Playing Fair and Being Kind

I first moved to Maine to stay in March 1987. That winter had been horrendous. My wife and I had been living on Commonwealth Avenue out near Boston College. I was working at a methadone clinic at Brighton Marine Hospital. I’d wanted to learn to build wooden boats since I saw one on the island of Kauai.  I’m familiar with the mid-coast area of Maine and I knew of the apprentice program at Maine Maritime Museum. It’s no longer available by the way. Tragic. I would visit the house we had bought on weekends. I’d drive up from Boston to clear stuff out of the house or deliver a few of our belongings. I recall the snow was waist deep to get to the door. We were looking forward to living here.

I spent the year and a half commuting from Boothbay to Bath while apprenticing. The experience was fully enjoyable and educational of course. I made a few long term friends during this period. Before I graduated the program I lined up a job in Boothbay with a third generation boat builder. Jimmy Jones had been building traditional wooden boats for all of his life. He was in his forties and I in my fifties with a new wife. We got along great. He had a dry sense of humor and could speak a line with such subtlety that it would be a good thirty seconds before anyone got the joke. He was a master of understatement.

We were taking our lunch break one day in the summer time. We sat on the side of a hill by the boat shop out in the sun quietly eating. The sky was bright blue and hard to look at. We were eating silently not saying much at all. We both noticed two contrails heading southwest. Both airplanes were well over seven miles high. They were converging and one contrail passed over or under the other eventually. It had been interesting to watch them converge knowing they were not even close but still wondering what the participants were doing to ensure they would remain out of each other’s way. They passed probably miles apart but from where we were it looked a lot closer. We munched a little more lunch and Jimmy, still watching the contrails as they diverged muttered almost to himself, “They missed. Jeeze, I always wanted to see one of those.”

Well, it didn’t bring the house down but I had to laugh a little at his dryness. That was probably the only thing he said all day. We worked together for four years until I went off on my own. I started my own business and did contract work around the region at nearly every boat yard over a period of ten years or more. Best job I ever had. Well except for driving Sea Cliff while I was in the Navy.

I hope your day goes well. I’m sitting inside listening to the drizzle drip of the roof. A good day to read and write. I signed up for a course on Paulo Freire’s educational style; Freire Academy. I’m looking forward to getting into it.

Here’s something I wrote so long ago I forgot it existed. Have you ever seen those plastic owls that are employed to prevent birds from roosting and painting everything with guano? They are used on boats on moorings and on railings on docks, etc. The don’t work very well.

 

DECOY

As Metaphor

A plastic owl stands strapped, fixed like a dummy to the roof,

Serving notice to vagrants to maintain order and discipline,

With best laid plans owl poses dutifully,

Glaring at everything

Though at nothing in particular,

This is the image employed by owl.

Day by day by day, the owl resolute,

Determined to control everything,

Smug when a nuisance arrives then retreats.

Scowling and sneering, being most impolite,

The pretend owl defends his turf.

Unintended consequences on the roof,

Vagrants now enjoy the owl,

The posturing and expressions lost in the fun,

Gatherings and meetings, owl as host, are held daily,

The host is ignored and the roof is a mess.

G. M. Goodwin

12 March 2013