Stitch in Time

by John Gould

  Then the lecturer would exhort everybody to see the wonder and the glory in the meanest of tasks, and great uplift prevailed.

  I’ve been building a cathedral.

  The sacred nature of the work inspires me, but I am not overwhelmed. I can see how building a cathedral is much like any profane construction, even as tedious as digging a ditch, but it has been fun—not just for me but for some others. You can believe that I was inveigled.

  I have a cousin of many parts whom I have praised variously, and will not now praise again, and one of his many hobbies is making, repairing, and restoring new and old windvanes. So when the Episcopal church of St. John added an “undercroft” to its edifice in Thomaston, my cousin provided a gold-leafed windvane in the pattern of the Angel Gabriel, with which the parishioners were pleased and which was to be mounted on the new undercroft. It seems the weathercock, symbolic of the Three Denials, has long been the most popular pattern for church windvanes throughout Christendom, but Gabe, as my cousin calls him/her, is a close second. In his long and distinguished career Gabriel has been imagined all the way from a fine old gentleman with white beard and golden wings to a plump and bare-tailed cherub—and here and there a female. The horn is standard. Gabriel is the celestial messenger and public announcer, bringer of tidings, and he will tootle his tooter at the last hooraw. So time flew by, and this Gabriel windvane had not been put on the undercroft roof, and my cousin asked why. I inquired, and the vicar told me it would be architecturally rude to set Gabriel directly onto the roof, so a special cupola was planned as a proper pedestal for him but what with this and what with that the project was still in the future. Perhaps I would like to volunteer?

  The “undercroft” is not really below ground, as undercrofts should be, but is fairly tall, and in Maine a cupola is always a kewp-pa-low. I agreed to make the cupola, and reduced the pitch of the roof to a drawing, keeping an ecclesiastical attitude consistent with the purposes. My cousin had done a superb job with Gabe, I should do as well. I cleared a place in my shop. I then went to a lumberyard and ordered eight hundred cubits of gophperwood and two hundred of shittim.

  The job has gone along in that vein. Each morning I touch off my shop stove and add figure, strength, and beauty to my cathedral. It sits on two carpenter’s horses. I accept my task as a challenge, because Thomaston is the town that went to sea and almost every house is a magnificent old ship-captain’s mansion built by shipwrights in the days of sail, with gingerbread and widow’s walks and cupa-lows—curious and cunning crafts-manship with which Gabriel’s perch must forever compete. In my town, which is not Thomaston, home workshops are geared to lesser projects, like lobster traps, skiffs, stormsash. So what I am doing has had attention from the neighborhood and some of the jokers have said some amusing things. One morning I was reminded that the scaffolding in the Sistine Chapel cost a good deal more than they paid Michelangelo. Again, I was informed that the basilica of Ste. Anne de Beaupré is intended never to be finished, but workmen will continue to adorn and embellish forever. At least fifteen funny-ones have gazed in awe, feigned respect, and then asked if I plan to put a centerboard to her? And the man next door says if it turns out all right he’d like me to make him fifteen beehives.

  The vicar came to tell me he had made arrangements for a crane to hoist Gabe’s pedestal into place. I have epoxied the spindle, and need to apply one more coat of paint. I have built my cathedral and Gabe will announce the Thomaston winds, fair and foul.

  (Additional: Gabriel, horn into the wind, is in place on St. John’s undercroft in Thomaston.)

  Before Television

  Antique boutiques delight me only slightly, for I dislike to see the commonplaces of my youth offered at many times their fair prices, making me sad that I didn’t save one of everything to grow old along with me. Think what I’d be worth today if I’d kept a thousand buttonhooks. But rather than wait outside, I went into the old barn by the side of the road to look at the junk, and there was a coal sieve full of stereoscope slides on top of a commode. The coal sieve and the commode are not, I think, objects d’art, and if they are I would appreciate a lucid explanation from an expert. The coal sieve was to reclaim unburnt cinders from the ashes, and the commode was to house the bedchamber potty. But stereoscope slides belonged to culture, were television’s grandfather, and were meant to cheat the time on rainy afternoons. “How much do you ask,” I said to a young lady who was arranging shaving mugs on a what-not, “for the stereoscope slides?” She deigned to look over her shoulder more or less towards me, and said, “The what?”

