by John Gould
Perhaps no sacred edifice ever stood on a lovelier spot. On a decent summer Sunday, Muscongus Bay shines cerulean the compass-rose around, and the heavy flavor of bayberry and sweetfern enfolds the knoll. The catspruces of Loud’s Island, as on all Maine islands, march in close order down the hill to the edge of the ocean ledges. There is no road to the Loud’s Island church—people come from both ends of the island by footpaths lined with blueberry bushes, gulls overhead. The walk through the woods relaxes the communicants from their everlasting business with the sea, and they arrive in pentitent mood. There was a “goodly crowd” for the services on that Sunday morning now in context.
The nautical minister welcomed all to the warmth of Eternal Love, there was a hymn, and in time the sermon. That was indeed a magnificent Muscongus Bay Sunday, and the topic chosen for the message was fitting. It was The Creation, and the glorious beauties wrought from the darkness that was upon the face of the deep. “And the evening and the morning were the first day,” the minister quoted from the Book of Genesis.
Then he said, “And God saw that it was sure some old goo-ood.”
The Lard Pail
Cook said if I’d fetch her some lard, she’d make me a blueberry pie. I’d sooner have that in midwinter than a license to steal, so I brought a bag of blueberries from the freezer and went to Fales Mkt. for some lard. “No got,” said Richard, who likes to toss off comical things he picks up from the summer people.
“No lard?”
“Nope.”
Just to counteract his verbal sloppiness, I came back with, “Is there some reason for this deplorable destitution in a prosperous community otherwise overflowing with milk and honey?”
“My, my,” he says. “I order lard all the time, but none comes.”
“So how is my wife going to make me a blueberry pie?”
He pointed at several just-as-goods on the shelf. Things I had seen well recommended on the TV, all of them non-this and non-that and made from wonderful things that are good for me. I told Richard, “My wife still makes her pie crust from lard, and I have spent a lifetime keeping her in ignorance of substitutes.” So I went to some other places, and at the third store I found some lard. Cook performed as agreed and the blueberry pie was delicious.
No doubt lard is scarce because demand has waned. But there is no substitute for pure leaf lard in the making of pie crust, and this should be embroidered in letters of gold and hung in every kitchen, as well as the Smithsonian Institution. Does anybody remember the lard pail?
I assume nobody remembers home-grown lard. When obsequies were held for the farm pig, the leaf fat was “tried out” in the kitchen oven and poured off as rendered into containers. Lard bought at a store might be scooped from a tub, but it also came packed in two-, three-, and five-pound tin pails—larger for hotel and restaurant use. If the lard came “loose” it would be carried home in a small pasteboard dish with some sanitation probabilities, but the lard in pails would be certainly clean. (The first lard “substitute,” before Crisco and wonders, was called in all honesty a substitute, and sometimes “compound”; it’s dominant virtue was a lesser price.) The lard pails were substantial, tight covers and bails, and after the lard was used the pails had a thousand uses until they wore out. The lard pail disappeared from grocery stores in the United States long ago, but for some years after that it lingered in Canada. As the symbol of Canada is the maple leaf, and this was “leaf” lard, the Canadian pails had a bright red maple leaf as a trade mark. Before the days of busing pupils to school, and before hot lunches, it was a stirring sight to look up a Canadian road and see the scholars carrying their lunches in these distinctive pails.
In my youth, before our lard pails disappeared, I had a three-pounder for my school lunch, but I was a light eater. I’d have two-three sandwiches, a cold chicken leg, pickles, cheese, cupcakes, pie, cookies, and perhaps an apple, and then I was ready to go out and play, but most youngsters had five-pound pails. The Willard twins had a ten-pounder between them.
The lard pail was great for berrying. Slip your pants belt through the bail and have both hands free to pick. When the five-pound pail was full, it meant two quarts and a pint—“a pint’s a pound the world around.”
A lard pail served to take a sip of water to the biddies, and then to bring the eggs into the house.
