the province’s very survival would come from timber in the disputed area to the west.
To be continued

The Pirate Dixie Bull Part 2

2010-11-27T14:38:00.000-08:00

Furious and desperate, after his loss, Bull gathered about him a small force determined to attack the French and gain compensation. There is no record of any success, nor was there probably any, as Bull soon looked for other means of regaining what he felt was his due.
In late summer or early fall, accompanied by a crew of 16 or more men “from the eastern settlements,” he sailed into Pemaquid Harbor in some stolen boats and attacked the fort. This fort, or rather a stockade, had been built in 1630 or ‘31 as a protection from the French as the Indians at that time had not presented a problem to the English there. As opposed to the swarming horde of my childhood imagination, they would not have sailed into the harbor with cannons blazing. Known to the people there as fellow traders, they would have rowed to shore uneventfully. The 16 men occupied themselves with rifling through the stores and the furs, taking anything of value. As they were weighing anchor to leave, one of the traders at the fort got off a lucky shot and killed one of Bull’s men, dropping him to the deck. As far as can be determined, that was the only casualty.
On November 21 1632, Governor Winthrop in Boston received a letter recounting the piracy.
Leaders of the coastal settlement jumped into action to apprehend the man who was now considered a pirate. The men of Portsmouth readied a fleet of four boats and took off in pursuit. Back in Massachusetts, Winthrop agreed, after meeting with his council on December 5, to send off a boat with 20 armed men to accompany the Portsmouth crew. Contrary winds, probably bitter northeasterlies, allowed the company to proceed only as far as Cape Ann from where they returned to Boston on January 2, 1633.
Meanwhile news arrived that the vessels from Portsmouth had made it as far as Pemaquid, where they were harbor bound for three weeks, by high, contrary winds as well.
With winter closing in, there was little enthusiasm to pursue the gang of pirates in the small, relatively open boats of the time, and there appeared to be no more activity on the part of the buccaneers either. That did not, however, prevent the spread of fear and rumor up and down the coast.
In January, the Portsmouth men stopped at Richmond’s Island off Cape Elizabeth on their return journey, long enough to apprehend three deserters from Bull’s crew and to hang an Indian named “Black Will” for the murder of Walter Bagnell, an unscrupulous trader, whose dishonesty had finally caught up with him.
In the spring, a half-hearted attempt was made to locate the pirate, Dixie Bull. But then the governor received a letter purported to be from him and his crew, which read, in part, “ We next proceed south; never shall we hurt any more of your countrymen-rather be sunk than taken.” It was signed “Fortune de Garde.” Not wishing to force a bloody confrontation, the search for Dixie Bull was called off.
Dixie Bull and his band were said to have sailed off to the east and were lost to history.
But where did they go, and did they bury a treasure trove on either Damariscove Island or Cushing Island, as local legends have said.
The answer to the second, is “probably not.” Both islands were inhabited at the time, so it would have been extremely risky to even stop there. Damariscove already had a year round fishing settlement when the Pilgrims arrived. In fact, in the spring of 1622, the Pilgrims sent a party there to procure food for the starving Plymouth colony, and were given a boatload of cod. Without this fish, the Pilgrims might not have survived. Additionally, the plunder from Pemaquid would have consisted mainly of staples and furs, not something one would leave behind.
Stories abound about the fate of the pirates as well. Did they sail to the south? Did they sail to the eastward and join up with the French? There is no evidence any of that happened. A popular poem of the 1600’s has Bull dying in a sword fight, and another that he was hanged in London. There are no records of any of that happening.
There is a record, however, that in 1648, Dixie Bull, of London, was released from his obligations of his apprenticeship to his brother. It would appear, then, that the frightful pirate, Dixie Bull, went on to lead a rather mundane life and probably died an obscure death.
For more information, the author recommends A Brief Account of the Wicked Doings of Dixie Bull by Jim McLain.

Dixie Bull: New England's First Pirate

2010-11-05T11:17:00.000-07:00

By Bill Millarrrrgh.
 Rocky and windswept, Damariscove Island sits like a sentinel in the ocean guarding the approaches into Boothbay Harbor. Rugged, like most of its kind, it possesses a fair harbor and long history. It is here, that the pirate, Dixie Bull, was said to have buried his treasure.
As a child, our family would pack the cooler, fill the thermos bottle and load into the old Chevy for an annual trip up the coast to Pemaquid, where, having our fill of the beach, we would make the short drive over to Ft. William Henry and climb around the stone walls and tower. Visitor signs and artifacts in the museum told how, in 1632, the pirate, Dixie Bull, had sailed into the harbor and laid waste to the place. In my young imagination, I pictured a fleet of tall vessels, their cannon belching smoke and flame, disgorging a horde of black, bearded ruffians, who took plunder and no prisoners. And, I often wondered who this Dixie Bull, known as New England’s first pirate and the reason for the first large man hunt in the area, really was.
The early 17th century brought an end to the period of exploration along the east coast and ushered in the age of settlements. Both the English and the French began settling and building trading posts along the shore of New England, in some cases in competing areas. This was the New England into which Dixie Bull arrived.
Born in Huntingdonshire in England, sometime in the early 1600’s, he was apprenticed to his older brother, Seth, a skinner and tanner in London. Skinners, at that time, ranked among the wealthiest trade guilds in that they regulated the fur trade. Bull became a “trader for bever,” and, in fact may have used his apprenticeship as a form of indenture to finance his passage to America.
His name first appears in New England along with his elder brother and nephew in a patent for land from Sir Fernando Gorges “east of the Aquamentiquos River (Now the York River)” Since Bull’s name does not carry with it the title of “gentlemen” or “esquire,” he was probably not considered wealthy. There is also no indication that he settled the land granted to him.
Setting himself up as a trader, he purchased a shallop, the pick-up truck of early colonial shipping. Small, open, sometimes half decked, these boats were fitted with sails, oars, or both, and were designed for operating in shallow waters. Sailing up and down the Maine coast, Bull traded for beaver pelts, a staple in the economy of the time.
While beginning a life he hoped would be prosperous, international events overtook Dixie Bull. By the Treaty of St. Germain en Laye in March of 1632, the English had returned to France, Quebec and Acadia. Interpreting the treaty to include those lands in what is now eastern Maine, French Lt. Governor Isaac de Razilly warned the English not to expand east of Pemaquid and sent an expedition to the trading post at the Penobscot Plantation. A French vessel, piloted by a “treacherous Scotsman,” robbed the trading post there, taking away everything of value, taunting the English as they left. In this one instance, Bull lost everything, including his boat. The up and coming businessman was left destitute.
To be continued

The Enemy On Our Shore: The Occupation Ends

2010-09-22T12:54:00.000-07:00

The British now set to work establishing their intended province of New Ireland. After a raiding party captured the fort at Buck’s Harbor on September 12, the coastline was secure. On Sept. 21 a proclamation was issued establishing the province and designating Castine as a port of entry.
All towns from the Penobscot to New Brunswick were granted the same commercial rights as any other British province. Vessel owners who swore an oath of allegiance were granted license to operate freely without English interference.
On November 7, Harpswell held a second special town meeting, and appointed the Selectmen as the committee responsible for the arms and equipment which were being sent from the state arsenal in Boston. They were authorized to issue out the arms, one for each person, and required each recipient to provide security that they would be returned when called for. Powder kegs, possibly from this shipment, are on display in the Harpswell Museum on Rt. 123 in Harpswell Center.
East of the Penobscot, daily life as citizens of the British Empire began to settle in. The officers of the garrison at Castine formed a theater, the actors coming from their own number. Feminine roles might be played by a young lieutenant of the infantry for lack of female players.
It was reported that, almost daily, shipments of desirable English goods entered through the port. The imports were of sufficient quantity that the US government established a customs office in Hampden, which collected approximately $150,000 in duties.
When winter brought the freezing of the river, intrepid Mainers could be found crossing the ice in sleighs loaded with contraband to avoid taxes.
One has to wonder to what extent the pillars of the community were profiting from this illegal trade. One night a customs agent apprehended a smuggler with a sleigh full of illegal goods. With Yankee gall, the miscreant charged the agent with highway robbery. Examined by the same magistrates who had appointed him, the unfortunate official was shipped off to prison in Augusta!
The Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812, also terminated the Province of New Ireland. On April 25, 1815, the British quietly evacuated all territory held in Maine and the US government retained control. Historian William Williamson, in 1832, recounted that the local inhabitants rejoiced, but given the commerce enjoyed during that time, how deep was that sentiment? One is left to wonder what might have been the consequences, what the State of Maine might be like today, had the negotiations left the territory east of the Penobscot as British territory.
For further reading, the author recommends The History of the State of Maine by William Williamson. Published in 1832, it is available online. Penobscot: Downeast Paradise by Gorham Munson (1958) also gives many interesting accounts of the area and its history and is a good read.

The Enemy At the Gates: The British Invasion of Maine Part 3

2010-08-27T13:28:00.000-07:00

The Battle of Hampden

Recognizing the need to eliminate the potential threat of a refitted Adams, a part of the fleet, led by Dragon and accompanied by a transport with 500 light infantry and artillery, was dispatched up the river to destroy it and capture merchant vessels anchored at Hampden, one of which had recently arrived from Rochelle, France with a rich cargo of silk, wine and brandy.
Aware of the British advance, Morris ordered the guns removed from Adams and constructed shore batteries to cover the approach up the river. As the militia trickled in during the day on September 2, he supplied any, who were unarmed, with muskets and ammunition from the ship’s stores.
Lewis and Little, meanwhile, were leading their men up the road along the west bank of the river. The latter, observing a detachment of Royal Riflemen landing to be in position to intercept them, turned his men into the woods and never reached the battle.
In the afternoon, Morris went into town to attend a council of war with General Blake, the commander of the militia and several prominent townspeople at the Hampden Academy Building. Blake had established a rough line with the right anchored on a church, extending in front of the Academy to the river. To the south was the burial ground, Sowadabscook Stream and Pitcher’s Brook. Pickets were placed overlooking Bald Hill Cove approximately three miles down the river.
Morris was dismayed to find total confusion. Blake had developed no clear plan for the 500 men, who were arriving, no positions had been prepared, and the townspeople were advocating no resistance relying instead on British magnanimity.
At sunset, Barrie’s troops aboard the transport landed on the shores of Bald Hill Cove. These were light infantry riflemen, with weapons more accurate and of longer range than the standard smoothbore musket. Elite troops, they had served with Wellington.
Blake’s pickets withdrew.
Throughout the long, rainy night the throng of citizen soldiers stood to arms. To untrained farmers and tradesmen, most of whom had never heard a shot fired in anger, the night was long indeed. Rumors would have flown up and down the line. The stress would have rendered many inconveniently ill.
The morning of September 3 came with a thick fog and movement of the British troops.
Through faulty intelligence, they believed they were facing 1400 militia, thus moved cautiously up the road towards Hampden with a local guide pressed into service. A line of skirmishers was thrown across the front followed by a company of the 60th Regiment, a green-coated regiment formed in great part from German and Dutch prisoners of war unhappy at being forced to support Napoleon. The flanks were guarded by detachments of marines from the ships. Behind it in support followed a second company of the 29th Regiment trailed by a battery of light artillery.
Around 8 AM, marching in quickstep, they broke out of the fog almost upon the startled Mainers, who fired a ragged volley at them. Immediately the center of the militia line collapsed, and without orders began a swift retreat. Morris, his men firing downriver at the British ships and landing barges, saw the collapse and ordered his guns to be spiked and the Adams set ablaze.
Within an hour, the British were in possession of Hampden. The battle, which turned out to be the last in the northern theater of the war, was nearly bloodless. One notable casualty was the unfortunate pressed into service by the British as a guide.
The citizens, who had counted on British magnanimity were sorely disappointed as their cattle were killed and houses sacked. Pleading to CPT Barrie for humanity, he responded, “I have none for you. I will spare your lives, though I mean to burn your houses.” Many were taken to the ships to be detained and a bond of $12,000 was levied on the town.
Two thirds of Barrie’s troops pressed upriver to Bangor. There was no stomach for fighting in Bangor where the citizens determined to rely on Barrie’s good will, and under a flag of truce, surrendered the town unconditionally. Some of them must have felt that resistance might have been the better course as public buildings were commandeered, foodstuffs confiscated and the troops set free to loot. After receiving a pledge of a $30,000 bond, Barrie called off his men.
They then bedded down for what must have been an uneasy night in Bangor. When the next day dawned, the occupiers busied themselves with burning a few more vessels anchored in or on the stocks in the river, and withdrew to Hampden.
Barrie’s men then began boarding the transports to return to Castine, stopping along the way in Frankfort to relieve the townspeople there of a large number of oxen, sheep and geese. On September 7 the victorious force dropped anchor in Castine. The Penobscot River campaign had ended.
To be continued

The Enemy At the Gates: The British Invasion of Maine Part 2

2010-08-01T08:25:00.000-07:00

The Arrival of the Adams

Concern spread quickly along the coast as militia units stood to arms. The militia in Bangor was ordered to reinforce the regular troops in Castine. In Machias, the citizens prepared to evacuate ahead of what was sure to come.
On July 25, Harpswell held a special town meeting electing Stephen Purinton to go to Boston as the town’s agent to collect Harpswell’s quota of the state arms and ammunition, providing he could procure them at state expense with no cost to the town.
At the same time, CPT Robert Barrie, commanding the 74 gun HMS Dragon arrived in Halifax with a convoy of supply ships in tow. Using Dragon as the lead, a powerful task force consisting of three 74’s, two frigates recently transferred from the Mediterranean, several smaller ships and transports with approximately 3,000 men and families from the 60th, 62nd, and 98th regiments was readied for action in the Machias and Penobscot Bay areas.
On September 1, this powerful fleet dropped anchor in the harbor of Castine. The two detachments for American troops, 28 regulars under the command of LT Lewis and 98 militia led by LT Little, sensing the precariousness of their position, blew up the fort before being called upon to surrender and fled up the bay to Bucksport with Lewis’ men dragging along two three pound field pieces.
The invaders began ferrying ashore, where they commandeered the largest buildings as barracks and the finest homes as officers’ quarters. Foraging parties were sent out to the surrounding farms over the next few days to bring in fresh food. A messenger, flying the Union Jack, was sent across the bay to Belfast bearing a warning to the citizens there that no harm would come to them if they did not interfere in British operations.
The US troops withdrawing to Bucksport accomplished a successful river crossing during the night, leaving the field pieces behind. Their pursuers recovered them after threatening to put the town to the torch.
Several weeks prior to the invasion, the 24 gun corvette USS Adams, under the command of Charles Morris, a former lieutenant on the USS Constitution had been preying on British shipping, but in severe weather, had barely survived grounding on a ledge off Isle au Haut.
Limping the stricken ship into Camden, Morris discharged his prisoners, but ascertained that port to be too vulnerable to accomplish needed repairs. So, he slipped up the Penobscot River to the mouth of Sowadabscook Stream at the southern end of the town of Hampden where repairs could be made in relative safety.
The enlisted prisoners, meanwhile, were marched off from Camden to internment at Ft. Edgecomb near Wiscassett, while, as was customary, the officers were released on parole. This group had no intention of honoring the terms of their release, however, and bribed a local resident to sail them to Eastport and the British garrison there.
In an event, which could only be described as comical, as they began to make their getaway, they discovered there was no liquor on board the boat, so one of their number went back on shore where he was promptly arrested in a store while trying to make the purchase. The rest fled, pursued by faster American boats, which overtook them and turned back towards Camden. So jubilant and overconfident were these Mainers at their capture of their former prisoners, that the escapees were able to turn the tables on their captors, take over the boats and sail safely to the shelter of the British lines.
To be continued

The Enemy At the Gates: The British Invasion of Maine

2010-07-01T16:17:00.000-07:00

In September 1814 the War of 1812, which had for the most part passed Maine by, came to its shores in earnest. A little known part of American history, it had the potential to radically change not only this state, but the entire nation as well.
The march towards open conflict with England had begun since the early days of the United States’ independence, finally coming to a head over England’s attempts at restricting American trade, particularly with Napoleon’s Europe and the Royal Navy’s practice of impressing American sailors into its service on the high seas.
With its long, well-harbored coastline and seafaring tradition, it was, perhaps, inevitable that Maine, then part of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, would be drawn deeply into the war.
President Jefferson’s Embargo Act of 1807, which had prohibited the exportation of any merchandise from the U.S. had caused an economic depression in Maine. Up and down the coast, goods rotted in warehouses, ships lay idle at wharves and seamen were unemployed. Although the act was repealed in 1809, its memory created a strong anti-war sentiment along the Eastern Seaboard.
At a special Harpswell town meeting held on August 24, 1812, for example, Stephen Purinton and John Curtis were elected delegates to a county convention “to take measures to alleviate the miseries of war and bring about a speedy and lasting peace.”
With the declaration of war in 1812, the British, were aware the sentiment for war was centered mainly in the south and west, and realizing profit could be gained from continued trade, decided to leave New England be. It was said in Maine at the time, a young man wanting action should sign aboard a privateer and not join the militia.
Even when the president called for militia units to be placed under federal control, Governor Strong disregarded the order, stating it would leave the Commonwealth undefended in violation of the Massachusetts constitution. George Ulmer was given a presidential commission of colonel and placed in command of the regular troops at Ft. Sullivan in Eastport, ME. “It was Ulmer’s design and duty,” wrote one Maine historian, “To prevent, if possible, all smuggling and intercourse with the enemy, in the faithful discharge of which, he gave to the inhabitants some affront.” Ulmer’s reward for attempting to eliminate commerce in contraband was to be relieved of command.
The brief, sharp engagement between the USS Enterprise and HMS Boxer off Monhegan Island in September 1813 was a brief reminder to Maine that there was a war going on.
To reinforce the defense of Eastport, two additional forts were established at Robbinston, garrisoned with 30 men, and a 70 man force stationed on Moose Island.
In the summer of 1814, war finally arrived, when on July 11, an expedition launched secretly from Halifax, NS, led by the 74 gun HMS Ramilies anchored off Eastport. Commodore Sir Thomas Hardy demanded an immediate surrender. The new American commander, Maj. Putnam, demurred, but through pressure from the local inhabitants, struck his colors without resistance. Hardy ordered 1000 soldiers from the 102nd regiment put ashore along with a number of their wives and children. All public property was immediately confiscated, and the surrendering Americans were placed aboard a prison ship.
$9,000 in unsigned Treasury Notes was seized, which the customs collector refused to sign even under threat of death. Hardy did not carry out the threat and issued a proclamation declaring US laws would remain in effect but ordering all inhabitants to swear an oath of allegiance to the Crown. Eventually about 2/3 of the population did so. To secure his conquests, he left inn place a garrison of 800 men and a Royal Customs collector.
Almost instantly resourceful locals began a brisk smuggling operation of cattle and local goods into the British lines.
To further secure the area, a party was dispatched to drive out the garrison at Robbinston. The lieutenant in charge, realizing opposition to the highly trained, motivated British troops was futile, ordered the destruction of everything that could not be taken and withdrew to Machias. An additional British raiding party was put ashore to spike the guns at the fort below Thomaston, rendering them useless.
To be continued

Buy Now Now For Discount

2010-06-12T16:05:00.000-07:00

10% off Where Is Crusader Rabbit Now That We Really Need Him?
Offer ends June 30, 2010

Get it
Where Is Crusader Rabbit Now That We Really Need Him?
Price: $19.99
Discount: $- 2.00
Discounted Price: $17.99

Disclaimer: Use coupon code SUMMERREAD305 at checkout and receive 10% off Where Is Crusader Rabbit Now That We Really Need Him?. Maximum savings with this promotion is $10. You can only use the code once per account, and you can't use this coupon in combination with other coupon codes. Sorry, self-purchases (buying books that you’ve published) aren’t eligible. This great offer ends on June 30, 2010 at 11:59 PM so try not to procrastinate! While very unlikely we do reserve the right to change or revoke this offer at anytime, and of course we cannot offer this coupon where it is against the law to do so.
Copyright © 2002-2010 Lulu, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Rusty Rails

2010-05-26T16:45:00.000-07:00

I like to watch railroad tracks, or, more specifically, abandoned or little used rails. They are a link to what was, the way we traveled, the way we got things, the way we even celebrated holidays.
Train time was an event. When my brother was born, my grandmother came over from New Hampshire on the train to take care of my sister and me while my mother was in the hospital. We drove downtown to the stately granite, oak and polished brass station to await her arrival. A few people waited in the darkening evening. There were folks waiting for arrivals such as we were, others leaving for parts unknown, one or two sailors departing for leave from the naval air station. Now and again we would go out onto the cold platform, even though we knew what time the train would arrive. And arrive it did. The rails had been converted to diesel by then, but we could hear the lonesome horn to the west, echoing as the engine passed through Deep Cut on the old Maine Central Line. The train stopped with a squeal of steel on steel, and my grandmother stepped down from the shiny car. It was all so thrilling.
Children’s books told us of how the good things we ate and everything else arrived in box cars behind the hard working engines. New cars were unloaded for the local dealerships, coal and oil were brought onto the siding at Brunswick Coal and Lumber to heat up our homes. Long trains filled with cement, potatoes, and wood products rumbled through town on their way to bigger places like Boston, New York and beyond.
The box cars were lessons in geography to us: The Louisville & Nashville, New York, Hartford & New Haven; Delaware & Hudson; and the Canadian National and Grand Trunk railroads.
But best of all was after Thanksgiving in early December, when the railway express cars would be shunted to the Railway Express depot, disgorging brown paper wrapped packages from distant relatives or large boxes from catalog stores. Christmas fever was boosted to a higher pitch, when the olive drab delivery trucks started up and down the street, stopping next door or even at your own place because every kid knew what that meant: presents were starting to arrive.
But all that is gone now. The few trains that come through are sorry affairs; one or two unmarked, unremarkable, rusting storage sheds on wheels pulled by equally drab mono-colored engines. No more do kids count them and try to find out where they have come from.
Most of the track is abandoned. Leaning telegraph poles and old ties still lie scattered along them, as if someone walked away and forgot what to do with them. Those are the tracks I like to stand beside. I like the grass covered rails leading off around the next corner into the fields or woods to disappear with their stories.