  “The stereoscope slides.”

  “You mean them pitchers there?”

  “Yes, these pictures here.”

  “What did you call them again?”

  The sweet thing, burdened so heavily with youth, had no notion of the purposes of the pictures, and when I asked if she had a machine (I thought “machine” would mean more to her than “viewer") she shook her head and looked about as if she hoped somebody would come and rescue her. She didn’t know what the coal sieve was for, and she said a commode made a dandy liquor locker.

  To be truthful, I’m not that old. The stereoscope had ceased to be important entertainment by my time, and as acquaintances of Fatty Arbuckle and Pearl White we youngsters looked through the family stereoscope in the parlor as an already oddity of the past. But we did have one, and it had been there in the parlor since it was new. I still have ours. And in my boyhood, almost every home had one on a parlor table, something out of date but not yet discarded.

  There were three kinds of slides; a slide was a pasteboard backing with two pictures pasted side by each. The first two kinds were “boughten,” or store-bought. One would be a general view of something like the Taj Mahal which would sell anywhere in the world. The second would be of a local scene, such as Mitchell’s gristmill, and would sell in a town or an area. The third kind was homemade, and went for family pictures, scenes on the old farm. There were special cameras—Eastman made one—with double lenses, because the secret of the stereoscope was a double image that the lenses of the viewing-contrivance turned into three dimensions. It was an optical illusion, but when the card said “Scene in front of Brown’s Store,” the things in front of Brown’s Store really were out in front.

  The scenes of world-renowned places—Grand Canyon, Traf-lagar Square, Okefinokee Swamp—and the local views—Bijou Theatre, Mill Street Boarding House, New Steel Bridge—were always well labeled, with printing. But the homemade ones seldom got any identification, and after a few years had passed nobody quite remembered about them. You’d see two gentleman standing in front of a woodpile. “Who’re they?” somebody would ask Grandpaw.

  He’d come over, take the stereoscope, squint through the eyepieces, perhaps adjust the focus, and he’d say, “Gawd, I dunno. I think that might be the Bibber boys, but I wouldn’t know which is which, now.”

  I didn’t buy any cards from the young lady, nor did I want the coal sieve and the commode. She said they were asking a dollar apiece for the stereoscope cards, and I told her I thought that might be just about right.

  If it is just about right. I’ve got a few thousand dollars tied up in stereoscope slides from the family plunder. The Matterhorn, Niagara Falls in winter, the Great Wall, the Bad Lands, the Bunker Hill Monument, Notre Dame de Paris, The Great Sphinx. Then Buker’s livery stable, the old Whittier School, the Pinkham Shoe Shop, Ruggle’s Boatyard, and Cutting Ice on Baglee’s Pond. And, which are the ones I prize, pictures of two men standing by woodpiles. It’s hard to believe the world once had little else to do.

  Mistreated Indians

  Some men are born with human rights, some have human rights thrust upon them, and some are just naturally happy. And it makes a difference who tells the story. Maybe you got excited at the stories in the newspapers about how the Indians are abused—our State of Maine Human Rights Commission went after the Down East blueberry growers for the deplorable housing provided for the Canadian India
ns who come over the line to rake blueberries. Director Terry Ann Lunt-Aucoin cried out in anguish that the living conditions are “an abomination . . . a cruel exploitation of native Americans.”

  Behold! Robert and Lois McCauley (he’s the snake man afore-said) live in Bethesda, Maryland, and own five-six acres of salt-water frontage alongside us here at Friendship Back River. They do not have a cottage with much expensive stuff—just a piece of land—and they come to Maine every summer to tent out for a week or two. Dr. McCauley was important in the Department of HEW, and his wife was prominent in the affairs of a Baltimore museum. That is, educated, refined, well-to-do, it happens that they have no electricity at the Maine campsite, and consequently no running water, with open plumbing openly arrived at. They sleep on the ground in bedrolls. Their kitchen facility is a stone fireplace with open wood flame. They dig clams, jig for mackerel, hunt wild berries, and commune with nature. They love every minute, and look forward all winter to their next visit to Maine.

