August 1, 1995 - The South Shore / Watchic Pond - Journal Entry

I had planned on leaving for Asia the previous weekend, but after a long phone call with Todd Shigekane, I decided to bus north and visit Michael's grave as well as my grieving mother. She had lost her baby son. His birth on December 7, 1960 was clear in my head. Thirty-five years ago. I had sublet my apartment for six months to Paul Brissman, a young Swedish photographer. I rode the Chinatown bus north to Boston.

My mother cried upon seeing me at South Station. My father bore his sorrow inside. Like me we were true New Englander. Emotions ran cold in our veins. Our mutual pain was was not to shared in private or public. I wanted to say that I remmember him driving into the school on that cold Pearl Harbor day to tell us about the arrival of our baby brother. He said nothing on the ride up to Maine. We were spending the weekend on Watchic Pond in Standish. It was a family ritual. The camp belonged to my sister and his husband, I slept on the bottom bunkbed. Everything was so familiar; the tall pines, Italian sandwiches, the tannin tainted water, the loons, my Aunt and Uncle. Shutting my eyes i saw my grandmother across the pond and only two years ago swimming in the Saco River with Michael.

My father drove the Olds 88 fast, almost as if he were fleeing the past or the future without his youngest son. When Michael had been unable to walk, my farher carried him to his radio show ONE IN TEN.

I had hoped for him to make it another year or two. He had been on experimental AIDS meds, only his were a placebo. Some of his friends had survived the scourge. Not my brother.

I wished I had gone insitead of Michael, but my mother couldn't surive the loss of another son, so I'm determined to live into the next century.

Until then it was time to soak in the soul of Maine.

The smell of the camp, canoes, the faint stench of the SD Warren paper mill, the Casco Bay, losters, soft shouldered roads, pine cones and the Saco River running to the sea. .

Italians 2020

Italian Sandwich from Maine

At David Henderson's Williamsburg Sculpture studio. They are only made in Southern Maine. Ham, tomatoes, pickles, onions, olives, cheap cheese and peppers. Lunch for the workers in the mills along the Saco River. Now almost extinct thanks to fast food chains, although in 2020 David brought two from Scarborough. Most excellent. I fake them with a baguette. Close but nothing like the real thing.

Nowadays the end of 2024 no vino no veritas no oblivio, but occasionally Italians. North of the Saco River.

17 Cents Per Gallon

Shared events are recorded differently in individual memories. No one in my family recalls my mother sending her two sons, ages 7 and 6, solo on a train from Portland, Maine to Boston. Collective amnesia has erased the recollection of our family watching brown bears dine on garbage at the town dump. I am our final retainer of lost episodes in time and the rest of the clan shake their head disapproving of my version of history. They may be right, but I can clearly recall the Biddeford, Maine gas war of 1958.

Two gas stations were located at the foot of the Biddeford-Saco bridge on Route 1.

During the summer months the road was heavily trafficked by vacationers to the Pine Tree State and the two station owners offered prices below the cost of the gas, hoping to bankrupt his rival. My father and many other drivers were aware of this competition and no one leaving Portland bought gas until crossing the Saco River.

Both stations were manned by slick hot-rodders. Window were wiped by cheerleaders. A free glass accompanied each fill-up.

The price dropped from 25 cents per gallon to 21 to 18 and finally 17 cents per gallon. My father detoured south from a day at Old Orchard Beach to top off the tank. The greasy-haired attendants were haggard from the onslaught of 'fill it up'. The cheerleaders' outfits were torn to rags by the sharp edges of cars. Once the tank was filled, our Ford station wagon left the pump headed north to Falmouth Foresides.

The two stations' gas war of annihilation threatened the entire gasoline structure of New England. Their respective suppliers ordered the rival station owners to agree to a truce. A price was agreed upon by all concerned parties and I've never seen 17 per gallon again in my life.

I've told this story several times at BBQs on Watchic Pond. My brother-in-law wanted to believe me, but 17 cents was beyond his comprehension. My uncle, a long-time Maine native, guffawed at the idea of 17 cents gas in 1958, but retracted his comment, saying, "When I was issued my license in 1939, gas was 10 cents a gallon."

"I was only $1.11 in 1994." My brother-in-law had a good head for numbers. He had been an accountant for the manufacturers of Topsiders before becoming a corporate head-hunter.

"And it's only 6 cents in Venezuela." The leader of that country was keeping it low for the people.

"6 cents a gallon." My brother-in-law shook his head. "Now that's cheap."

And all thanks to the triumph of socialism over capitalism.

The the victors go the spoils.

ps Gas under Trump has dropped to $2.33 on the national average, but I've seen it $2.79 on the highway to Greenwich and $2.79 isn't $2.33 or 17 cents.

Not by a long shot..

THE UMPTEENTH COMING by Peter Nolan Smith

"This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius"

These words were sung by the cast of HAIR in 1969 and millions of hippies dropped acid to touch the sky of Aquarius.

I wanted to be one of them and the Fourth of July 1970 my friends John Gilmour, Tommy Jordan, Mark McLaughin and I scoring a couple of hundred hits of LSD from a French-Canadian hash dealer in Montreal. We dropped the Orange Sunshine after entering the USA at Canaan, New Hampshire. The backroads were lightly traveled and my VW Beetle meandered down Route 3 toward the White Mountains. The acid came on strong at the T-intersection of 110 and 3 at Groveton.

We didn't have a map and Mark asked an old farmer sitting on a lawn chair, which was the best way to Mount Washington.

