11 August 2002

Some things have changed and others have not. George has married Judy, a successful attorney from Bath, and they have produced two wonderful kids, Annie and Frazier. They now occupy the old family cottage and the parents have bought the place next door, up the hill. Cousins are across the street and they have rigged a bucket on a laundry line to Alexa can send notes over to Annie when they have been sent to their rooms for sleep. It is a family compound inside a larger family compound. Everyone knows everyone. There is a parrot I met in 1975, a gift from the old King of Libya to an American diplomat. The bird has outlived them all. He is 41, and they say that the African gray parrot can live to be 80. He will likely be whistling when Frazier is middle-aged and his children are running back from the dock.

You would like the smell of the cottage. The floors creak with each footstep. Old wood. Old newspaper. Windows all open and the smell of the sea. Old in a good way. Bric-a-brac that has been here for a century, summer�s worth of notices and calendars that still take 1984 seriously. Rugs that were old when they were unrolled here, that speak of ancient lands. The cottages that haven’t been updated are just paneling over the studs, and in the kitchen, the studs and braces form the shelves of impromptu pantries.I was informed of an aggressive  social agenda in Bayside. We are to take a plunge off the Community dock; we are invited to sale out to Turtle Head, around the corner from John Travolta�s place on exclusive Iselboro if the wind comes up. We are invited to cocktails at the parent�s house next door at five, then off to Young�s Lobster Pound for a shore meal of steamed Quohog clams. Then a stop at Rollie�s Bar for the best crag roll on the mid-coast of Maine. Then back to Bayside for the annual beach bonfire, and following the dying of the embers, the tunes will crank up at the Noise-a-torium, a heavily remodeled cabin up the slope from Merrithew Square.

It is a lot to achieve, but Ins�hallah, we will get it done.

Bayside is eerily familiar. You would recognize it instantly as the sister village to dozens of Methodist Retreats that sprung up in the 1879s as a sort of back-to-nature movement. They banned alcohol and praised the Lord, so the members of that sturdy faith would not recognize the people who have succeeded them. But the little gingerbread cottages remain unchanged and the breeze off the water is the same, whether it is Bayside or Bayview in Michigan or Rehobeth Beach, Delaware. They are all sisters under the skin and if you are home in one, you are home in all.

Looking out from the village dock is a panorama of natural beauty that Kenneth Roberts wrote about his wonderful series on life during the Revolution here in Maine.  Straight out is Turtle Head, named because of its resemblance  to the crouching amphibian. Behind it is Blue Hill, thrusting up, concealing Mount Desert Island and Bar Harbor behind it. To the left is Searsport, the big petroleum holding tanks the only modern structures to be seen. Belfast is around the corner to the left, and Bucksport is there and other islands. The sun glitters off the water and tide is high. It is only ten feet down to the saltwater and when you leap from the dock and hit the water the chill goes right through you, cold and crisp.

George�s Dad Jack is there, 75 and going strong. He takes off his short and performs a crisp racing dive. The cold does not seem to affect him. The smell of the land meeting the salt is strong but no unpleasant. Rich in the nostrils, bracing on the tongue.

The wind comes up and Jim brings his boat in from the mooring. He does not drop the outboard into the water, he is a waterman and he does it all under sail, arcing around to bring the boat near enough to the floating camel to allow us to leap on. We drove up to the store and bought tonic and a six-pack of Molson�s Ice at Bell�s, and we stow it below in a pouch with blue ice. We take the long reach with the freshening breeze and it makes us fly majestically. Jim works in Connecticut and commutes to the shore on the weekends. He looks to be in his early 40s, he has been married 22 years and we talk about men and women together, as men do. Shaking our heads in the wonder of it all.

We take the reach all the way to the cliffs at Turtle Head before we come about. We can see the mouth of the Penobscot River and it does not look a great deal different that it would have when Paul Revere led a little fleet up here to challenge the British. He was ignominiously routed by the Redcoats and his flotilla scuttled to keep them from falling into the King�s hands. Paul walked back to Boston. Jim marveled that we don�t hear that story much.