  So Rob and Lois were here just as the awful news broke in our papers that people were mean to the Indians. But without reference to that, Bob had just said, “Not everybody agrees with me, but for my taste the best sardine I can get down in Maryland is packed here in Maine by somebody named Wyman.”

  I said, “I’ve got a friend of long standing who’d greatly admire to hear you say that.”

  “Oh? Who’s that?”

  “State Senator down to Milbridge, name of J. Hollis Wyman. Owns the Jasper Wyman and Son Canning Company. He packs those sardines.”

  So lunches were put up, and the four of us made a day trip down to Milbridge, and Bob got a chance to tell Hollie that he packs a good fish. The sardine pack was over for the season, but the blueberry crop was coming in, and while the four of us were in his office, Hollie’s telephone jumped in the air and he got his first call from the newspapers about this big abuse of the Indians. We listened while he parried the Associated Press, the United Press, the Bangor Daily News, and some others. The Human Righters had just let go a blast about the downtrodden Micmacs, the outraged Maliseets, and the persecuted Passamaquoddies. Hollie, swimming upstream, tried his best to explain. The Indians come of their free will, a year after year arrangement, and they arrive by families in trucks to stay in the “camps” provided by the food packer. These camps are tight frame buildings, equipped and ready. True, they sit on the blueberry barrens far from anything much, and they don’t have electricity and they don’t have plumbing. The Indians are well paid for raking berries, and by doing business with a chief rather than individuals, the processors spare themselves a lot of red tape. Until the Human Righters butted in, the annual deal with the Indian rakers was happy and serene. Indeed, after looking into the matter that particular summer, the Bangor Daily News editorialized that the Human Rights Commission had overstated, and had enflamed, divided, and antagonized through public utterance of over emotional rhetoric. Well said. Alexander Denny, chief of one tribe, comes with his wife and ten-year-old son and calls blueberry raking his “vacation.” Chief Denny has a position with the Nova Scotian government, is important, and well off. Hollie told about another man who is a policeman in Canada, and wears his uniform while raking blueberries. Sabattus Nicholas, a Passama-quoddy, says he looks upon raking blueberries as “camping out,” as a chance to restore age-old tribal lore of his ancestors. He says this explains why the Indians move the beds from the camps out under the trees, and also the cookstoves. His words suggested the camps which the Human Righters found abusive are not really all that bad. At least the Human Righters did overlook the truth that Down East real estate brokers can get up to three hundred dollars a month for just such camps, where out-of-state summer folks can enjoy a vacation worth going back home to brag about.

  So we were sitting there and Hollie was on the phone defending his position, and the expression on McCauley’s face was worth the day’s trip. Hollie was shouting into the phone, “But, dammit! These Indians don’t have to sleep on the ground!”

  Bob turned to whisper, “And, dammit—neither do I!”

  So there are ways and ways to look at Human rights, and we could see that Chief Micmac and Bob McCauley saw them one way, and Ms. Terry Ann Lunt-Aucoin saw them another.

  The Whonkeroo

  To cheer my day there came a letter from Don Seymore of Canton, New York, to ask about the Maine black flies. He says he plans a camping trip to Baxter State Park, and would like to know what sort of reception he will have from these insects. Don—you have certainly come to the right person. You will never get anything but the truth about black flies from me. Over the years our state publicity people have been enticing people with all manner of professional folders, and not one of them has ever mentioned the black fly as a tourist attraction. A good many of us deplore this conspiracy of silence, because the black fly is one of Maine’s most talked about assets. He captivates the attention of visitors a good deal more than do our advertised attractions—our historical sites, our scenic views, our fine eating places. You’d think we had nothing but lobsters. But every summer thousands of people go home after pleasant Maine vacations, and they talk about nothing except the black fly.

  Our Maine black fly remains in hibernation until approximately the time summer is officially opened by the Mount Katahdin Chamber of Commerce. This year summer is to be on the 12th, 13th, and 14th of July. Meanwhile, the black fly will stay clustered in hollow trees and caves, in a desultory manner. When temperatures moderate, he emerges in great flocks to perch in spruce trees as prelude to dispersing and foraging. The flocks sit on the branches, usually near a trunk highway, and often their gross weight snaps off the limbs, making cracking noises audible at considerable distance. As temperatures begin to warm they sing some, and then move about the state in swarms, taking up positions to await the arrival of tourists. The signal to attack is the arrival of the first Massachusetts driver.