We had a five-pound lard pail for well water. Our deep well had the best water in town, so we never put tap water on the table. A long pole had a snap on the end, and the lard pail would be lowered into the well. Just the right amount of water for a family meal. If company came, we used a pitcher, but we saw nothing gauche in having the lard pail on the table otherwise.
The lard pail was a shut-in’s friend. Now and then Mother would fill a lard pail with cookies, candies, a couple of doughnuts, maybe some fruit cake, and I’d carry it to somebody laid up, or for a birthday goodie. She’d tell me I might go inside if asked, but to mind my manners and take off my cap, and not to wear out my welcome, and always to bring back the lard pail. “I couldn’t keep house without that lard pail!” she’d say.
And now people keep house without lard pails, and even without lard.
About Joe Toth
This Joe Toth—pronounced Jo Tote—lived alone in a big sea-captain house with spacious lawns and wedding elms, and next was another big sea-captain house with lawns and elms where the Prindles lived. It was maybe seventy-five yards between the houses, and Joe was a little nearsighted. So one fine morning Joe got up at his usual hour, came down to let in the cat and start his breakfast. He sliced some bacon and laid it in a pan. He frothed two eggs in a bowl with some milk, for scrambling, and he fitted two slices of bread into the toaster. The coffee started to perk, and Joe had things in hand. Joe always ate at the big kitchen table where he could look across towards the Prindle house.
Joe was just putting some butter to his second slice of toast when he laid everything down on his plate, wiped his mouth on his napkin, pushed back his chair, and stood up.
Then he opened the back kitchen door, went through the hallway into the woodshed, crossed the woodshed to the barn, and pulled the wooden peg that served as a lock for the rolling door. Pushing on the door, Joe got it open with some protest from the rollers, and he opined to himself that he had forgotten again to squirt some oil. He now passed through the open barn door and walked down the rollway to the driveway, and stepped from the gritty gravel onto the velvety lawn. There had been a good dew, and his shoes were instantly wet. He crossed his own lawn and then crossed the lawn of the Prindles, thus coming to the back door of the Prindle barn—a hinged door that was held shut by a hook on the inside. Joe pounded on this door, and then stepped back to await a response.
It took a few minutes for Mrs. Prindle to come from her kitchen, through the shed and into the barn. When she got to the door, she lifted the hook and pushed, and there was Joe Toth standing in the morning dew.
“Good mornin’, Joe,” she said.
Joe said, “Good mornin’—what was it you wanted?”
“What was what that I wanted?”
“You was waving at me.”
“Joe you old fool,” says Mrs. Prindle, “go on back and finish your breakfast! I’m washin’ my windows.”
Poor New York
Back along, when New York City suffered the monstrous tragedy of getting buried with snow, I took a poll amongst the folks living here in Maine at Back River, and the question was, “If people don’t like snow, why do they live in New York?” Marty Kierstead answered, “I don’t know why they don’t just tread ’er down, same’s I do.” Two people cried out in anguish, “My, my—ain’t that turble!” And another said, in deep sympathy, “Ha, ha!”
On the morning of that disaster in Gotham, I awoke here in Friendship to as pretty a world as anybody has clapped an eye to in a long time. Back River, silent under winter ice, showed ripples where a light wind had frolicked with the new snow, and as I took my look a crow scaled out of the McCauley pin
es and started across towards Cushing where I surmised he had business. There was still some snow in the air, so as this crow flew he gradually became absorbed and disappeared—black into a white nothing. This was not a bad thing to see before breakfast, and I rejoiced with that crow until I had neutralized a good deal of the sad news coming over my radio about New York.
