Labor Day Travel

Written Sep 1, 2022

In early September 2008 my good friend Alan Vaughan called from Gary, Indiana. The art dealer from Bruxelles was driving to his old hometown, Sarasota, Florida from Onekama, Michigan, where his family had maintained a cottage on Lake Michigan below the Acadia Dunes formed from the glacial melt. He had just visited the Jackson 5 home on 2300 Jackson Street. A little out of the way, but we all loved their 1979 hit ABC. We hadn’t seen each other in a good six or seven years. He knew that I had returned from Thailand to dogsit a mad Airedale rescue for two months in Palm Beach. That job was over and it was time to vacate the mansion off Worth Avenue. I informed him that I was heading north to New England.

“How you getting north?”

“I’m hitchhiking on I-95. I figure it will take 3-4 days.” I actually had a airline ticket from West Palm Beach to Boston, but preferred to mythize a drifter's northbound voyage. “I’m broke so that’s the only way I can get there.”

>“You’re kidding?” He was incredulous. “I haven’t seen a hitchhiker on the entire trip from the Upper Peninsula.”

“Not one?"

“Not one.”

“Well, I’ll be a blast from the past.”

I hung up and then called Alan the next day from the Palm Beach airport saying I was in Jacksonville. He was in Memphis. He had stopped there to see Graceland.

The next day from Brooklyn I called from Dillon, South Carolina. On Labor Day Roanoke, Virginia.

"I’m making real good time."

By the way I was already drinking voka screwdrivers made by my brother-in-law, David Rutter, on Watchic Pond in Standish, Maine. Nowhere close to South of the Border. At my family cottage with my sister and her family and my Aunt Sally and Uncle Russ. Twice the vodka. Half the ice.

The trip from West Palm Beach to Boston wasn't fun, but it han been faster than standing on I-95 waiting for a ride in the middle of the night fast.

And there was nothing like Maine at the end of summer and a cold water lobster. And of course heavy-handed Vodka-tonics from my brother-in-law David Rutter.

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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. .

Aurora Borealis Maine July 3, 1971 from 2008

On the 4th of July weekend in 1971 John Gilmore, Mark McLaughlin, and Tommie Jordan and I left the South Shore of Boston to holiday in Maine. A large store in New Hampshire sold fireworks. John purchased $20 worth of M-80s and various rockets. The four of us stopped at my grandmother's cabin on Watchic Pond for a swim and Italian sandwiches. None of us had bathing suits. My grandmother said that she had seen plenty of naked men as a nurse in France. WWI. After the sun set over the pines John lit off the fuses. Edith kept her distance from the explosive display. After the finale we bid her good-bye.

"I don't want to hit traffic tomorrow."

"You drive safe." My grandmother gave me a kiss and we headed north in A 1968 VW Beetle.

By the Turnpike the trip to Bar Harbor was about two hours away, but I-95 was boring from Presque Isle to Miami, so we opted on the coastal road, smoking pot and listening to the Jefferson Airplane through the dark towns of Brunswick, Bath, and Wicassett.

Someplace outside of Camden John pointed to the sky.

"Check that out."

"What is that?" Tommie asked from the rear seat and I cranked open the sunroof.

The sky shimmered with an unearthly light and John said, "I knew that weed was strong, but not this strong."

"That's not a hallucination. It's the Aurora Borealis," Mark declared with undebatable authority.

"How would you know?" John demanded before puffing on the bong. He was attending Quincy Community College to be a paramedic.

"Because I have a Boy Scout merit badge in astronomy."

"Well, la-dee-dah." John and Mark were childhood friends. Sometimes they were rivals.

"The aurora occurs over the poles after a charged particles from the sun collide with atoms in the upper atmosphere riding the Earth's magnetic fields."

"They taught you that in Boy Scouts?" I had been a Star Scout with merit badges in marksmanship and canoeing, but suddenly understood that Mark's universe was bigger than I had imagined for a mechanic at a Wollaston Beach garage.

"No, I was into the Space Race. I watched every televised launch from Cape Canaveral I read everything about the stars. The Algonquins called the Northern Lights the 'dance of the spirits'."

"Damn, you are an expert." John passed the bong to his longtime friend and I pulled over to the side of the road.

"I saw them once as a child. They lit up the night sky above the Blue Hills." My neighborhood was set in those hills.

"I've never seen them." Mark's eyes were spellbound by the spectacle overhead.

The four of us got out of the VW and lay on the dewy grass.

The celestial phenomena sashayed across the sky as iridescent curtains blowing in the wind. The light show lasted about twenty minutes and disappeared like a mirage into the cosmos.

"The Aurora Borealis," John remarked in awe.

"Aurora was the goddess of dawn." I had read Bullfinch's Mythology in high school.

"I was sort of like dawn at night." Tommy spoke for the first time that evening. He was a hockey player for a Maine prep school. Last season a college scout recruited him to play at an Ivy League college. His grades were horrible, but his scoring led the league.

"That blew my mind." John stood up and wiped the damp grass from his clothing.

"More than Jimi Hendrix's at the Garden?" We had seen him together. It had been one of his last shows.

"Not better. Different." Tommie looked us in the eyes. "But better the same way Jimi was the best."

"Excuse while I touch the sky." John grasped the air with his hands.

John put ARE YOU EXPERIENCED on his tape player and Mark stuck his head out the sunroof hoping for another sign from the heavens, because one vision of the dancing spirits was not enough for a lifetime. And tomorrow we were destined to see the fireworks over Bar Harbor.

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The Measure of Happiness - 2012

Last month my sister, her husband, and I celebrated my 60th with lobsters, steamers, Pinot Grigio on Watchic Pond. An early evening breeze fended off the mosquitos from the dock. My brother-in-law dressed accordingly; tee-shirt, shorts, and no shoes. Neither of us had shaved for days.

"What you think?" My brother-in-law pulled out a pipe. His health had improved dramatically since his retirement three years ago.

"Nothing much has changed here." The lake shore was covered by tall pines, hiding the numerous summer camps.

"That's what I think too." My sister and he planned to spend the summer here not doing much of anything. David passed the lit pipe. Native Maine bud from Cornish, the nearest town to the west on Route 25. "Change is good as long as it doesn't change the things you love."

"If things don't change, then I feel like I'm aging with the world." A puff of weed helped color the sunset.

"A slow pace makes time stand still." David had been a top headhunter in Boston. Work had been an 8 to 6 race. He loved his new life. Waking with the dawn with his day free for himself.

"In this light you look 30."

I had taken off my glasses. Myopia was a great fountain of youth.

"That's what I like to hear from my guests." David took off his shirt. The sun had tanned him to golden brown hue. My sister admired his physique. He was in better shape than me.