  Mr. Seymore will undoubtedly follow through with his camping plans, tent and sleeping bag and so on, but I, myself, would go camping at Baxter State Park by engaging a comfortable room at the Hermitage Motel in Millinocket. It is a good inn and has a fine dining room. The chambers are heated the year ’round. The management keeps the paths shoveled during the summer so the dining room is always accessible, and unless the guest wishes to hike in the woods there is no need to bring snowshoes. There is daily shuttle service to The Park by snowmobile, and frostbite and chillblain insurance is sold at the desk.

  But if Mr. Seymore doesn’t care to heed this good advice and does tent out in The Park, he may be lucky enough to see the annual “blind flight” of the black flies, which comes in late June just after the highway crews have taken down Frost Heave signs. It is an amazing spectacle. Entomologists have never given a lucid explanation of this strange flight, but the Indians had some folklore about it. They said that the great spirit of Mount Katahdin, Pamola, would rouse in his sleep at the season’s first appearance of the black fly, and he would direct a mighty slap at the annoyance. This caused consternation in the flock, and whole populations of black flies would rise at once. Those on the north side of the mountain moved around to the south, and those on the south to the north. (This is done counterclockwise in alternate years.) The turbulence of the wind created by this tremendous swirl of insects will continue about the summit of the mountain for several days, and in the folklore of the region is known as the “whonkeroo.” Woodsmen use the whonkeroo to tell time—did such and such happen before or after the whonkeroo? Thousands of people gather to behold this, and to hear the thunderous noise of the flight, but as the whonkeroo depends on the season a great many always come too early or too late. However, the sound of the flight can be heard afar off, and many who have not actually attended a whonkeroo are familiar with the heavy buzz over the region. Folklore says it is Pamola moaning in his sleep.

  The Pamola myth about the whonkeroo is better explained by saying it is nature’s way of protecting the genes, preventing inbreeding, and keeping
the strain of the Maine black fly healthy and strong. It is, truly, a “blind flight” to separate the families and discourage incest. Otherwise, the Maine black fly would today be as docile and physically deteriorated as an Ontario mosquito or a Southern chigger.

  The Wrong Day

  A great many Mainers, and more every year, spend the winters in Floridy, which would be all right with me if they wouldn’t send back their postcard snides about the salubrity of the weather. They might properly send cordial greetings saying, “Wish you were here” and let it go at that, but they always add, “Hope you’re not buried in snow!” Here is the precise text of a card that came on a certain day: “Having fine time wish you were here. Hope you’re not buried in snow so you can’t get out. Keep the home fire burning and toss on another log for us! Bathing every day. Too bad you can’t come down and enjoy our warm weather. Bye-bye.”

  When our chill factor hits bottom and Friendship harbor is frozen over, such levity is fine and can be excused and accepted, but what these jokers in Sunland never know is that 99 percent of such cards come on the wrong day. This one did. I’ll tell you about Pete and Mildred:

  Pete and Mildred had their “seasonal dwelling’ here at Friendship for a couple of decades. It sits on a bluff of pointed spruce trees, looking down on the harbor and the Friendship lobster fleet, and you’d look a long time before finding a better spot. And as Pete and Mildred came each summer, they did some work to make their summer dwelling a year-round home to which they would retire.

  So after a distinguished career in the Boston money business, Pete retired. They sold their lovely home in suburban Belmont, severed all ties, and came to Maine to settle in forever and see how many years it would take the selectmen of Friendship to get them off the “nonresident” list. (’Twas four, as I remember.) And as they were arranging their affairs to make the move, they got the usual flak from their Belmont friends and neighbors about the rigors of Maine and the wicked winters. “Why did you ever decide to go to that place!” The Belmont synonym for Friendship was “boondocks,” and Pete and Mildred got a lot of boondocks. “Good place to go skiing, but . . .” And, “We’ll be thinking of you when you’re shoveling snow!” All on a par with the regular wisecracks on postcards from Florida. Pete and Mildred quietly explained they looked forward to their first Maine winter, said farewell, and moved to Friendship.