No Bookee No Fuckee

Throughout the centuries the Vatican has maintained an Index of Prohibited Books comprised of proscribed authors such as Jean Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Voltaire, Denis Diderot, Victor Hugo, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, André Gide, Immanuel Kant, David Hume, René Descartes, Francis Bacon, John Milton, John Locke, and Galileo. Nazi Germany extolled the SA and SS and Hitler Youth for submitting offensive and subversive books to bonfires. America has long been a bastion of banned books and publishers were guaranteed a sales surge by any tome with BANNED IN BOSTON emblazoned across the book sleeve. Presently the country still upholds the tradition of demonizing the books and reading.

In 2008 the Washington Independent published a list of Top 10 Banned Books in America based on the American Library Association's findings of the book most requested to be withdrawn from a library along with the reasons.

1. AND TANGO MAKES THREE by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson Synopsis: Tango, an orphan puffin at the New York City zoo, is taken in by a loving penguin couple — both male. Reasons: sexism, homosexuality, anti-family, religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group 2. THE CHOCOLATE WAR by Robert Cormier Reasons: sexually explicit, offensive language, violence 3. OLIVE OCEAN by Kevin Henkes Reasons: sexually explicit, offensive language 4. THE GOLDEN COMPASS” by Philip Pullman Reasons: religious viewpoint 5. THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain Reasons: racism 6. THE COLOR PURPLE by Alice Walker Reasons: homosexuality, sexually explicit, offensive language 7. TTYL” by Lauren Myracle Reasons: sexually explicit, offensive language, unsuited to age group 8. I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS by Maya Angelou Reasons: sexually explicit 9. IT'S PERFECTLY NORMAL” by Robie Harris Reasons: sex education, sexually explicit 10. THE PERKS OF BEING NORMALS OF ” by Stephen Chbosky Reasons: homosexuality, sexually explicit, offensive language, unsuited to age group

I haven't read most of the books on this list, however I was glad to see that Huckleberry Finn hasn't lost its dubious reputation, but actually I'm surprised that Americans even bother to ban books anymore, since many of the houses that I have visited in recent times are devoid of books.

The only reading material are magazines in the bathrooms and the only reading by these householders seems to be that of a text.

We are living in very illiterate times, where opinions are formed en masse like jello casseroles quivering on a picnic table. What people know they know thanks to the talking heads of TV telling them what to know, so they can say they know something and we fight for the right to tell you that they know what they know, so they can challenge anything to might say by asking, "Where you hear that?"

"I didn't hear that anywhere. I read it."

"Read it? In what?"

"A book." You call tell them the title, but they suspect that you're lying since real people don't have the time to read books, unless they're welfare cheats or commie teachers retired on a pension.

Books are deemed useless by the masses.

Owning book speaks of evil for the Despicables.

According to Baptists reading them leads to Satan's backyard.

Thus lives America as the Land of the Unread, because books will endanger whatever you are told to know.

Illiterati of the Modern Age # 1

Back in the early 1960s I attended a good Catholic grammar school on the South Shore of Boston. Dyslexia was considered a sign of the Devil by the Nuns of Our Lady of the Foothills along with writing with the left or sinister hand. The inability to decode words has been declared incurable by various speech and reading therapy experts and I have to admit that they are probably right. I read the page from the outside in and my typing matches my consonant mispronunciations; gh distorts to hg ad infinitum. I can not read a poet aloud without changing the sentences to suit my impediments, but friends and family emails from the Internet have proven that people aren't dyslexic, then they are horrible spellers and grammarians. Their illiteracy had risen to a new level unrivaled since the Dark Ages, when there were only 3 books in all of Christendom.

The Bible and two holy treatises on pornography.

One male and one female with a small pamphlet for the perverse.

But little concern needs be shed about this collapse of intelligence.

You only have to read the following to understand why we no longer need geniuses. Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe can.

i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.

The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it.

Like I said who ndees samrts?

Thankfully none of us have to read porn.

Modern American Illiteracy # 2

After a four-day stay at NYU Hospital in August I was signed out for release. I dressed in my street clothing, thanked the staff for their care, and descended by elevator to the ground-floor to hit the streets. I spotted a gift store in the main lobby and stopped to get a newspaper or a book having read Cookie Mueller's collection of short stories WALKING THROUGH CLEAR WATER IN A POOL PAINTED BLACK as well as Tim Mohr's amazing history of punk under communism in the DDR.