There are numerous good answers to the question often asked us Mainers about what do we do in the winter. The only snowstorm difficulty I have is with my outward swinging storm door and our cat, Oboe. Not every Maine snowstorm piles up so much that I can’t push this door open to let in the cat. But this one that creamed New York did it. After I made my broche at sight of the crow, I made some more for a snatch of pine grosbeaks, and for a pair of bluejays waiting for Oboe to get off the porch so they could tackle the crumb box. Cat lovers deplore my inhumane treatment of Oboe, who gets extinguished every evening and readmitted at matins. They haven’t taken notice of the lovely antique velvet divan in my boathouse where Oboe survives my cruelty in sumptuous comfort. Her only bad moment is first thing in the morning, when she thinks it takes me altogether too long to let her in. Then, of course, I tangle with the bird lovers for having my crumb box so close to Oboe while she’s waiting for me to open the door. And the morning of the New York snowstorm it took me quite a time. I had to take out a glass panel, crawl through, and go to the shop for a shovel. But once Oboe was in and had taken her morning nourishment, she stomped around with such a throbbing purr that all the picture frames went askew, and I could see that she held no resentment against me for making her sleep in the boathouse. So, other than this passing inconvenience to the cat, that snowstorm was no bother here.
I was interested when the radio told me every available truck in New York City was pressed into service to cart off the snow. In a week or so, I heard, the streets would be found again and restored to traffic. I breathed easier after that. Here in Maine we figure one truck for every hundred miles of highway, and that includes winging back for the next storm. Here at Back River I have three hundred yards of dirt driveway to clear before coming to the town road, for which I have a small garden tractor with a blower. After breakfast I blew my dooryard and driveway, and then I could go wherever I wished—except New York. I was pleased to find, when I reached the town road, that Raymond, a neighbor, had shoveled out our mail boxes, so the R.F.D. carrier could leave our letters when she came. Eleanor, our carrier (does that make her a mail lady?), is not obliged to leave anything unless our boxes are approachable, but she has been known to make exceptions. They said in New York it would take a week before mailmen could resume their appointed rounds. But here at Back River normalcy returned well before noon, and except for whittling, or painting lobster buoys by the shop stove, we had nothing to do on this beautiful Maine morning except listen to the radio and feel sorry for New Yorkers. This concerned us so much we found it difficult to remain cheerful.
Granther MacDougal
The immutable Maine rule that the cook is boss of the lumber camp cookshack was something Granther MacDougal hadn’t heard about. That’s because he was a Nova Scotian. He lived near Tatamagouche, on the Toney River, at a place called Up Along, and until now he had never been farther from Up Along than Pictou. Now, he had decided in his old age to visit the Boston States and gaze for the first time on his two grandsons, Colin and Jock, who were already grown men. Neither had married. They lived with their parents, Bessie and Andrew MacDougal, Andrew being son of Granther MacDougal, and father and sons operated a sawmill at Cookson Station, Maine. So all were happy to hear that Granther MacDougal (the MacDougal!) would come to visit. The two grandsons told Gus Minot, their sawyer, not to get into any trouble he couldn’t get out of by himself, and they drove the horse into Bangor to meet their grandfather when he arrived on the Boston-bound Maritime Express.
These two strapping grandsons looked bonny to Granther MacDougal, and they, in turn, were astonished to find the old man in the pink of good health, straight and keen, and his shoulders broad enough to toss a caber at his age. And when Granther MacDougal arrived at Cookson Station, his natural Nova Scotian appreciation of a fine woman caused him to look upon Bessie, his daughter-in-law, with extreme favor. And for good reason. Her father had been a Dillworthy from the English Midlands, by way of York County, Maine. Her mother had been an Aucoin from Berlin, New Hamp-SHEER, and Bessie had just about everything to admire. The Dillorthy influence had not, however, stifled an accent from the Aucoin, and Granther MacDougal recognized it as Acadian. It was, in fact, from Bon-aventure, Baie de Chaleur. True, Bessie had long been a MacDougal, and the jooal was muted, unless she became excited. Her clear black eyes, her straight black hair, and her bouciness of build would still suggest the Aucoin if she held back the h’acc-SENT. Granther saw she was a beautiful and able woman, and as she installed him in the spare chamber she kissed the old duffer and called him beau-pére.