"My pleasure. Only one thing I miss."

"Your kids." My sister knew the way I thought.

Angie and Fenway are on the other side of the world. Talking on the telephone brings us closer. I would prefer to hold my son and daughter in my arms. She's 8 and he's almost 4. I had spoken to both this morning on Skype.

"I'll be there soon enough." I had a flight to Thailand planned for mid-June. I was staying two months, but today's happiness index suffered from their absence and I went to sleep a little sad.

The next morning rain splashed on the lake. New York exerted a tug and I checked the schedule of the train from Portland to Boston.

"You're leaving?"

"I got to get ready for my trip."

"How you getting to Portland?" The station lay below western promenade.

"If necessary I'll hitchhike." Yesterday's plan was for a tomorrow departure. The weather dictated a change.

"No one hitchhikes anymore." My brother-in-law wanted me to stay. We enjoy each other's company,

"Only crazy men." I had seen the ghostly wraiths of rags on highways. No destination in mind. Mime was the other side of the world.

"It's not the 70s." The Seventies were the decade of our 20s. "Hitchhiking is dead."

"I know." I had often hitchhiked across the USA, sometimes for pleasure and sometimes out of necessity. Pleasure and necessity had combined forces in August 1972. A fellow BC student Neil Nepola had been visiting his girlfriend, Vickie, in Tulsa. His BMW was to be our ride to California and I had thumbed through the Midwest spurred by the dreams of driving through the deserts in a fast car.

I arrived in Oklahoma to discover that we were on foot. Neil had rubber-necked a roller coaster in Oklahoma City and rear-ended a Chevy. The BMW was in repair shop awaiting parts. We were stuck in Tulsa without a car.

Tulsa was half-way across the continent. Vikie, her younger sister, Neil, and I drank ourselves senseless in a few of city's BYOB bars before voting to keep on trucking. We were 21. We had long hair. Neil was going to Med school in the fall. In the Philippines. After reading ON THE ROAD. The two of us bade good-bye to Tulsa, Vickie, and her younger sister. Funny I can remember Marilyn's name. She had green eyes.

We reached the coast at the end of Route 66 and stayed with Neil’s cousin in Seal Beach. We smoked more pot, bodysurfed, and drank at a bar next to the Long Beach Channel. A week flashed fast in a paralytic ganga haze. His cousin’s name is lost in that miasma.

Two weeks remained until the resumption of BC’s fall semester. I wanted to see my friend, Wayne Shephard in Pomona. It was far from the coast. He was living with his biker brother. They took us to DisneyWorld. We smoke weed in IT’S A SMALL WORLD. I couldn't have been happier, then again Disneyworld prides itself on being the “the happiest place on earth.”

This distinction has changed locations for me many times since 1972.

Goa, Koh Phi Phi, Bali, Palm Beach, Paris, Bar Harbor.

Sri Racha with Mam and Fenway.

But all places become common the first day you buy a roll of toilet paper, because the daily grind wears down the degree of happiness and you ask yourself, “Who is really happy?"

Several studies have named the Danes as the happiest people in the world. They're family people. They like nothing more than a hoogy or get-together. Danes ride bikes. Pedal . They have no basketball superstars. The USA is 15th in the rankings.

The main source of happiness comes from a feeling of belonging and in western society cars separate us from those we love. Marshall McLuhan says the only time western man is truly alone is when he’s in his car. Cell phones are supposed to bring us closer, except no one answers them. Every man is not so much an island as a desert of feeling.

Drive in the suburbs.

The landscape of emptiness.

Not a restaurant open.

Not a bar where ‘everyone knows your name’.

Only the mall where you’re forced to consume everything you don’t really need.

Friends, family, the pursuit of happiness, which is why I love Thailand.

Not for the sex.

Not for the weather.

But for the warmth of drinking, eating, and talking with your friends and Thais only score 43rd on the list.

Both Thailand and the USA could do better.

Be happy. Mi sabaii.

The other choices are too gray to consider as viable alternatives.

Happiness is more than a warm blanket – Snoopy

As Victor Borge said, "To measure your happiness feel your heart."

We all know where it is.

Cinco De Mayo

Sixteen years ago my brother-in-law and I left the cabin on Watchic Pond. My sister remained in the kitchen prepping for lunch. The bright spring sun had heated the morning and the thermometer nailed to a tall pine read 72F. Our task putting in the dock in the lake in early May. The water temperature hovered around 62 and the sunny air was warm for Southern Maine. David and I waddled into the water with trepidation, but it wasn't so bad once we passed our waists.

Coming out both of us shook from the long immersion in the cold water. My sister ordered us to take hot showers and we obeyed her command. When we returned to the kitchen two margaritas waited on the table.

"Happy Cinco de Mayo." My sister was a big believer in national and international holidays.

"Viva Juarez." I raised my salt-rimmed glass to clink a toast.

"Why Juarez?" My brother-in-law smacked his lips. The rims of margaritas were tangy with lemon.

"Juarez led a revolt against the Catholic conservatives and after their victory in 1861 he declared a moratorium on debt payments to Britain, Spain, and France, which had supposedly loaned the previous government over $52 million, but actually only had issued $1.2 million in actual money. Juarez protested that firstly the loan was made to a deposed government and secondly that the amount had been inflated by usurious interest. The family of the French Emperor owned the paper on this debt and Napoleon III convinced England and Spain to defend its claims."

"How do you know this?" David was always suspect of my stories.

"I was a history minor in college." Those courses had been my only As and after a trip to Mexico in 1975 I read volumes on the travails of our southern neighbor.

"Sounds like that could happen to America now." My sister taught finance at a college in Boston. Sovereign debt was crushing countries across Europe and her students were buried under credit card bills and college loans.

"England tried to force Iceland to pay the debt of its banks and the Icelanders kicked out the government. The banks punished Iceland by closing all the McDonalds. In 1862 France sent over an invading army, which pursued Juarez forces toward Mexico City. On May 5th the Mexicans stopped running at Puebla and fought French forces twice their force under the command of their thirty-three year-old Mexican Commander General, Ignacio Zaragoza Seguin. They achieved a great victory and thereafter have celebrated Cinco de Mayo."

"Let me guess." David was enjoying his margarita. "The French sought revenge for this defeat."

"How well you know the French. They had installed a Habsburg emperor protected by an imperial army."

"Second guess. It ended badly."

"After the battle, the French troops departed from Mexico. Maximilian I was offered exile, but he wanted to be emperor and loved Meixoc. He executed by the Mexicans. End of the foreign intervention and Cinco de Mayo was important to the USA, since the Mexicans stopped the French from supplying the Confederates with arms."