I was shocked to discover the store offered no newspapers or novels other than coffee table books.

I caught the subway south to Chinatown and stopped in the 169 Bar.

Dakota was behind the bar and greeted me with a smile.

"How you feeling, old man?"

"A little tired, but otherwise not bad," I recounted everything in 100 words or less and ordered a cranberry juice and soda.

"So no more drinking?"

"Nothing if I want to live. It's been four days. The longest I've been sober since my climbing Kilimanjaro before the pandemic. Actually this was the first time I stayed in the hospital since my birth." I said nothing about my condition or future. I had a ways to go before I knew anything, but I mentioned about the gift store's lack of reading material, since Dakota is an avid reader."

"No books?"

"None."

We spoke about our favorite writers and poets; Hart Crane, James Elroy, George Orwell's DOWN AND OUT IN LONDON AND PARIS. The other drinkers at the bar failed to join in the conversation and I said aloud, "America is technically illiterate."

Two out-of-state slummers glared at me. They were in their 40s and one with glasses said with a Midwestern accent, "Everyone who isn't a foreigner knows how to read English and if not English most can read their own language."

"Actually the literacy rate in America is 79% according to Wikipedia." I had checked that site on the subway ride.

"Can't be!," his friend exclaimed and Dakota countered, "I'm a substitute teacher and most students in New York City are struggling with reading, although probably because of the curriculum of Shakespeare and English poetry."

The four of groaned remembering reading the Bard's plays.

"Worse was having to discuss the meaning of it all," said the first speaker, who introduced himself as Blair from Iowa.

"Enough to put you other drama for the rest of your life."

"On the train only a few people read books," said Dakota.

"But they all read and write on their phones."

"Badly." Text messaging has proved that not everyone can write, but they do understand the hieroglyphics of emojis.

"He's right. I can't remember the last time I read a book," admitted Blair's friend, "All the libraries near my town have been closed due to budget cuts and the book selection at Walmart is horrible, plus I don't have the time."

Dakota and I suggested books and I said, "New York's libraries are open, but there are much fewer books almost as if millions had been burned to make space with empty shelves. Even the main library at 42nd Street isn't what it was, because the trustees wanted to open a retail space in the stacks and removed most of the volumes to New Jersey or just shitcanned them."

"Like the crumbling books in the library in HG Wells' THE TIME MACHINE. The Eloi didn't read, because they didn't have to," said Blair about man's future. "We might be like them, but in the movie they were all beautiful blondes raised to feed the subterranean Morlock overlords."

"Ignorance is easier to achieve than enlightenment and oblivion even more so. Dakota let me buy these guys a drink. I can't anymore, so you're my designated drinkers."

They toasted HG Wells with well whiskey and the prurient value of old stroke books with beer.

I told them all about THE ITCH, Steven Hammer's masterful voyage through perversity on Olympia Press.

"I must have read it a thousand times."

"To THE ITCH."

"I just ordered it from Amazon. Thanks for the recommendation."

"My pleasure," I offered leaving the 169. I was heading back to Clinton Hill. I was looking forward to my own bed and a book between my hands leading me to sleep. Nothing too serious. Maybe Ian Fleming's THUNDERBALL. It's always good to read an old friend.

Chapter 1 - TAKE IT EASY, MR. BOND.

A WALK IN FOG by Peter Nolan Smith

On a murky November evening in 2011 I attended the opening of the "Dream' exhibition at Luxembourg's Mudam Museum. Madame l'Ambassador bailed early for a formal affair. I was not invited for the dinner.

"It's a diplomatic thingee." Madame l'Ambassador explained, as we walked through a thickening fog to the embassy's waiting Jaguar.

"I understand." A writer-in-residence had to accept his place in the scheme of European politics.

Francois the driver opened the right-hand rear door for Madame l'Ambassador. It was the safest seat in the car. He asked, if I needed a lift back to the city. The museum was located on the opposite side of the gorge running through the city. I had traversed le Petrousse through the ancient battlements many times on foot and refused his offer.

"You go with Madame. I'll be fine." I was a good foggy night for a walk. Foggy.