Give Me A Break, PETA

2010-04-20T16:32:00.001-07:00

At one time the humble sardine provided Mainers with thousands of jobs along the coast, particularly Downeast, where paid work today is a vanishing commodity. Seiners went out with their nets and returned with holds loaded with little, silver fish, which were headed, gutted and packed away in often times colorful, flat cans to be shipped all over the world.
During the Vietnam War they could be purchased in the PX tent along with crackers and consumed as a snack along with a favorite beverage when off duty.
But like the shoe and textile industries, the forest product industry and farming, the sardine industry is about to become a thing of the past, with the last cannery in the entire US in Prospect Harbor, ME closing.
For those of you who don’t know it, Prospect Harbor is not one of the economic boom areas of the country. Maine has turned its back on its old industries. Despite all the promises of a legion of political candidates, Maine has turned its back on any industry to become a haven for wealthy retirees and yuppies with enough in the trust fund to open trendy shops for tourists. Bring forward a proposal for a business, even an environmentally friendly one like wind or tidal power generation, and a “Friends of” group will spring up, in their LL Beans finery, decrying how the proposal will destroy “their corner of heaven,” or even life as we know it. Forget the facts, just don’t mess with my view.
But, I digress. A possible buyer has been found to purchase the Prospect Harbor factory and process lobster, allowing more of our largest marine catch to be turned into a value added product right here instead of being shipped to Canada. The state government hasn’t, in the recent past been overly friendly towards the lobster industry in spite of its impact on the economy, but nonetheless, here is an opportunity to help it.
In one of the stupidest moves (I’m not going to euphemize it, it is bone headed stupid) I have ever seen any group do, PETA has written a letter to the governor protesting the sale. According to the Portland Press Herald: “PETA official Tracy Reiman says ‘lobsters and fish are smart, sensitive and unique individuals who should be respected, not killed and canned.”
Got news for you, Tracy. Lobsters are bugs, genetically related to grasshoppers. They are neither smart nor are they nice. They are cannibals. In fact, if left alone in a trap, they will attack and eat each other. I’ve also never really noticed anything particularly intelligent about fish either, although our 14 year old gold fish could recognize me through the glass and beg for food. Oh yeah, lobster is low fat, fish high in omega 3, so where are we going to get that? Birch bark? Nature made the food chain, and we, fortunately, sit fairly near the top. It’s all part of the circle of life.
I’m sure Ms. Reiman is adequately paid as an official of PETA, but the former sardine workers are now just receiving unemployment compensation. Isn’t it time we think of them?
By the way, I have no problem boiling a lobster.

Free Shipping

2010-04-19T21:52:00.000-07:00

Buy your copy soon!

The Hit Man

2010-03-25T13:08:00.000-07:00

There once was a hit man named Artie, who specialized in strangling his victims. One day he performed a hit on a friend's ex-wife as a favor, but being a professional, he said he had to charge, but only asked for one dollar, to protect his image. The hit was to take place in the parking lot of the local Shop 'n Save. As the woman drove into the parking lot, Artie noticed that she had a boyfriend with her, which meant he had to be dealt with. Artie jumped him first, strangled him and then turned on the ex wife, strangling her. The manager of the store, alerted to the scuffle going on outside, ran to the scene and was strangled himself before the police arrived and secured Artie.
The headline in the paper the next day read, "Artie Chokes Three For A Dollar At Shop 'n Save."

The School Hot Lunch Program

2010-03-06T17:41:00.000-08:00

Once I became a first grader, one of the big kids, who had to be at school during the morning and the afternoon, I became aware of the hot lunch program at school. Many of us lived within walking distance of the school and were excused at noon to walk home to a bowl of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup or a peanut butter sandwich. That’s right, I did not say peanut butter and jelly as my mother had not mastered that concept yet, and I was forced to choke down, on sandwich day, two slices of Holsum bread with an arid layer of Peter Pan peanut butter between them.
The bus kids, and those whose mothers worked during the day marched down to the room which, at Longfellow School, served as the gymnasium, assembly room and cafeteria. At one end was the stage for presentations and plays, the other end held the kitchen, serving window and highly varnished picnic tables. For $.25 a kid could buy a ticket for a hot meal and a ½ pint bottle of milk or for $.03, a ticket which scored him just a milk, if mom sent him to school with his Roy Rogers lunch box with a sandwich. My Hopalong Cassidy lunch box, contained a thermos bottle, and so I would be relieved of the necessity of even that expense.
The hot lunch program was funded, not by the Department of Education, as one might think, but by the Department of Defense. Its purpose was not to keep us healthy learners as the concept of “a hungry child can’t learn,” wasn’t in vogue. It was borne out of the need to insure that our generation could provide enough healthy cannon fodder when the time came, and that the girls would become brood stock for another generation of soldiers. The Great Depression had created so many malnourished youngsters, you see, that the government was alarmed at the number of young men rejected medically for military service during World War II.
Lunches at home were pretty mundane. In addition to what I’ve described above, there was Franco American spaghetti, a plate of elbow macaroni with orange shake cheese or good old, healthy baloney. We didn’t expect any more than that, and we knew what it was, even though no one had ever seen a healthy balone, from which the baloney came, grazing in a pasture.
One nearly forgotten rainy day in the first grade, I did not want to walk home in my heavy, oil skin raincoat with hat that didn’t turn when my head did, giving me a limited field of vision, so I conned a quarter out of my mother to eat a hot lunch. At noon, I watched the walkers leave, lined up and filed to the cafeteria with those, who were already veterans of the lunch room. As we neared the first floor, my nose was assaulted by a warm, damp smell. I stood in line, received from one of the hair-netted lunch ladies a thick, white plate with a green band, which I could barely hold, and shuffled down the line as the food was ladled onto the plate. At the end of the line I was given a ½ pint glass bottle of milk. I found a seat with some of my friends, some of whom started to eat, and looked at the plate. There was a distinguishable glop of what looked like mashed potatoes, unlumpy like my mothers. Over this was spread a mass of brown. Yup, brown it was. I suppose it was meat and gravy, but to a finicky first grader, any thing unrecognizable was nauseating. I picked at it, drank the milk, developed a roaring headache and was scolded by some female authority figure as I emptied an almost full plate into the trash when the bell rang.
At home that night, I still felt sick, and my father, like most of his generation to whom the three squares a day of army food were a welcome relief from the poverty of their childhoods, was not sympathetic. “When you get into the army,” he warned, “You’ll eat it or starve.” I heaved at that.
From then on, I avoided staying in for lunch until junior high, when a 20 minute lunch period and a two mile round trip walk forced me to bring a lunch and watch others try to put the meals down. We were now eating out of bilious green sectional trays and the milk bottles had become cartons. The meal I remember the most, not only because of its frequency, but because to this day I’ve never seen anything as revolting served to free citizens. It was called, “Canadian bacon.” It was, in reality, fried baloney, and so help me the edges of it were gray-green.
The food in the Army, by the way, with the exception of the C-ration of ham and lima beans, was pretty good. One of my first extra duties as a lieutenant was mess officer, and later in the reserves, I served as director of instruction at the Army’s food service school at Ft. Lee, VA. But… Anything after those school hot lunches would have been good.

A Tribute To Poopy

2010-02-17T18:06:00.000-08:00

They laid Poopy to rest today.
Actually, his name was Wayne and only two years older than I. I had always thought him to be much older, but as a four year old, the six year olds, already in school, seemed much older, and the kids in Harpswell grew up faster than we soft kids uptown.
Nicknames often come from some indiscretion or something done by accident during early childhood, and he was no exception to that. The story goes that when he first started school, he had an accident, which left him with full pants. The old family farm was just down the road from the one room school house, so the teacher sent him home for clean clothes. Being no slouch, he realized he had stumbled on, as we used to say in the Army, “a good sham,” and so several days later, he unloaded his problems, and took the short walk home. After several leaves of absence, his mother sent a letter to the teacher, instructing her that if Wayne were to do this again, “Let him sit in it.” The next event was the last, but the effect it had on his fellow students gave him the name “Poopy,” which never left him.
His obituary said he was an avid hunter. Well, that was an understatement, as the terms “poaching” and “jacking” were often associated with his name, and as late as this past fall, he was allegedly pinched by game wardens for taking a shot at an entrapment decoy placed near the side of the road. It also said he loved entertaining people with “anecdotes.” This was quite true, and the majority either stared or ended with “Gawd, boy.” Or “Gawd, boy, did you ever…”
But I’m not writing this to make fun of an early childhood incident or to put him in the role of rural buffoon. Wayne was a salt of the earth type of guy, who was a friend to everyone, and those who knew him all had stories about him. The fact is, with Wayne’s passing, a bit of what made Harpswell an interesting place, has disappeared and we are becoming less a community and spiraling deeper into the bland retirement community for people from away that we are rapidly becoming.
Rest in peace, Poopy. We’ll miss you.

A Short Review

2010-02-16T13:32:00.000-08:00

Your book is by far the most realistic one on soldiering in ‘Nam I have read to date. It is very obvious (even to those who might not personally know you) that you were there and lived this. It is also really “close to home” for those of us who shared that experience. You really captured it – the good, bad and ugly – and poignant. It truly is a masterpiece and I thank you for writing it and for getting me a copy.

The Porkasaurus On The Plane

2010-02-03T13:00:00.000-08:00

As I came around the corner into the gate for the flight to Boston, I would hear a cigarette, raspy voice whining on a cell phone about something or other. The owner of said voice was a rotund woman with spandex pants and black nail polish. As the only seats available were next to her, we sat down to await our turn to be called into the steerage class Delta Airlines calls “zone four.”
“If there is a God,” I thought, “She will not sit near me.” And the odds were she wouldn’t. As I was trundling my bag down the aisle looking for Row 14, I would see ahead of me, this same personage splayed out across three seats in one aisle, close, I determined to row 14.
I almost screamed when I saw, that it was indeed Row 14. Her body and possessions occupied not only her assigned seats, but Susan’s and mine as well. She turned around and asked if I was sitting there, and not wishing to appear friendly, I curtly replied, “Yes.”
So she squeezed herself into her seat and half of mine and retrieved her Sudoku book and a “what’s happening in Hollywood” magazine. Her 40lb love handles spread across the seat arm and down into my space. For all I knew she could have had 40lbs of C-4 strapped to her arms. I sat down and wiggled myself into place. I thought, “My God, she makes Jabba the Hut look svelte.” With Susan in place on the other side I had the choice of having my arms crushed so tightly against my ribs that I would need a CPAP to get enough air to last the trip or spend the time leaned over at a 45 degree angle. I know on the afternoon, “you are all beautiful, empowered victims” talk shows we learn that fat people have rights, but what about mine?” I didn’t Twinkie myself into invading someone else’s personal space.
Anyway. The plane took off using a whole lot of runway. The personage next to me fell asleep, and immediately began to exude odors most foul. Susan looked at me, but she could tell from years of marriage that had it been me, she would have detected a look of either triumph, ecstasy, or a smirk. She saw neither, and I meanwhile was drifting back to the captain’s discussion of how the cruise ship we had returned from dealt with black water, cleansing it, and pumping it overboard where it would be sucked up, desalinated and become our drinking water.
For two hours, we sat, thigh pressed to thigh, but it was not like any of my teenage fantasies, I can tell you. When the stewardesses brought around pretzels and peanuts, I wondered if rubbing the salt on this slug person would cause her to shrivel and give me Lebensraum. She snarfed down a bag of pretzels.
Eventually we landed safely in Boston, caught the Concord bus and arrived back to find the house had maintained a 49 degree temperature, so the pipes weren’t frozen and the electricity was on. That made it a good trip.

Winter Late Afternoon

2010-01-17T14:42:00.000-08:00

On the shore a soft northerly breeze barely ripples the charcoal gray water at half tide. The air is heavy with the coming snow. Behind the ledge that is Martha’s Island I can hear the honk of a Canada goose. Somewhere in the growing dark small sea ducks squeak as they skitter across the surface of the water, but I cannot see them. Then a pair of black ducks flies by the outer ledge. Most of the houses along the shore are dark. Just above the black horizon are the blinking red lights of communications towers scattered around the area.
When my girls were very small, we would go down to the shore on Christmas Eve to determine if one of those beacons might not, in fact, be Rudolph’s red nose. The lights from the naval air station to the north no longer flash across the night sky, a reminder that the planes that came and went for many years, will come no more.
Coming up the hill, I can see the lights from my aunt’s house next door through the trees. It has been rented now, and it is good to see them again.
Then I come into the light and the warmth of the wood stove.

That Awful English Spelling or, I Live In A Ghotiing Community

2010-01-07T16:28:00.000-08:00

Most of us remember the joys of spelling class, and how we succeeded or failed at learning to cope with the oddities of the English language. My oldest daughter was a whiz in the first grade but by her second year we realized she was dyslexic and couldn’t spell. Her early success: The teacher always stood over her holding the list, and she could see the words through the backlit paper, and could write the letters in appropriate order even though she was seeing them backwards.

If you look at our spelling, it’s a wonder any of us learn it well enough to pass. Take the word ghoti. It’s a simple word we use almost daily: “Fish.” Take the GH from “cough,” the O from “women,” and the TI from “nation” and there you have it: Fish.

How about Ghoughpteighbteau. Another common word. Take the GH from “hiccough” the OUGH from “through,” the PT from “ptomaine,” the EIGH from “neigh,” the BT from “debt,” and the EAU from “bureau,” you have….. POTATO.

So you see, back in those distant school days, it really wasn’t your fault.

Christmas 1944

2009-12-26T07:02:00.000-08:00

My family gathered together this Christmas for my father, now 90 years old, to read the Christmas stories he has been reading for 62 years now. Every year we get out the 1947 Giant Golden Book with the beautiful illustrations by Corrine Malvern and his once strong voice falters over the words to “The Cobbler and His Sons”, “The Peterkins’ Christmas” “The Harper”, and finally “The Night Before Christmas.” In recent years we have discussed having one of us younger people read the stories, but his is the voice of them, and sadly will be extinguished sometime in the future.
When St. Nicholas had finally wished everyone a happy Christmas as he drove out of sight, my father raised his hand for silence and said, “We have to remember one of us is not here, but in Korea, and we must think of her tonight. (My youngest daughter, a captain in the Air Force Intelligence is currently on active duty at Osan AFB in South Korea.)
He then continued, “We all have Christmases that stand out above all others. Mine was the Christmas of 1944.”
In the dark of December 14, 1944, the 104th Infantry Division, of which he was a platoon leader, was lying on the ground outside of the German village of Merken, on its drive into Aachen. The village, currently held by the Wehrmacht, was to fall victim to a Time On Target, an artillery operation in which every available gun, from small mortars to the largest howitzer is fired in such an order that the entirety of the fire falls at once. The effect, not only on the buildings, but the people in them is devastating. In the aftermath of the TOT, the 104th scrambled forward into the rubble to clear out any remaining resistance. Coming upon an anti-tank gun in a bombed out house, my father ordered his platoon to cover him while he and another man rushed in, releasing a salvo of semi-automatic fire into the basement where the enemy had taken cover, killing one and wounding another. The remainder of the stunned Germans stumbled out, blood flowing from their noses and ears, to surrender. In the course of the night, he doesn’t know exactly, as shock can deaden pain, he was hit in the knees by shrapnel, probably from a hand grenade and given first aid by a German medic, a veteran of the Russian front, happy to be a prisoner of the Americans, and then evacuated to a MASH for surgery.
“I was in Paris on December 25 and put on a plane with other wounded and flown to England,” he said. “I’ll never forget when we arrived: they were singing Christmas carols. They were singing about peace on earth, and yet we were out in the mud doing just the opposite.” His voice choked for as second and continued. “At that time the Germans we were fighting were often 12 and 14 year old kids. We captured this one young soldier and brought him back to our orderly room. He broke down crying. All he wanted to do was to go home for Christmas to be with his mother.” He paused. “I wonder if he is still alive.” And then he wept.

The Christmas Pageant

2009-12-20T11:31:00.000-08:00

In those days a decree went out for children third grade and above, who wished to participate in the annual church pageant, should gather at the church vestry at the appointed afternoon in early December. I do not remember which afternoon, but it was probably a Saturday. Gangs of us showed up, as the prospect of being a shepherd, wise man or angel was as much of a part of getting to Christmas as opening another window of an advent calendar, which, at the time, we did not have.
The annual director was Mrs. Leighton, a woman short in stature, but a giant in spirit and patience. The younger boys were automatically assigned roles as shepherds, the girls as angels. For the latter, the only other option fell to one anointed older girl, that being the part of Mary. For the older boys there was the opportunity to be a wise man or Joseph, but the former was the role to which I aspired because of the cool costumes available.
Along the north wall of the vestry was a bench, which unknown to those of us participating for the first time, opened to reveal a wonderment of costumes made from old curtains and bathrobes, pie tin halos, and interesting things like a brass lamp that appeared to have escaped from Aladdin, a brass incense burner, small jewelry box, two crowns and a fez, probably from antique lodge paraphernalia.
Once a week, we trekked down to the church, each rehearsal a step closer to the great day.
The final product was extremely simple: there were no speaking parts for us. The church, a unique wooden structure from the late 1840’s built in the self-supporting Gothic style, was lined with fir garlands and behind the pulpit a large tree with white decorations. Candles were placed in holders at the end of each pew and lit by the ushers. Then, the Dean of Bowdoin College would climb into the pulpit and the voice of Christmas would resonate throughout the church as he read from the King James bible, with the “lo’s” “Fear not’s,” and “swaddling clothes,” now eliminated from the modern, “relevant” story.
He would begin with the decree from Caesar Augustus, at which point, Mary and Joseph would take places in the front while the congregation sang “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem.” When he came to the shepherds and the visitation of the angels, we would all take our places in the front along with singing of “It Came Upon A Midnight Clear” and “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.”
During the latter, we shepherds would scurry down the side aisles to the back of the church only to troop back up the center aisle to adore the Baby, with the singing of “Oh Come All Ye Faithful.”
Then it was the turn of the three older boys who played the kings. Each would solemnly pace down the aisle, one to each of the verses. When all the players were in place, the other children in church were invited to bring their gifts down front to place in front of the manger. In my early days, these were still gifts of items like warm socks and small toys which were sent to the recovering countries of Europe. (That’s how old I am.)
The lights would then be dimmed, the church illuminated only by candle light, and we would finish with “Silent Night.” As the last verses fell away, we would put on our coats and head for home, for whatever traditions our families had, darkness would take its deep winter hold, and we would sleep, awaiting the arrival of Santa Claus.

Christmas 1952

2009-12-13T11:37:00.000-08:00

The graying December sky and a rare trip to church this morning bring to mind Christmases so long ago to me now that they are almost just a whisper in time.
By December 12 (today) we would be well into the gathering excitement of the season.
The big Sears and Montgomery Wards catalogs arrived early with a hint of what was on the horizon.
Coming home from my cousins’ on Thanksgiving Day in the late afternoon, would find the fire department in Brunswick, Maine stringing fir garlands woven with colored lights across the width of Maine St. Santa Claus would have already made an appearance, standing in a cardboard chimney mounted on the back of a Treworgy’s furniture store pick-up truck, as he cruised the streets of town, tossing candy to the kids who lined the way. The store itself would have been transformed. The basement would have found the customary beds and mattresses hidden away to replaced by a toy department with the Big Guy himself sitting on an elevated chair at the far end, awaiting the horde of over-stimulated, runny nosed kids standing in line out onto the sidewalk. Christmas was here!
On Maine Street, the windows were decorated with ornaments, merchandize and snowflakes stenciled from Glass Wax window cleaner. Woolworth’s and Grant’s expanded their toy departments to include anything any kid could want, and the Firestone Store at the end of the street advertised new, shiny bicycles, Flexible Flyers, and sports equipment.
Early in the season we would drive down to Harpswell, which in those days, was driving out into the country and hike through the dense thickets off High Head Road (now Mountain Road) and drag out of the frozen low grounds a spindly fir tree which we would take home and store in the garage. To be Christmas, it could only be balsam fir.
We decorated our classrooms at Longfellow School with paper chains, and snowflakes had drawn names for the party, and soon a Christmas tree would appear in the back corner of each room.
In the afternoon we all gathered around frozen puddles and stumbled between the tufts of grass on our skates or ran and belly flopped onto our sleds to slide across the ice. The sky would become a deep purple as lights came on up and down the street. I used to think of the verse in the Bible about the lion and the lamb lying down together as even the neighborhood bullies became decent for the time, as even the skeptics wanted to make sure they didn’t blow it with Santa Claus.
My first memory of church on Christmas Eve was the candlelight service held at the First Parish Church in Brunswick in 1952. My father had just returned from Germany and his active duty during the Korean War. The church was actually lit by real candles in an event that insurance and fire codes have long since ended. The “big kids” put on the pageant with a reading of the appropriate Bible verses by the dean from Bowdoin College, whose voice, for years, was the sound of Christmas in Brunswick, ME. At the end of the service everyone, even this six year old, was given a candle, with the flame passed from person to person. The congregation filed out to the front of the church and stood on the sidewalk in the lightly falling snow (I remember snow, whether from reality or nostalgia) and sang “Silent Night.” I could not wait until I was old enough to participate in the service.
When the last notes died away, with much “Merry Christmasing,” we all dispersed and came back to our own Christmas tree, with the lights glowing in the darkened room, my father reading the Christmas stories he still reads to his grown grandchildren today, hanging a stocking my mother had dyed red and affixed our names with Elmer’s glue and glitter dust, and wondering if I would ever fall asleep.
Sleep would eventually come and Christmas would pass into another memory.

