CAREFUL...

I was sitting in a popular lunch spot near the train station in downtown Brunswick, having a light-hearted lunch with a couple of longtime friends.

Starkey (his real name is James, but I’ve never heard anybody call him that) and Laurel (her real name is Laurel), are charmers: gregarious, witty, kind, fabulous conversationalists.

They’re also hungry readers – they read everything: fiction, non-fiction, biography, essay...they simply love books, love to read, love to talk about what they’re reading.

When the man at the next table took off his jacket, revealing the print on his T-shirt, we three lapsed into respectful silence.

          “Careful,” it read, “or you’ll end up in my novel.”

“I want one of those,” I said.

We laughed, took a couple of bites, swallowed.

“Is it true?” Starkey asked, suddenly, turning to me. “Do writers put people they know in their books?”

         

It’s a terribly loaded question for a writer, and answering it brings up a veritable minefield of possible responses, most of which are vague, and all of which carry a germ of truth.

          I’ll answer as best I can.

The names of characters are irrelevant – I mean, they’re just names – but what comes after the names? How do I turn those names into recognizable characters; how do I make you care enough about them to become involved in the story I’m telling, in what I have to say?

The answer is fairly obvious:

I borrow bits and pieces of people I know – how they walk, or sit in chairs, how they button their shirts or put on their jackets. I take note of how people twirl lengths of their hair, chew their fingernails, or tip their heads when they’re thinking; how they fold the newspaper and hold glasses of water, how they talk to their children, their spouses, their friends.

I borrow characteristics from people I know who drink too much, eat too much, swear, yell and cheat too much; abusers and enablers, dreamers and high achievers, those who do good works, who volunteer, who do what they can to build community for us all. I adapt attitudes from friends who are doctors and cafeteria workers, farmers and attorneys, grocery store cashiers and retirees, from saints and sinners and fools.

I borrow their use of language, their words, their phrasing, their rhythm and timing; their senses of wit and humor (or their lack of both); I pay attention to their acts of kindness, selflessness, their indifference and, sometimes, downright cruelty...

...I could go on, but I’m sure you get my drift.

So, be careful.

SEPIA SATURDAY: THE ROLLO BOOKS

This little fellow is Rollo Holiday, the principal character of Jacob Abbott’s multi-volume series of books for children, first published in the 1850s and reprinted periodically during the last half of the 19^th century.

Rollo lives with his parents (Mr. and Mrs. Holiday, of course, who don’t seem to have first names) and Jonas and Dorothy (who don't seem to have last names), the household’s outside/inside domestic help; he’s got a cousin James and a friend George, whose father is a local farmer. The stories are selectively sprinkled with other town characters that pop in and out of Rollo’s life; the books are chock-a-block full of morals, ethics and drama.

In his “Notice to Parents,” Abbott explains that although his Rollo Books for children are meant primarily for entertainment, he also intends they will stimulate thinking, expand linguistic skills and, perhaps most importantly, cultivate “the amiable and gentle qualities of the heart...”

I have an odd sense of connection to this Jacob Abbott. He was born in Hallowell, Maine in 1803 (about 30 miles north of me), graduated from Bowdoin College (two blocks from my house). He studied at Andover Theological (where my brother lived for twenty-odd years) and was later pastor of a Congregational Church in Roxbury, MA (where my Howell ancestors lived, although they were staunch Unitarians!). 

 I’ve got ten Rollo books. They were purchased by my great-grandfather Selah Howell (1840-1910), who read them to his children; in 1880, he mentions Rollo in his diary:

Read Rollo to dear Will after supper and before his bed

In his last will and testament, Selah states:

The Rollo Books I give to that one of my children who has the most children. If none of them has children, which God forbid! the Rollo Books are to be divided equally among “the joys of my life,” the said Fred, Fanny and Will.”

(Don’t you just love the “God forbid!” in there? Talk about drama!)

Well, Fanny (see “The Face,” posted May 25) and Will each had two children, and Fred had none. Somehow, my line (Will’s) got the lion’s share of the Rollo Books, and they now live on the top shelf in my living room bookcase.

It’s amazing to me that Rollo, although he’s a child of a lost time and place, still has relevance. He learns life’s lessons as we all learn – by parental guidance (hopefully) and by personal experience (definitely). He does chores, learns his manners, rescues baby birds, carves jack-o’-lanterns, builds bridges and catches squirrels.

And learns the importance of keeping promises.