"Cinco de Mayo." We clinked glasses again and my sister began to fix another batch of drinks.

I liked mine with salt.

We weren't going anywhere.

"E me gusto en ninguna parte."

Happy 74th Father’s Day Poo Frank

My father passed away over fourteen years ago.

Today would have been his sixty-third Father's Day.

Frank A Smith II was my best friend.

Still is.

He loved my mother and mourned her early passing from this life.

My father loved his kids.

All six of us.

Frank III, Regina, Pam, Patrick, Michael, and me.

He was a native of Maine.

And Watchic Pond

I loved that lake too.

It always felt like home.

After my mother passed in 1996, my father and I traveled the world.

We voyaged by car through France.

He came to stay with me later in Ireland and we found my Nana's house.

We went west to Utah.

North to Quebec.

And Poo Frank voyaged around the world to Thailand to meet my family.

Frank A Smith was a good man and while I don't carry his name, I will follow his path around the world.

HEAVY METAL ACCORDION by Peter Nolan Smith

Every boy has a best friend in his youth.

In 1959 I was lucky enough to have two; my older brother Frunk and a neighbor.

Chaney and I attended the same kindergarten class at Pinewood Elementary in Falmouth Maine and we did almost everything together boys were supposed to do that far north.

In the winter we played hockey in the small backyard rink my father built from 2 by 10s and also sledded down a gully to a tidal ice pool. During the summer we swam in the shallow waters beyond the marsh grass and bicycled to the forbidden bridge crossing the salt flats to Macklowe Island.

That August in 1959 the two of us crawled under the fence into a strawberry field and ate ripening fruit on our backs. The farmer caught us and my father paid him for four quarts. They were worth his angry words and ten whacks of the wooden spoon from my mother.

Partners in crime, but Cheney and I were in love with the same girl. Kathy Burns was sweet on Chaney. He played the accordion. I had no musical skills, even though my mother was famed for a voice capable of silencing the Portland Cathedral choir.

Chaney was a protege on the squeezebox. He mastered SINK THE BISMARCK and DAVY CROCKETT as well as the standard songs learned from his music teacher; YELLOW BIRD and MACK THE KNIFE. I envied his virtuosity as well as Kathy's admiration of his talent.

That autumn our brunette schoolmate held a birthday party to which I was not invited. Chaney brought me a piece of chocolate cake and told me how he had kissed Cathy in her basement. The cake tasted like chalk, but I congratulated Chaney's success. We were best friends.

Thw next summer my family moved south from Maine to a suburb south of Boston. Chaney and I vowed never to go swimming, unless we were together. His parents had a place on Lake Sebago and my grandmother's cabin was on nearby Watchic Pond.

"Wait for me."

"You and me only swimming together."

"And take care of Kathy Burns."

"I will, because one day I'm going to marry her."

I bid him good-bye and my father drove us south in our Ford station wagon. It had wood paneling and he liked to go fast.

That summer was warm in New England and my parents took us to Nantasket Beach for Memorial Weekend. My mother considered the wide strand of sand to be the best beach in the world and she had been to Bermuda for her honeymoon. My brothers and sisters ran in the eddies of the surf. My father swam past the waves. i sat on the blanket and my mother asked, "Why aren't you in the water?"

"Because I told Chaney I wouldn't go swimming without him.

"We won't be in Maine for another two weeks."

"I can wait."

"Seems a waste." She reached out her hand. "Come with me."

I was a good boy and obeyed my mother.

The Atlantic was cold, but not to the young.

Upon our return to our suburban development my father hosed off the sand and salt off his boys outside, while my mother showered my two younger sisters inside. We dried off in the warm summer sun.

The phone rang in the living room. My mother answered it and came out a minute later with wet hair.

"Go sit in the car."

"What I do wrong?"

"Nothing. Just do as I say." She was on the verge of tears.

"Yes, ma'am." I went to the station wagon and sat in the front.

To the West the setting sun shadowed the silhouette of Great Blue Hill.

Several minutes passed before my mother came to the car. She leaned on the open window with a pained weariness and said, "Chaney drowned this afternoon."

"Drowned how?"I already knew how.

"In Sebago Lake. Everyone had gone waterskiing and left him with his grandmother. He swam out too deep and struggled in the water. The grandmother couldn't swim and he drowned. Say a prayer for him."

"What time?"

"I don't know. This afternoon."

My mother walked back into our house.

I sat in the car and looked at the sky seeing only the sky.

Chaney had broken our vow, as had I at Nantasket Beach.

One of us paid the price.

Chaney.

Not me.

Two weeks later my family headed north for a vacation on Watchic Pond.

My father drove first at Falmouth Foresides. New people were living in our old house. We stopped at the Noyes. I hung out with his brothers. None of us spoke of Chaney. As we prepared to leave, I saw Cathy Burns across the street. i walked up to her and she said, "I know what you did and so did Chaney."

"I swan."

"You were wrong."

"I was. I miss him."

"Me too. Chaney could play accordion."

Yes, he could."

My father hour later I was swimming in the tannin-tainted waters of Watchic Pond. It was wide enough, but short by a mile to make a lake.

That night my parents sat around the campfire and my mother sang 'YELLOW BIRD'

I wished Cheny was there to play accordion.and since that sad day every time I see an accordion I think of Chaney and any time I see a street accordionist I ask them to play SINK THE BISMARCK. None of them know the Johnny Horton tune and I request IN-A-GADDA-DA-VITA.

None of the accordion players can play that 60s hit either, however I'm sure that Chaney would have liked Iron Butterfly.

Cathy Burns too.

After all we were all best friends.

To hear Rene Sevieri's cover of IN A GADDA DA VIDA, please go to the following URL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ugt9pZVkgtg

Watchic Pond Maine 1964

Watchic Pond 1964

My grandfather and his friends had dammed a stream to create a lake.

A foto of my brothers and sisters reenacting the Titanic sinking.

My grandfather Frank A. Smith graduated from Bowdoin in 1912. A college friend had drowned in the Titanic sinking. My grandfather was older and more mature than his classmates having worked the North Woods as a logger. The family sent him north to St Johns to collect the body. He recognized his friend's body from the school ring on his finger.

During WWII A surgeon in France, where he met my grandmother a nurse.

The Maine native was later Robert E Peary's personal doctor in Westbrook Maine. Admiral Peary founded the Explorers Club to which I now belong thanks to that connection and my travels from Watchic Pond to the beyond. The small world loomed larger through the milleniae back and forth through eternity.

Foto 1964 - Frank A Smith II

DONT FEED THE BEARS by Peter Nolan Smith

My second youngest sister has frequently called me a liar.

