Stitch in Time

by John Gould

  Not a Cane

  Piece in the paper explains that walking sticks are coming back, and that a walking stick is not a cane. That is true, and my Uncle Bert learned that from my grandfather. When Uncle Bert married my Aunt Grace, they settled in at housekeeping, and my grandfather shortly went to visit them to look over his new son-in-law. He got a neighbor to come and feed the stock and pick up the eggs, and took the steamcars. Uncle Bert and Aunt Grace met him at the dee-poe with the Maxwell, and after supper Uncle Bert suggested they take a stroll and see the neighborhood. As they stepped out the door, Uncle Bert reached a cane from the umbrella stand and handed it to Gramps.

  Gramps never used a cane, but he well knew about walking sticks. He flourished this one a couple of times to get the hang, and then noticed Bert didn’t have a stick. “Where’s your’n?” he asked.

  Bert said the wrong thing. He said, “Oh, I don’t need one.” That instantly changed the walking stick into a cane. Grandfather, older, was doddering and infirm; Bert was the bride-groom rejoicing as a strong man. “No more do I!” said Gramps as he tossed the thing behind him on the piazza, and off he went to walk rings around poor Bert.

  Some years after Bert’s mistake (the cane, not the marriage), I came along, and Gramps walked the legs off me, too. We’d start from the house to go up the lane, over the knoll and down into the woods, and his stride was altogether too much for my little legs. As I grew taller, he grew older, but age never shortened his gait and I was always behind. He was a small man, and one day I was taller than he. He still outwalked me. You see, he was a comrade of the old G.A.R., and when soldiers were moved in our Civil War, they were marched. Little Gramps, then with his mere eighteen years, struck out in the rhythm of the regiment, hay-foot-straw-foot down the map, clocking off the miles to Gettysburg and on into The Wilderness. The only people I ever knew to keep pace with my grandfather were his fellow comrades of the Sixteenth Maine Regiment of Volunteers, and every Decoration Day they would hike to the cemeteries with their little pots of geraniums at a clip that kept the band in quick time.

  Had Uncle Bert carried a stick that day, Gramps would have without question, because when he walked about his farm he always had a stick. But never a cane. As a starter, there was always his peeled willow wand, his persuader for the cattle in the pasture lane. It stood by the tie-up door at night, and was left at the pasture bars every morning to be retrieved in the evening for the return to the barn. This stick was worn jauntily, with all the grace of a British swagger stick, and it could never be construed as a cane because the other end never touched the ground. A light touch or a smart rap, as needed, kept the cows moving along the lane.

  Another kind of cattle persuader was by the tie-up door—the goadsticks left over from the days of oxen. Mainers called the goadstick a gad. There was some use of the gads as walking sticks in my time, but in the days of oxen a teamster always went about with gad in hand, whether teaming or not. Uncle Niah’s gad had a murderous-looking darning needle in its business end—some three inches long. Uncle Niah had been gone for years, but Gramps explained to me that the needle was for show. Uncle Niah was, Gramps said, a nash old poop who blushed if somebody said darn, and so kindhearted he wouldn’t slap houseflies. His animals were trained to whispered commands, and he’d plow all day and never touch his gad to a beast. (By the way—who first translated Martin Luther so he says it makes a difference whose ox is gored—didn’t he mean goaded?) There was another old goadstick in the tie-up—instead of a brad it had a short leather thong to be used as a stinger. Somebody back along preferred to whip rather than brad. And then there were some plain sticks there—two or three of them I peeled in my time.

  My first one was a hazel shoot, with a crooked root making a handle. Gramps and I, going with the cows, had stopped at the Red Astrachan apple tree to estimate the time to the first pie, and I jumped at a limb to grab down an apple to make the test. Gramps, with his cow stick, simply tipped one off the twig and caught it as it fell. “You need a stick,” he said, and out came his “toad-stabber.” He lopped off the shoot, and later I peeled it. That was the day he told me about the time Uncle Bert thought he was an old man.