          “Why, father?”

          “Because I want you, when you grow up to be a man, to be bound by your agreements. Men will hold you to your agreements when you are a man...”

Hmmmm. Really?

Perhaps, one hundred fifty years after publication, the Rollo Series should be required reading for all politicians...

...and they’re just for starters!

NOTE: Be sure to visit other Sepians at http://sepiasaturday.blogspot.com

GRAZIN' IN THE GRASS...

Remember that song from the 60s?

“Grazin’ in the grass, it’s a gas, can you dig it?”

Hugh Masekela, a trumpet player from South Africa, recorded it in 1968; the Friends of Distinction carried the vocal version of it into the Top Ten in 1969. I thought the lyrics were silly then (still do), but the instrumental is great.

 Well, here’s another slant on Grazin’ in the Grass, this one from an article in the 1884 Annual Report of the Maine Board of Agriculture – an extensive inventory (with detailed accompanying plates, two of which I’ve included here) of The Grasses of Maine.

         

It is astounding...

“The grass family is, without doubt, of far greater importance to mankind than all the other families of plants combined,” wrote Professor C.H. Fernald, Maine State College, Orono.

According to the (Agricultural) Census report for 1880, there were 1,107,788 tons of hay cut in the State of Maine in 1879; there were ninety identified species of grasses in Maine at the time.

Their common names read like song lyrics:

          White grass, prickle grass; meadow, common and floating foxtail; timothy, herdgrass, thin-grass, fly-away grass, tickle grass, mountain red top, wood reed, Canadian small-reed, Richardson’s feather grass.

          There’s salt grass, marsh grass, fresh-water cordgrass; Bermuda grass, scutch grass, orchard, meadow, quaking grasses.

Each is described thoroughly: There are details of stems, leaves, panicles, spikelets; descriptions of habitats (“grows in wet meadows, bogs near the coast, wet woods and the margins of ponds”); month of seeding, stock preference (“floating manna grass is relished by cattle...”).

The Hon. J. S. Gould (I have absolutely no idea who he was, but with that surname, I’ll run with him) recommends flat-stalked grass; he says that “cows fed upon it, both in pasture and in hay, give more milk and keep in better condition that when fed on any other grass...”

There’s one grass with a series of common names that leaves me as tongue-tied as its Latin Agropyrum repens – remember, these are 1880s common names for one particular grass in Maine.

Ready?

Here goes... witch, twitch, and quitch grass, quick, and quack grass, quake grass and squitch grass.

Say those ten times fast, then fire up the John Deere and get mowing!



ETHER ON SATURDAY...

Doctors? Monuments?

I have a couple of those....

This, known affectionately as the “Ether Monument,” consists of a statue and a fountain; it’s planted in the Public Garden near the corner of Arlington and Beacon streets in Boston, Massachusetts.

It commemorates the first successful public demonstration of the use of ether as an anesthetic on October 16, 1846 at Massachusetts General Hospital.

It was exactly one hundred years before I was born.

I remember going to see this monument when I was about six or seven and still lived in the Boston area. My grandfather – William W. Howell, a pediatrician and Harvard Medical School graduate (Class of 1900) – thought that, since I was (firstly) a doctor’s grandchild and (secondly) born on the 100^th anniversary of this event, it was only proper that I be familiar with the monument.

          He told me that, before ether, many people actually died during surgery – not from the surgery itself, but from the pain of surgery! Ether changed the course of modern medicine, he told me; it saved lives, it allowed for new medical procedures.

I really didn’t care about the ether business; I was mostly fascinated by the beasts carved on the lower panels of the monument!

William Thomas Morton (1819-1868), an American dentist, first learned of the effectiveness of ether in 1844 from his Harvard Medical School chemistry lecturer; he dabbled in experiments (probably using his dental patients and/or himself as guinea pigs), but it wasn’t until 1846 that a truly public demonstration occurred at Massachusetts General Hospital – Dr. John C. Warren painlessly removed a tumor from the neck of a patient who had been anesthetized by the administration of inhaled ether.

Later, William Morton joined the Union Army during the Civil War; he used ether to help more than two thousand wounded soldiers in several battles, including the dreadful Wilderness Campaign.

Interestingly, one of the other soldiers who served in the Wilderness was William W. Howell’s father – my great-grandfather, Selah Howell – who drove an ambulance for the Sanitation Commission.

I wonder if they ever met.