In some ways Pam hasn't been not wrong, for my remembrance of the past differs from the collective memories of family and friends.

Several years ago I headed up to Maine for my youngest sister's birthday. Watchic Pond was a short distance outside of Portland. Not much had changed along Route 25 and even less at the lake, except the pine trees were taller and we were a little older.

After a long day lazing around the camp on Watchic Pond we sat outside on a long wooden table for a lobster dinner. One-and-quarters were cheap that season and my brother-in-law boiled a two dozen in a huge pot. My father, aunt and uncle, brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews consumed big bottles of white wine, as the sky darkened to a cobalt blue and lake lapped at the shore speaking a wind-driven language.

We broke the shells to get at the succulent white meat. The empty claws, tails, and legs, and knuckles grew into a substantial pile.

"That's going to make some bears happy."

"What do you mean?" my uncle asked from the other end of the table.

"Don't you remember the bears eating garbage at the Standish dump?"

"I never saw that." My eighty-five year-old father drew a blank.

"I remember seeing them sitting on their haunches, eating food from people's trash.

There had been no plastic bags in the 50s.

"Are you making this up?" my aunt and uncle asked in unison.

"It wasn't a dream. I was standing on the bluff looking at the bears. They ate with good manners too."

My older sister and brothers rolled their eyes and Pam demanded, "Were you on LSD?"

My younger sister was a trial lawyer and I was thrust onto the stand for interrogation.

"No, I was only five." I was almost sure of my answer, then again no one had proven that the CIA hadn't experimented on children in the 1950s.

"Maybe it was an acid flashback." My brother-in-law laughed at his joke.

Everyone from our generation joined him.

I was the family's one hippie.

"What's so funny," my father grumbled from his seat.

"The bears at the dump."

"Never happened." My father returned to his post-dinner stupor.

"No, I swear I saw them."

"Well, there are bears in these woods." Uncle Russ looked over his shoulder. He had graduated fromthe University of Maine. Their mascot was a brown bear. He was also partial to a good story.

"Not these woods." Pam had heard too many lies from her clients. None of them ever told the truth and nothing but the truth.

"Maybe not this time of year, but I had a cousin up in Naples." My uncle was a Maine native. "This bear kept on eating his garbage. My uncle locked the lids and build a shed. The bear found a way in. He finally stored the trash in his house,"

"Did that solve the problem?" My brother-in-law was good around the house.

"No, the bear crashed through a kitchen wall."

"What your cousin do then?" my older sister was scared of any animal bigger than a cat, although her twenty-pound Shadow was no kitty.

"He shot the bear in the ass with buckshot and the bear ran away. Never to be seen again."

"Like the bears at the dump." Pam wasn't letting it go.

"I saw what I saw."

My older brother had been there then and I looked to him.

He shrugged to indicate I was on my own.

"I believe you, but everyone else thinks you're lying," my sister joked to the laughter of our gathered family.

"Here's to your 38th Birthday." I raised my glass.

"You never mention a woman's age," my aunt Sally admonished me.

"I can live with thirty-eight." Pam was on the other side of 40.

"So some lies are good."

"36 would have been better and bears at best left in the woods."

After dessert I helped bring in the plates.

"What about the lobster shells?"

"Leave them outside. We don't want them to stink up the house." My brother-in-law loved his camp.

We washed the dishes, while my family disappeared into the bedrooms. My brother-in-law and I had a vodka for a nightcap and he said,"I love that story about the bears at the dump."

"It really did happen."

"All stories are true, if interesting."

It was an old family adage.

I bid him good night and went to my room.

Lying on the bed I thought about bears.

We had a long history and I went to bed remembering my teddy bear. His name was Billy. I have no idea where he went astray. Maybe it was during our move from Maine to Boston in 1960, but I wished he came out of the trees tonight and rolled over to shut my eyes.

My next connection to bears came from the book GOLDILOCKS. My dearly departed mother read it to my older brother and me before switching to Lynd Ward's THE BIGGEST BEAR as a bedtime tale. The plot followed a nicer version of THE YEARLING, in which a boy adopted a bear cub in a Maine farming community until the bear grew too big to be with humans. The happy ending was the capture of the bear by hunters from a city zoo, although the bears at Franklin Zoo in Boston did not seem to happy with their lot in life.

Once we moved from Maine to the South shore, bears figured less and less in our lives, but they popped up as Yogi and Boo-boo on TV and I read THE BIGGEST BEAR at least three times a year. I begged my father to take us to Franklin Zoo in Boston and he relented one week. The lions and tigers slept on dusty soil and I said in front of the bear den, "These bears don't look very happy."

"Bears are bears. They're only happy when they're eating," explained my father, but I never asked to visit the zoo again.

THE BIGGEST BEAR was retired to my top bookshelf in my teenage years to be replaced by my adoration of the Boston Bruins. They won a Stanley Cups in 1972 and I drank beer toasting THE BIGGEST BEAR and the Big Bad Bruins.

That summer I hiked into the White Mountains and camped without a permit. I trekked from the Swift River to Sawyer Pond. I carried no tent, only a drop cloth and a sleeping bag. A little before sunset I set up camp in the shelter of a glacier rock. I ate cold beans for dinner rather than risk the rangers spotting a fire. The Red Sox game on radio guided me to sleep under a starry sky.

A snort disturbed my sleep. Something big was lumbering through the underbrush. My hand grabbed a flashlight, but hesitated turning it on in case the prowler was a ranger. The noise went away and I spend the rest of the night watching the darkness for the fangs of a black bear.

In the morning I found bear tracks twenty feet from my shelter and hurried back to the road.

Bears were best left in the wilderness or hockey rink.

The folk singer Dave Van Ronk performed frequently in Harvard Square and sang a wicked version of THE TEDDY BEARS' PICNIC with his coarse voice lending the children's song an unintended menace. One time I brought him THE BIGGEST BEAR to autographed and the bearded singer laughed, saying, "I've been asked to sign a lot of things, but never a kid's book."

"Glad to have given you a first time."

I loved Dave Van Ronk, the Pope of Greenwich Village.

In 1974 I worked at a restaurant on Cape Ann. The entire staff was gay. We smoked pot after work at a friend's house on Rockport's Bear's Neck. Gay men mauled me worse than any bear, but I escaped with my masculinity intact as my universe of bears jumbled with images of them eating garbage at dumps, cartoons, movies, and story books along with hairy gay men.

When I moved to New York to be a famous writer, I visited the Central Park Zoo.

The elephant was chained in a smelly cage and the gorilla dodged trash thrown by school children, but the polar bears seemed content as the bears at the dump with a swimming pool, free food, and a mate. I imagined THE BIGGEST BEAR to have shared their fate.