I lingered at the soiree for another half hour. The crowd was young and artistic. The curator waved to me. The amiable Italian was chatting to an aristocratic couple in their 70s. Patrons of the museum were much more important than a well-unknown writer and I ordered a Duvel beer. The Belgians know how to brew a good beer.

The bartender poured the triple-strength beer into a special glass with reverence. Mittel Europe worshipped its beers. I leaned at the bar and studied the passing faces. The queue at the bar seemed contently unconcerned by the chaos of the Euro, then again Luxembourg has the highest individual income in Europe and even the poor are rich in comparison to America.

The first beer wasdowned quickly and I ordered a second. No one commented on the speed of my drinking. The grand duchy had scored marked the highest beer consumption per capita in 1993 with an unbeatable score of seventeen beers for each man, woman, and child in the tiny country. A light-weight in my late fifties I called it a night after my third beer.

I had a good walk ahead to the upper city across the canyon of the Petrusse.

The Mudam's I.M. Pei structure was shrouded by a spectral fog and I remembered my High School German teacher's translating fog for our German class.

"Nebel." Bruder Karl at Xaverian High School had spoken the word with the muted thunder of someone, whose wrist bore the tattoo of the camps.

Nebel coupled with Nacht became night and mirrors, a mystical combination for the intrigues of the Gestapo.

I heard no jackboots from the foggy night and descended into the reconstructed fortifications with the night's cold on my skin.

The Mudam disappeared into the gray murk. I followed the switchbacking trail like a man going blind. A train sounded its whistle on the tracks below. It was the 7:43 from Troisvierges.

During its reign as Gibraltar of the North Luxembourg had housed thousands of soldiers and on a night in the 18th Century the path from Fort Thungen would have been travelled by hussars, dragoons, and mercenaries. Now only me.

Tonight my footsteps ricocheted unanswered against the stone ramparts and I thought about a movie that an actor friend had made here several years ago. Bill had played a blood-lusting Nosteradu. The city's medievalism had lent the exterior scenes an unexpected aura of horror and I glanced around me with a rising apprehension.

I was all alone.

While I no longer believed in God, I had seen enough vampire movies to know that I offered a fairly easy target for a bloodsucker. Were-wolves were not a worry, because the moon was in the middle of the synodic month. A twig cracked in the surrounding woods. Something was out there in the forbidding shadows. I wished for a sword in my bare hand.

A single pinpoint of light broke through the swirling overcast.

Venus.

I salvaged a little bravery from my fears with the sighting of that familiar object in the night sky, then a lisping wind scrapped the bare branches to chant an incantation from a time before the invention of electricity.

Meeting a woman under a light was too much to ask from this evening.

This was Luxembourg and not Paris' Rue St. Denis.

My pace accelerated through the tunnel underneath the outer bastion. A shiver scrapped a dull razor against the skin of my spine. My cellphone dimly illuminated the black passage of stone. Running would have been a sign of fright to creatures of the night preying on the weak.

I crossed the traintracks before the 7:45 train to Wiltz raced beneath the steep embankment. The smooth cobblestones gave way to gravel and the trail bore the ruts of wagons.

A rusting grate blocked the tunnel under the railroad tracks. I hopped over the metal fence and bushwhacked through the underbrush to the tracks. I looked both ways and clambered across the double set of steel rails to the other side.

I reached the street ten seconds later.

A streetlight glowed overhead.

The fortifications along the Petruche were in sight.

My cell phone rang.

It was Francois the driver.

He asked, if I was all right.

I had reached the safety of the old city.

"Okay." The word meant the same in English as in French.

"Sure?" Madame l'Ambassador was concerned that something bad might have happened to me. She was a longtime friend.

“Fine, I'll be back at the residence within fifteen minutes. Thank the ambassador for asking."

It was a nice feeling to know someone cared and also that a good scare made a man feel alive, which is 100% better than being killed by a vampire any night of the week.

Lobstah Roll Badger's Island

My younger sister called from her drive to Maine. She was heading north to spend some time on Watchic Lake. I had hoped to join her on the ride, but financial obligations required my staying in New York. She asked me about the Red Sox and I snapped, "I don't want to talk about them until next year."

The 2011 collapse against the Orioles and the disastrous 2012 opening had soured my faithfulness to the hometown team.