"Are you in a hurry?" His accent was non-rhotic Granite State.

"We have all the time in the world." I was 18.

"That's what all young men say." He took off his straw hat and looked at the intersection. "Most travelers take 3 down to Lancaster and east on 2, but a few head over to Berlin."

Berlin was a logging town.

"Which one you take?" My voice shimmered with color, mostly green.

"Depends on where I'm going, but I like driving along the Upper Ammonoosuc River. It's very twisted."

"Thanks for the information."

Mark and I looked at each other.

"Go left," said John in the back. "Always take the road less traveled."

It was the hippie way and I beeped the horn before heading down 110.

An AM radio station from Burlington played War's SPILL THE WINE, Free's ALL RIGHT NOW, Mungo Jerry's IN THE SUMMERTIME before fading into static behind the airwave shadow of Mt. Cabot.

Berlin blurred under the blue sky and the pines wavered with the breeze. This was the North Country. The wind riffled across our ears. I drove slowly up 16 with snow gleaming atop Mount Washington.

A river ran to our right.

"Quiet." I shut off the engine and coasted down a dirt road to the bank of the Peabody River. "Me too," replied the three friends.

We were on the same plane.

The four of us got out of the bug.

The mountain stream rushing over glacial rocks to create a primordial language. Our teenage ears listened to its teachings and we obeyed the command to submerge our bodies in the torrent's lecture. Our communion with LSD immuned our flesh from the frigid winter melt. Time melted faster than butter in the sun.

"Speak, river, speak." John was all ears.

Our skin was turning blue.

I strained to understand the river's message.

A young boy in shorts appeared from the trees. He was wearing an Andre the Giant tee-shirt.

John Gilmour elbowed me.

"It's him."

"Him who?"

"Him."

“I don't who him is, but we don't need him to bring us down. What you want, kid?” Tommie was a stickler for keeping crowds small while on LSD.

"Why are you were sitting in the water?

"To hear it speak," Tommie answered without hesitation. He was a high school hockey star. On ice his skating was almost holy and Tommie was the was the most spiritual of us.

The eleven year-old stuck a finger in the river.

"I don't near nothing, but the water."

We cocked our ears to the current.

The boy in the shorts was right.

"We hear the water too."

We were on an ancient quest.

"And it's cold."

"Yes, it is cold."

We stood up with goose-bumped skin. The release from the river was a rush.

“Come out of the river.” The young boy ordered with biblical authority.

"Whatever you say.” Tommie Jordan chattered through this teeth.

Mark’s skin was death white and I shivered like I had been pulled from the Atlantic after the sinking of the Titanic. This boy had saved us from hypothermia. His coming here was no accident.

"Who are you?" I asked, blowing into my hands.

"Bobby."

"No, you're not."

"Am too."

"You're someone else." Someone famous and John's retinas opened to the max, as he whispered, "It's Jesus."

"Jesus." I might have been a non-believer, but I flashed on the 12 year-old Messiah in the Temple. Bobby was about his age.

"What are you talking about?" I was a firm non-believer.

"He's the Second Coming." John was on a vision.

"I've been here before." The boy picked up a rock and threw it into the river.

"Here before?" I asked with time repeating over and over again like a reshuffled deck of cards.

Yes." Bobby liked simple answers and before we could pose the right questions, a teenage girl in a tube top hurried from the underbrush. Red hot pants hung off her skinny ass.

"Bobby, you get over here." The redhead was about 15. Her skin was milk white.

"I wasn't doing nothing." Bobby was a member of her family.

"What I tell you about speaking to strangers." She grabbed her brother. Her tube top was no protection from our eyes.

“I wanted to know why they were sitting in the river.” Our prophet attempted to escape her clutches.

“Why? Because they’re stupid hippies.” She was teenage trouble to men and boys.

"We're not stupid hippies." I was enlightened by LSD. Bobby was Jesus. His sister was blind.

"I know stupid when I see it. You're fucked up on LSD too." The sister seized Bobby by the ear and our ‘Jesus’ squealed in defeat, as she dragged her brother away from the river.

"Don't take him away." John scrambled over the glacial rocks.

"Let him go." Mark slipped on a mossy rock into the river.

"But he's____"

"Look." John pointed through the trees.

Bobby's family was setting up a barbecue. His father regarded us with a command to keep our distance. This was their holiday destination.

Bobby had been here before, but only in this lifetime.

"So he's no Jesus."

"He was a for a minute." John laughed with the LSD.

"He's just a kid we thought was Jesus. Listen." Mark was lying in the water.

The river had resumed its music. Its song were never played on the radio. We lay in the river and sang its lyrics until our throats were parched dry as the summer grass. Drinking the river was a sacrament. We clambered from the water and sat on the rocks. Bobby's family left in the direction of North Conway. We came down under the pine trees. The night rose from the east.

"You know they're lighting off fireworks on the Charles." John loved watching the Boston Pops playing the 1812 OVERTURE. The fireworks were a wonder of pyrotechnics.

"We missed it this year."

"But not our trip." John smiled in the darkness.

The moon floated across a universe of nova stars.

"It was something else."

We spread our sleeping bags and lit a fire.

"You know there is no God." I had to say it.

"And there is no Jesus." Mark had been quiet for hours.

"But there is a Bobby." Tommie lit a joint. It was good Acapulco Gold.

"And he has a hot sister."

Our heads bobbed in agreement, because even an atheist on LSD can believe a small boy with a sister in a tube top can be Jesus.

After all acid is only a drug and this everyday is the dawn of the Age of Aquarius.