Political Correctness Run Amok

2009-11-30T11:54:00.000-08:00

I’ve waited a few weeks to comment on the events at Ft. Hood in which Maj Nadil Hasan gunned down his fellow soldiers in a processing center there. The inevitable gnashing of teeth, finger pointing and the “how could this have happened?”elicit a big “Duh” from me. For anyone who has served not only in the military but in any other public/governmental agency, it is no surprise: political correctness.
Personnel in Maj Hasan’s chain of command were aware of his radical Islamic leanings, but no one did anything. Why? Simple, it was a matter of self preservation. Had anyone complained about him, his career would have been over. He/she would have been branded racist and if not summarily dismissed, would have been referred to sensitivity training and the resulting comment on their records would have prevented any further advancement.
In the American military, one cannot remain, say, at the rank of captain even if that is the level he or she is most comfortable or competent. All must stand for promotion and if not selected, they are removed from active duty. So absurd is the system that promotions are often based on a mandatory full length picture of the applicant. If one “does not look like a major,” that person can be denied promotion. Thus a comment on one efficiency report can finish a person who has rendered good and faithful service for many years. The easiest way to kill a person’s career, it is said, is to “condemn with faint praise.” Only water walkers need apply.
And what about Maj. Hasan himself? His performance had been described as “inadequate” but he was nevertheless promoted to the rank of major. There are many former officers not promoted thus, simply because it was noted that 12 years before as a brand new lieutenant, their uniforms did not fit exactly as the rater wanted. This in spite of the fact that their service had been exemplary. Again to not promote someone in a minority group would be career suicide for someone.
I often wonder what has happened to our meritocracy, when promotions can be made based on racial quotas rather than skill and quality of performance. Discrimination against any group is wrong. In this case the political correcting of our society has ended the lives of 14 good people and ruined the lives of many more.

The Thoughts Of An Old Army Friend

2009-11-08T16:07:00.000-08:00

I thought I would share the kind words of an old Army friend, with whom I was stationed at Ft. Hood and after our tours in Vietnam at the Army Intelligence School at Ft. Holabird, MD. I received it in an email a week or so ago. I am humbled.
"…when I read it, I went into an unusual (for me) slow-down mode. As agonizing as it was to read your experiences (much worse than my being a REMF who only spent about 12 days and nights with ground-pounding units), I needed to read every line carefully to get the full flavor… I loved the book and only wonder why you didn’t call it a memoir rather than a novel. Even though I knew the author had survived, my heart was in my throat every time I started a new chapter. I agonized over every firefight, even every decision you had to make. I had fewer worries about my ability to function under fire, which I had to do a few times. I was less confident of my ability to lead troops without getting anyone killed unnecessarily. I would have been glad to have been led by a leader like you developed into. I know command is not a popularity contest, but I enjoyed the interaction of you and your men. There seemed to be a far smaller asshole quotient in the field, even with your first six, than what you faced in the rear. I anguished over your plight with the 191st and grieved when some soldiers I’d come to respect in your old unit were killed. I share your feeling of helplessness and rage at the injustice…
Your book has inspired me to dig out the series of taped messages I sent my parents during my year in the Nam. Not to write a memoir, but to see what I had to say at that time and recall some names of people I admired as well as those I didn’t."

Political Correctness: Quatsch!

2009-10-31T13:26:00.000-07:00

Down at the shore I found a seagull feather stuck upright in the cultch facing, trembling into the southwest wind like a weathervane. The sou’westerly was driving the late autumn gray water up the channel against Wilson Ledge out in the middle of the bay, and the motion of the white caps looked like the white manes of horses racing up towards Brunswick where the ocean ends. And it made me think of how the ancient sea peoples all had beliefs of sea gods and spirits either astride horses or driving them in chariots. Sometimes when the air is more still you can hear the clucking and cooing of distant sea ducks, sounding like human voices. It is easy to see where the myths came from.
But I digress. I can do that, along with starting a sentence with a conjunction, because this is my space, and I am not submitting it for a grade. Besides, my two favorite story tellers, Garrison Keillor and Gary Anderson of the Harpswell Anchor newspaper, do it all the time, much to the enrichment of their tales. Mind you, I have nothing against English teachers. My instructors from junior and senior years in high school, Bob Hart and John Smith, members of the Greatest Generation, were truly inspiring and taught an immature kid how to write and think like an adult, even if he didn’t act like one. (I still don’t!)
But it wasn’t ancient sea myths that caught my attention. It was the fact that as a kid, I would have picked up the feather, tied a ribbon around my head and lit up into the woods to pretend I was an Indian. Now, playing that role was certainly not to denigrate Native Americans. We thought they were really cool. We wanted to be them.
Anyway, that thought led quickly, as my synapses started clicking, to the fact that kids can’t enjoy being kids. Those of my generation remember the excitement of cutting witches, ghosts and jack o’lanterns out of construction paper and plastering our classroom with them. Can’t do that anymore. Inappropriate. It promotes witchcraft. The Germans have a great word for that: Quatsch! It is pronounced, Kvatsch, by the way, and is a polite substitute for “Bull Shit.”
Christmas? The kids can’t even wish each other a merry one. My kids were not allowed to sing Christmas Carols, but they were made to sing Hanukah songs, and the Christmas assembly was watered down to a “winter assembly.” Am I missing something here? As I remember the one Jewish boy in my class, a friend to everyone and all round good guy, had as much fun with it as we did.
Valentines Day? Nope, can’t do that either. We spent days cutting out pink and red hearts, turned doilies into what passed as greetings and had a nice afternoon party. No one was excluded. We all, even us unpopular and ugly ones, looked forward to it. Grade school kids don’t care what you look like. We all got cards punched out of cheap sheets and all ate cake with pink icing, so that our mothers didn’t need to plan for supper that night.
Easter? Forget it. I don’t even need to go there.
The fact is, in our society’s wimpy and pathetic attempts to offend absolutely no one, we have watered everything down to the point where kids of today will have no memories.
I’ve got news: Life has winners and losers. I don’t believe in telling an eight year old he or she is already a loser, but our timid approach to everything is not a learning moment.

Influenza

2009-10-24T17:19:00.000-07:00

I think I am the only person of my age who has any memories of the influenza pandemic of 1918. The memories of which I speak, are passed down, for there is no one left alive in my family who was old enough to have actually experienced it first hand. There are, however, vivid reminders of it at my aunt’s house in New Hampshire in the form of a small, white christening dress and a china headed doll, which once belonged to my Aunt Grace.
Grace was the oldest child of my grandparents, a bright, honey haired child, the darling of the neighborhood according to all accounts. In 1918, she and my uncle, who was about four years old and my two grandparents were the beginnings of a family which would, over the years, produce six children. My grandfather was working in Memphis, TN, designing sporting equipment, and my grandmother had returned with the two children to Chicopee, MA to be with her parents while she awaited the arrival of my father, whom she was carrying at the time.
Coincidently, my maternal grandfather was working in Springfield, MA as a civil engineer for the Boston and Maine Railroad.
The epidemic, by all accounts was frightening and ugly, for it cut down children and young adults in their prime, with extreme swiftness. Combat operations in World War I were held up as both sides dealt with devastating casualties, not from bullets but from viruses. It spread with such an alarming speed that it is still not known today, how and why it spread as fast as it did. Many, who would contract the disease, would survive and start to recover only to be stricken with pneumonia, which their weakened bodies could not resist.
Among those stricken were my Aunt Grace and Uncle Jim. My frantic grandmother called the local doctor, who came and made his assessment, “The little girl will be fine, but I’m afraid for the lad.” Grace began to recover but quickly worsened and became a casualty of the great epidemic. My uncle, however, did survive. But in her way, Grace lived on. When I was small, the whole family spoke of her as if she were just someone living too far away to visit, even though Uncle Jim was the only one who had known her. In that doll and small dress, she is still present in the family home.
My other grandfather, in the meantime, fell ill, and while lying abed in the front room of the house he was renting, could see the continuous funeral processions going by his window. Not a comforting sight, I am sure. Every home on his street lost someone.
Now, perhaps to even the score, I have never had the flu at all. In fact, I have only had one flu shot, inflicted on my by the Army in 1968 when there was fear of another big outbreak. In Vietnam, a medic flew out to the field to re-inoculate us against bubonic plague, but not the flu. As a 6th grader (1957-58), the Asian flu swept through emptying out schools. In my class of 25 or so, only Billy Field, who came to school in the winter with no socks, ill fitting hand-me-down shoes and no lunch, and I were the only ones untouched. In the panic of the ‘70’s even though, as a teacher I lived in the bacterial/viral soup that is an old school building, I was unaffected. And, I’m not losing sleep over H1N1. Maybe Aunt Grace is looking out for me. If she is, “Thank you.”

Leaf Peepers

2009-10-12T17:15:00.001-07:00

I have spent the last two weekends in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, which are well known for the brilliant colors produced by the deciduous trees as one last orgasm before they go into suspended animation for the winter. Maples, poplars, birches and beeches turn from their various hues of green into gold, yellow and bright red. The oaks, meanwhile, less boisterous turn a dignified rust. The mountains, once stripped of their trees for a voracious timber industry have recovered, and are more than eager to show off that they have not been defeated. In the valleys, the small, gravel bottomed rivers are alive with the yellow and red boats the leaves make as they drift away toward the ocean on the gold water.
It is beauty such as this, that people from the world over come to marvel. But do they really see anything? The main highways coming in and out can be bumper to bumper with crawling traffic. But out in the mountains, one can still be very much alone, sometimes within feet of even the inter-state which follows the Pemigewassett River up into the mountains. Why?
The answer is simple: the people who come to see the beauty of nature flock into the several tourist towns along the road to buy trinkets made in the orient and decide which faux Nordic sweater or piece of Scotland they are going to take home with them. I suppose the area needs the business, and retail is what keeps the economy going, but I have never been able to fathom why folks would want to drive into such a special place and just shop. Why not stay home and do it, for God’s sake.
Ah but wait. If those who came for the foliage actually wanted to see it, I would not be able to enjoy the easy solitude of the mountains even on Columbus Day. Keep shopping, people.

The Songs My Grandmother Sang

2009-09-28T16:38:00.001-07:00

My grandmother was the quintessential grandmother. She was jolly, rotund, and since we could never get her angry, we never tried. One of the things I will never forget about her, is how she suddenly would burst into song. Sometimes it was a hymn; “Come Thou Almighty King” was a frequent, or songs from long ago wars such as “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the boys are marching;” from the Civil War or “I have come to say goodbye Dolly Gray,” from the Spanish American War, a time she experienced as a child. The frustrating thing about these tunes, was she would usually only belt out the first lines or perhaps, in the case of a hymn, the first verse.
Often the songs she sang were from her school days. “Dicky Bird, Dicky Bird, Dicky Dicky Bird; How I’d like to fly with you; Dicky, Dicky Bird,” would come echoing out of the old camp window into the surrounding beech wood, where she and my grandfather lived. “Up the airy mountain, down the rushy glen; We dare not go a’hunting for fear of little men,” I later learned was from a poem by William Butler Yeats. “A hunter on the hill, who gallops forth at early dawn to shoot the startled deer; All fresh at early dawn;” was a German folk song, “Der Jaeger aus Kurpfalz.” Her elementary education predated World War I when things German fell out of fashion.
But there was one little song she sang, and again, only the first verse, that always touched something with me. “Come little leaves, said the wind, one day; Come over the meadows with me and play.” I could always picture the leaves of past summers being blown over the fields as summer ended. Even now I remember the tune, and recently found the entire poem, which I am attaching. If I close my eyes, I can still recall past autumns and meadows, long since disappeared under construction, and hear my grandmother singing to us the lament of a dying summer.
Come Little Leaves
COME LITTLE LEAVES
by George Cooper

"Come, little leaves" said the wind one day,
"Come over the meadows with me, and play;
Put on your dresses of red and gold;
Summer is gone, and the days grow cold."

Soon as the leaves heard the wind's loud call,
Down they came fluttering, one and all;
Over the brown fields they danced and flew,
Singing the soft little songs they knew.

"Cricket, good-bye, we've been friends so long;
Little brook, sing us your farewell song-
Say you're sorry to see us go;
Ah! you are sorry, right well we know.

"Dear little lambs, in your fleecy fold,
Mother will keep you from harm and cold;
Fondly we've watched you in vale and glade;
Say, will you dream of our loving shade?"

Dancing and whirling the little leaves went;
Winter had called them and they were content-
Soon fast asleep in their earthly beds,
The snow laid a soft mantle over their heads.

My Grandfather's Favorite Joke

2009-09-20T17:25:00.000-07:00

You never think that your grandparents were once young, at least when you are young yourself. However my mother's father was young at one time, and the glimmers of his younger days would creep through in stories in which he usually referred to himself as "an observer."
He was a civil engineer, and oddity in the 1920's being a college graduate from the University of Connecticut in 1912. After working for several railroads and the United Fruit Company in Jamaica he ended up working for the Maine Highway Department, surveying and planning the roads that would push through the distant farmlands and forests to connect Maine's far flung towns. Often the survey crews were gone for weeks at a time, particularly in the winter, when travel home was impossible and they would be holed up in some northern town where the sole source of entertainment was the bar in the local "hotel." Many hotels in Maine, back in the day, were just bars with a few cots upstairs so that they could meet the letter of the law and sell hard liquor. I stayed in one such hotel back in 1964, but that is another story for another time.
At any rate, to fight boredom, the crew would invent things to do, and sometimes form "societies" and "clubs" which required an initiation, something the founders never did themselves, and the new guys were none the wiser. One such club was the Order of the Burning Straw. The initiate, probably well oiled by the time, would be required to drop his pants and hold a broom straw between the cheeks of his butt while it burned down to a stub.
But I digress. I remembered Poppa's favorite joke the other night just as I was falling asleep, and my chuckling forced my long suffering wife to ask why I was laughing at such an odd time.
The story goes as follows: There once was a medical student, who was prone to wild binge drinking, which usually left him hurling violently and then comatose. His friends admonished him telling him that some day he would "puke his guts out."
One weekend came, and after a particularly spectacular spewing event, he passed out. His fellow students went to the lab, and brought back some preserved intestines and organs, which they had been studying, laid them around the inebriate and left.
The next morning he appeared ghostly white and said, "You fellows were right. Last night I threw up my guts, but with the aid of God and a long handled tooth brush I got them back in."

Flatology

2009-09-09T16:55:00.001-07:00

Thirty years ago, my wife and I quit secure teaching jobs and moved into our unfinished house in Harpswell, ME along with a newborn daughter. I fancied myself an aquaculture pioneer, who, along with my two partners, were going to be the oyster barons of Casco Bay. We did realize that it would take some time and a lot of hard work before this came to pass, and also knew that we would not be able to pay ourselves for some time. So, for the first months, the time we still call the “winter of ham hocks and beans” we pulled through as best we could, eating copious amounts of soups made of various dried legumes, government cheese obtained from a senior center and beer made from molasses. I worked nights as a “checker” in the warehouse for LL Bean, a great job for someone with OCD and one weekend a month would travel to Rochester NH where I was commander of a US Army Reserve infantry company. I would spend the two weekend nights on a cot in the armory as the drive back and forth was too long. My days were spent on the water tending to our young oysters.
In the spring, when Heather was old enough to be left at a sitter, Susan got a job working for both the Regional Hospital in Brunswick and Bath Memorial Hospital as the infection control coordinator. I immediately assumed her job was to make sure the infections were equally spread between the two, and the doctors referred to her as “The Bug Lady.” One of her first scores was informing a physician he would wash his hands between patients.
One of the first friends she made was another nurse who had the job of continuing education coordinator. She became a dear friend and would come over to the house with her husband for visits.
On one memorable visit, she either had forgotten what it was I actually did, or wanted to find out just what it was I did, for she asked, “What is it you do?”
Without batting an eye, I replied, “I’m a doctor.”
“Aren’t you going to practice locally?” she asked, without hint of skepticism.
“Well, I’m on a hiatus while I try oyster farming. Besides, my specialty is very narrow, suited mainly for teaching hospitals, but I would be happy to come in and do workshops for the nurses, if you like.”
“What is your specialty?” she asked taking a mouthful of blueberry muffin.
“I’m a flatologist.”
At that point the muffin spewed across the kitchen counter in a spasm of laughter.
“I’m serious,” I said. “It is my experience that nurses are woefully trained in a subject that could be used in evaluation of a patient. I’ll bet you don’t even know what the three cornerstones of the science are.”
She allowed that she didn’t, but that I would probably tell her, and I obliged. “Tone, texture and bouquet,” I said. “Think about it. If people could not pass gas, they would blow up and explode. The human race never would have survived one generation. So, if you detect the hint of a rectal zephyr, don’t be grossed out, nay rejoice, for what you are witnessing is a life being saved.”
I never did give the workshop, although delivered the lecture many times to an adoring public, one of whom was my friend’s daughter. She used it as the core of a high school essay and was awarded an “A.” I realized that had I done the same in my day, I probably would have been suspended from school. How times have changed. And, by the way, the plural of flatus is “flati.”

Enterprise and Boxer: The Battle off Maine's Coast

2009-08-29T06:03:00.000-07:00

.

On September 5, 1813, during the War of 1812, the USS Enterprise, cruising the coast of Maine, encountered the brig HMS Boxer off Pemaquid Point and began a violent, brief battle which has entered US Naval lore and was memorialized in poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Although the Royal Navy had done little to blockade trade north of Cape Cod, as we shall see later, the Coast of Maine was nonetheless open to depredation by British warships and privateers. In once incident, linked to Harpswell, James Sinnett of Bailey Island and his brothers were engaged in fishing when hailed by a large vessel identifying itself as the US warship, Essex. When they came aboard, they were informed they were on the 18 gun HMS Rattler, and were prisoners! The captain loaded the Sinnett’s schooner with 20 Royal Navy seamen, who were then ordered to reconnoiter the coast. After a week, during which the brothers were well treated, their boat was returned and the Rattler sailed south.
In fact the Rattler sailed on into the mouth of the Merrimac River at Newburyport! The communities along the coast began to doubt the efficiency of the US Navy, and in response the Navy transferred the Enterprise to Portsmouth to patrol the area.
The Enterprise had recently returned from a mission familiar to today’s Navy. She had been engaged in combating pirates off the coast of Africa. Refitted as a brig and mounted with 16 guns, she was ready for business. The new captain, William Burrows, had recently arrived from Philadelphia and prepared her for sea.
In the meantime, the HMS Boxer, also rigged out as a brig and armed with 14 guns was making its way southwest from St. John, NB. Off the coast of Lubec, she sighted and captured a small sailing craft, which was “manned” by a group of women out for a sail. Samuel Blyth, the captain, had them brought aboard, informed them politely that perhaps they should confine their pleasure cruising closer in shore and released them, to return with stories of their adventures. By coincidence, one of the ladies was the wife of the militia commander in the area, who was so impressed with Blyth’s chivalrous behavior, that he placed advertisements in local newspapers announcing it. It is a poignant feature of this story is, that despite being at war, the combatants did not seem to hold any hostility towards one another.
Burrows left Portsmouth along the coast testing the speed and handling of his ship as he went. The winds were very calm, and the crew was engaged, from time to time in sweeping, and exhausting task, which involved the deployment of large oars from the side of the ship. On September 4, near Portland, the crew could hear cannon fire coming from the area near Sequin Island, but due to the calm weather, they were unable to close and determine its source.
By the morning of September 5, off Pemaquid, they sighted a ship at anchor in the harbor there. They watched as the strange vessel shook loose its sails and slowly came out to meet them. Lookouts in the masts saw three Union Jacks flying, and the crew of the Enterprise prepared themselves for a battle. But Burrows surprised them. He ordered the Enterprise to pull out to sea away from the approaching Britisher. His crew, spoiling for a fight, was outraged. However, they soon realized what their captain was up to: He was maneuvering his ship to get the wind advantage and test his own speed against that of the enemy. Around 2 PM Burrows ordered the “beat to quarters,” and the battle began with broadsides from both vessels. The black powder from the guns soon turned the area into a manmade fog bank.
Henry Wadsworth Longefellow’s poetic account tells of the citizens of Portland hearing the gunfire from the battle, but that was not true. From the top of the observatory, the keeper with a telescope could see the battle and called down its progress as he could see it. Inhabitants of Edgecomb and Wiscasset could hear the distant grumbling, however.
Aboard the ships life was a hell of fear and confusion. Lethal metal and wood fragments flew everywhere. Blyth was struck in the body and killed. Cpt. Burrows was hit in the groin by a musket ball fired from the Boxer’s tops and fatally wounded.
Using its superior speed, the Enterprise moved ahead of the Boxer, swung to starboard bringing its broadside to bear down the entire length of the doomed ship. The top of the enemy’s mainmast fell, bringing down much of the rigging. Pivoting the other way, the Enterprise raked the Boxer with another broad side.
It was evident the Boxer was finished. Second Lieutenant Tillinghast called across to his adversary asking if they were ready to quit. An officer shouted back they were not, but he was quickly pulled to the deck and a second officer declared they were. “Pull down your colors,” Tillinghast commanded. “We can’t.” came the reply, “They’re nailed up to the mast.” “Send some one up to cut them down. We’ll hold our fire.” And so the battle ended.
When presented with his dead adversary’s sword, the dying Burrows asked that it be returned to Blyth’s family and said, “I die contented.”
The Enterprise with Boxer following under control of a prize crew sailed slowly back passed Halfway Rock into Portland Harbor.
It is now known if any residents of Harpswell were down on the shore, for certainly anyone fishing off Bailey Island might well have been able to see the smoke and the distant thunder of the guns. That information, if it exists is not known.
In Portland Harbor, First Lieutenant Edward McCall, now in command of the Enterprise began the work of repair and personnel matters. He was quite surprised with he was approached by a local business man with a strange request. The gentleman represented a group of business people, he claimed, who had shipped in a boat load of English wool. They had engaged Blyth, while the Boxer was in St. John, and had in fact, given him a £100 note for protection. Their goods were aboard a Swedish vessel, Margaretta, and were escorted by the Boxer to the mouth of the Kennebec where, they had requested Blyth fire off a few cannon to make it appear that they had been chased into port. Would McCall sell them back the note for $500? The lieutenant was incensed at first, but the gentleman, obviously a smooth talker, convinced him that the wool was needed by the Army, and it was for that reason that this group of citizens was using the enemy’s navy for protection.
Yankee and English merchants were not adverse to continue trading with each other and a brisk trade apparently existed between Mainers and British ships hovering off shore. The commander of the fort built at Cundy’s Harbor at the time, for example, wanted to put a stop to it, and ordered all vessels leaving the Harbor pull in for inspection. One fishing vessel owned by a man named Dingley refused, and the guard at the fort fired, holing his boat, which barely made it back to shore. Whether that created more obedience to the rules, we do not know.
There were further prisoner issues to clear up. A group of fishermen from nearby Monhegan Island had approached the Boxer earlier, requesting that the surgeon come to the island to attend to an injured colleague. The kindly Blyth allowed him to go accompanied by two midshipman and an army officer passenger, who wanted to participate in some bird hunting.
Once they knew the battle was to be joined, they borrowed a rowboat to return, but were unable to catch up and had to return to the island where the inhabitants figured it would be a good idea to take their weapons, which were just fowling pieces. The four “guests,” watched the battle from the cemetery up the hill from the landing, and were returned to Portland to join their shipmates in captivity.
On September 9, both captains were buried side by side on Munjoy Hill in Portland with full military honors. The local authorities allowed their British prisoners to march in the parade and accompany their captain to his gravesite.
The Enterprise was repaired and ended her days in the Caribbean aground on a ledge, with no loss of life. The Boxer was also repaired, sold to private interests and ended her days as a merchantman.