"A little grumpy these days?" My younger sister warned that I was starting to sound obstreperous and I had to agree with her assessment. She also asked me to kick her in the knee, if she was ever short with people.

"This I can do."

"I'll talk to you later. I'm at the Portsmouth rotary and I'm getting off to find a McDonalds."

"I have a better idea." I was at my desk and hit Google maps for Portsmouth. My new connection is fast and a satellite image of the Piscataqua River. "There's a lobster shack on Baxter's Island. Not Warren's. I've stopped there a few times coming back from Maine. It's the last place to get real Maine lobster."

"I don't want to waste a lot of time."

It was a beautiful afternoon in Fort Greene. I could only imagine how nice it was in Maine.

"I know, but you don't want to eat at Mickey Ds either." The younger sister ate well, but still subscribed to fast food on the road. In most cases there wasn't much of a choice, but I said, "Cross the Route 1 Bridge and then drive over to the old bridge. Ignore the signs saying the bridge is closed, because you're only going to Badger Island. The lobster shack in on the right."

It was a short distance and I guided her through the turns.

"I see it now. It's called the Weathervane."

"That's it."

I'll let you know how it is."

"Love from old Grumpy."

Thirty minutes later she sent a photo of her lobster roll. The bun wasn't grilled, but it looked better than good.

I'm sure it was.

ps my younger sister phoned back to say that the pizzeria on Badger's Island was selling lobster rolls for $6.99. My last lobstah roll was out at Lunch in the Hamptons. $24.99. Of course everything out there is more expensive, since Montauk is so close to Europe.

A FLYING DIME by Peter Nolan Smith

On an June evening in 1939 my uncle and three of his teenage friends exited from Portland's State Theater’s western matinee of STAGECOACH and JESSE JAMES. The gunfights in the cowboy double bill had had a funny effect on their blood, for while America was still peace, the threat of war loomed across the Atlantic.

Europe was a long away from Maine and weekend shoppers exited from Benoits with full bags. College boys from Bowdoin and Bates protectively escorted their bobby-socker girlfriends along the sidewalks, as drunken shipyard workers and men from the SD Warren paper mill careened from bar to bar.

"What now?" asked Russ’ best friend, Hugh, who played left field for the Deering High School baseball team.

"We could get a pizza." My uncle was hungry and an Italian restaurant on Congress Street served the best pizza this far north on the Eastern Seaboard.

"Pizza?" Hugh was more ambitious with his adventure. "We can have pizza anytime. What about a beer on Fore Street?"

"Only sailors, tramps, and fisherman go to those dives," Russ protested knowing no good came from slumming on the docks.

"Are you chicken?" Hugh challenged and Russ said, "No."

The four friends walked down High Street to a bar offering dime beers and they drank 'Gansetts', watching sea-toughened fisherman arm-wrestle with iron-hard East Yard ironmongers, until a Portugee fisherman picked a fight with the young boys and the teenagers fled the bar to catch a trolley to the quiet safety of their homes in Deering.

The long summer sun was two hours from setting, but the east a full moon topped the low skyline of Portland.

"That’s that," Russ looking at the tree tops lit my a silvery moon. Less than a mile away a girl lived he had met at a dancer hall on Peak's Island and he wondered what Sally was doing.

"There has to be more to life than this." Hugh kicked a can into the gutter. A light flashed on a second-floor bedroom. Their neighborhood was used to quiet nights.

"Not in Portland."

"My cousin went to Boston once." Hugh’s family came from Westbrook. The brothers worked at the SD Warren paper mill. It was only a few blocks from that girl's house, but her father was a doctor.

"And?"

"He said Scollay Square was fun and no place was more fun than the Old Howard. Its motto’s 'Always Somethin’ Doing .”

“Not like here.” Randall, who field center for Deering High, looked around the quiet neighborhood.

“Boston’s a long way away.” Russ had heard about the burlesque theater, where the dancers appeared on stage almost as naked as Eve.

"We need a car to get there," Hugh said and the three friends looked at Russ.

"I don’t have a car." Russ had gotten his driver’s license this winter.

"But your brother does and we'll leave him a full tank of gas." Topping off the tank cost about $2.

"He'll never let us take his car to Boston." Russ thought that this was starting to sound like a bad idea.