  Hawks and Handsaws

  When I was but a tyke, Uncle Levi, our family’s dearest kin, was making little Louise a doll’s house, and he needed a few small items of hardware which could then be had from the Woolworth’s of the day, the five-and-dime. Uncle Levi was a brickmason by trade, but liked to putter at what he called the “joiner’s bench,” and he was craftsman enough to make some lovely things. So, needing some hardware, he came down off the scaffolding where he had been laying bricks, riding in the mortar elevator, and he walked over to a Woolworth store to select his needs. He found them on a counter, and holding them in his hand he looked about for a clerk to take his money. There was no clerk. He walked up and down the aisles, called out “Hello, hello!” and came back to stand around and wait. Still no clerk. And as his noon lunchtime was nearly over he simply walked out of the store without paying and became a shoplifter. He told us about this when he came home that evening, showing no regrets for his depraved action, and said it served old man Woolworth right for not attending to his business.

  The doll’s house was weekend work, so he didn’t get to putter with it until Sunday, when he found the hardware he had stolen didn’t suit. It was too big or too small, or something, and he was greatly put out at his own stupidity for picking the wrong things. He put the hardware in his pocket and took it to the construction job the next day. Come noon hour, he again descended in the mortar lift, walked over to Woolworth’s, and returned the several items to their compartments and slots on the counter. He then looked around and found just the right things that he should have had in the first place, and again tried to find a clerk to take his money. No clerk. So again he walked out without paying, to become the only shoplifter on record who exchanged his merchandise. The doll’s house, by the way, is extant.

  As I grew along, I spent much time at the joiner’s bench with Uncle Levi, and he broke me in to the use of hand tools and the shaping of wood into pretty things. About that time the town meeting embraced manual training and domestic science in the schools, after long urging by the alleged educators, and Uncle Levi advised me to enroll for manual training. I did, but soon withdrew. In our town of shipwrights, the manual training shop came to be ridiculed as the Necktie Rack Works, and professional woodworkers who still believed in apprenticeships soon saw the folly of trying to make culture out of a craft. Uncle Levi understood when I told him the teacher had held up a handsaw and said, “Now, boys, this is a handsaw.” It happened that Willy Beakers, whose father made sloops, stood beside me in that class, and Willy had quite a business going as a saw filer. It occupied him after school, and he’d rush home to file saws until supper time. He got twenty-five cents a saw, and was considered the best filer in miles. Willy didn’t stick to manual training any longer than I did, but we both made a necktie rack before we quit. Willy pulled out entirely, but I stayed on and “took up” mechanical drawing to finish out the term.

  Uncle Levi was dismayed. He was afraid I was about to become an “arkiteck” and he hated architects. At the news, he went behind the barn and sat on the chopping block to “catch a breath.” When he returned, he lectured me on the evils of architecture, and I have heeded ever since the great lesson he taught. He held a brick up under my nose, and he said, “All right, now, boy—this here ain’t no handsaw, it’s a brick!”

  Having thus established a big difference between knowledge and what is taught in school, he clapped his bench ruler to the brick and read off its dimensions—length, breadth, thickness.

  “Now, Johnny-boy, if you’re going to draw designs on a trestleboard, don’t you never forget them figgers! Every damn’ arkiteck in this world should jump out of bed every morning and yell them figgers out the window to prove he ain’t forgot ’em! But, I’m telling you once and for all—they ain’t an arkiteck in Christendom tha
t knows how big a brick is!” I never saw Uncle Levi so worked up, ’fore or after.

  What boiled him was simple enough. All the years that he had been laying bricks, one after another in the interminable courses of the construction trade, he had to follow blueprints laid down by architects who didn’t know the dimensions of a brick. Every time he had to leave a hole for a window of a door, the architect would specify dimensions the ordinary brick couldn’t meet. Instead of six bricks, or twenty-four bricks, the hole would take five and a half bricks, or twenty-three and a quarter bricks. The brickmason had to break bricks to come out even, which slowed the work and added to building costs. Uncle Levi hated to break bricks. So I learned that this would be a far finer world if we never had an architect in the family. Shoplifters, yes—but architects, no.