The Selkie, for lack of a better title

2009-08-22T17:00:00.000-07:00

I like to snorkel. Hovering motionless over a world of waving seaweed and little fish flitting back and forth, it is probably the closest thing I will ever come to flying without the use of a parachute or hang glider. I also spend time floating with my hands behind my head, an ability I inherited from an uncle with an abnormally large lung capacity. He would lie back in the lake in front of his camp with a cigar clenched firmly between his teeth, as easily as if he were on an air mattress. He and my aunt had no children of their own, and with his Irish knack of telling stories and “inventing” the truth, he was a favorite of his nieces, nephews and any other kid who happened by for that matter. But that is another story.
Without a wetsuit, I stay in, until my core temperature reaches a critical point and then climb out on the rocks to sit in the sun. It all feels so natural. Perhaps it is a genetic memory from some bygone era when a webbed footed ancestor first left the sea to soak up the sun and avoid the fangs of some Precambrian sharkodont, or something like that. Or perhaps one of my early Scottish ancestors was a selkie, a mythical creature from Scotland and the surrounding islands, who was a seal while in the water and a man upon the land. I suspect there may have been more truth than myth to the story. My guess is, the creature was invented to explain the unexplained pregnancies in shore clinging communities, caused in actuality by some Norse sea raider, who came, had his way and then disappeared over the seas.
Today the clouds to the west and southwest were dark and foggy. Off shore was Hurricane Bill, too far to bring wind or rain, but he would be felt. While the wind was calm and the boats riding quietly at anchor, floating in the waters tucked away from the open ocean in Casco Bay, I could feel his pull. There was an almost imperceptible current that pulled at me as I tried to hover over a rock, watching the periwinkles cleaning algae, unaware of my presence.
At last the tide withdrew so I could no longer snorkel, the seaweed lay down on the rocks, and the shellfish closed up awaiting the return of the water. The plovers, chatting like a group of old men on the end of the point, removed to the rocks and sand to hunt for their meal. Hurricane Bill moved further off towards Nova Scotia, and I came up into the woods to resume my life on land. I put my webbed feet by the hose to wash off the salt water, and sat down to watch the Red Sox beat the Yankees in good, old Fenway.

Tourists and Other Stupid People

2009-08-16T16:32:00.000-07:00

I don’t really care much for idiots. Now, I’m not talking about someone who is ignorant because they haven’t been exposed to something, or someone who maybe doesn’t get it, but is at least giving it a try; what I’m talking about are the people who are so numb they not only don’t know anything, they don’t even suspect anything.
And amazingly many of them end up here in Maine either as tourists or new residents, who have “discovered” us. How they discovered us, when we knew we were already here is a bit beyond me, but maybe I’m stupid too. Anyway, the question has often occurred to me as to how these people got jobs that provided them enough money to get here, and how they found there way here in the first place.
Case in point, the stupidest newcomer of the summer of 2009. It is noon at the Harpswell Anchor newspaper office. It is always that time of the day when they drive into our yard to either buy something, which is good, or to ask for free stuff, which isn’t. They have all day, for God sake, why the stroke of noon when we are a mouthful into our deserved sandwich? A Subaru, good giveaway that the driver is probably and elderly woman, pulls into the parking lot, and a gray haired lady gets out, comes into the office, opens her purse and puts two letters on the table. As we stare in wonderment, she asks, “Aren’t you the Post Office?” When we respond in the negative, she replies, “Well, I saw a flag and a sign, so I figured you were.” Now our sign says, “Anchor Publishing,” which I guess where she came from was close. We then gave her directions, and when she left, I added, the building has a sign in front of it that says “Post Office.” Damn, and you know she probably had a college degree.
When I retired from state servitude, I was asked by a local commercial fisherman, a long time friend, if I would manage his wharf. That entailed weighing up crates of lobsters, filling and salting barrels of bait, and dealing with the occasional tourist who wanted the experience of buying “fresh” lobster. Inevitably, as I pulled a crate of live, flapping lobsters from the water, I would be asked, “Are those fresh?” Duh. “No,” I would reply, “They’re very well behaved.” This was usually greeted with the same expression, you’d get off a board fence.
The business was called “Dick’s Crabs & Lobsters.” One day an out of state car pulled up, a man got out and said, “Are you Dick?” “No,” I replied. “Well,” he said, “I’m a good friend of Dick and his boy, what’s his name,” and he always gives me lobsters at half price.” Yeah, really. “Well,” I replied, “When What’s His Name comes in, ask him.”
Most of the dumb questions involved crabs, and gave me the opportunity for great answers. Two identically attired gentlemen, one afternoon, asked “Where can we get crabs?” Huh, read the sign? “The toilet seat at the bus station is supposed to be a good place,” was my answer. The other common question was, “Do you have crabs?” “My response being, “Not since I used that soap the doctor gave me.”
One morning as I came up from the float, I found an elderly man and his wife in the bait shack going through the pockets of the pants and jackets the guys left to change into when they came back from a day’s fishing. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I just want to see what they carry with them?” was his innocent reply. “Could I go to your house and go through your stuff?” I asked.
“Of course not.”
“Then get the hell off this wharf, do not buy lobsters here, do not pass Go.”
We Mainers aren’t unfriendly, we just don’t like being seen as a giant, open air, petting zoo.

The Woodstock Generation

2009-08-09T17:16:00.000-07:00

I have often been asked if I attended the concert at Woodstock, and have been told that it "made us what we are today." To the former, I answer truthfully, "No," and to the latter, I politely reply that it has nothing whatsoever to do with who I am now or was at that time. You see, even if I had wanted to hitch a ride and sit in a rain soaked field to listen to music, I probably wouldn't have, although the free love part seemed intriguing, but I wasn't available at the time. I was in Vietnam, and not just In Country, but out in the middle of the jungle, as part of an infantry unit that basically lived there just as did our North Vietnamese colleagues. We did not watch the news on TV, did not get so see Bob Hope; none of that. That was for the REMF's, the Rear Echelon Mother, (you get the rest) So actually, we did not even know what it was or that it was even happening until the Special Services sent out a Life Magazine, which they did from time to time. You see, other than counting the days we had until we could get on the freedom bird back to The World, and letters from home, which arrived every two to three days, we were absolutely ignorant of anything going on outside of the grid square we happened to be located in at any given time.
It was the rainy season, and in the late afternoon, the skies would darken and open up in a deluge you might experience in a brief thundershower here, but over there, it lasted all night. It was rain that drowned out all sound in the complete darkness that was the jungle at night. Conversation was even difficult above the roar. For days at a time, we were soaked to the skin, covered with sores and depressed. So when the magazines arrived showing pictures of young hippies huddled under plastic bags at an event they voluntarily attended, we were less than sympathetic. There was no "wow" factor, only my medic's sardonic comment, "Ain't that some shit." To which we all responded with our form of agreement, "There it is."

The Joys of Flight

2009-08-02T14:36:00.000-07:00

This morning we rose at 4AM, or “oh dark thirty” to get my daughter to the Portland, ME airport for a 7AM flight to Atlanta with a connection to Fort Walton Beach, FL for an Air Force school starting tomorrow. We arrived at 5:30, looked at the arrival board to see her flight listed as “on time.” Not so fast! At the check in there was a group of tired, surly people and a handwritten sign saying the flight was cancelled. No reason given, no weather problems, my guess from the number of people, they just didn’t want to run it at a loss and were going to fill up their other, later flights. A check of the website listed the flight as canceled from Portland but on time to its Houston connection from Atlanta. Hmmm.
So the best we can do is a 3:40 PM, and reservations on the remaining two flights into Ft. Walton, in case something else goes awry. Which of course it did. The flight was boarded shortly after 3 and sat on the runway until five. So my daughter has now been up since 4 AM and will arrive too late to make any connection, which will necessitate spending the night on a bench, and will report in late and exhausted some time tomorrow.
Why can’t we do better than this? Why can’t we have high speed rail like the rest of the developed world? When you consider all the hoohah at the airports, the fact that they are outside of the cities one is trying to reach, the homeland security drills and just being yanked around by the airlines, one could get on a train, say in Boston and be in New York, downtown, in less time and be more comfortable.
That’s my rant, because I have driven to Portland twice today and feel jet lagged myself.

The Origin of New Words

2009-07-26T07:13:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I think about how languages change dramatically over the years. I guess that comes from not having much of a life. Consider, my high school German students could more easily decipher Middle German, spoken around 1200, than they could English spoken around 1000. And languages change fairly rapidly. The average person today could not read Old English, but would not find the English of 100 or so years later to be that difficult. In the span of history, that isn’t a very long time, two or three generations. If Old English had been spoken, say in 1909, we would have known people in our younger days who still spoke it. Pretty amazing, I would say, particularly when it just didn’t happen in one tiny village but all over the place. Most European languages that I am familiar with have made dramatic sound shifts at one time or another. German made one around 900AD. Look at the difference between the Spanish and Italian spoken today and the Latin that was its common tongue. The latter did not even have the definite article (“the”) The Germanic languages spoken by the Gothic tribes that invaded the areas during the collapse of the Roman Empire did, however. Perhaps that’s where it came from.
And then languages change on a personal family level. For example, since my oldest daughter Heather was born, the word “banana” has been replaced in our family language by “balana.” Breakfast has become “greface.” Rhododendrons have been replaced with “Road from Denvers.” My second daughter, Laura, interested in sports, introduced us to “lympics” and “nastics” for Olympics and gymnastics. To “train” for her coming Olympic, gymnastic career, she wore “norts” and “lockies,” or shorts and long socks. Even the beloved Red Sox have come into our speech as “The Lockies.” Since we are not important people, these will never make it into the common tongue, although I did hear my brother-in-law ask my sister for a “balana” the other day. If we were royalty maybe in 100 years, people would eat their greface under a Road from Denver.

My friend, Bob Hawkins

2009-07-16T17:10:00.000-07:00

When I started working for the Maine Department of Education in the early 1980’s, one of the first people I met and who befriended me was Bob Hawkins. Bob was in his early 60’s at the time, was small, like me, and had been a boxer in the Marines during WWII. This carried over to the way he would dance his boxer’s footwork down the halls of the office building, and jump his way up stairs as if he were jumping rope, just to show off that he could still do it. He had a puckish sense of humor, which he immediately used to get me into trouble with one of the secretaries.
Early on, I realized that I could tell Bob any joke, no matter how politically incorrect without him being offended, and one Monday, after learning the story of a leper in a bar at an Army Reserve drill, I decided to tell him.
A leper walked into a bar and asked the bartender if he could get a drink. When told yes, he gratefully thanked the man, saying, “I usually upset people, so it’s very nice of you to serve me.”
“No problem,” the barkeep replied, “We serve anyone. It doesn’t matter what you are, everyone is equal here.”
The leper then orders a gin and tonic, and as he raises his glass to drink, he notices the barman, go to the end of the counter and throw up in the trash can. When he returns, the leper orders a second drink, and sees the same thing happen. During the third drink, the poor bartender is retching violently with the dry heaves.
He returns to refill the leper’s glass, wiping his pale face with a towel. “I’m sorry, if my presence here makes you ill,” says the leper. “I’ll leave.”
“Oh no,” replies the embarrassed bartender, “It’s not you. It’s the guy next to you dipping his crackers in your arm.”
Bob nodded, and admitted it was a good story and suggested I tell it to one of the secretaries, an older woman, with children about my age. I demurred at first, but he called her over and said, “Bill, has a story he would like to tell you about a gentleman with Hansen’s disease.” Thus began the incident of the two innocents, she not knowing what Hansen’s disease was, and I not knowing that she was going to be totally grossed out. That was my third day on the job.
On my fourth day, Bob told our boss that we would be going over to the State Office Building to pick up a print order and that I should meet people in the other building. That part was true. What he didn’t tell me was that, as a native of the area, he felt it his duty to show me the old granite quarries nearby in Hallowell, so away we went down old single lane, unplowed roads. It was February, and when we tried to turn around we got stuck and he had to call his brother, a retired Army officer to pull us out. Neither he, nor our boss was particularly thrilled, but I didn’t get fired that day either. I think, Fred, our boss, realized there would be some entertainment value to the two of us.
Bob aspired to be a poet. When threatening rain clouds appeared, he would loudly exclaim that, “Those clouds look juicy.” And from this he came up with a little poem I’ve always remembered:
“Them juicy clouds are full of dew;
The rain is going to fall;
You’ll be needing your umbrella;
It’s a hanging in the hall.”
But the poem he always wanted to write and never finished, started with the memorable line:
“It’s a long, long way, I think, do you?
From Keetmanshoop to Katmandu.”
We struggled over that for months, and although I came up with a second line of:
“And farther still, I understand;
From Singapore to Samarkand.”
We were never able to finish what might have been a great poem.
Bob is gone now, and like with so many of his generation, the world is a little more boring without him.

UNH Magazine Online

2009-07-08T18:49:00.000-07:00

William K. Millar, Jr. '68

When I graduated from UNH I was told by the ROTC department that, as a German major, I could expect to be sent to Germany as a Military Intelligence officer. Neither I, nor anyone who knew me, could picture me as an infantry officer, but there I was, all 115 pounds of me as a platoon leader in the First Cavalry Division. On the plane trip over to Vietnam, I started writing a journal. The opening paragraphs of my book are actually what I wrote on the plane that night. I maintained the journal until the monsoon rains rendered the paper un-writeable.

In 1974, I was newly divorced, teaching at York High School, in York, Maine, and still feeling the effects of Vietnam. I started writing down my experiences on the backs of unused test papers I pulled from the trash. It was finally completed in 1978. By this time, I was remarried to Susan Collins '71. She was teaching at UNH and represented the Nursing Department on the Faculty Senate. One of her fellow senators was Don Murray. She asked him if he would be interested in reading my book, and so, he took the manuscript, still on the old tests and bound up in four term paper folders. About a week later, he called and asked me to come over to his office some afternoon when I was done teaching. Needless to say, I went with some trepidation.

After trading war stories, Don handed the manuscript to me and asked me what I was planning to do with it. I said I didn't know, and would probably just stash it somewhere. In typical Don Murray fashion, he graphically told me why I should try to publish it. I won't use his exact words, but they were from one infantryman to another. Last year, my eldest daughter decided she would take the manuscript to Lulu.com and make a book for me as a Christmas present, and so here it is.

http://unhmagazine.unh.edu/sp09/bookreviews.html

Thoughts on the Fourth of July: What if.

2009-07-05T05:47:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was July the fourth, Independence Day. As I was walking away from watching fireworks over Middle Bay, I pondered the “what ifs,” which I do a lot.
What if there had been no Revolution. After all, the taxes the British government was levying on the American colonists were to defray the cost of their defense, a fair request, in my mind, since the taxpayer in England was doing it for them.
Many colonists felt that way, and while they may not have liked having more taxes laid on them, no one does, they believed that King George represented the legal government. It is a fact, not taught in high school history, that, in fact there was a rather large number of people who remained, at least quietly, loyal to the Crown, and many of the troops wearing red coats, were not brought over from England at all, but were native born Americans.
So what would it have been like if the radicals (as they were seen at the time) had not prevailed? What would the current United States look like today?
I don’t really know, but I can guess, and since this is my space, I’m going to. First off, we would eventually have become a dominion of the British Empire and finally independent as has Canada, Australia, and South Africa. At some point, probably fairly early in our history, a central government would have been created, as was done in Canada. So, we would be pretty much where we are now.
But what would have been different? Settlers would have arrived from other countries, as they were doing at the time, and they would have pushed west towards the Mississippi. But without exuberance of having become a new nation and idea of Manifest Destiny, what would have been their relationships to the nations and confederations of Native Americans they encountered? Perhaps there would not have been the belief in a God given right to drive them out. Many Native Americans did indeed move north into Canada where they found better treatment at the hands of the Canadian authorities.
Would Lewis and Clark have explored the Louisiana Purchase? Probably, but it would not have been the Louisiana Purchase but rather Louisiana Land Grab, taken from Napoleon when he was defeated.
Would the Southwest be part of the US or a larger Mexico? My feeling is, the latter may well have been the case. Without the revolutionary zeal to conquer all of North America, settlers certainly would have moved into Mexican territory, as they were invited by the Mexican government to do, but may well have become Mexican citizens, and would not have been supported by royal government. The Republic of Texas might have come to pass, but may well have remained an independent country. Can you imagine needing a visa to watch the Dallas Cowboys play, and Lyndon Johnson could not have been president of the United States.
As the British Empire abolished slavery in its territories, the Civil War would not have been fought and much of our racial history would have been radically altered.
The US would have entered World War I in 1914 and World War II in 1939. The infusion of US material and manpower at those early stages could have shortened those wars considerably. My father may well have served in the 104th Royal Timberwolf Division.
My grandmother would have been born a native instead of Canadian, as her ancestors evacuated to Nova Scotia with the British troops following the siege of Boston.
But, although I can imagine the Patriots playing the Redskins in a rugby match, I cannot for the life of me picture the beloved Red Sox as a cricket team.

How I lived in a story book

2009-06-27T17:27:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-21T17:05:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-14T07:13:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-10T12:43:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-05T19:23:00.001-07:00

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.

Snorkeling

2009-05-31T13:49:00.000-07:00

Just beyond the rocks is my prime snorkeling location.

Uncle Archie

2009-05-29T14:11:00.000-07:00

My maternal grandfather was always proud that his family had been in this country almost since the Pilgrims. In fact, they came over from England and settled in the Salem, MA area about 10 years after the landing at Plymouth Rock. A framed certificate hung on his wall proclaiming his membership in the Sons of the American Revolution, through his descent from one Peter Dolliver. He regaled us with stories of life on the frontier during the early Indian wars when one of his forefathers, caught outside in a raid, was brought down on is doorstep when a tomahawk cleaved his skull. The stories often sounded like he was actually there. The stories of this era would always end by him telling us that we were also descended from the last man hanged for horse thievery in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Other stories included an uncle, a Wells Fargo man, who was killed during a train robbery. His widow and child, my grandfather’s cousin, had come back east after the tragic event, but later had returned to Colorado.
His own grandfather, one William Augustus Wright, owned a trading company which probably acted as middlemen, bringing goods from not only the US but the Carribbean to England where he had a partner in one Sir Francis Vernon, whence came my grandfather’s middle name, or so the story goes. My grandfather, Frank Vernon, graduated from the University of Connecticut in 1912, and after refusing a lieutenancy in the Philippine Constabulary, took a job as a civil engineer in Jamaica with the United Fruit Company.
In those days, there were no docking facilities in Kingston, and passengers were brought to shore in rowboats, propelled by native water men. As he and his trunk were safely aboard, the old man, about his father’s age, rowing the boat remarked about my grandfather’s name on his luggage. “That’s my name too,” he said.
“And what would your name be, then?” he asked to be polite.
“William Augustus Wright.”
Strangely, my grandfather’s stories, although he was fascinated with the Civil War, never included any relatives of his own. The family was wealthy enough for any male at the time to avoid service, and perhaps that’s what they did.
These stories left me, at the time, almost resentful that my father’s side of the family seemingly had no one, who participated in the great events of our nation’s history, as his father had arrived here in 1902, and having two children at the time, was exempt from service in World War I.
But then, as he grew older, and I had traveled back to Ireland to meet his family, Grand father Millar told me of his Uncle Archie. Uncle Archie arrived in the US at the time of the Civil War and was either drafted, enlisted or paid as a substitute to enlist in the Union Army, and as my grandfather told it, a cavalry regiment, as he was a superior horseman. Frustratingly, he knew little, if anything about his service, save that at the end of the war, he was suffering severely from rheumatism and being heartily sick of the United States, returned home. All he could remember was peeking into a trunk, when his uncle was an old man, and seeing a sword and a “peaked blue cap.”
Sadly only one of his sisters in Ireland had any first hand recollection of him, the others being too young to remember him when he died. They did remember a long lost sword and produced a picture of a handsome, self assured looking gentleman, and told me that local lore said that he was an avid bird hunter as well as horseman, and that, rather than hunt on foot, using a dog to flush his prey, he would gallop across the fields with the barrel of a shotgun resting between the ears of the horse. The poor animal must have suffered chronic headaches after a day of killing grouse. How much of this is true, I don’t know. What has fascinated me over the years, was that here was a man who returned to his native home after finding that the land of promise was not what he expected or even wanted to be a part of. It has never been part of what we were taught in school.