"No, but he will, if we’ll tell him we're going to Sebago." The big lake was less than twenty miles from Portland and there was a popular hamburger stand in the pines off Route 25.

"I don't like the idea of lying." Russ’ older brother was a better friend than Hugh.

"And you like the idea of sitting around here and doing nothing?"

His silence answered that question.

"So are we in?" Hugh was the leader.

"When?” Russ had a date with the doctor's daughter the following Saturday.

Burgers at Pine Grove.

"Next Friday night.”

"Friday's okay with me."

The following Friday night Russ borrowed his brother's Studebaker Champion, telling Doug, "I'll be back by 9."

Russ started the car, picked up his friends, and pointed the car south. The ride to Boston took almost three hours. The teenagers spent the afternoon touring Scollay Square's various attractions. One boy hocked a gold ring at Simpson’s Loan to finance their adventures. They got their hair cut at Tony Ruggiere's Barber Shop, ate lunch at Waldorf's Cafeteria, played pinball at the Amusement Center on Washington Street, refilled on hot dogs at Joe and Nemos, and then they went up to the entrance of the Old Howard. They were sixteen, which was old enough to pay for the tickets. The usher sat them in the darkness of the back row. Only bald men sat in the front row to admire the sights and sounds and smells of the curvy showgirls.

Russ and his friends stayed through two shows of dancing girls in skimpy costumes and they came out of the bawdy theater into the evening's crowded street. Men in uniform were on a weekend pass. Boston was preparing for war. Men had money in their pockets and Scollay Square was the best place to spend it.

"What next?" asked Hugh. He wanted more.

"What time is it?" Russ asked hurrying to the Studebaker.

"6PM."

"Then we have to go."

"But the night is young. Heck, it isn't night for three and half-half more hours."

"My brother said be back at 9." Russ jingled the keys in his hand. "And I plan to keep my word.

"It's three hours home." Randall had a 9 O'Clock curfew.

"If I drive fast."

"Let's go." Speed was always an adventure.

The boys jumped into the car and Russ stomped on the accelerator. The Studebaker passed every car on Route 1 and hit 80 mph along the hilly straight-aways of Topsfield.

He didn’t slow down until the Portsmouth rotary. It was 8PM. Deering was one hour away and the Studebaker picked up speed approaching the steel bridge spanning the Piscataqua River.

"Darn, we have to stop to pay the toll," Russ shouted over the roar of the engine and the whip of the wind. "Give me a dime."

“Here.” Hugh handed him a coin and Russ flung the dime at the toll booth.

The booth collector ducked and the dime plunked into the wood with an audible thock.

Russ swore the sliver of silver was buried in a pine timber. His friends backed him up. It made a better story.

The boys arrived in Deering at 9:30. Russ dropped off everyone before returning home. Reaching home his brother was sitting on the steps. Doug felt the hood and checked the mileage. There was no sense in lying and Russ wasn't allowed drive his brother’s car again until he returned from the War in 1946, but he went out with the doctor’s daughter the next night. Dough drove him everywhere.

Sal became his wife and they live together in Marblehead.

As a young man I loved hearing my uncle’s stories over and over again.

Last year at the Barnacle Clam Shack on Marblehead’s inner harbor I asked Russ, “How fast were you going through the toll booth?”

"I don’t recall." That night had been over sixty years ago.

"80?"

"No."

"60."

"No, more like 90," Russ admitted without guilt. "Studebaker built a good car back then.”

"I know. I drove a Hawk across country in 1996.” Meg Grosswendt had been hot to be with her beau and had driven over a hundred across most of the Midwest. They married and had two kids. I understand that people drive fast for a reason.

"That was their last good car."

"We blew a carburetor in Colorado. Amazingly the mechanic had the part."

"Probably the last one in America." Russ held Sal's hand. She smiled at him and I said, "That was probably the last Studebaker carburetor in America."

"I guess you made them extinct."

"For a good cause."

It had been a good trip.

Five days from coast to coast.

Meg drove the same as Russ from Scollay Square.

Fast with a destination, which was the only way to travel, when you had to be someplace.