  (Seven and three-quarters times three and three-quarters times two.)

  No Haulin’ Day

  A couple of old-time schools of “communications” recently gave up, pleading lack of funds, and I thought at the time that communication comes in different sizes. With new electronic opportunities, ordinary schools of “journalism” became schools of “communications,” and the ability to enunciate a one-minute commercial for brass polish took on academic stature. All to the good, but when a school of communications can’t communicate its need for money, a small doubt about something or other should be permitted. Not too many have been privileged to see some Maine lobstermen communicating without saying a word, partly for want of an invitation to attend, and partly because lobstermen get up about 2 A.M. to do their communicating. I think a school of communications is unlikely to work this into a seminar.

  There are esoterics. The Maine lobsterman is a loner by nature and rather much by trade. Even when he “goes two,” which means he has a stern man, or assistant, the arrangement goes “snacks” and neither is the boss. The Internal Revenue Service, back along, tried to tell the Maine lobsterman that going snacks, share and share alike, had to be handled taxwise as employer and employed, causing a tidal hilarity that bounced along the Maine coast all one summer. Much of the satisfaction of being a lobster catcher, I’m sure, derives from being out there in your boat, man against the sea, having every bit of the beauty and the challenge for your very own. Few lobstermen admire to have a rider, a visitor, and while almost every summercater would love to “go to haul” to see what it’s like, invitations to do so are seldom. As a retired highlander coming to live by the tide, I was much touched when Harold asked me if I’d care to go haul “some mornin’.” Some foolish people might prefer a seat on the Supreme Court bench—I went to haul.

  But at his independent best, the Maine lobsterman stays close to all other lobstermen. While hauling, his eyes keep attention over the water to see who’s around. If a motor fails, and some boat isn’t back in harbor on schedule, community uneasiness settles over the waterfront, and you could cut it with a knife. Those who have “come in” recollect where they last sighted the boat—off Mosquito Rock, down east’ard of Rack Island—and there is a kinship framed in anxiety. Minds are turning as to where to look first. Then, when the overdue boat returns to harbor the tension eases, nobody admits to being concerned, and all go home to supper. The communion is reserved for members only. That first morning, when I arrived in the pitch dark of 2 A.M., Harold spoke a casual greeting and wanted to know if I was “down for the summer.” Just to remind me that I was a guest; that I was different. Harold was standing shoulder to shoulder with Tom and John, and some others were there I didn’t know or didn’t recognize in the dark. “Mornin’,” I said, and got silence. Everybody was communicating, and I joined the witan to face the harbor and wait for light enough to see the lobster boats on mooring. Fueled and with bait aboard, the boats would not cast off and go down the bay until the big decision had been arrived at as to whether or not this was a “haulin’ day.”

  To haul, or not to haul?

  Was this a day to run five, six, seven miles to sea, to be there at sunup when the law permits traps to be lifted, and would the sunrise be propitious? Nobody spoke, and the silence was communication.

  After a time, Harold said, “Well—I dunno.”

  Some minutes later, Tom said, “Well—I dunno.”

  There began to be some light, and the shapes of the fishing boats appeared. Another few minutes, and John pushed his skiff off the wharf into the water, stepped in, and quietly skulled off toward his mooring. So, too, did Tom, and the others, and so did Harold and I—Harold taking the thwart to row his overloaded skiff. A decision had been made and agreement arrived at, and the day was a haulin’ day. We were well down to Magee Island when the sun burst from the ocean and dripped great red blobs back into the tide. John, when he pushed off his skiff, had said it would be like that, but not in words. He just communicated.

  On the other hand . . . A year or so later Harold stopped by and I gave him some Brussels sprouts from my garden, and I asked, “They crawlin’?”

  “Eyah,” said Harold. “Some.”

  “I haven’t been to haul this year,” I said.

  Harold smiled. “You can go anytime you want, you know that.”