Memorial Day 2000

2009-05-23T16:35:00.000-07:00

In May, 2000, I was asked to deliver the Memorial Day speech at my town's parade. Harpswell is a small town of about 5,000, and the speech is delivered from the front of the Old Town Meeting House which was constructed in 1758. It is truly a Norman Rockwell event.
I would like to dedicate my remarks today to Sp4 Clark Douglas of Corning, NY; John Michael Rice of Indianapolis, Indiana; and LT. Brian J. O’Callahan of Alexandria, VA, three friends who will always remain young men in my heart, but who so richly deserved to go on to raise families and suffer the indignities of aging.
People began gathering together on this day, on what was known as Decoration Day to honor the fallen of the Civil War, those brave men, who rushed naively to the colors to save the Union and rid our country of the scourge of slavery. Once they had enlisted, most wondered almost immediately what they had gotten themselves into, and once they “saw the elephant,” their term for going into combat for the first time, they realized that dying for one’s country is not particularly glorious, and they never wanted to see it again.
But war did come again, and the armies passed on in time. We now honor the fallen of many wars and conflicts. The grand armies which spread out across the continent in the struggle to save the Union have become ranks of moss covered headstones. The endless lines of marching men, who fought the First World War from Flanders to the Pacific are now by a faint whisper in time, and the great armies which defended our country from the threat of fascism and communism in Korea are now in the winter years of their lives, and their stories are too quickly falling silent. Even the young men from Vietnam, who invaded the evening news, are nearing the autumn of their lives.
The real tragedy of the losses in all these wars is not so much the loss of the individual, who as the armies pass, is relegated to old photograph albums, remembered by a decreasing few, until none remain who knew him at all. The real tragedy is the loss of potential. We know not what great piece of literature bled away, unwritten, in the trenches of France, or what medical discovery was lost with the life of a young soldier on Okinawa or even Stalingrad, or what technological breakthrough was lost in the Mekong Delta. Perhaps an unborn descendent of one of the lost ones would have had the cure for AIDS or the knowledge of controlling fusion. We will never know what might have been.
If the sacrifice of our fallen brothers and sisters is to have any meaning in a world becoming increasingly smaller, we must also remember those others who fell wearing the jackets of field gray, wearing sandals made from old tires or who were incinerated in their tanks on their desperate retreat back to Bagdad, for like our own, they too had their hopes, their dreams, and their potential for good.
Some would say that on a day when we wrap ourselves in our flag, that what I have just said is inappropriate, but it is fitting and proper that we do this. One of the stories of the early celebrations of Decoration Day tells of a cemetery in which were buried both Union and Confederate dead. The graves of the Union soldiers had been covered with flowers by their loved ones, but when the families of the Confederates approached the local commandant to ask if they could place flowers on the graves of their loved ones, permission was denied.
During the night a breeze arose which blew the flowers from the Union graves, and in the morning the previously unadorned Confederate graves were covered with flowers, a tribute, many said from the Union fallen to their Southern brothers in arms.
In remembering all, we can protect the future and thereby honor the sacrifice of our own.

Frauenberg

2009-05-14T11:59:00.000-07:00

In the spring of 1967, a group of us Americans studying at the Phillips Unversitaet in Marburg Germany packed up a lunch of hard rolls, salami, cheese and a bottle of South Tyrolean red wine and took ourselves out along the road, out of town to a small rise in the floor of the Lahn River valley, a place called “Frauenberg.”
After a long, never ending German winter, days of incessant drizzle and darkness, it is easy to see why the Germans in the spring would take to the woods and fields in droves. “Wanderlust” is not a German word for nothing. And unlike the coast of Maine, Germany had a real spring: days when the weather was clear as crystal; the air warm and gentle but not hot; the grass the deepest green, like the fields of Ireland.
The Frauenberg, lady’s mountain, or more probably Mountain of Our Lady, was topped by the stone ruins of a medieval cloister, only the remnants of a stone turret. Around and within were lilacs or some bush of similar type, their buds at the bursting point.
We sat on the grass, opened our bag and brought out the food we had brought with us. One of us, probably me, had a jackknife with which to slice the cheese and salami, while my roommate had carried along a corkscrew and a pair of glasses, which we would share, having been close friends for nearly a year, sharing everything from teabags to germs.
We sat and ate, licking the grease from the salami from our lips and fingers, passing the glasses around to swallow down the bread.
Above the sky was an indescribable, rich blue; the grass below an equally lush green. Birds rode in circles on the thermals rising from the ground. Down the valley, far off in the distance were dots where villages and now and then a tractor in the fields were. They sky and the grass became hazy in the distance until they blended into one on the horizon.
It has been 42 years since that day, and it has never left my memory.

Smelting

2009-05-07T13:18:00.000-07:00

Written April 1969 while on leave before going to Vietnam, a strange time for me. Always in the back of my mind was the thought that I might be doing something for the last time, or seeing someone/something for the last time.

The broad Casco Bay narrows itself into one of its small coves bordered by gray, igneous cliffs, crowned with mantles of pine and moss. It is at the quiet end of this inlet, far from the surf and turbulent currents of the great ocean outside, where the sea is docile in the grip of the land, that a small brook chortles its errant way out of the dark woods, across the bucolic tranquility of an open meadow, through an island of aged pines, where, with a final chuckle, it trips over a small fall to lose its identity in the vastness which is the sea.
During that time of year when the earth renews itself, a traveler from the lonely deep returns to the place of its birth with those who came to life with him, intent on starting the cycle again. This is the smelt, who arrives in schools from the salty ocean to find a quiet fresh water stream and there to spawn.
These small green and silver fish, averaging about 8” in length, swim in with the tide during the hours of darkness, deposit their eggs and return to the depths from whence they came as the tide ebbs. To catch these fish, one requires a dip net, a flashlight and patience.
Bob and I set out on this one evening intent upon catching some of these fish, as they afford very good eating. The tide wasn’t due to be high until 11 PM, and the full moon gave promise of an extra flood. We parked our jeep in the field and hiked down into the grove of pines where the brook flows into the cove. All was quiet save for the laughter of the babbling of the brook as it flowed towards its own oblivion and the chorus of peepers.
The moonlight made the cliffs appear as pewter. By the moon we could see the cove open to the bay and the black line of the far shore. There were no lights and no human noise. No boat broke the calm of the silver glass.
Bob perched on a small overhanging rock and every few minutes the beam of his flashlight would play across the water, cutting the dark and making shiny reflections on the opposite cliff. We waited and watched for the arrival of the smelts.
At first there was nothing, only an occasional eel fingerling and the gleam of the mica on the bottom rocks. Then- one, then two and three green fish darted past the ray. We turned the light off and slowly dipped the net into the water, holding it as still as possible. The light went on again, and the water was alive with fish. I gave the net a quick scoop and hauled it dripping from the water into the harsh glare of the light. The twapping sound from the bottom of the net let us know we had caught a few, which we then emptied out into an awaiting pail. I placed the net slowly into the water again, and Bob shined the light over the spot where I had just trapped the smelt. Nothing; only a rock and some seaweed remained.
The beam of light shifted away searching for its elusive prey; the net awaited with hungry, open jaws. Bob spotted them! They had regrouped to run in again. I let the first go by and scooped the net again. A few more fish shared the fate of their ensnared companions.
And so it went on. The fish retreated, we waited, they ran again, and the hungry net struck.
The cold from the water pierced through my rubber boots and my hands were cold from the metal net handle, but I still braced excitedly each time Bob whispered, “Get ready.”
Finally the tide started to ebb, and the fish slowly disappeared. No longer do they run again after every scoop for they have returned to the deep, their task accomplished.
We gathered our equipment, a pail full of fish, which will never return, and headed off for the jeep and home, leaving the peepers to sing of the brook as it chortled away its identity into the retreating sea.

In Praise of the USO

2009-05-01T13:16:00.000-07:00

We just returned from San Angelo, Texas where our daughter graduated from the Air Force’s Intelligence School, and without the jokes about Air Force and intelligence, I must say that it was very difficult and the graduates awarded sufficient graduate credit for half a master’s degree.
When we arrived in Dallas, Laura told us to head on down to the USO. Now, despite over 20 years between active and reserve duty, I had never come across a USO before.
According to my father, it was really big during WWII and nearly every train station where troops would be stopping had one. Our town’s recreation center, where I learned the fine points of basketball and tried to avoid the mother mandated fine points of ballroom dancing, was, during the war, a USO building for the air crews stationed at Brunswick Naval Air Station. A fairly massive Quonset hut-like structure made of brick and wood, it still stands and still hosts activities for members of the community.
But during the Vietnam war, I personally didn’t even know it existed. The airports at that time were filled with young men (mostly) in uniform traveling either to somewhere they really didn’t want to be or coming home on leave from the same. Travel in uniform was mandatory, we had either “military reserved” or “military stand-by” tickets, which required us to do so. This was the way until it was discovered that American servicemen in uniform were easy targets aboard hi-jacked airliners. And while traveling in uniform, one was hardly likely to get a friendly greeting from anyone but a family member at arrival. Older folks were the only ones that were not overtly hostile or at best dismissive of the kid in his new army greens.
I guess the USO was there, and perhaps I just never flew through airports that had one. So when Captain Laura advised us to visit the USO because they had “free food,” I went. It is out of the way, in a quiet corner of terminal B. Upon entry, I was asked, as in most military, or military type places if I had an ID. Even my “gray card” for old timers is honored. Inside was a snack bar with various types of sandwiches, burgers and hot dogs, all frozen, but with a micro-wave available. By the micro was a selection of soups, and next door was a well air-conditioned theater with a big screen TV playing a movie to a bunch of folks awaiting their next flight. The fellow behind the snack bar, a really friendly guy, gave me two turkey sandwiches, bags of chips and sodas, so I could also provide for my wife (Man, the hunter) who was down at the gate guarding our luggage. After putting a generous donation in the box and cranking up the microwave, I went my way back to gate B-29 and the flight to San Angelo.
As I grow older I become less bitter about the way we were treated during the Vietnam era and up to Desert Storm, but there is still a lingering sadness to it. What is great though, is there are folks like those at the USO and even TSA, who thank you for your service when they see the retired ID card. The hurt is also eased by the knowledge that the kids (even full colonels were not in high school when I was pounding the sand!) who are serving in uniform are treated with the respect they deserve and the intelligence which they possess.
If you have an occasion to donate to the USO, I thank you.

The Poet as a Young Man

2009-04-23T14:30:00.000-07:00

My mother was a gardener, although technically she still is, as much as life in assisted living will allow. On fall days when the sun came down through the maple leaves like stained glass and the dirt side walks were carpeted with soft pine needles, the neighbors would fill the air with the delightful smell of marshmallow roasting bonfires at the edge of the street. That happened at every house but ours, where we obediently stuffed all the fallen vegetation into bags, and dragged them out to the compost pile, where, as my mother instructed us, they would be turned into dirt.
In the spring my parents would go to the hardware or garden supply store and return with bags of peat moss to build up the beach sand which constituted the dirt around our house. The old leaves would be spread on the flower beds, and one year when, for some inexplicable reason, the Memorial Day parade wound its way through the residential streets of town instead of down Maine St. (Yes it was spelled Maine and not Main: Our town boasted the widest Maine St. in the country. Originally laid out by the first settlers, it was called “Twelve Rod Road” referring to its width. Our father’s found that if the road were cleared back to that width, travelers would be out of range of the natives’ bows and arrows, but, again, I digress) When the parade had passed, my mother ordered me to go out into the street with a shovel and pick up the horse manure left behind. Not wishing to be the laughing stock of Longfellow School the next day, I refused, and so, she took the wheel barrow and did it herself.
Along with the lime, and fertilizer was always a bag of a product called “Bovung,” or dried cow manure. We had been around farms a bit, and so I was aware of manure piles, like the one that allegedly kept Shubel Merriman’s barn from toppling over, but I was fascinated by the fact that someone had come up with the idea of colorfully packaging colonic droppings of a ruminant. So intrigued was I that, at the age of 13, I composed a poem about it, which recently came to light in some old boxes.
And so, dear reader, I present to you for the first time in 50 years:
Ode to a Horse Bun
There you lie, regal horse bun,
Product of what some steed has done.
Some, for their gardens, for you will pay,
Mixture of oats, and grass, and hay.
Art some quadruped has wrought,
In colored ten pound bags is bought.
Shoveled from hill and vale and field,
Pasteurized, shredded, packaged and peeled.
Fertilizing, as any turd should,
Horse bun—you never had it so good!

A series of strange events Part 2

2009-04-18T10:51:00.000-07:00

At the end of our specialty training, which gave us an MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) dabbling in secret, Keystone Cop-like operations, we were visited by a colorless man in a gray suit, who, one by one, took us into a closed room to tell us our fate. He introduced himself as Mr. somebody or other, which I came to feel afterwards wasn’t his real name to begin with.
As I sat down across from him, he informed me that I was going to be sent to Berlin Germany to the US Army Europe Security Detachment. I would not tell anyone that I was an MI officer, and that my orders would show me as being in the Quartermaster Corps. I responded to this by asking why not just send me as being infantry, since I already legitimately had the ribbons and badges that proclaimed me as such. Besides, if anyone asked why a grunt was going to a “spook” unit, I could just shrug my shoulders and say, “You know the army.” He agreed.
He then gave me a name, also fictitious, of someone in Virginia for my parents to contact in case of emergency because the Red Cross would not know my whereabouts. My name would not be on the register of the US Army. I was nobody. Furthermore, when I arrived in Frankfurt, I would be met by someone and not go to the replacement depot. I felt like Scrooge being told I would be visited by spirits.
We were cramped aboard a Trans Caribbean Airlines 707 headed to Germany when the career E-7 beside me asked where I was going. His question to my response was as I had predicted, “What are you doing going to a spook unit.” My pre-planned answer set everything right.
Upon landing in Frankfurt, we dragged our duffle bags down the corridor following signs pointing us to the replacement depot, when two young men in civilian clothes stepped forward, and said, “Captain Millar, please come with us.” The E-7’s jaw dropped, and we said good-bye.
Without introducing themselves, and obviously not enthusiastic about working on a Sunday, they took me outside to a van, and drove to a nondescript apartment building, where I was instructed to change into civilian clothes, and spend the rest of the day the way I wanted. I conned 5 DM, about $1.50, off them and walked around until 5 PM, when they collected me for a trip to the train station to board the 7 o’clock duty train for Berlin.
The duty train had been created by the agreements between the Soviet Union, England and the US at the end of the WWII, and was allowed to pass through East Germany unmolested by either the Russians or the East Germans. It was the only way, I found, that I would be allowed to leave West Berlin, unless I chose to fly.
While I was hanging out, waiting for the train to leave, along with a multitude of uniformed Americans, a somewhat scruffy but unremarkable young man approached me and asked if I spoke English. I told him I did. He began to regale me with the classic story I had heard from many deadbeat hippies when I was a student. “I’m going to school here and my father has just had a heart attack. I need five marks to get out to the airport.” Not wanting to give him anything, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a US quarter, guaranteed to not get him on the bus. “That’s all I have,” I said. In a flash, he grabbed it, held it up in front of me and palmed it. “I’ve gotten everything I need,” he said, “Believe me, you don’t know how much I dislike doing this.” And then he disappeared into the crowd.
Short a quarter I boarded the train and forgot about it.
Several months later, in Berlin, I was in the parking lot of the US Consulate, where our unit was stationed. As I was entering my duty car, this same person approached me with the same story. “I’m a student here, and my father’s just had a heart attack. I need $2 to get to Tempelhof Airport.” I stared at him a moment and replied, “That’s funny, in Frankfurt it was 5 marks to get to the airport.”
With that he blanched. “You know me,” he said. “I do, and if I see your ass around here again, I’m turning you over to the MPs.” Several weeks later I saw him again, headed straight for him, and when he saw me, he disappeared at a dead run.
I’ve often been told that you’re not paranoid if they really are following you, but when I returned to the States, living with my ex-wife and attending graduate school, the local police chief, to whom she had been recommended as a possible school crossing guard came to the trailer one night to talk to her. Caught up in his own importance, he told us how he had driven by, done a license plate check, and realizing that I was 26 years old, ascertained I was probably a veteran and contacted the Army’s counter-intelligence office in Portsmouth, NH. “I should have gone there first,” he said to my wife. “They not only had everything on him, they had a whole file on you.”
At that point I turned to him and said, “That’s really odd…… We weren’t married until after I was discharged.” His face revealed he had talked too much.
I’ve often wondered who that young man was. The coincidence of him hitting me up in two cities, particularly in an area of Berlin where tourists didn’t hang out, was pretty far fetched. That leads to question, then, of what was he doing? Several former intelligence people to whom I have related this story believe he was working for another of our agencies. And why me? I’ll probably never know.

A series of strange events Part 1

2009-04-13T11:52:00.000-07:00

As my senior year of college began to come to its close and we could finally see what was outside in the world for us, those of us enrolled in Army ROTC were faced with the choice of what branch or specialty we wished to serve in, and where we might want to do that. Being somewhat naïve, we did not see the absurdity of asking for a place of duty assignment at a time when most were going pretty much directly to Vietnam. But I was told that, as one majoring in German, who had just returned from a year at a German university, if I were to request a commission in the Regular Army (RA) I would be guaranteed my choice of first duty assignment, and branch. It was recommended to me that I try for the military intelligence.
That all seemed exciting. I could see myself flying down the Autobahn in a new Porsche and being assigned secret duties, most of which, I was sure, would involve beautiful foreign women. After all, I had seen the James Bond movies. So, I did what they suggested, and what to my surprise, it was all granted, a military intelligence assignment in Germany. My friends were amazed and jealous. Most of them were going to places like Fort Lost in the Woods and Fort Puke as signal people or engineers. But I…..
Then the shoe dropped: all RA officers who were not in a combat arms, would be detailed to one of the three branches, and mine would be the infantry. Ah, but not to worry, I was still guaranteed my first duty assignment, and upon graduation was given vague orders to USAREUR.
But first I would have to travel to the Infantry School at Ft. Benning, aka the Benning School for Boys or the Trade School on the Chattahoochie, assigned to a company of 200 RA infantry types, half of whom were straight from airborne school, or obnoxious, gung-ho graduates of Texas A&M, or both. The West Pointers, I’m happy to say, were pretty low key about the whole thing.
So, whenever an instructor started his pitch with, “Gentlemen, if you don’t learn what I’m going to teach you today, you will die in Vietnam,” I knew that was my cue to drift off to someplace else, almost anyplace else.
To make a long story short, Germany did not happen, and I ended up as one of two German speaking lieutenants in an infantry battalion in Vietnam, while those of my class who went to Germany, could not utter a sentence in German if the entire group were put together to do it.
Finally after surviving a year in Vietnam, and deciding I really didn’t care for the Army all that much, I was sent to the Military Intelligence School at Fort Holabird, an enclosed are of Baltimore, near or in Dundalk, that consisted of boring, windowless buildings in an area the size of several blocks, close enough to a brewery, and there I embarked upon my training to learn all kinds of “special” things that I can’t talk about, and really don’t have any desire to do so. I had always wondered what “Top Secret” material consisted of, and found to my surprise, most of it was boring. One of the most exciting classes we attended was on the capabilities of the Soviet Navy. So secret was this lecture, that we were frisked for pencils and pens prior to entering the lecture hall. When the instructor mounted the podium to begin his talk, he informed us, in a most embarrassed voice, that the source of most of what he was going to say, came from a recent issue of Time magazine.
And so, because I have been told people who read blogs have short attention spans, I am going to end here and put the rest in a second part. You probably feel like the person who has been put in a round room and has been told to pee in the corner. My conscience is clear…. Until next time!

Advertising

2009-04-10T08:27:00.000-07:00

This is the advertisement to be featured in the May addition of “The Harpswell Anchor.”