It was the third day of Granther MacDougal’s visit that things began to pall and he fidgeted for lack of familiar scenes. He began to cast about for ways to amuse himself, and now while Bessie was out on the porch hanging up a wet dishcloth he came into her kitchen. She came in to find him leaning over the stove, lifting the cover of a pot so he could look into the steam and see what was cooking. He did not know, being a Nova Scotian and strange to Maine ways, that the most secure potentate that ever sat upon throne had no more power, authority, sway, and absolute jurisdiction than a Maine cook in a Maine kitchen. If that cook also has even a touch of the old Kaybeck, more so. Men who have owned a million acres of Maine timberland have known they must say yes-sir and no-sir when they eat in their own cookshacks. Granther MacDougal was intruding.
So Bessie whacked him across the back of his hand with a long-handled iron spoon. The cover of the pot jangled to the floor and the poor man hopped about the kitchen with his hand full of bees, his dignity down, and his astonishment high. When he settled down, he looked at his beautiful daughter-in-law in puzzlement, and he said, “Why did you do that?”
“Because this is my kitchen,” and Bessie told him she’d thank him to keep his hands to himself and let things on the stove alone.
“But I just wanted to see what’s for supper!” he whimpered.
“You ask me, I tole you—but don’t touch!”
Well, the afternoon wore along and Granther MacDougal accepted things. As suppertime approached, he said, “Bessie?”
“Yes . . .
“What’s for supper?”
“Vittles and with-its,” said Bessie. “Ever have them up along Toney River?”
Granther MacDougal gave her a hug, and because he had learned his lesson Bessie winked at her two sons and then kissed Granther again.
The Boss’s Camp
The big effort to liberate the downtrodden female surged just about the time education, as a concept, was eliminated from our public school system in favor of a unionized culture and I, if nobody else did, felt a relationship. If lovely woman stoops to the folly of equalizing herself with man, God’s great mistake, she deserves what she gets. Perish the thought. It was accordingly relevant to me when the annual fund-dun letter came from my college, which had so carefully encouraged me toward enlightenment, asking if I’d need a dormitory room during commencement exercises. If so, the query ran, would I want it for one person or two people?
This person-people business stems from the Susan B. Anthony syndrome whereby sex is to be eliminated from the language and everybody will be the same. Beguiled, my college goes along. Two persons do not necessarily make a people, as in “the people of Western Europe.” But the assertive ladies have wrought new thoughts such as “chairperson” and have abused the definitions. This letter came from my college the exact same day I had at last given up on “presently.”
The reason I had given up on presently was a folder from a plumbing supply house with information about “. . . the pressure tanks we are now presently making at this time . . .” I didn’t feel man enough to
contend after that, other than to lament that our school system turns out advertising writers. I used to take folders like that and write all over them that the present tense of the verb takes care of the “now,” and of “at this time,” and that “presently” has nothing to do with either. So I gave up, and now at this time I am presently embracing the people-person bit.
Somewhere I acquired a sheet of sticker stamps, for putting on letters, put out by the YMCA and saying, “Send a Boy to Camp.” I use one now and then, and cross out the word “boy” and write in, “person.” A small remonstrance and ineffective, but a start. The difference between male and female is not political, social, psychological, and even philosophical, but strictly biological, and it was recognized by humanity and language long ago. One summer not long ago one of our Maine timberland owners agreed to participate in a university program. A group of forestry students would come to live in and study the operation of a lumber camp. When the students arrived, the group had fourteen boys and one girl. There is nothing that says a young lady can’t study forestry, but there remain numerous reasons why one should not attend a lumber camp. The university had gratified the liberationists, but the camp was not yet ready for the girl who came.
The professor who was in charge of the bisexual, if top-heavy, summer program did the only thing possible—he went to the boss of the camp to suggest that arrangements be made so the young lady could have discreet accommodations in the boss’s camp. No way. The boss of a camp wouldn’t let God Almighty share. So, you see, the word “person” is no good if it needs another word to make it clear. Fifteen persons is not the same as fourteen boys and one girl.
It’s likely, and I admit it, that Maine may resist the desexing effort longer than some places. For one thing, the word “person” usually suggests somebody not worth further identity. “Some person came to buy a pig while you were gone,” wife to husband on his return.