In 1982 I left New York for Paris, where a German friend had decorated his 16th arrondisement house with bear furniture. Jurgen thought I was the next Henry Miller. I wanted to be John Steinbeck. My spelling was atrocious enough to be Hemingway.

Jurgen hired me to work at a nightclub in Hamburg. The mysterious German's Reeperbahn apartment was packed with bear figurines of all sizes. One night we were drinking there.

When I asked about his collection, Jurgen said, "This? This is not a collection. These are my friends. I am a bastard. My father never came back from Russia. As a child I had no one to protect me. Believe me Hamburg is tough. I created an imaginary bear and he was inside me to get me out of any trouble. After I started making money, I bought these. They protect me now. You want another beer?"

Beers tasted better than bear or so I have heard.

Jurgen died in 1985 under mysterious circumstances in Paris.

I wasn't even sure that he was dead, until seeing him in the morgue. I wanted to make sure that his death was natural and broke into his apartment on Montmartre. There was no blood on the floor, but I wiped the surfaces for my fingerprints and stole a small bear as a keepsake. His step-brother put the rest up for auction. I still have mine somewhere, although I misplaced my edition of THE LITTLEST BEAR in New York and the Bruins avoided the Stanley Cup with frustrating regularity.

Despite their lack of success I continued to wear their shirt with the old logo.

In the 80s bears became beasts from Wall Street. Brokers hung in the East Village. They spoke about 'bulls' as their friend. Bears were their enemy.

During my journeys throughout Asia in the 90s, I ran into trained bears in India. These creatures were gaunt shadows of the grizzly bear of legend, a golden beast towering over man.

I was seeing Mrs. Carolina at this time. The married blonde waited for me and I came back from my trips to her.

My father asked about our relationship.

Since she was married, I answered, "We are traveling companions."

"So that's what they call it now."

Ms. Carolina originally hailed from the Adirondacks and on a trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains I told her the story about the bears eating garbage at the dump.

"We had bears too." The police decided the proximity of bears to humans was a danger better not tested and used firecrackers to scare them away."

"And did they?"

"I guess so."

"You know how to escape a bear?" asked Ms. Carolina.

"Run faster than the people with you."

"No." She considered that ungallant. "If you're being chased by a bear, throw your jacket at them."

"You mean like giving a mugger your wallet."

"No, a bear can run 30 mph. The jacket will make him curious. At that point you're supposed to get a tree between the bear and you. If you're lucky, you might survive. Maybe you'll be lucky."

I was a big believer in luck.

On a trip to Montana and Wyoming May 1994 we stayed at the Chico Springs Hotel. I hiked into the mountains. After an hour I reached a sign stated, "Anyone proceeding after this point without a guide will be prosecuted if not eaten."

It didn't make any sense.

Eaten?

By what?

I gazed around the slopes.

The bears in the Rockies didn't eat just garbage.

They ate everything.

Across the river the wind swayed over a pasture. Bears might be lurking in the high grasses for me to get closer. I picked up a rock and threw it hard. The invisible bears didn't break from cover and I hiked back to the lodge very fast.

I found Mrs. Carolina soaking in the springs and joined her.

"How was your walk?"

"Fine." She didn't need to know that I had been scared.

The next day we stopped in Yellowstone National Park. A huge fire in 1988 had devastated its forests and huge swathes of the volcanic plateau were charred from horizon to horizon. Ashes clogged the streams and burnt bones laid as humps along the river banks. The fire had been a disaster, but the torched trees allowed motorists unrestricted vistas. Bison cruised the road and elk grazed the meadows, plus some sections of the park were untouched by flames and hiked along a river.

Bear tracks led away from the stream and Mrs. Carolina asked, "What are you doing?"

"Following these tracks."

"And why do you want to meet a bear? Maybe a grizzly bear?"

"No reason."

"It's spring. Bears are hungry. How fast can you run?"

"A little fast." My best time at the 440 had been 55 seconds. A little better than 15 MPH. "Maybe we should go back to the car."

"That's a good idea." Ms. Carolina didn't fool with big animals, only me.

Later that week nearing Glacier Park we spotted a grizzly loping across the road at a good clip.

"He must be in a hurry." Ms. Carolina was driving and sped up the car. She didn't believe in rubber-necking with her life on the line.

"He's probably going to the town dump."

"I don't think so. There are no towns up here." Ms. Carolina stepped on the gas. She had a heavy foot at the best of times.

At the park entrance I told the young ranger about the grizzly.

"It looked like a big dog."

"Just be glad you didn't pet it. They can be mean this time of year." A young ranger told us, as he made change. "Mostly they like to stay away from people, but the brown bears are very friendly, unless you get between them and they're cubs or food." His associate was a man of regulations. "We don't condone feeding them. Only make them dangerous. We had two fatal attacks in the last ten years."

The young ranger handed Ms. Carolina the ticket.

"You be safe."

As we drove away, Ms. Carolina asked, "Why didn't you tell them about your dump story?"

"Because those bears aren't these bears." Mine wore a smile and had good manners. "Besides bears don't like man, wee smell bad and taste worse."

For the rest of the trip we didn't get out of the car, except at the scenic stops on the pass.

We were playing it safe, because in the wilderness we were the garbage dump for the bears.

Recently I watched a movie GRIZZLY MAN, in which this incredibly naive amateur naturalist traveled north every year to live with the bears. Without them Timothy Treadwell had no life and Werner Herzog assembled Treadwell's video recordings into a documentary.

The pay-off was a bear mauling 'grizzly man' and his loyal girlfriend.

Neither survived the attack.

I felt sorry for the girl. The guy had put her in a bad spot. The bear was just being a bear and the next morning after the lobster dinner on Watchic Pond I woke early for a swim. Everyone else was asleep, except for my father, who was doing a crossword puzzle in the kitchen.

"How'd you sleep?"

"I dreamed a lot about bears."

"I haven't seen a bear in years." He still lived on the South Shore. Bears were extinct south of the Neponset River. "But they're out there."

"Not as much as mosquitoes." The Maine woods were famous for the swarming insects.

"They shouldn't be that bad this time of the morning. Enjoy your swim."

I exited from the cabin. A thin mist hovered over the lake. Two loons cried out in the mist. I passed the long table and looked down on the ground. The lobster shells were gone. I searched the dirt for tracks. The paw prints were unmistakably those of a bear. My head snapped to the right and left. The bear was nowhere in sight, but they are very clever for such a large creature. I almost went back inside to tell my father about the bear, but if they didn't believe me about the bears in the dump, then there wasn't a chance they would believe me about the night intruder. I went to the end of the dock and jumped in the water. It was cold and upon breaking the surface for air I laughed about my discovery.