Time

2009-04-08T11:37:00.000-07:00

I have been listening to some music from the late ’50s a time when I was first becoming interested in what was on the radio, and realizing that I was beginning to lose something in the process. Childhood and all the things I held dear about it were fast disappearing, and many of those I still clung to, I kept secret so I wouldn’t be ridiculed as “being a baby.” The wonders of Christmas, for example, I could only live vicariously through the eyes of my younger siblings. Junior High no longer held the fun of Valentine’s Day parties, or the local firemen giving us red, cellophane fire helmets for Fire Prevention Week. In their places we had a fossilized shop teacher, who admonished us that when we applied for jobs, we would all be ordered to demonstrate our ability to sweep floors, ignoring the fact that the entire class was bound for the college course. Other teachers began to threaten us with the “If you don’t pass this class, you’ll end up working in the shoe factory.” I eventually did that for a while, and despite the fact that the pay was abysmal, the work really wasn’t as unpleasant as some things I would later be faced with.
My grandmother was no longer able to pack up a lunch and walk my cousins and me down the road, across the low grounds to the shore, where we could splash in the icy, cold water of the Fore Shore, before coming back, gathering blueberries and wild strawberries as we came.
The toy soldiers and toy dump trucks became no longer cool, and even though I still wanted to play with them, I feared being seen doing so, so I didn’t.
Other friends were growing up at a faster rate, and were drifting off, becoming people I didn’t know any more.
I was also beginning to see the world through my parents’ eyes. I could see what they saw, memories of living on the edge of financial ruin in the depression, the uncertainty of even the next hour during the war, and I could not see in them the great optimism that was supposed to abound in the post-war time. Most of the people we knew had little money, and the only ones that did, were those few with dual incomes. The threat of a coming war with Russia lay heavy, not just that we lived in a Navy town with a big target painted on it, but my father had been called back to active duty during the Korean War, sent to Germany, and told stories or how close we were to another war in Central Europe.
I had vague dreams about what I would like to do, but didn’t know if they would come true. Childhood had been a reality, and not a bad one. I didn’t want to lose it, and didn’t want to lose the old folk, who were starting to go.
Those songs take me back to that time. I can still see the colors of the days, see the people and places that were so familiar to me, but it seems out of time, as if it had never happened. Is there a time when we will be able to go back and see the old places and the old friends again?
There are times in my past that are like that, and others that feel like yesterday. The smell of a passing diesel, the slap of certain helicopter blades, gritty sweat on a humid day that can bring my mind to Vietnam as if it were yesterday, even though it is 40 years in the past. Other years closer in time, also feel like they never happened. Time, or our memory of it, is a fluid thing, apparently, not running in a straight line.

Tribute To My Father

2009-04-05T07:33:00.000-07:00

On Apirl 3, 2009, the Maine Health Care Association awarded its seventh annual Remember ME awards in the Hall of Flags in the State House in Augusta, ME to residents of assisted living homes in Maine, who have shown a lifetime of achievement. My father, William K. Millar, was one of this year's recipients. We drove him to Augusta for the ceremony, where he met, and shook hands with Governor Baldacci, and remarked that he "Was probably one of the only ones who could stand up to receive the award."
My father, a quiet man, usually the straight man for all our humor, has always reminded me of George Bailey in "It's A Wonderful Life." The opportunities he desired always seemed to be preempted by things beyond his control or his unwillingness to give up a principle. For that he is one of the richest men in town.
Below is the biography I was asked to write for his nomination. It is the biography of a person so typical of what Tom Brokaw calls, "the greatest generation."
"After graduating as president of his high school class, Mr. Millar had to pass up full tuition scholarships to both Bates and Middlebury Colleges to work to help his father support his mother and three younger siblings. After working for a year, he attended the University of New Hampshire.
In 1942, two weeks shy of his graduation, he was drafted, sent to Ft. Devens, MA and given a 24 pass to come back and graduate with his class where he had been a member of the track and cross country teams, Senior Skull, Inter-fraternity Council and President of Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity.
He applied for and was accepted into one of the first Officer Candidate School “90 day wonder classes” and was commissioned as a 2LT in the infantry. He was sent to Ft. Leonard Wood, MO where he acted as a cadre member in training the 97th Infantry Division. In 1944 he was sent to the European Theater and was assigned as a platoon leader in the 104th “Timberwolf” Division.
He was wounded in action on December 11, 1944 and evacuated for emergency surgery to a MASH. For this action he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for Valor and the Purple Heart. From the MASH he was returned to England for therapy, and was able to meet aunts and cousins, whom he had never seen before.
On his birthday, April 27, 1945, he rejoined his division for the liberation of Nordhausen Concentration Camp. It was this experience, which brought him to be one of the early members of the Maine Holocaust Commission. In working with this group, he traveled throughout the state speaking to high schools, colleges and universities.
In 1951, he was again called to active duty for the Korean conflict and was sent to Army Headquarters in Heidelberg, Germany.
After release from Active Duty, he became employed as an accountant at Bath Iron works, a position he held until he retired.
As a community member he was active in the First Parish Church, serving as a Sunday School teacher, superintendent of the Sunday School, deacon, treasurer and many other committees. When the vestry needed painting, he formed a group called the “Michaelangelo Society,” and urged prospective members to show up with paint brushes. Not a few were surprised to find out they had volunteered to paint the church, not join and art club.
On the state level he was the director of the UCC family camp at Pilgrim Lodge in Litchfield for three years.
He served the Town of Brunswick on the Property Tax Review Committee and taught bookkeeping for adult education.
He also served as the President of the Longfellow School PTA in Brunswick, broke tradition by being a “den mother” for his son’s Cub Scout Pack and was a referee for the Pee Wee Hockey program when it started.
He also served as a fundraiser during the building and development of Parkview Hospital.
In addition to all of these activities, he built his own summer home in Harpswell. At that time, there was no electricity, so he carried all the sand, cement and water for the foundation in 5 gallon pails and cut all the framing and paneling by hand.
He is currently a charter member of American Legion Post 171 in Harpswell along with his son and granddaughter, a captain serving in the Air Force. He was recently awarded a Silver Star by the state of Maine for his service and a second Bronze Star by the US Army for his Meritorious Service in WW II and during the Korean Conflict.
On April 27, 2009, William Millar will turn 90 years old."

Important Annoucement for CMP Customers

2009-03-31T13:10:00.000-07:00

Central Maine Power will be purging its power lines on April 1, 2009. All CMP customers are advised to unplug all electrical appliances between 1030 and 1035 AM to avoid possible damage from power surges as the old electricity is forced out.
CMP advises that this is an annual event, occurring every April 1, and is necessitated by the changeover from heavier weight winter electricity to lighter weight summer electricity.
All customers are being thanked in advance for their cooperation.
“Flip a switch, and we’re there.”

Gleaning, or How I Heat for Free

2009-03-29T07:11:00.000-07:00

When my wife and I first moved into our house in July 1979, it was not finished. The electrical system consisted of one socket. One half of it was occupied by a string of Romex wire, into which was spliced, at intervals, several light bulbs which ran from the kitchen up the ladder where the stairs would eventually be to the bedroom. The other half powered an ancient refrigerator, a donation from a former selectman of the town. Plumbing was a few months away from complete, and where there is a flower garden today, stood a small, plain outhouse. It could be illuminated at night, if need be, by a kerosene lamp. Insulation and sheet rock was non-existent. With a six-week old daughter, we knew there would be a race to beat winter.
We had both quit our teaching jobs to make the move. I was going to be the oyster baron of Casco Bay with my brother-in-law and another partner, and as soon as Heather was old enough to be left with a sitter, Susan would resume nursing. The oyster farm could pay us in nothing but sweat, and the $260 per month I earned as a captain in the Army Reserve, commanding a combat support company in New Hampshire, didn’t stretch very far.
We were entering the time we now refer to as “The Winter of Ham Hocks and Beans.” Each week we would make up a new soup, first pinto beans, then yellow eyes, peas, and lentils, which would be enriched with a ham hock and rice. Our diet was rounded out with dairy products and cereals we bought with W.I.C (Women, Infants, Children) coupons and sometimes augmented with a huge brick of government issue cheese my father-in-law would score at the senior center he attended. Store bought beer, or anything like that was out of the question, and so I brewed, from a recipe in a prohibition era book, a beverage called “molasses beer.” That rates its own story later, but anyone who drank it felt pity on us, and would bring enough real beer to leave behind a bottle or two.
Heat was a wood stove. Fortunately, we had the foresight to purchase five cords of hardwood before we left our jobs, but being neophytes, we had no idea how long that would last or how warm it would keep us. It was then I started gleaning. At the end of each day, I would go down to the shore to pick up drift wood and lug it back up the steep bank to the house. Most of it was punky soft wood, but sometimes the sea gods would give me a break and cough up a nice piece of oak or better an oak plank that had been part of a commercial wharf. Soaked with years of fish and engine oil, they burned really well.
We don’t eat bean soup as much as we used to, and the smell of molasses beer will never permeate the house again, but I still glean. People call me crazy for spending the year, when the bay isn’t ice-bound, hauling pieces of wood much to heavy for me to be carrying, up a steep bank to cut up with an electric chain saw. Soft wood, they say, is lousy firewood. Well, I have to disagree; free wood makes great heat, no matter what it is, oak, birch, spruce or poplar. True, softwood doesn’t build up a bed of coals, but I use it when we don’t need a fire all night. I figure I can heat my house for free, right into December, although the free wood usually lasts until about the end of November. And no, I don’t burn pressure treated wood. I save that for projects, such as the platform my rain barrel sits on.
Most of the shore ice is gone, so I went down to glean today. I got a piece of oak, about 4’ long. I figure, cut, split and dried, will last me a cold January night. I retrieved some stray pine and poplar, which will probably keep me warm for two nights in the late fall.
Maybe I am crazy or cheap as many tell me, although I prefer to think of myself as parsimonious, but when those first sharp nights of October come in, I’ll go to my wood pile, bring in an armload of free wood, and sit back with a beer not made from molasses and stay warm.

The Value of Cooking

2009-03-25T16:33:00.000-07:00

My road to becoming a self sufficient cook has come by many stages. After leaving college and joining the Army, instead of a promised trip to Germany, I was sent to the back of the beyond at Fort Hood, Texas. There I was installed in the Bachelor Officers’ Quarters, which at the time offered a square, cinderblock room painted institutional green and furnished with a chair and bed, upon which were generations of cigarette burns reaching back to the Korean War. A common refrigerator in the hall was placed for the convenience of the BOQ rats, who stole everything desirable, someone else placed in it, such as beer. So I purchased a toaster oven in the exchange and stocked up on the cheap TV dinners available in the commissary at a cost of four for a dollar. Each of them consisted of a dollop of wall paper paste, three or four pathetic, dried kernels of frozen corn and something that was supposed to resemble either a piece of fried chicken or beef something or other.
As soon as I could, I made the acquaintance of some other single lieutenants in my battalion, and we rented a house. Those who cooked were exempt from doing the dishes, and so I learned to prepare my first delicacy: French fries. I made these by cutting up potatoes and throwing them into a pan of boiling vegetable oil, and served with some sort of fried or broiled meat, and, of course, beer.
Tours at Fort Hood for second lieutenants were mercifully brief, it being situated in the middle of the dry belt of Texas with no social life within a four hour drive. The buildings at the time were still WWII vintage yellow wooden structures which stretched out for miles. I was told Vietnam would be an improvement, and in some ways it was. At least the married guys couldn’t get any either.
Being in the infantry we subsisted on C-rations, various meals served in olive drab cans, with a fairly decent variety. One can consisted of the main meal such as “Ham and Eggs, chopped.” In the field cooking was accomplished with small bits of C-4, which we all carried. That’s right, the very C-4 which is still very much a part of the Al Qaeda basic supplies. It has the consistency of dried up marshmallows and is safe unless mashed into a combined space and ignited quickly. In the open it burns at a temperature about three times the surface of the sun. This was proven by one, who, after heating his coffee water, decided the right thing to do would be to douse the flame, and stepped on it. The result was that it melted a hole through the bottom of his boot. Since re-supplying the infantry with footgear was of rather low priority with the rear echelon folks, he stomped around the jungle with a hole the size of a fifty cent piece (ever seen one of them?) in the bottom of his boot.
My favorite recipe, taught to me by a self proclaimed Hill Billy from Kentucky was to take the can of beans and franks and the can of cheese, something akin to Cheez-whiz and melt the latter into the beans. The water crackers which accompanied the cheese were broken up into the mess, and as with all recipes, anointed with hot sauce. I still make it, only my wife makes us eat it off dishes, and not out of cans, the way it is supposed to be consumed.
Ham and Eggs, chopped, combat quiche, were generally eaten cold. That was a meal you either liked or detested. On one occasion, as a reservist, I was assigned to a regular army battalion at Ft. Knox. Trying to be a good guy, I volunteered to take them. The response was quick: “Get in line, bucko.” I happened to get into a unit of Ham &Eggs, chopped aficionados.
Stationed in Germany, I learned to make French onion soup from the French wife of a fellow unit member, and to cook chicken in beer from a civilian military intelligence officer. I kept all this knowledge, because I knew that a man, who can cook, is sexy…Even if he is a dork.
On our first date, I cooked my wife an eclectic mix of kilbasa soup, potato pancakes and shoo-fly pie. It was love at first bite. It certainly wasn’t my looks or money.
I have since learned that cookbooks are only guides and after a while you learn that you can mix things like ground chicken and nutmeg. And as my favorite painter, the late Bob Ross, used to say, “Let’s get crazy.”
Tonight my wife said she was going to cook pork chops in barbecue sauce. She said I didn’t sound excited. I replied her cooking was predictable.
Mine evokes fear. When my girls would come home from school and ask, “What are we having?” Heather, the oldest, would tiptoe into the kitchen and report back, “One of Dad’s creations.” They would look at each other with wide eyes and very uneasy faces.
Now, Heather eats sushi, that which commercial fishermen would refer to here in Maine as “bait,” or “gurry.” She recently offered me a piece, and said, “Try this, it tastes like the smell of Dick’s Lobster Wharf.
Yup, it did.

Druk een for Englisc

2009-03-22T07:22:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered what the world would be like today if the Saxon shield wall had held that October 14, 1066 and William the Conqueror had lost the Battle of Hastings? Probably not, but I ponder such things. Sometimes I even sit on rocks, when they have been warmed by the sun and something will come to mind that makes me think, “Ain’t that odd?”
The Saxons, who inhabited the south of old England, spoke Old English, a Germanic language not unlike the German spoken at the time, and akin to Dutch. To the north in an area referred to as the “Danelaw,” recent conquerors and settlers spoke an old Scandinavian dialect, which stemmed from old Danish and Norwegian. The Normans spoke an archaic form of French.
So, if William had packed up his surviving troops and sailed back to Normandy, what would the world look like to us now? In all probability, I think, Saxon and Danish would have blended into a language less inflected than Saxon, maintaining vocabulary from each. “Inflection,” for those whose language education didn’t get passed diagramming sentences, means simply that as a word changes its meaning in a sentence, the word or the article in front of it changes.
Latin is an example of a heavily inflected language. For example, the word agricola, or farmer (our word “agriculture” is a derivative of it.) changes as it is used. Agricola non est nauta means “the farmer is not a sailor,” with farmer being the subject of the sentence. Agricolam video, is “I see the farmer. In this case farmer is the direct object of the sentence. Remember that from 9th grade?
Anyway, so we would be speaking a decidedly different language with a Scandinavian or Germanic flair to it, but what about our history? Certainly there would have been different rulers over the course of English history, and their personalities and policies would have colored and shaped what happened to a point. However, England, because it is insular, would still have developed into a sea power, and still would have been predominant in the history of North America. Would the 13 colonies have eventually seceded through violent revolution or quietly evolved into an independent nation such as our good neighbor to the north? I haven’t really pondered that, and the rocks are still too cold to sit on.
What I do know is, if you called the phone company, a utility or some other commercial entity to whom, “your call is very important,” the first option on the answering machine would probably sound something like, “Druk een for Englisc.”

The Aral Sea

2009-03-19T11:57:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid I would get interested in something to the point of obnoxiousness. Maybe that is why I had few friends, or maybe I was that way because I had few. Either way, I started collecting airplane photos, which came with chewing gum much as baseball cards did. I could tell you the names of every aircraft in the Royal Canadian Air Force or describe the wing markings of the Peruvian Air Force. I put together a model of a plane called the “Pogo,” a propeller driven plane designed to take off and land straight up and down. It had a short life.
Then it was birds. I read the print off my parents’ Audubon book, and bemoaned the fact that the birds I really wanted to see didn’t come as far north as the Maine tundra. I tried painting them, but with five and dime water colors, four inch brushes and no talent for art, I quickly became frustrated.
So I turned to the Civil War. My grandfather had already given me an excellent grounding in American military history for a fourth grader. He gave me, in the third grade, a biography of George Armstrong Custer, and promptly informed me, that had old yellow hair survived the Battle of Little Big Horn, he probably would have been court martialled. I cajoled Chip Koerber into making blue forage caps out of construction paper for all the kids on the street, so we could re-enact battles. Our hats turned out to be disasters, so I turned to geography.
I always finished my social studies assignments ahead of the allotted time, so I would quietly go over to the globe on the counter by the window, and one day, I noted that there were seas all over the world. I found the Ionian, the Banda, the Weddell and the Sea of Azov. I also found the Andaman Sea, the name of which fascinated me; I was sure no one else knew of its existence but me.
I then hatched a plan. I was going to cover the entire walls of my room with a huge, museum quality map of the world, on which I would place all the seas. I found not only was there a Red Sea, a Black Sea and a Yellow Sea, but a White one as well. And then there was the Aral Sea, totally landlocked, stuck to the east of the Caspian Sea in the middle of Asia. What would a sea way out there look like? I wanted to go there, and sail around it.
But I never did. I went away to college, bummed around Europe, went off to fight a war in a place I had never heard of as a child, swam in the Tasman and South China Seas, and returned to live a fairly predictable middle class life, working in jobs I never knew existed as a child and never would have aspired to if I had.
After a time I began to notice how things have begun to change. The good, gentle old folk, the ones who knew the secrets of handling a team of plow horses, spinning wool into yarn on the porch, shoveling coal into the bellies of steam engines or who had walked the wooden decks and reefed the sails, have all faded away. The parents, the aunts and uncles, who put together the family picnics, flipped the burgers and roasted the hot dogs for us kids, are one by one becoming absent. Those men and women, who came home from the wars those years ago, became our teachers, den mothers and parents of our friends, in increasingly greater numbers no longer answer the roll call.
Our hometowns as we knew them have disappeared. Where once the men from Brunswick crossed over the river to hunt deer in Topsham, there is nothing but pavement and big box stores. Maine Street, alive every Friday night with people buying their groceries at First National or A&P, going to the movies or the five and ten cent stores, is dying, lined now with galleries and coffee shops, which do not attract the number of people that made it so vibrant. The furniture store that converted its basement to toys and where Santa Claus listened to lines of runny nosed kids, no longer exists. Even the Christmas boughs which arched Maine Street with brightly colored, boisterous lights have been replaced with bland clear lights and timid, politically correct banners wishing a happy generic holiday.
And then there is the Aral Sea. Once the fourth largest saline body of water in the world during my younger days, it now consists of three, highly polluted lakes. Its once fertile bottom is a barren salt pan, a resting place for the hulks of the fishing boats that once plied its waters. The fishing villages that once lined its shores are now ghost-towns.
We can never go back to see the old folk and hear their stories, we can never go back to the homes we remembered, and we can never sail the Aral Sea again. Time hurries us along to wherever it is we’re bound.

My Irish Aunties

2009-03-15T07:17:00.000-07:00

The period around St. Patrick’s Day is the time in which we prove, “There are only two types of people in the world: the Irish, and those that wished they were.”
In 1902, my grandfather Millar left his father’s farm, traveled to Londonderry and there disembarked upon the Caledonia for the US. He was twenty years old, dapper, but very small, and had five US dollars in his pocket. I often wonder if how scared and lonely he must have felt leaving his family and a farm he would, as the eldest son, have inherited. He would never mention how he felt, although in response to my question as to why he left, he replied, “I was out plowing one day and realized I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life looking up the ass of a horse.”
Upon arrival he somehow got himself to the home of some distant relatives, successful tobacco farmers in the Connecticut River valley. Instead of welcoming, they were not impressed with having a poor immigrant show up on their doorstep and convinced him that Springfield, Massachusetts was the place he should be as the Presbyterian (He was an Orangeman) Church would take care of people like him. So they put him on a train and off he went.
He eventually found a job, ending up working for Spaulding Sporting Goods, designing and manufacturing golf clubs. One of his designs, using a drop forge, was called “The Chicopee Putter.”
In time he sent for two of his sisters, who followed him over. The elder, Mary, settled in Boston and became a registered nurse at Mass. General. The younger, Eveline, still in her teens, lived with him, my grandmother and their new baby, while working in a flower shop. In 1917, word came from Ireland that their mother was dying of cancer. So my grandfather accompanied them to the pier in Boston where their last view of him was disappearing from site in a snow storm as they sailed for home despite the dangers from German submarines.
I grew up knowing I had a family in Ireland, and once in a while we, or my grandfather would receive a Christmas card from these mysterious people across the sea. In 1966, when I went to Germany to study, I decided I would have to visit these people and see just what they were like, as my father’s side of the family seemed fairly lacking in distant relatives.
Mary had married and due to the hard economic times in Ireland, moved to England where her husband found employment operating a farm owned by Oxford University. On spring break I flew in from Frankfurt to Southend on Sea, and in going through British customs put her address as my destination on my forms. The customs agent asked who she was. I will never forget what happened next. When I told him she was my aunt, he swung his rubber stamp down on my passport and said, “Welcome home, son.”
Mary lived in a thatched roof cottage with a flag stone floor in a village called Waterperry. To get there, I had to travel to Oxford and then take a bus to a small town called, Wheatley. Arriving there, I learned I had missed the twice weekly bus to Waterperry, but the friendly agent told me how to get there: two miles across freshly plowed April muddy fields in the gathering dusk. By the time I came over the hill and the village was below me, it was late afternoon, and I was covered with mud. I thought I had walked into the village of the damned: it was a ghost town. I could hear window shutters flapping in the breeze and feel eyes on me from behind curtains. I walked to the end of the village when I finally encountered a farmer, right out of a James Herriot story. With his directions I knocked on the door of the house to be greeted by a pixie in coke bottle classes. As I had missed the bus, she thought I wasn’t coming, and gathered me up in tears. She apologized that the co-eds she had invited out from Oxford to entertain me had been forced to leave. We sat by her fire drinking cider, while I recited what everyone in the family was up to and then she asked me how the Boston Braves were doing. I had to tell her they were now in Milwaukee and the Red Sox were the only game in town. When bed time came, she tucked me in, even though I was 21. Her stories will be another post.
A month later, taking advantage of a student strike against increased cafeteria prices in Germany, I flew to Belfast, and was greeted by the younger generation, and taken off to see Aunts Grace and Eveline.
Grace lived in a farm house on the top of a hill, which was appropriately called, “The Hill.” I was forewarned so when she bolted from the house, I was not surprised. She had not come to the states, and I was the first of the American family she had seen since my uncle in World War II. Although, small in size like Mary, with the same twinkling eyes, she was a dynamo. She had a heart condition, which despite her doctor’s frantic urgings, did not stop her from chopping firewood. She was up at first light with her sons, James and Edward, for the daily milking, preparing them a breakfast which would fill an army. Not being a morning person, I could not explain to her that I could not force down steak, eggs, and oatmeal at 7 in the morning. I was more a gag down a glass of orange juice person.
Eveline lived on the farm, on which my grandfather had been raised. She regaled me of stories of early Springfield MA, and we tried to track down information on “Uncle Archie,” who, my grandfather claimed, had come to the US, fought in the Civil War, was discharged totally fed up with America and went home. There were vague memories of his “blue peaked cap” in a chest somewhere, the that was all.
I was taken from place to place, “which would be of interest because your grandfather went there,” and met people whom he had known, most of whom forgot the generational gap and referred to me as “Jimmy Millar’s boy.” The experience gave me a feeling of pride, to know the good people I had come from, but also gave me a sense of loss. In meeting my Irish “aunties,” I realized, perhaps selfishly, that I had been deprived a life time of extra grandmothers, who probably would have spoiled me when I was little.
I see in my daughters’ eyes, the twinkling blue and the infectious smiles they all had, and although they are gone now, and I only saw them that one time (I did see Eveline once later) I love them as if I had always been with them. I’m damned proud of my Irish family, and, yes, when St. Patrick’s Day comes around, I’m going to proudly say, “There’s only two types of people in the world: the Irish and those that wished they were.”