The monument was designed by William Robert Ware, a Boston architect. The sculptor was John Quincy Adams Ward (now there’s a solid Boston name!). It’s about forty feet tall.

"To commemorate that the inhaling of ether causes insensibility to pain," it reads. "First proved to the world at the Mass. General Hospital in Boston, October A.D. MDCCCXLVI."

Just think: A monument dedicated to a medical breakthrough that occurred exactly one hundred years before I was born.

I’m honored to share the date.

(Be sure to visit other Sepians: http://www.sepiasaturday.blogspot.com)

GOOD HELP IS HARD TO FIND...

I’ve always wanted a housekeeper.

For years, a group of us shared a fictitious cleaning lady named Juanita. We regaled each other with tales of Juanita’s irresponsible behaviors –cavorting with a bearded lover (in black turtleneck and beret) at a coffee cafe in town, being arrested for solicitation, taking off to Vegas where she spent days in an alcoholic stupor and gambled away all the money we had paid her for services she never rendered.

We blamed Unreliable Juanita for our messy houses, our wrinkled shirts, our unmowed lawns and untended gardens.

And then, at my 60^th birthday party, my friends gave me the ultimate gift.

This is Marie.

          When she arrived, she had on a floor-length black skirt and a white blouse with ruffles. She also sported a little white apron tied about her waist and an honest-to-goodness maid’s cap on her neck, secured with a murderous-looking hatpin.

          The first week we had her, I scared myself to death when I walked into the kitchen at night for a glass of water; there was just enough light from the streetlight to shadow her form by the kitchen door, and I nearly launched myself through the ceiling!

          But we became used to her, and started moving her about the house. People who came over for a quick cup of coffee actually began looking for her; occasionally we’d hear a quiet, “Hi, Marie!”

Then somebody offered Marie a new dress. It was a sporty, Johnny Appleseed number, white with horizontal blue stripes; we dressed her in it, added a bit of bling for good measure.

          The first person through the door took one look at Marie in her classy finery and said, “Geez, Marie – nice outfit!”

It didn’t take long.

People started sending Marie clothes: long cotton skirts with peasant blouses; a poodle skirt (where on earth do you get a poodle skirt these days?) with a big, wide plastic black belt (remember those?); a cowgirl outfit, complete with fringe and a six-shooter in a holster.

She’s received jewelry and other items in the mail, including a few winter hats (useless), a pair of mittens (equally useless), a pair of duck magnets that actually stick to her lower body (which is a metal cage).

She likes to accessorize – necklaces, bad costume brooches and the like – and she’s working on a collection of campaign buttons. My favorite is a “Biker Chick” button that has a picture of a yellow chicken with black leather vest and headband!

She gets mail, too (the mail carrier just shakes his head and giggles), including postcards from friends. She even got a Christmas card last year!

She’s more reliable than Juanita; she never misses a day. She’s not good at much, however; certainly not cleaning, washing dishes or dusting, and she definitely doesn’t answer the phone.

But, boyoboy, she sure knows how to dress for work!

FARMS FOR SATURDAY...

And here's my favorite post...

We’ve got our share of old farms in Maine: they’re spread throughout the width and breadth of the state. Follow any old road in the area and you’ll eventually find one – or what’s left of one. They’re a slowly vanishing species around here – tumbledown barns, shells of old houses, sometimes nothing more than an old foundation and cellar hole, thick with sumac, saplings and memories of a lifestyle gone by.

 

This old beauty, spreading here from one end of the photograph to the other, is (or was) Ratherwyck Jersey farm. I lived and worked on this farm in the late 1960s and early 1970s (back in my hippie days), and took this photograph one fine summer morning while standing near the fenceline of what we called Maum’s Field – I was heading out to get the cows for morning milking.

         

The house was built in the early 1800s (the main house is the smallest piece on the far right) by the Lunt family, part of a Quaker community of farmers that settled in a corner of Freeport and Durham. As the farm expanded, more buildings were tacked onto the main house – this is a perfect example of New England connecting architecture: Big house, little house, backhouse, barn.

          Big house? The main part of the house, with dining room, living room, bath; bedrooms upstairs. The front door opened onto the road.

          The little house, perpendicular to the main house, was the kitchen and outkitchen – the outkitchen contained the laundry room (do you have any idea of how much laundry a working dairy farm generates daily?) and two enormous chest freezers in which I stored 30 cubic feet of vegetables for winter consumption.