Over the years I have told the story about bears eating garbage all over the world. Some people believed me. Some thought it's a good story. Others feel I'm lying, but those bears were there in the Standish dump. Maybe they weren't smiling, which I will not admit to my sister.

After all we sometimes need to believe in something that isn't the truth, especially if it's interesting.

Italians To Go

If I could click my heels and be anywhere in the USA, my # 1 destination would be Watchic Lake in Maine.

My grandfather and his friends dammed a stream at Watchic's western end to create a lake by building a dam in the 1920s. He built a log cabin for his family and I've been going there since the 1950s.

Several years ago I called my dear brother-in-law David, who chided me saying, "It's been too long since you've been up here."

"You've got that right." I was sitting on my porch in Pattaya halfway around the world.

"We have Italian sandwiches on the table."

David was a kind man with a cruel heart, he knew full well how much I love the long soft-bread sandwiches filled with ham, cheese, olives, pickles, tomatoes, dusted with salt and pepper, then drizzled with olive oil.

My mouth is watering just thinking about one in my hand and I asked, "Could you Fed-Ex me two, but hold the onion and peppers?"

"Not a chance. You want one, you have to fly back to Maine and get one."

I restrained a curse and demanded to speak with my sister.

"You can talk to her all you want, but the only way you're getting an Italian from us is to come up to Watchic and wash one down with one of my Vodka and OJs."

My heels clicked like Dorothy in THE WIZARD OF OZ.

I remained on Manhattan, but thankfully wasn't transported to Kansas, because Kansas like New York doesn't have any Italians, at least not like the Italians invented in 1899 by an Italian baker in Southern Maine

According to a 1996 article in Yankee Magazine Giovanni Amato invented the portable and inexpensive lunch for road construction workers in 1903 and since then the sandwiches are beloved by anyone living north of the Saco River and not all of them are the same.

Corsetti's Variety on Brighton Avenue supposedly received an order from Colorado who wanted two dozen regular Italians - no oil.

I had once asked my Uncle Russ to airmail me Italians to Thailand.

"They will be frozen most the trip, since they will be stored with cargo. The temperature outside the 747 has to be below zero."

"Actually the air at 30,000 feet ranges from -40F to -70F."

"So you'll send them?"

Like David he said no, but added, "Everyone says Amato's is best, but my brother Doug always said, "Amato. Too many Tomatoes."

My fav comes from the variety store at the south end of Sebago Lake.

This past summer I had two from George's in Biddeford. They were damn good.

Guess I'll have to get up there soon.

It's been way too long and nothing would make me feel younger.

The Fairy Village of MackWorth Island

In May of 2012 I traveled north to Maine with my sister and her husband. Our destination was their cabin on Watchic Pond.

David and I installed the dock in the frigid water as mosquitos attacked our flesh. The entire operation lasted an hour and neither of us complained about the cold. We even celebrated the completion of the task with a total immersion. My sister had towels waiting for us.

She loved us both, but really loved David.

Our teeth chattered from the long stay in the lake and our bodies were on the edge of hypothermia.

"Go take a hot shower," she ordered in her sternest professor voice.

David and I obeyed without question. Ten minutes under a hot shower in the first-floor bathroom brought feeling back to my muscles and the skin stopped stinging after fifteen. David remained in the upstairs bathroom for another five minutes, since his water pressure suffered from my usage.

"How about a ride into Portland?" My sister offered after I dressed in dry clothing. "Just you and me."

"What about your husband?" I get along with my brother-in-law. Some people say that we look alike. Both of us have our hair, which is a miracle for men almost 60.

"He's has some more chores to do before he can take a break. We'll drive by our old house on Falmouth Foresides and then head into Portland to get steamers." My sis knew my weak spots. She forgave all my shortcomings and they were more than I could count on one hand.

"Sounds like a plan." I hadn't seen the house on McKinley Road in over twenty years. I shouted to David that we were leaving and he yelled to be back before sunset. The retired corporate headhunter liked to eat early.

Traffic on 25 from Standish to Portland was light even for a Sunday. We reached US 1 in forty minutes and crossed the Penobscot River Bridge.

The Harbor was becalmed by the windless afternoon. and not a single wave rippled the ocean passage between Cushing Island and Portland Head Light.

"Looks the same as always." The parking lot of the B&M Bean factory was crowded with pick-up trucks. Beans sold well in the Great Recession days.

"Like when we were kids." My sister drove a little faster than the speed limit. She had inherited her heavy foot on the gas from our late father. Falmouth Foresides lay on the other end of the Martin Point Bridge.

Our childhood was anchored in the middle of the 20th Century. Cars had been bigger in the 50s. Most of them had been manufactured in Detroit.

"There aren't any new houses and the old Civil War fort still guards against the rebels."

"It's called Fort Gorges and it wasn't finished until after the Civil War." My sister had a better retention of history, especially since I filled in the blanks with guessses.

"Here's our street." My sister turned into the quiet neighborhood. "When we were kids, everyone was outside on a day like this."

"We're baby-boomers. People have less kids now."

"Mom also exiled us from the house during daylight." She slowed the car to a crawl on our old street. "Kids stay home and play videos or surf the internet. Outside sports are uncool."

"This is our house." The owners of # 12 had expanded the two-story dwelling. The breezeway connecting the garage to the kitchen was enclosed by walls. I had jumped out the bedroom window into a deep snowdrift. The family behind us had belonged to the Davis family. Their daughter was the best baseball player in town back in the summer of 1959.

"Brings back lots of memories."

She didn't stop until the end of the street.

I got out of the car. My sister phoned her husband. I walked across the grassy verge.

The dock at the bottom of the bluff was gone as were the lobster boats. A few buoys marked the location of the remaining traps. I returned to the car.

"What now?"

"We could walk around Mackworth Island." The fir-covered island was connected to our neighborhood by a causeway.

"They allow people on the island?" Our parents had warned us against approaching the bridge. Older kids told scary stories about the deaf school on the island. Bad things happened to the students. No one said how bad. "We were all scared of the school station wagon. It had bars on the window."

"The school is still operating, but it's open to the public on the weekends. There is a hiking path around the shore."

"Let's go. You know when I was a kid, I heard stories about Mackworth Island."

"I remember them. There was a scandal in the early 80s. The teachers beat students to force them to speak rather than use sign language. There was a settlement, but the state refused to give the money to the victims." My sister was a college professor. She loved her profession and her voice quivered at the thought of the long history of mistreatment on the island. "That's over now, but not for those who suffered from the abuse."