Review

2009-03-10T19:35:00.000-07:00

Review by Chris Considine

Mr. Millar realistically articulates the travesty of war from the prospective of a young American Army Officer during the very unpopular Vietnam War. However, war is apparently more "trendy" today when Mr. Millar was getting shot at. Soldiers of that time were pariahs, while soldiers of today are heroes.

Mr. Millar describes the camaraderie that develops among soldiers that are doing their best to stay alive, which is the same camaraderie that troops have today in Iraq and Afghanistan. Throughout the book you see this trust among troops grow, under fire, and wane, when relegated to the rear echelon, where the self-described heroes build their pseudo legacy for their progeny.

Reading this book served to rekindle the absurdity of war feelings that for me personally go back to that time, yet history are now repeating themselves again fail to understand the culture and intestinal fortitude of our opponents. We were arrogant then, we are arrogant now.

This book is a timeless record that will behoove our soldiers of the future to read and evaluate. It doesn't give you a warm and fuzzy feeling at the end, nor should it. War sucks and you may die and your families then must unwillingly enter the world of the living dead.

Read the book and spread the knowledge that all soldiers, are heroes. Lastly, our heroes from Vietnam, who never got the respect they deserved, and the military heroes of today, lived in horrible conditions, risked death and their country still has not saved the world.

Marbles

2009-03-08T08:17:00.000-07:00

When the snow began to melt away from the streets, and puddles appeared everywhere, particularly along our dirt sidewalks, the kid population turned out to drain it away. It was probably more from just wanting to see something moving after living in a petrified, white landscape that motivated us, as opposed to a desire to get rid of the snow. Much shoe rubber was worn away as we became hydrological engineers, dredging systems of canals, of which the Dutch would have been proud.
This time of year also brought out the first sport of spring: marbles. Bags of them would be brought out from wherever they had been stored since the previous spring, and playgrounds, vacant lots and unpaved walkways took on the appearance of a prairie dog village, for we did not play the game in which they were knocked out of a ring. We had no good pavement for that, and so we pitched them into holes.
The great game of marbles had its own set of rules varying from playground to playground, street to street, and had its own economy and language.
There was, for starters, the tools of the trade. They were works of art, multicolored swirls of various colored glass beads, more commonly called “alleys or aggies.” The older folk also referred to them as “glassies,” to distinguish them from the semi-round clay pellets of our parents’ days. Some of us even had a few of them hidden in our bounty. “Cats-eyes” came along later, clear glass with a colored plastic center, which did indeed look like the namesake. Then there were “croakers,” much larger and heavier. Many of the kids, whose fathers worked in the shipyard used ball bearings that were liberated from The Yard as a substitute.
All of these would be carried in a sack or an old sock. My mother had made me a corduroy bag with little felt marbles appliquéd on it. One enterprising soul carried a khaki bag, which turned out to be a personal effects bag from his father’s WWII service. Its purpose had been to carry the most personal items of a wounded man, such as wallet and toothbrush, around his neck during his evacuation.
In the language of the game, the terms all ended with the suffix “ies.” For example, you could play for “funsies” or “keepsies,” the latter being our introduction to playing for loss, gain, or being hustled. Playing “funsies” was for the very small and wimps, or if your current supply was way down.
At the beginning of each game, when the hole had been bored out with someone’s heel, and a shooting line had been scraped in the mud, the economy of the game kicked in with a determination as to the scale of the game. One could play for “onesies” or “twosies” in which case each player would pitch one or two marbles. A croaker could be pitched at a value of, say, one equating to three alleys. You see, we were learning the rudiments of currency exchange. High stakes games might include “tensies” or “twelvesies.”
The next formality to be decided was whether to play “nothingsies” or “everythingsies.” With the former, only the crooked index finger could be used to shoot a marble. Under the latter, there were various moves that could be used to move a marble: “Shovesies” was for anything less than three foot lengths from the hole and the only move allowed in “nothingsies.” A “picksie” was for a marble three foot lengths, but less than five from the hole. That required picking the marble slightly off the ground and arcing it towards the hole. Beyond five foot lengths, a “bootsie” was allowed. That allowed the player to place the side of his foot against the marble and swing his other foot against it, propelling it toward the hole.
The first shooter was chosen by the scientific method of “eeny, meeny, miney, moe.” He or she pitched the marbles towards the hole with the intent of sinking them all. After each had shot, the person with the most marbles in the hole attempted to sink the rest by the above methods. He shot until he missed, and then the second person, the one who had placed second after the initial shots had his chance. The last person to sink the final marble, won the pot.
Little fingers resembled raw beef as the games progressed in the cold mud. Mothers must have dreaded laundry day as well.
At Longfellow School, this blatant form of gambling, hustling and extortion was tolerated so long as the marbles weren’t brought out during class. Marble bags had to be kept in your desk or closet, or be subject to confiscation. Some of those teachers had to have marble collections that would need a vault like Scrooge McDuck’s. There was a fantasy of Miss Ridley or Mrs. Stevens rolling around in a swimming pool of them. (Wait, we were little and innocent: they were clothed.) We often wondered what happened to all those marbles. Did the teachers have a secret tournament after we left?
The odd thing is, after the ground dried, became warmer and more conducive to actually playing the game, the marble bags all disappeared until the next season.
Marbles were fun. Sadly, I can’t imagine a school allowing it today. How will today’s kids learn about international finance without them?

The World's Briefest Trip Abroad

2009-03-05T13:49:00.000-08:00

Paul and Sylvia Nadeau are two of our best friends. We met while Paul and I were still in the Army Reserve and both are from Aroostook County (The County to Mainers). For a number of years, as part of our reserve duties, Paul and I were required to travel to The County to inspect military skills classes being held at the National Guard armories there. Our unit was a school with classes being taught at local centers, Paul and I acting as school principals. It was during one of these trips that we took the shortest trip on record into Canada.
Aroostook County occupies about the northern third of Maine and is inhabited by about 10% of the state’s population. It consists of many heavily forested acres and the big sky of farm land. Potatoes are the largest crop grown. The southern half is made up of mainly of folks tracing their ancestry to the British Isles, while the northern half, predominantly the St. John River valley (The Valley) is comprised of people descended from the early French settlers, most of whom still speak French, and English with a delightful accent: French with a hint of Celtic lilt. Sandwiched in between is a small colony of Swedes in the towns of Stockholm, New Sweden and Westmanland.
The greatest people in Maine live there. They are good humored, and a person’s intelligence is measured not by college credits but by common sense. Our Senator Susan Collins, who operates with such an intelligence not common in Washington, is herself a County girl.
During the time I was in State servitude, I would travel to The County with the Maine State Police, another of my favorite group of folks, where we would conduct school bus driver training. It was not uncommon to hear drivers discussing the merits of vehicles in French. We would know what they were talking about because the words, “automatic transmission” and “air brakes,” could be heard from time to time. At one point, one of my trooper colleagues was asked if he could speak French. To his negative reply, he was asked, “Then how does it feel to be dumber than a Frenchman.” Great folks these.
Although I don’t miss working for the state, I miss the great people I had the privilege to hang out with. Take for example, Jim Grandmaison, of the Ft. Kent School District. His name translates to “Big House,” but his decidedly French speaking secretary loved it when I called asking either for Mr. Big House or Senor Casa Grande. He always claimed that to come south, he parked his car, an alleged ’54 Studebaker in Medway (look that up on the map) where he would pick it up after a dog sled run south.
But I digress. Paul and I had to inspect the classes held there, so we would drive north on Friday, stay at the farm with Virgil and Althea, Sylvia's father and stepmother, and Saturday morning would find us in one of the armories. We tried to get done by noon to allow time for some trout fishing or bird hunting for Saturday supper as the seasons allowed.
Now, our pride was that we held the only classes in basic artillery skills, and nuclear, biological and chemical defense in the entire US Army that were held in French; that being with the battery in Ft. Kent.
One year, long before 9/11 as we were up there, the price of gasoline was significantly lower in Canada than the US, and with the armory literally a snowball’s throw from the border, we crossed over the bridge, dressed in our US Army uniforms, asked the friendly Canadian border agent for the location of the nearest gas station, and ten minutes later pulled up at the US Immigration Service gate to come back in. The guard looked at us, two uniformed commissioned officers, and asked how long we had been in Canada. Paul looked at his watch and said with a big smile, “Ten minutes.” “What are you bringing back?” “A tank of gas.” With a laugh and shake of his head he waved us through.
Life was a little simpler then.

Maple Syrup Time

2009-03-01T07:15:00.000-08:00

The snow still lies deep on the ground, deep enough to need snowshoes to avoid where the depressions in the ground are hidden, and one leg can suddenly disappear to the hip, throwing you off balance, and making you rejoice in your wealth of Anglo-Saxon vernacular. But it is that time when the tops of the trees feel the strengthening sun, and draw up the sap they have stored in their roots since the fall.
I rummage around in my shed and find the tin in which I keep my spiles and then retrieve the plastic jugs I have been saving since the fall from under the house. I prefer cider jugs, as milk jugs, no matter how diligently you wash them, manage to retain a certain essence of sour dairy product. Next I take my snowshoes down from their hook in the garage, and throw them in the back of the truck, along with a claw hammer, brace and bit. The spiles, from which the sap will flow, go into my jacket pocket. I run a string trough the jug handles so I can drag them behind me, throw these in the truck, and I am ready.
In the past two years, I have learned that slogging through snow is hard on a body that in the time of my childhood would have been considered old. So, I drive to a location where I can get into the deepest woods with minimal walking. This will also be true once the sap runs heavy. Multi-trips through snowy woods while carrying a full five gallon can will work up a decent sweat on the coldest day.
In my layered, checkered Maine guide shirts, I look like my grandfather, or so my cousins all tell me.
The naked trees creak as I draw into the woods as if they were talking to one another. I think they are telling each other that the fool is back and that he’s no threat. Other than the wind in the branches overhead, there is no sound but the biting of the drill bit into the tree. Sap oozes out immediately, and as I hammer the spile home, there is an instant spurt. I slip a jug over the spile, and as I trudge away, I hear the soft drip, drip as the sap is beginning to collect.
With only the tools to carry, I now realize how stiff my hips and back are. Snowshoeing is not a normal walking position. Tomorrow I will retrieve today’s run, and set the rest of the spiles.

PS: Tomorrow is here. It is well below freezing, so there will not be a sap run. A foot of snow is on the way for tomorrow. March is a winter month in Maine.

Returning to Maine: The way life should be?

2009-02-25T13:01:00.000-08:00

This was not an original topic, but for those of you who pine for the Pine Tree State, it isn't like the tourists see it in summer.
We left a balmy, sunny Miami on Sunday morning headed back to Maine. Landing in Charlotte, NC, the temperature had dropped to 45 degrees, but it was sunny and pleasant, a day we would welcome here. Back in New England it was quite another story. Boston was foggy and raw with a light rain. We boarded a bus north to Portland, and the further we went, the heavier the rain, the deeper the snow by the roads and the drearier the landscape. In Portland, we retrieved the car to complete the 30 mile drive to Harpswell, in what was now heavy rain, with the drops beginning to splat on the window. It was snowing and dark by the time we reached our driveway, covered with the ice of a storm that had occurred while we were gone.
"So welcome back to Maine," I thought. Tomorrow I will strap the snow blower to my loins and blow a great white stream of snow across the yard. But waking up in the middle of the night, I realized I had neglected to think of another wonderful aspect of life in Maine: the power had gone out. That means, no lights, no furnace, and in the case of rural areas, no water.
But we plan for such things, they are frustratingly frequent. Monday was occupied with clearing away cement heavy snow, and standing by the wood stove to melt enough snow so that we could flush the toilets. The yellow snow by the garage could be blamed on the dog..... if I had one.
Day two found me up at 6 cranking up my third world wind-up radio to listen to the sound track of a local TV station, and the first words to come out of it, so help me God, was the punch-line of a Central Maine Power commercial, "Flip a switch and we're there." The irony was grotesque.
But the day was occupied with my job. CMP (Cut My Power, to most of us) had restored power to the main road, so the office of the Harpswell Anchor Newspaper, had lights and running water. After restoring the main line so the kids could return to school the line crews disappeared, leaving most of us still in the dark.
The nice thing about having parents in assisted living is that those places have huge generators, so off we went to spend the evening with them, to use their shower.
Day three, today, my wife got up for work, left unkempt. She could be mistaken for a hospital patient, not the nursing instructor she is. I get up feeling like I used to after a fraternity party. Why one can't sleep when the power is off,and why brushing your teeth out of a glass instead of a tap leaves them feeling like they're wearing sweaters, I don't know.
At 1:30 I call home. The answering machine picks up... the power is back on. I race home bring in all the food where it has been freezing on the porch and put it back in the fridge. Flush all toilets, run all faucets to see if the pipes have frozen. So far, so good, but there's another storm on the horizon for Sunday.
So it is with life in Maine, the way life should be.

The Civil War Comes To Harpswell, Maine

2009-02-15T07:42:00.000-08:00

In late June 1863, the Civil War was approaching two climaxes, which would ultimately lead to the Union victory. In the west, the forces of General US Grant were beginning their final push to capture Vicksburg opening the entire Mississippi River to the Union, while in the east, the Army of the Potomac was engaged in a grueling foot race with Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia as it moved north through Maryland and Pennsylvania in an attempt to attack Washington DC. At the same time, a lesser known event occurred which directly involved Harpswell.
In May 1863, Lt. Charles Reed was serving aboard the CSS Florida off the coast of Brazil when it captured the brigantine Clarence. Reed, a 23 year old native of Mississippi had graduated at the bottom of his class in 1860 from the US Naval Academy at Annapolis. The young lieutenant prevailed upon the commander of the Florida to allow him to take 20 men and head north to disrupt shipping off the east coast to try to draw away resources from the Union blockade. He was provided with a 12 pound howitzer, small arms, and the Clarence was commissioned as Florida No 2.
The intrepid Reed and his crew sailed northward along the eastern seaboard of the United States, capturing or burning several ships, and on June 12, within sight of Cape Henry, they came upon the ship Tacony. Raising an inverted American flag, a sign of distress, as a feint, Reed approached the unwary ship, sent over a boarding party and captured it. Figuring this new ship was better and faster, he transferred his men and weapons to it, and set the Clarence aflame.
The Confederate raiders had captured 6 vessels and 50 prisoners in a week. The US Navy was ordered to send any vessel available to hunt down and either destroy or capture what was now becoming a threat to Northern shipping. Even the yacht America from Reeds alma mater, the Naval Academy was sent out in pursuit. The Tacony continued to elude the hunters and between June 12 and 14, captured 15 more vessels!
June 23 found the Tacony becalmed off Portland (ME)Harbor where she was hailed by a federal gunboat. Reed bluffed them off, replying that he was a different vessel bound for Portland. As the gunboat departed, they shouted a message over the water for them to be on the lookout for rebel marauders.
Realizing that the Tacony was going to be recognized, the crew captured and took possession of the schooner Archer on June 24 near Southport and enjoyed a fine chowder dinner prepared by the Archer’s crew. The fate of the Tacony was now to be that of the Clarence, and she was set afire.
The next day, the Archer was off Damaraiscove (some accounts say Haskell’s) Island where they encountered two Harpswell fishermen, Albert Bibber and Eldridge Titcomb tending their fishing gear. The accounts also vary as to exactly what happened next. One states that the crew of the schooner represented themselves as a party of fishermen needing guidance into Portland. The other relates that the two were hailed, and asked to come aboard, and when they demurred, and armed party was put over in a small boat to persuade them to do so. Since it is unlikely that any Maine fisherman would give up a good day’s hauling to ride into Portland with a party from away, the latter is more likely the actual.
Once on board, Reed interrogated the two and learned that the steamer Chesapeake was in Portland Harbor as well as the revenue cutter Caleb Cushing.

At about 7:30 PM the unobtrusive Archer, slipped passed the forts guarding the mouth of Portland Harbor and dropped anchor. Reed ordered most of his men and his two captives below, but kept several on deck to allay any suspicions from those passing by. The rest of the crew was put to work manufacturing fire bombs from oakum and turpentine. The plan at this point was to capture the Chesapeake and steam her out of port. The chief engineer, however, determined he would not be able to get enough steam up in the boilers by himself in time to be underway before daylight. That left the Cushing as the next target of opportunity.
Most of the crew of the Caleb Cushing was ashore for the funeral of the captain, who had died quite suddenly, and there was a dance party in progress on Peak’s Island. After midnight, when all had quieted down, and the returning crew was bedded down for the night, Reed and his raiders rowed across the harbor and took possession of the cutter, securing the crew below decks. Things started going awry for the Confederates as they slipped the anchor and found themselves aground. Launching two small boats they began towing the Cushing down the harbor hoping for a morning breeze to pick up. As they drew abreast of the Archer, Titcomb and Bibber were brought on board and forced to assist in piloting. Around 4 AM, the outgoing rebels were passed by the steamer Forest City inbound from Boston. Ironically one of the passengers was Lt. James Merryman, newly assigned to take command of the revenue cutter.
To avoid risking fire from the forts at the mouth of the harbor, Reed directed the cutter up past Peaks and Hog Islands and into the gap between the latter and Cow Island, making out into Hussey Sound. Although Bibber warned the Confederates that is was a risky passage, he testified later that he was neither asked nor gave any directions as to the course. Realizing that pursuit was inevitable, be begged the rebel captain to release him and Titcomb before they got to Green Island. Reed denied his request.
In the meantime, the Portland waterfront was alive with activity. Mayor Jacob McClellan chartered four vessels to pursue the rebels and sent messages to the two army commands in the area, the 17th ME at Ft. Preble and the 7th ME at Ft. Abraham Lincoln up the Fore River. The troops from Ft. Preble, 35 men and two small field pieces were hurried aboard the Forest City, while 27 men from the 7th ME with similar weapons, were piled aboard the Chesapeake, along with 50 armed civilian volunteers. The Forest City, with its steam already up, set out in pursuit with the Chesapeake following in short order.
Meanwhile, aboard the Caleb Cushing, Bibber was still pushing his plea to be released. Finally, out by Cod Ledges, with two steamers visibly loaded with soldiers coming after them, Bibber, begged again, and was given permission to take one of the small rowboats tied along beside and go. This he did with such alacrity, that he left his fellow, Titcomb, behind with the rebels.
Reed ordered the crew to fire several shots at the approaching Forest City with the Cushing’s 32-pounder and the former pulled back out of range to protect its exposed paddle wheels. The Chesapeake bore up fast, and after a hurried, across the water conference, the two vessel captain’s agreed the Chesapeake would take the lead and run down the Cushing. Realizing the gravity of the situation, Captain Leighton called on all hands to determine what should be done. It was unanimously agreed to run the cutter down and strike her amidships. Colonel Mason commanding the army troops on board admonished his men to stand fast and stay cool.
Aboard the cutter, the situation was becoming grim for the Confederate crew. They had fired all the ammunition they had found, and knew that side arms and cutlasses would not be much of a defense against the well armed pursuers. Reed had his captives brought up on deck, still in handcuffs and loaded aboard two small boats. Someone remembered to throw them a ring of keys as they shoved off, but in their haste to escape did not remove the restraints. Reed’s crew began to set fire to the vessel, before jumping into the remaining small boats and rowed away as well.
Two citizens, one a milliner, the other the port shipping master had been jockeying for command of the volunteers and began issuing conflicting orders. As the boats carrying the released captives approached, one issued an order to fire, whereupon Colonel Mason finally took control and shouted that he would run through with his sword the first person to fire. Realizing the danger they were in, one of the former captives, Lt. Davenport from the cutter began waving his white shirt. They were brought aboard unceremoniously as if they were pirates themselves and placed under guard. Meanwhile the Forest City rounded up Reed’s crew, who had thrown their weapons overboard and fashioned a crude flag of surrender.
Volunteers came forward to board the cutter and dowse the flames, but fortunately for them Cpt. Willard, one of the Portland Harbor Pilots knew there was a great deal of powder still hidden aboard the cutter of which the Confederates were unaware. After standing back to watch it burn, the Caleb Cushing suddenly erupted in a sheet of flame and sank to the bottom.
The Rebel prisoners were brought back to shore, imprisoned at Ft. Preble and moved to Ft. Warren in Boston.
The exploits of Lt. Charles Reed and his intrepid crew are but a sidelight of the great Civil War. Their exploits were soon overshadowed by the cataclysmic events at Vicksburg and Gettysburg.