Beware of Moose

Several Christmas Eves ago I traveled north from New York to Boston on the Lucky Star bus. My sisters and I attended a party at our old next door neighbors from the South Shore. Everyone was in good spirits. I drank a little more than more but not more than everyone. It was a time of good cheer.

The next morning I woke at my eldest sister's house and we handed out gifts around the Christmas tree. The dinner table was set for eight. My sister, her husband, their two kids, her daughter's boyfriend, and my aunt and uncle. A baked ham was a departure from the traditional turkey, but a welcome change from the Big Bird.

Old stories of Maine dominated the table.

My mother putting my brother and I on a train alone, my uncle throwing a dime at the Portsmouth tollbooth, my watching bears at the dump were only few of the legends reworked by the gathering. My niece's boyfriend was new to our family and the logging trucker didn't say much, although everyone was impressed by his present to my brother-in-law.

A set of gigantic moose antlers.

"Find them all the time on the back roads. They fall off in the fall. Thought you might like them."

"Like them?" David was ecstatic.

"They're great." I was jealous and said, "Back in 1995 I was on a good trip with my old girlfriend."

"Ms. Carolina?" asked my brother-in-law.

"Exactly." I knew he was partial to her cooking. She was a good woman. "We stopped at Govonis Italian Restaurant outside of North Woodstock."

"On Lost River Road." My uncle Russ knew the place. The little restaurant sat on a rocky gorge. It was the only good Italian restaurant between the White Mountains and Quebec.

"We had veal and a couple of bottles of wine. The place was packed, because it was Laconia Biker Weekend. We hadn't been able to find a motel room in Woodstock and I told the waitress that I was driving over to North Conway."

“Be careful about the moose," a biker warned in dead seriousness.

"I'm from Maine. I know moose." They were big.

We paid the bill and walked to the car. Ms. Carolina stopped in the parking lot crowded with Harleys.

“You want me to drive?” My driving scared Mrs. Carolina 1995.

“I've been riding these roads since I was six.” Most of them as a hitchhiker or backseat driver behind my father. "Gimme the keys."

"Only if you drive slow." It was a moonless night.

"I'm in no hurry."

The Kancamagus Highway was under construction and I drove at 30 mph over the mountains. Nearing the pass I spotted movement in the underbrush.

"Yeti?" My brother-in-law joked at the Christmas table.

“Moose?” Mrs. Carolina 1995 eyed the passing herd.

“Moose.” The bull was 10 feet tall with 15-foot broad antlers. An accident with him would have been a fatality and the bikers back at Govonis could say, “He said he knew all about moose.”

I drove away from the pass convinced that moose were the king of the road.

"Lucky you didn't hit one. They come through your windshield and you're dead man," my uncle spoke trucker spoke with authority. The thirty year-old had had several near-accident on the back roads off the West Branch of the Penobscot.

"Yeah, your next-door neighbor on the Lake had a patient who had hit one while driving a motorcycle." I was speaking to my brother-in-law. I needed him as back-up, since my family considered many of my stories to be myths.

"We had been sitting with Carrie at the end of the dock, watching an August meteor shower. He worked at Maine Medical taking care of recovering drunks. A postal worker had been missing in action for several weeks and when he showed up again, Carrie barely recognized him. The man said he struck the rear end of a moose and his face was brushed away by its bristles. Said it cured him of drink for the time being."

"That would do it for me." My niece's guest said succinctly. Someone people might have thought Mike was brusque. They didn't know Maine or its way of speech.

"That can't be true." My aunt doubted the veracity of my tale, but my brother-in-law interjected, "I heard the same story. I don't know it to be 100% true, but Carrie doesn't tell stories like some people we know."

All eyes but my those of my niece's boyfriend gazed at either my uncle or me.

We were guilty as silently accused, however as I always like to say, "All stories are true if interesting."

Moose in Maine are traffic hazards. The big relatives of elk are responsible for hundreds of accidents in the Great State of Maine. The DOT suggest the following measures to avoid collisions with moose.

* Drivers should reduce their speed when it is dark.
* Use your high beams where it is appropriate
* Always have everyone buckle up
* Search the roadway ahead to identify potential problem

If you feel a moose-vehicle collision is inevitable, follow these suggestions from the Maine Warden Service:

* Apply the brakes
* Let off the brakes just before impact
* Aim to hit the tail portion of the moose
* Duck down to minimize injury