We parked in the lot and strolled around the island. It was low tide. I picked up the sea's offerings off the rocky beach.

We passed the stone boat pier and followed the path through the tall pines to discover that over the last years children had been erecting small dwellings for the fairies of Mackworth Island.

"What for?" asked my sister."

"Maybe they're for the souls of those poor kids."

"So many?"

"When people are bad, they are very bad, especially if they have the support of the State."

I added my findings to a small birch wood structure and we returned to the car. Her husband was eager for us to return. He loved steamers.

Upon my return to New York I googled Mackworth Island and found 'WHY I HATE MACKWORTH ISLAND' by Richard Wormwood. His sister had been a student at the Deaf School. The young girl had suffered at the hands of the teachers and students. None of her tormentors were punished with jail sentences. The principal knew the location of too many skeletons.

I wrote Richard Wormwood that week.

Dear Richard

I am sorry for your sister's pain.

Seeing those little fairy houses I thought of those children. They sadly were not alone.

Our family moved to the South Shore of Boston in 1960. My friend's sister attended a Catholic school for the deaf. Jannie could read lips and tell jokes in her own way, but she lived outside of us. One day I found her crying and asked why. She shook her head, but after a few minutes Jannie confided that the nuns were torturing her and the rest of the kids.

I told my parents.

They didn't believe me.

I called the police.

I was 11.

The next Sunday after Mass the parish priest cautioned me about spreading rumors.

My friend's sister was transferred to a public school.

I don't know what happened to her, but think about her often.

Your story brought back many memories and like you I hope that justice is meted out somewhere along the line.

The truly bad do not deserve happy endings.

Peter Nolan Smith
www.mangozeen.com

To read Richard Wormwood's article please go to the following URL

http://www.portlandphoenix.com/features/top/ts_multi/documents/03885664.asp

A MAN OF SPEED by Peter Nolan Smith

In early September of 1960 Hurricane Donna struck New England as a category 2/3 storm. The radio station WBZ announced numerous school closing. My primary school on the South Shore, Our Lady of the Foothills, was one of the first on the list following Beaver Country Day School in Newton. My older brother and I were happy to stay home. We were new kids in town.

That morning a raging gale howled against our split-level ranch house and the windows vibrated in their sashes. The electricity died at noon and my father lit a kerosene lamp, which he placed on the kitchen table. Our family of seven huddled around the flame like Neanderthals sheltering in a cave. Several hours later the howling hurricane abated to a whisper.

“Where are you going?” my mother demanded with hands on her hips, her voice ringing with the authority of a woman, who had carried five babies in her womb.

“Outside to show them the eye.” My father loved a good storm and waves crashing over the sea walls.

“Hurricanes are not a joke.” My mother had experienced the 1938 hurricane. That tempest didn’t have a name, yet hundreds of New Englanders had died in its path.

“I know.” My father shrugged in weak surrender to the truth.

“You act, as if you don’t.”

Hurricane Edna in 1954 had destroyed his sailboat on Watchic Pond. The hull lay in our backyard.

Six years later he had yet to repair the damage to the mast.

My father was my best friend. He's been gone four years. From this life. But not from forever.

To read A MAN OF SPEED by Peter Nolan Smith on Kindle, please to the following URL to purchase the book for $3.99

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01HHLHTDK#navbar

Watchic Autumn by Regina Rutter

The end of the line for summer. Fall is ravenous for cool days, The crunch of brightly, colored leaves underfoot, The smoky sweetness of wood fires, The sharp, crisp bite of fresh picked apples. A loon's soul-filled cry mourns The passage of another season Summer into autumn And the loss of children's laughter, As they barreled off docks Into the warm, golden waters of Watchic Pond. A poem by my Sister Regina Rutter Woke to a dream of Watchic Pond Maine. Standing watching my brother in law load the car. I wander off for a last swim. Haven't been there in years. Until tonight. Swam in the hot springs there are none save in my dream.

TWICE THE MAN by Peter Nolan Smith

My good friend Marge had lived a long life. The Maine native had served as the athletic director at several all-women's colleges in New England. Her basketball teams had played big teams. She had been a great coach and refused to act her age.

The nonagenarian exercised daily and ate healthy foods. Marge abstained from alcohol, although she liked a cold beer on a hot summer day on Watchic Pond.

Back in 1927 my grandfather had built a log hunting cabin on the opposite shore from Marge's farm. My family had been friends with Marge for over sixty years. My father had learned ping-pong from the kindly physical educator. While he had a slight edge over me in the game, my losing streak to Marge challenged the Red Sox's inability to win a World Series.

Marge's gravity-less drop shots, wicked spin serves, and power slams befuddled, confounded, and frustrated me for decades. Each summer I crossed the lake to tell Marge of my travels around the world and sip her homemade lemonade on her porch, after which we would play our annual game of ping-pong.

On Labor Day 1999 my niece and I canoed to Marge's landing. Kat asked, "Think you might win this year, Uncle Bubba?"

My niece loved my nickname.

"How'd your dad do?"

"Marge annihilated him."

"That's good to know." I pulled the canoe onto the grass and walked with Kat to Marge's house. It dated back to the 1700s and the barn was even older.

Marge was happy to see us and I recounted my overland journey through Laos.

"Wish I could travel, but the body isn't willing." Marge rocked in her chair. She had a good view of Maine Route 117.

"You look in good shape to me." Our conversation were a ritual leading to this moment.

"Maybe this will be the year that you beat me in ping-pong."

"I have to get lucky once."

"Luck has nothing to do with winning."

"Skill and practice." The two words were her mantra for success in sports.

"I only play you." Once a year for forty years.

"Then get ready for your whipping." Marge budged out of the chair with a groan. Arthritis was having its way her body.

"Aint no fun getting old and then getting older."

"Better than the alternatives."

"You're right about that. Young lady, help me straighten up.

Kat offered her arm.

"Sure you're up for this?" I was on the wrong side of forty, but felt in good shape.

"Ha." She scoffed at my question and hobbled over to the barn, mocking me to Kat. "Like he even has a chance."

Her two horses neighed a hello and she gave them each an apple. They were loyal fans and stomped their hooves, as Marge handed me a worn paddle. Hers was even older.

"I'll even let you serve first."

"Thanks." I wasn't about to play nice.

Marge returned my serve with a blistering forestroke. She won the three games without breaking a sweat. The horses cheered her victory and returning to the porch Marge said, "Kat, go get us a beer. Winning makes me thirsty."

Upon my return to the camp my father asked, "Any luck this year?"

"Luck has nothing to do with it."

"Skill and practice," chorused my father, uncle, and brother-in-law.