.

My First Review

2009-02-10T12:14:00.000-08:00

Last night I received my first review from Skip Shirks, a rifleman in my platoon, and character in Where Is Crusader Rabbit, Now That We Really Need Him? What makes this special is Skip was there with me. He was very typical of the kind of young man the US Army sent to Vietnam, smart, caring about his fellows and tough. If Skip had your back, you knew things were OK. At his own peril he rescued a fellow platoon member, who was being swept away by a flooded stream, and for that received the Soldier's Medal, the highest award given for non-combat bravery. I had lost my grip on the man, and to this day, I thank Skip, as had he drowned that day, I would have felt the guilt to this day and beyond.
If I had to do it all over again, I hope that I would have people like Skip Shirks around.
The book is written for all the young men who served honorably and bravely as he did.
Hi Bill
I just finished reading your book. Great job.I think you told the story of the grunt better than I have ever read before. I had forgotten a lot of things that you brought back to mermory, I knew just about everybody you had in the book. plus you filled in a lot of blanks i had about as to where we were and what we were doing. you nailed it good
skip

CR Accepted for Amazon.com distribution

2009-02-09T16:15:00.000-08:00

I was just notified that Where Is Crusader Rabbit, Now That We Really Need Him? has been accepted for distribution by Amazon.com. We are currently working on distribution through Amazon.com.uk, Barnes & Noble and Igraham. We'll post that when it is available. Should be soon.

The Visit of the Snow Snake

2009-02-07T07:12:00.000-08:00

It is February, still bitter cold in a month that should have winter’s hands easing their icy grip around our necks. It is the month, when the sun has the strength to melt back the snow from any dark surface even when the temperatures are fairly low. The ground hog may or may not see his shadow, but here in Maine, that really doesn’t matter. An early spring is actually sometime in April.
There are days, however, when the sun gives promise of spring, and I am reminded of a family mystery of many years gone by: the visit of the snow snake.
My grandfather had shoveled a February snow all the way back to the road, which by that time, had been touched with the civilizing effect of blacktop. There on the warm tar was a snake, wriggling like a sluggish drunkard. Although he was fascinated by them, my grandfather was loathe to touch them. In fact, the only time he moved them was with a stick or an axe handle. With the corner of his shovel, the old man lifted the snake and flipped it into the snow, where it promptly stiffened out. He then scraped it back onto the warm tar where it re-commenced its writhing. This scenario was played back and forth until the two neighbors, Leland Williams and “Snipe” Purington came by to see what the commotion was. After a chorus of “by the Jesuses;” “Never did see the likes;” and “Now, ain’t that somethin’s,” the poor reptile was thrown up on the snow bank to become a chewy treat for a mid-winter starved fox.
Where that snake came from, no one would even speculate. It remains to this day in the category of events we Mainers would label, “Now, ain’t that odd.”

The Polio Clinic

2009-02-04T16:57:00.000-08:00

In the early ‘50’s, one of the most evil demons to be feared was polio. My mother was terrified when my father was recalled to active duty and sent to what she considered the disease ridden South, and greatly relieved when we were transferred out in the winter, before the season of pestilence began. Still polio was to be feared and struck, on occasion, even up here in Maine, even on the street where we lived, although the young girl who contracted it, survived unscathed.
Movie theaters were off limits in the summer as well as fairs or any other large gathering, and getting your feet wet in a summer rain puddle was a sure ticket to a wheelchair. The Topsham Fair was declared safe, for it was held in the fall after the danger of infection had passed. Even here, however, we were not immune, for annually the March of Dimes hauled in a trailer in which lay for all to see, a victim in an iron lung, a giant tube from which only the head appeared. Bellows at the bottom sighed rhythmically. We filed by in lurid fascination, fearful and hoping it would never be us.
The advent of the Salk vaccine lifted that fear. Parents were relieved, and so were we kids, philosophically speaking. That was until the little, white slips began appearing for us to take home for parental permission to be the recipient of not just one but three injections. Brows creased, panic filled small bladders and bodies tingled as if sitting in a bathtub full of ginger ale. Dolores’ sunny, blond countenance took on a strained look of pain. Larry blanched. Nausea rose in my stomach, and in frenzy I turned my paper over hoping it would be blank.
My mother believed in the French judicial system whereby the condemned was never told of his execution date, so when the big day came, my mother had not told me of its arrival. At school the classroom was deathly still and all faces were pale. Only Miss Ridley was calm. Larry sniffed in his sleeve. The atmosphere was oppressive.
Outside in the hall began the shuffle of feet as the classes began their march to the office of Mrs. Higgins, the school nurse. The door closed behind the last unfortunate in Mrs. Russell’s room. We were next.
The black box on the wall buzzed. We struggled to our feet and shuffled out the door. The entire school was stretched out in a long snake down the corridor to the stairs, down to the first floor and around the gym to the nurse’s office.
At first all was quiet. The teachers kept us herded tightly against the wall to prevent escape. As we reached the first floor we were greeted by a constant murmur, like wind through leaves, punctuated now and then by a scream or loud crying. Still the teachers paced our line, keeping us docile.
Mrs. Higgins stood about eight feet tall, and her muscles strained the sleeves of her uniform. She ascribed to the medical theory of the time that what didn’t hurt or taste bad, wasn’t good for you. The doctors giving the shots were impassive. All veterans of the big war, they had seen it all, and we were nothing more than another line of draftees in the war against disease.
Larry began to howl as we drew near. Mrs. Higgins grabbed his skinny arm and dragged him in, holding him in a bear hug until the deed was done, and he was led sobbing back to the room.
Every nerve in my body screamed, “Run for it!” but I was more afraid of Mrs. Higgins than the needle, so I clenched my teeth and closed my eyes so tight, my hairline descended to my nose.
Back in the classroom, a sense of normalcy gradually returned. We felt good in the knowledge that some other poor slob was now on the receiving end of the syringe.
All this was training for life. The worst of basic training, we had been told, was the day you were inoculated against all diseases, foreign and domestic. But what the Army could dish up paled in comparison to the sheer animal terror of that polio clinic

For Don Murray

2009-02-02T08:44:00.000-08:00

In 1977 I had finished the draft of Where is Crusader Rabbitt, Now That We Really Need Him? typed out on the backs of old quizzes I had scrounged from the waste bins at York High School in York, ME. From the time I had started it in 1973, I had gone from being poor, single and living in the slum of Portsmouth, NH (Those of you familiar with Portsmouth might remember Seacrest Village) to being married to a wonderful lady who was a nursing instructor on the faculty of the University of New Hampshire.
One of her extra duties was to represent her department on the Faculty Senate. Among her fellow “senators” was Don Murray, perhaps one of the most popular faculty members who ever walked the halls of UNH.
Don had dropped out of high school to work in a logging camp, and at the outset of WWII had enlisted as a paratrooper and served throughout the war with the 82nd Airborne Division. Upon being discharged, he returned to school on the GI Bill, received a BA and MA, and also won the Pulitzer Prize.
At one meeting, Susan told him about my project, and he replied that he would like to see it. So at the next meeting, she presented him a ratty assortment of various colored paper bound up in four term paper folders. Not long afterward I received a call, asking if I could come over to his office some afternoon after I was done teaching, an invitation I accepted with some trepidation, considering the stature of a man like Don Murray.
We spent a pleasant afternoon, during which he waved off a stream of visitors, sharing stories about living in the mud and eating out of tin cans. Then he cut to the chase and asked what I planned on doing with the manuscript. My response was that I was happy I had written something that long, when no one else I knew had. And besides, trying to get something published was shooting in the dark.
He leaned forward, looked me square in the eye and asked, “Tell me, do you like sex, or do you like to masturbate?” I responded that after years of being single, the former was my preference, or words to that effect. “Well,” he said, “If you don’t try to publish this, you’re just masturbating.”
Well, I’m slow, but it’s finally been done. I only wish he were still around to see it. I quit when I needed glasses.

2009-02-01T07:49:00.000-08:00

There has been a lot of hope for the new administration, and I, for one, hope it succeeds. We all need it to succeed.
However, we have a new Secretary of the Treasurer, the man who oversees the IRS, who failed to pay taxes until caught, and former Senator Daschle, nominee for Secretary of Human Services, who also failed to pay large amounts of taxes until caught at it. I don't fault the Obama administration for these failures, but the disturbing thing about it is, every time the administration changes, the issue of high ranking officials failing to pay taxes comes up. I fear that had John McCain been the victor, we would have been seeing the same thing.
Could it be true that Leona Helmsley was right when she said, "Taxes are for the little people?"

It Wasn't Always Protested

2009-01-28T07:11:00.000-08:00

The popular conception of the war in Vietnam, is that it was widely opposed from the start. What is forgotten is that, at least in Northern New England, the majority of the people, and even college students either supported the effort, or were at least silent in their opposition.
I can call to mind two events, long forgotten probably by even those who were present at the time. It was during my sophomore year at the University of New Hampshire (1965-1966). At that time, some of the more hard-hearted professors would admonish the class to study harder by warning them of the consequences of failure, which meant getting drafted. During my freshman year, an acquaintance of mine from the class ahead of me, failed to heed this warning, and to avoid being drafted, enlisted in the Army to become a paratrooper. He shortly found himself serving with the 101st Airborne Division in Vietnam, where his young life was tragically cut short. The university newspaper ran a rather lengthy story about him, quoting some of his letters home, and there was a general sympathy for the sacrifice he had made, even among some of the more pacifistic students.

How different that time from when I was ordered overseas in 1969, when a former college friend, in responding to a letter I had written telling him of my news wrote, “If you get killed or wounded, you’re only getting what’s coming to you.”

When spring brought the UNH campus out of its winter cocoon in 1966, word spread that a group of Quakers planned to hold a peace vigil in the Memorial Room of the student union, the Memorial Union Building, commonly called the “MUB.” The Memorial Room had a wall sized plaque with the names of UNH alumni, who had died in service during our past wars. Ironically the class of 1942, my father’s class, had the largest number of names from WWII, as 1968, my class, was to have in Vietnam.
The group proposed to walk from a silent vigil they would hold at the front gate of Pease AFB in Newington, NH to the Durham Campus and do the same when they arrived at the MUB.

Word quickly spread across the campus, and soon a large crowd, mostly male as I remember, gathered in front of the MUB, a few carrying American flags, to wait the arrival of the “Peaceniks,” and deny their entry. There was a strong feeling that to hold an anti-war vigil would desecrate the purpose of the Memorial Room. Rumors would spread through the crowd like a zephyr rippling across water as to the progress of the marchers. As I remember, some of the information was being relayed along by the police, as the local law enforcement agencies appeared to be in sympathy with the crowd. Had any violence been acted towards, the protestors that day, I doubt to this day that they would have received a lot of protection.

At last word arrived that they were at the outskirts of town, and people strained to see them coming. Unlike what anyone probably expected, the group consisted of about a dozen people, dressed in black, most of them older than we. As they walked quietly up the sidewalk on Main St., not a few of them looked terrified. The crowd, shouted, jeered, and probably a few water balloons or empty beer cans may have been tossed. From where I stood, off to the side, I could not tell if they said anything, but they did appear to pray.
My own feeling at the time was I thought it inappropriate to hold a peace vigil in a room honoring war dead, but the other half of me felt it was their right to do so whether I agreed with it or not.

After a few moments, the group decided not to try to enter, walked away and everyone went to the dining hall for supper.

I went to Germany that fall to study, and when I returned in 1967, the “Ballad of the Green Berets” and “Billy, Don’t Be A Hero,” had disappeared from the radio, and the crowd on the lawn of the MUB had now forgotten what they had done, that spring day in 1966.

The Book Is Ready

2009-01-27T05:07:00.000-08:00

I received a call last night that Where is Crusader Rabbit, Now That We Really Need Him? is now available at the address below"
http://stores.lulu.com/wmillar
I believe it is also available through Amazon.com
It is early, and I have things to do, such as getting ready for 16" of snow coming, so I have no time to write something of great meaning at this time. Later today, perhaps.

Dedication

2009-01-24T11:53:00.000-08:00

I have been asked when Where Is Crusader Rabbit, Now That We Really Need Him? will be available for sale. My daughter, who has been the force behind getting it out of the attic, informs me that it will be ready around the end of February 2009, and we will post that information when it becomes available.
If one is interested, there is a comment on one of the posts, placed there by Heather, which shows the pictures that will appear on the front and back covers, the dedication page and the comments on the back cover.
On the dedication page, one of the persons to whom I dedicated the book, and to whom it was actually dedicated, long before Susan, Heather and Laura were in my life, is “Doc.” Doc was actually a young man named Clark Douglas, who served as the medic of the Second Platoon, while I was platoon leader. As the medic, he was a part of the platoon command post, along with the platoon sergeant, and our two radio operators (RTOs). During normal operations he stayed close to me along with my RTO, while the platoon sergeant and his RTO brought up the rear or the other flank to avoid the situation of “one grenade will get us all.”
Doc was a born leader, a person who seemed to know no fear, but without bravado; a person, who saw the physical hardships as something to grouse about from time to time, but not much beyond that. He greeted the new lieutenant in his shiny, straight from the supply depot uniform, with skepticism. I guess I passed his test, because we quickly became friends. I would have liked to have continued this friendship beyond the Army, but it was not to be. Several weeks after I was transferred out of the platoon, to give another lieutenant his shot at “command time,” Doc was killed going to the aid of a wounded platoon member. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, our second highest decoration, posthumously.
Unlike the combat situations in Iraq and Afghanistan today, we were brought into units as individual replacements and left the same way. It was difficult to keep track of friends once they had left. One of my biggest regrets over the years was that I had no contact with Clark’s family.
For me, the best part of this book and blog is that I have found Clarks’ daughter, born while we were together, and his wife. I still grieve their loss, but I am happy that they are the good people one would expect. It gives me pleasure to know that there is a part of Clark Douglas, my comrade in arms and good friend still among us.

Inauguration Day

2009-01-20T16:34:00.000-08:00

My first “tour” at Ft. Benning, GA, home of the Infantry School, was in 1951, when my father was recalled to active duty for the Korean War. A veteran of World War II, he had remained in the inactive reserve, something a five year old did not understand. He and my mother had just purchased a house and moved in with my sister, not yet one year of age. All I knew is we were going far away, and I had to have a lot of shots before I could be registered in the on post elementary school.
Up to that point I had never been further away from home than my grandparents’ house, a three hour distant ride. Traveling by train, plane and automobile, we arrived in Columbus, GA, two days after leaving my grandfather’s in New Hampshire, and moved into an army housing area called “Battle Park.”
Integration of the armed forces was underway at that time, but not complete, and some commanders dragged their feet at incorporating black troops into what had been all white units. The commander of the battalion to which my father was assigned was a southern gentleman, who believed that placing all the blacks in his command into a separate company was “integration.” My father, a reservist (and a Yankee), and therefore considered by the regular army officers to be at the bottom of the pecking order, was placed in command, and was, indeed, the only white in an infantry company of black soldiers. Shocked wives of his fellow officers asked my mother if he carried a gun when he went to the field, and were more stupefied at my mother’s response as to why he would want to do something like that.
For most people, who serve in combat, the unit you serve with stays close to your heart. And that is true with my father. He is still a proud member of the 104th Timber Wolf Division, but though he will turn 90 this year, he remembers with great fondness, that all those great guys at Ft. Benning, who accepted a red haired Irish guy from Maine as their commander and who could stand tall with any man.
Today we saw the inauguration of our first African American president. How far things have come in a lifetime. And to the Brothers I had the honor to serve with: Right on!

The End of Innocence

2009-01-17T13:16:00.000-08:00

It was a golden warm September afternoon at the University of New Hampshire in 1964 when we trooped over to the ROTC supply building to be issued our uniforms.

The floors creaked, and the interior was divided into bins screened off with heavy wire.

We lined up at the metal counter behind which stood a grizzled, retired sergeant from World War II, now an army civilian employee. The whole place smelled strongly of wool, canvas and leather.

We drew a garrison cap, a dress jacket, which the old NCO called a “blouse,” upon the lapels of which were round brass pins with the flaming torch insignia of the Reserve Officer Training Corps; pins which we would be required to polish. We were given a pair of woolen trousers, (“Only girls wear pants,” the sergeant had told us) a black tie, socks, a brown shirt, a belt with a brass buckle, also requiring polish, and a pair of black army shoes, which we would also learn to spit shine. For many of us, these shoes also became our dress shoes.

We bore the uniforms back to our rooms openly and proudly so that the girls could see them as a mark of our manhood.

Our fathers had worn such uniforms and now it was our turn. We, too, would go to Europe and fight a war to preserve freedom and democracy.

Little did we know that in a brief time, these same uniforms we proudly slung over our shoulders, would be symbols of scorn and contempt, and the war we thought we would fight would be in the steaming jungles of a place most of us had never even heard of.

2009-01-13T16:46:00.000-08:00

As I sit here waiting for the Arctic chill to hit, and make me doubt the existence of global warming, I can think back to how hot it was in Vietnam. The heat was like a blanket wrapping around you, one you could not throw off. It was as if we were constantly on the verge of suffocation. I often wondered if we walked into an ambush, would we be alert enough to spot it, or in some cases even care.
When the cold arrives here, I will be able to throw another log on the fire and put on an additional layer of clothes, but with heat, there is no way to cool down. The dense foliage in Vietnam held it in, and even splashing through a swamp or fording a stream offered no relief as the water was close to body temperature.
In watching our troops in Iraq, confined to the ovens that the armored vehicles can become, with sleeves rolled down, helmets and body armor, I wonder how they can even move. If you have never suffered heat exhaustion, I do not recommend you try it. The headaches are excruciating.
I recently asked the son of a friend who has been deployed three times to Iraq and Afghanistan how they manage to function in that environment. His response was,"We drink a lot of water, and we have all been trained to administer IV's."
My heart is always with our young men and women who are over there. To be sure, the First Cavalry Division is among them. When one considers that many of our troops are on multiple tours, one has to admire their courage, even if one doesn't agree with the war.
So, to those over there, "Keep your heads down and stay safe."

The journey of the book

2009-01-08T17:33:00.000-08:00

Writing Where is Crusader Rabbit Now That We Really Need Him? has been a long journey. While taking ROTC in college I was advised to enlist in the Regular Army, for doing so, would guarantee my first assignment and branch choice. Majoring in German, I thought Military Intelligence and a government sponsored trip to Germany would not only be a great way to avoid Vietnam, but would be a good time. I took the advice and was commissioned as a Regular Army second lieutenant with a branch of MI. Then the shoe dropped: Regular Army, non-combat branch officers, had to serve a year in the infantry, but not to worry, I would still go to Germany where my then fluent knowledge of German would be put to good use. I could envision myself gliding up and down the Autobahn in my new Porsche.
On the day of graduation from the Infantry Officer Basic Course, my orders were changed to Ft. Hood, TX. That base, needless to say, had not been on my choice of places to go. From November 1968 to April of 1969 I was a platoon leader in the 1st Armored Division, commanding a platoon of Vietnam returnees, many of whom were suffering PTSD, and many of whom were escaping the crushing boredom and loneliness of the place with drugs.
In April of 1969, I received orders late one Sunday afternoon advising me that I would be going to the Jungle Operations Training Center in the Panama Canal Zone en route to the RVN with a Military Occupational Specialty of 1542, small tactical unit leader. Needless to say the dreams of the Porsche evaporated.
Realizing that, for better or worse, I was about to embark upon something far larger than myself that would appear in history books in the future, I began to keep a journal. The opening paragraph of Where is Crusader, is a verbatim copy of what I wrote shortly after taking off from Oakland, CA. I maintained the journal until the constant soaking from river crossings and monsoon rains destroyed the remaining pages.
In 1973, now out of the Army and teaching school, I began to reconstruct the journal and what I remembered. For four years I typed it all down on the back of scrap paper I rescued from the school’s trash bin. Once it was done, it made several moves and eventually it was dragged out of the attic and put on a computer disk.
My daughter, Heather, decided that I should publish it, and for Christmas 2008, presented me with the first copy.
Everything in this book actually happened. However, I have changed the names, even though in some cases I had permission to use them. In some cases, several people have been morphed into one character, but it’s all true, folks. It is my hope that the good men, and the majority were super, that I served with will see themselves and take pride in what they were able to accomplish and adapt to.

Where Is Crusader Rabbit Now That We Really Need Him?

2009-01-07T19:51:00.000-08:00

Where is Crusader Rabbit Now That We Really Need Him? is a novel based on the author's experience as a platoon leader with the First Cavalry Division in Vietnam from 1969-70. It takes the reader on a journey through the jungles, through the eyes of very young infantrymen to the life of troops in the rear areas, where the comradeship of the field did not exist. The reader meets the young soldiers of an unpopular war, who were, in the end, as noble and courageous as American soldiers in every other war, and those who were interested only in advancing their own careers. The author draws on the journal he kept while in Vietnam and his letters home.