  “Eyah.”

  He looked at the Brussels sprouts and said, “That’s enough. I’m good for just about that many once a year. They don’t taste so good second time.”

  “You haulin’ tomorrow?”

  “Plan to.”

  ” ’Bout four?”

  “Prolly. Four-thirty, more likely.”

  I said, “If I’m not there by four-thirty, I’m not coming.”

  I was there at four-thirty.

  On a haulin’ day, Friendship harbor comes to life all over. Each engine, some three hundred of them, is started and idled long enough to listen to the rhythm. It must sound right. Pumps empty the bilges. Each lobsterman gets his waterproof clothes, because no matter how calm the weather, water flies when the pot warps are brought in over the snatch-blocks. The cumulative roar of all the engines keeps up until the fleet disperses “down below.” Radios are turned on, and talk will continue among boats until the business of hauling warps interrupts. Friendship is a working harbor, and the fishermen have little use for the summer mahogany. Even if they did, one can’t start up a motorboat and head for sea without making a noise, and once the fleet is outside Garrison Island the cottagers and the yachtsmen can go back to sleep.

  Again, I found Harold, with Tom and John and the others, standing in the dark facing the harbor—communicatively silent. I got the usual small hello, and I got the foolishness about being down for the summer. I had my breakfast and lunch in a clam hod, weather gear under my arm, and as a touch of light developed in the east I could see that Harold’s skiff (incidentally, one I made for him) was on the wharf and hadn’t been bailed after last evening’s shower. There was no surge of engines off on the harbor. I didn’t hear the squawk of a boat radio, turning to the Coast Guard weather. Nobody said, “I dunno.” Nobody had gone off to mooring. They knew. A decision had been reached and it was unanimous. John went first, shuffling up the ramp in his rubber boots, and then one by one they all went home.

  It was not to be a haulin’ day.

  The First Day

  There is no culture west

  of Framingham.—Henry Beston

  Now and then I get letters, always from west of Framingham, asking me what I meant by such-and-such. Such as “good.” The questions arise from my devotion to the solecisms of my beloved Maine, and I must explain first off that good is always pronounced in two syllables—goo-ood. Numerous Maine words do the same—stow-wer for store, show-wer for shore, hee-yer for hear and here, and shoo-wer for sure. Of the many Maine ways to use goo-ood, I prefer the meaning of the French, “ça suffit.” When Harold the lobster catcher comes to sup with us, the moment arrives when he is asked to replenish his supply.

  “Harold,” says my wife-person, “how about another chop?”

  “No, no!” says Harold, “I’m goo-ood!”

  This is t
he simple equation. The compound equation is used, for example, when she asks if he’ll take more pie. “No,” he says, “I’m goo-ood,” and thinking that might be construed as uncomplimentary to the pie, he adds, “But that pie is some goo-ood!” This is almost the supreme Maine approval. When elevated into the supreme, it goes, “That pie is sure some old goo-ood!”

  Some years ago one of the Popes decreed that the ancient Latinity of the Roman Catholic Church could be eased off in favor of the vernaculars, after which priests localized. But localizing had long been common practice here in Maine, an early instance concerning Loud’s Island and the Sunbeam. The Sunbeam is a missionary boat that cruises up and down the Maine coast, bringing spiritual encouragement to the remote heathens of the islands and peninsulas. With no nuances of impiety, the coastal Mainers call her “God’s Tugboat,” and they will tell you that God’s Tugboat is dedicated to benefactions that are some old goo-ood. (I must interpolate here, without relevancy, that there is a summer cruise schooner out of Penobscot Bay that is named Victory Chimes, but by the fishermen is called Jingle Bells.)

  So years ago the Sunbeam put in at Loud’s Island for a weekend, and the skipper-minister was to conduct Sunday services at the church there. The few people on the island can’t support a resident parson, so the church is used only when there is a “supply,” usually the Sunbeam skipper. Nobody goes to haul (allowed on Sunday then, but not nowadays) and everybody goes to church.