The Molsons taste good in the freshening air. An antique biplane, maybe a Steerman, flies overhead with the deep drone of a rotary piston engine. The pilot performs a hammerhead turn and flies back along the coast. George says it might be John Travolta, a pilot who has his own landing strip over on Isleboro. The money that lives over there is in seclusion from its public fame. Jim says that the yacht club there is pretty snooty.

We get back in time for drinks and hors d�eourves on the screened porch next door. I lived in the maid�s quarters of George�s house in Detroit for a year after college, when I was just starting out. So his folks are mine, too, in a way. They are enjoying this retirement, close to the grandkids.

George and I have a certain amount of living to catch up on, and Judy graciously allows us to do it prior to the bonfire. They are going to sell popcorn as a fundraiser and the kids are making posters and preparations. We drive through Belfast and turn down into the lot at Young�s. There is a brisk trade in progress around the counter. To the left are the big blue holding tanks for the live lobsters. There are thousands there. George says the experts have been saying the Penobscot should be lobstered-out by now from over catching, but still the crustaceans keep crawling into the traps and eventually onto our plates.

We are here for steamers, though, and the counterman plucks two mesh bags of live clams out of saltwater and dumps them into the steaming broth. They boil merrily and in minutes are seated out on the picnic tables looking back across the water to Bayside. We dip into broth to clean the last of the grit from them, then plop them into drawn butter. This is heaven. When we have finished converting the clams into empty shells we drive back to Belfast. We stop at Rollie�s Bar and order a crab-roll. We enjoy a Sam Adams draft and watch two ample local ladies play pool. When the plate arrives it is a hotdog bun split down the top and heaped with mounds of fresh crab, mixed with just a hint of mayonnaise. Rollie�s is one of those places, you know the kind. The ones where Rollie would pick up two battling customers by the scruff of their necks and eject them onto the street, telling them to take their quarrel elsewhere. We could stay, but we don�t. We have a bonfire to go to, and a party after that.

We drive circuitously out of town to dodge the cops, past the large park that now stands where the chicken plant was. When we pull back onto Maple street the sun is below the horizon and they have lit the great pile of timber and brush and rotted ship�s cradles that will light the night. The kids stand around the pyre and the adults stand in the park above the beach watching the flames roar. The kids through stones at the fire and the sparks race up into the night and the stars are out. This is one of the most beautiful places on earth, and this bonfire marks the beginning of the end of the season. The summer people are already beginning the disengagement, kids need to get back to college, Labor Day and the great quiet is looming out there just a week or more away. There is something special about the summer people, this annual companionship that stretches across the years.

I am introduced as an old high school pal, which is fine. The next question is always: �Have you been hear before?� George responds that I am �On the door,� where our height is recorded in pencil with the date. My date is 1975 and I am much shorter now. But being on the door makes a part of this somehow, and have the feeling of being home.

George is on summer time, and he lasted much longer at the Noise-a-torium party. I faded at eleven, a city boy with an early bird schedule. I was up early, the air fresh through the open window and the scent of the water in my nostrils. I crept as quietly I could downstairs, holding my sneakers. I walked the mile or so up to Bell�s, drinking in the air. David Kinney has his Model A Ford down there, getting a cup of coffee. I buy a paper and David asks me I I would like to go for a ride.

�Ay-jup� I say, and climb in. He had problems with the transmission and had it replaced a couple weeks ago. This was really the first time it was back on the road for the season. The thermometer on the hoot ornament works. He tested it with a match.

It is a fine way to drive around Bayside, on the bluff over the glittering Penobscot. The water is calm and glassy this morning, and a haze is burning off out toward Turtle Head. The wind will rise as the morning goes on, a fresh breeze for the sailboat race in the afternoon.

Then home again, home again, jiggety-jig. Ready for the last week at Harvard.