Our combined losing streaks totaled almost two hundred years.

"Maybe next year." My brother-in-law poured me a glass of wine.

"And maybe the Red Sox will win the World Series."

"Some things never change in New England."

The new century came in much the same as the last. I worked the fall at the diamond exchange, traveled the Orient throughout the winter, and came up to Watchic Pond in May to put in the dock at the camp. The lake was cold and the mosquitoes buzzed for blood. My uncle Russ watched our efforts, as my father drank white wine. He liked Chardonnay.

"Have you seen Marge?"

"I did last week." Kat was getting big. Next year she would be a teenager. "She had a stroke this winter. She can speak fine, but she can't do what she used to do."

"Ping-pong?"

"She's in no condition to play ping-pong." My father was a few years younger than Marge. He believed in fair play.

"Okay, okay, I'll just go over for a visit."

"I'll go with you, Uncle Bubba." Kat like getting out of the house.

After adjusting the level of the dock, I dragged the canoe from under the camp. The Old Town slid into the lake like a knife. Kat and I strapped on life preservers, since the warden was ticketing people for every penalty in the book.

"Do you think you'll ever be old as Marge?" Kat asked from the prow. She stroked the paddle with ease and we straight-lined toward Marge's place.

"Our family got legs in our lives." Great-grandaunt Bert lived to 103. "Nothing wrong with getting old as long as you can move."

"Marge isn't moving so good." Kat sniffed back a tear.

"Marge ain't going anywhere."

"I hope so." Kat had known Marge all her life. "I hope you aren't too."

"I'm going nowhere today." I never felt old at Watchic Pond.

I pulled the canoe out of the lake and we walked across the tidy lawn.

Marge sat on the porch. She looked the same, but a nurse stood by her and a walker was in the corner. After an introduction to her helper, Marge smiled and said distinctly, "Hello, young man, where have you been?"

"New York, LA, Thailand, Paris, and Watchic Pond."

"As you can see, I've been stuck here."

"You look good." It was the truth.

"But you didn't come over here to shoot the breeze."

"Yes, I did."

"You're a bad liar. You came over to see, if you can beat me in ping-pong."

"Am I that transparent?"

"You're easier to read than a comic book."

"The doctor doesn't want you exerting yourself." Her nurse didn't like this idea.

"What's the worst that can happen? I die? I'm 92. If I go beating him, it's a good day."

"Maybe you shouldn't play." Kat was concerned for Marge.

"We'll play one game to fifteen." It was a generous concession and the nurse assisted the old Physical Ed teacher to the barn.

"Marge___."

"No backing out now, unless you want to forfeit."

"I'm game." I followed her close in case she tripped, but Marge made the barn without any trouble.

The horses were happy to see their mistress. She fed them apples. I got the newer paddle. Marge stood at her end and picked up ball.

"I will serve first."

"Some things do change."

"But not this."

She aced me with a top heavy serve and took an early lead 4-1. I evened the score with my service. Marge was slower, but crafty as ever. Balls curved in the air, they spun like tops, and she lobbed sliders onto the table's edge. The horses clomped on the floor. Kat and the nurse cheered her play. I tried not to take advantage of her disability and stayed still same as her. We reached the end of the game 14-14.

My serve.

"Uncle Bubba." Kat was pleading for me to throw the game.

"I don't want any charity. Bring on your best, Bubba."

I swatted my serve to her backhand. Marge flicked the ball to my right. I lofted it high into the rafters and the ball landed on the table. Marge's paddle snapped at it and a white blur zipped my way. I slapped at it, but the ball soared off to the left.

"15-14. I win." Marge put down her paddle a happy woman. "Some things never change. Kat, get us three beers."

"And one for me." Kat was twelve.

"Long as you don't tell your mother you can have half of mine."

Marge needed no help on the walk back to her house. We went for a swim after the beers and Marge said, "I'm going to live forever."

Kat and I canoed back to the camp.

Halfway across the lake she stopped paddling and asked, "Uncle Bubba, you didn't let Marge win?"

"I wish I could say that."

"But you didn't move."

"And neither did Marge."

"But she didn't seem to have any trouble once she won."

"You noticed that too."

"Yes." Kat shrugged and I said, "Winning is good medicine."

Back at the camp my father laughed at my defeat.

"You'll never beat her."

"And neither will you."

"Some things never change."

And that's why I love Watchic Pond, because the things that don't change are the things that matter.

METHUSALAH'S MAD DASH by Peter Nolan Smith

My good friend Marge lived a long life. The nonagenarian attributed her good health to a rigid exercise regime and abstemious diet as well as her many decades of physical prowess as the athletic director for several all-women's collages in New England.

Even into her late-80s Marge's ping-pong game was unbeatable. Gravityless drop shots, wicked spin serves, and a power slam guaranteed her a winning streak against me that spanned decades and I thought I would never beat her, but at the age of 91 Madge suffered a stroke. Not so severe as to damage her thought process, yet she had lost a little off her game and I stopped over her house on Watchic Pond to challenged my friend one last time.

The game was to 15.

And I beat her by one.

My niece considered my gloating over Marge 'bush', then again my niece has never beaten me. Only problem is that I'm well over the half-century club and today I read off senior athletes are still competing against each other in a variety of track and field events. I had to ask myself, "Could I beat a 90 year-old in the 100 meter dash?"

Current record by a 95 year-old was 22 seconds .

Back in Brooklyn I went to the local track and paced out 100 meters. My friend AP had a stop watch. I talked him into officiating my race against time.

"You know that you have a thirty year advantage on 90 year-olds." AP was younger than me by ten years. He had refused my every challenge for a race.

"I have to start somewhere." The previous week I had beaten his eight year-old daughter in Fort Greene Park by ten yards. This was a much more serious enterprise.

I leaned forward in a racing crouch imitating Tommie Smith, who was my favorite runner in the 60s. He won a gold medal for the 400 meters at the Mexico City Olympics in 1968. This race was infamous for his black power salute on the medal podium. The sprinter had to be about in his late 60s, but I was racing a clock and not my hero.

I called out to AP at the end of the track.

"Ready, set, go."

I dashed from the starting line with the finish in sight even without my glasses.

I counted the seconds. 50 yards in 8 seconds. 75 in 15. 100 in 20.

My friend checked the watch.

"21 seconds."

I hadn't beaten the best of the 90 year-olds and I was elated with my victory.

Next stop is against the 80 year-olds and for this contest I will train like a motherfucker, because some of those old geezers are cheating with steroids. I will use none, because I'm pure as the wind-driven slush. No asterisks will mar my bio or race record. At least not unless I lose and then it's every man for himself.