          The backhouse was a jangle of purpose: in the 1800s, it housed the Lunts’ sleighs and carriages, had a workshop and a passageway to the outhouse (you can see the outhouse jutting out from the middle of the backhouse wall). We, too, had a workshop there and also stored machinery: the tractor (an Allis-Chalmers that was as old as I was), mower, bailer, and tools.

          And the barn – oh, that barn! Big, sweeping bays, grain bins, hay elevators straddling the uppermost rafters to help us load the tons of hay we needed to feed our forty Jersey milkers over the winters.

         

We milked twice a day, starting at 5:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. That early morning start meant, of course, that we had to wake up at 4:15 or so – and in order to make that wretchedly early start a bit sweeter, resorted to living our lives on Farm Time: we set all the clocks forty-five minutes ahead – so on Farm Time, we were up at 5:00 every morning.

          Much easier to bear!

         

I left the farm in 1975, went on to other things.

I still drive by occasionally; it is no longer a working farm. That great huge barn is gone – nothing there but smooth lawn – and the backhouse has been converted to a garage with upstairs storage. The meadows and fields have disappeared; some of the land has gone back to secondary growth forest, some to real estate development – there are houses and driveways where our cows used to graze.

         

It’s a bittersweet thing, this remembering.

But I know that somewhere, there will always be Farm Time.

Deb Gould is a retired ASL interpreter (educational specialist) and author; she lives, quite happily, in Maine, USA.

TURN THE KEY DEFTLY...John Keats

You can find old keys in nearly every flea market or shop – sometimes they’re stored in Mason jars, old coffee tins, or even just strung along a length of wire – and for years I simply passed them by, paid no attention.

But once, when I was idling away some time in a little shop in Topsham, Maine, I found an old cookie tin full of them, reached in for a few – just a few, mind you – to take a look.

And look I did, for a good half-hour: Car keys, door keys, cupboard and file cabinet keys; keys for padlocks and post office boxes; keys for rolltop desks, steamer trunks, library card files...keys, keys, keys.

I was surprised by the craftsmanship, by how beautiful they were!

Made of brass, mostly, they had company names and logos and designs tooled into their faces; they were wonderfully heavy, had heft and substance to them; they felt good in my palm.

I bought a few – six or seven, maybe – and brought them home, cleaned them up a little bit, then placed them in a small bowl on a end table in my living room.

When people come to visit, they can’t keep their hands off them: guests poke and push at them with index fingers, swirl them around in the bowl and, eventually, everybody lifts at least one out of the bowl for a closer look.

And everybody’s surprised by how lovely they are!

I’ve given a few away, sometimes people ask if they can have one (I always say yes), and I have a suspicion that a few have been pocketed – I prefer to think inadvertently – so every now and then I have to replenish my supply.

Take a look at these:

 Eagle Lock Company (Terryville, CT, 1833) – was once the largest maker of locks for cabinets and trunks in the world! There were two factories: the one in CT and the other in Ohio; the company made more than 2000 different locks! The Terryville factory was enormous – had several buildings and even boarding houses that lined the streets near the factory to house male employees.

The company went out of business in 1975.

P & F Corbin (New Britain, CT, 1848) – founded by brothers Philip and Frank Corbin, the first products of the company were ox balls, which were used by farmers and drovers to cap the tips of their animals’ horns (you can see these balls in old photographs). They later produced all manner and kind of hardware: locks and keys, coat hooks, doorknobs and doorplates, even coffin “trimmings.” Philip Corbin died in 1910.

The company, after several mergers, is now part of Stanley Black & Decker.

Francis Kiel & Son (New York, 1876) – had a huge factory on 163^rd Street in New York City. The company manufactured “miscellaneous hardware and electrical specialties,” which included keys and blanks and locks and electrical things I do not understand, such as an ampro electric bell and an Anti Screw Midget push button (now just think what you could do with that!).

At any rate, Kiel hardware can be found today in renovator’s catalogues.

            This key is my absolute favorite!

Independent Lock Co. (Fitchburg, MA, 1926).  Morris Falk invented a machine to tool hairpins; when hairstyles changed and the hairpin market ran dry, he switched over to making keys, and in 1926 moved the business from Leominster to Fitchburg. He bought up other smaller companies, and by the end of WWII, had a multi-million dollar business! He patented rekeyable locks for cabinets and drawers; in 1942 he applied for a patent for a process for making key blanks.