Tennessee Tales and Travails

11/13/12:  We've been in the tiny town of Harriman, Tennessee for three weeks since our engine blew on nearby Interstate 40.  Our replacement engine for the Tracker finally arrived on Friday, and is being installed.  We hope to be home on Monday, November 19  - YAY!!!

As for Harriman, the surrounding countryside is stunning - rolling hills covered in forests of hardwoods and other deciduous trees dressed in every autumnal shade from dusty green through fiery red; rivers, streams, and creeks wander everywhere; the huge Watts Bar Lake is a few miles away and the Great Smoky Mountains are nearby.

But all in all there isn't much happening around here unless you are a hunter, fisherman or spend your life hiking the hills, and fall is definitely not this area's main season for outdoor tourism.

There are other disadvantages to life in Harriman, "The Town that Temperance Built": you can't buy a bottle of booze on Sundays, the closest movie theater is 28 miles away, no bowling alley, no local political organizations, no active college scene -the only students I saw at the attractive local junior college were a handful practicing basketball in the gym, no wine at the local Italian restaurant, which has wine glasses but serves only beer.  A four-lane highway runs through the center of town and there are a bunch of other highways and a freeway intersecting close by, but time has pretty much left Harriman in the dust.  The historic downtown is two-thirds boarded-up storefronts; the largest local industry seems to be the dozen fast food places; the main businesses are related to automobiles or their repair, and to second-hand stores or pawn shops.  There appear to be more churches than there are people.  Things are not exactly hopping around here.  Maybe in the summer, but not now.



Coal is still used to fire this cement factory outside of Kingston, TN

We've been entertaining ourselves by exploring local history and any local attraction. The hills, here at the edge of the Cumberland Plateau (the largest remaining forested plateau in the continental U.S.) were mined for their iron, coal, and limestone in the 1890's and into the twentieth century.  There is still a nearby cement factory and trainloads of coal roll through here day and night, so they're mining limestone and coal somewhere.  We are in the Appalachians after all.

Harriman was founded in 1891 as a town of temperance and industry where "no manufacture, storage or sales of intoxicating liquor or beverages" would take place.  Not quite the place any of you would visualize for Conrad and me!

The old residential district was planned and developed by one company, the East Tennessee Land Company.  Called Cornstalk Heights because of the many cornfields originally in view from this residential ridge above the Little Emory River, its streets were planted with the red and yellow maple trees that still sporadically shade them.  Over 100 buildings in town are on the National Register of Historic Places, which sounds more promising than it actually is.  Although the Cornstalk Heights homes, when they were built, were allegedly characterized by "unusual comfort, good taste and evident fixity of home life," from the outside many are rundown, and most are decidedly understated and bereft of the gingerbread and decorative facades that I think of as Victorian architecture. Harriman's staid guardians of temperance undoubtedly didn't place much value on fussy Victoriana.  The interiors sound intriguing: panelled with native oak and walnut, and floored with pine planks, all milled by the old local Emory Street Mills.  Hardware, nails and tacks were purchased from neighborhood factories and many of the homes were furnished with oak furniture built in the Harriman Furniture Factory.  Unfortunately I haven't been in any of the homes, and fortunately we will be gone by the time of the annual Christmas Home Tours.

In the 1890's, the town included several blocks of a planned red brick downtown constructed from locally manufactured brick, and also an industrial section of 29 manufacturing companies on Emory Street.  Sadly, the brick business district is largely empty and the Emory Street manufacturing companies have disappeared.  It doesn't look like anyone is making much money in town these days.


Temperance Building in Harriman

Carnegie Library in Harriman

The impressive old Temperance Building, with its brick Norman turrets, limestone trim, and slate roof, still stands on the main street.  When it was built it was touted as "the finest private office building in the state," and once housed the short-lived American Temperance University.  Now it is a local museum that is seldom open, and the most exciting news is that a team of ghost hunters found evidence of spirit life there. 




Around the corner from the Temperance Building is a true local jewel: the public library, a Carnegie building constructed in the Greek Revival style over 100 years ago from a grant by the Andrew Carnegie Foundation.  It is pretty cool inside with its original oak bookcases, light fixtures, arched interior doorways flanked by Corinthian oak columns topped with gilt capitals, and a fireplace with a painting of Andrew Carnegie hanging above its mantel.  Barbara, the librarian, has become a pal.


Oak columns and portrait of Andrew Carnegie above fireplace

I've also been to the Rocky Top General Store, described as bringing new meaning to the term "unusual," but it doesn't (although the cricket dip mix on sale is quite unusual).  Some of the problem is that everything in the area is over-hyped in the local tourist brochures, and then a disappointment when you get there.

We've driven often to the next town of Kingston, which sits beside Watts Bar Lake with its 700 miles of shoreline.  We took a long drive around parts of the lake and it is truly beautiful country, but the marina businesses are mostly closed for the season along with any lakeside restaurants.  Kingston has more retail businesses then Harriman, and is better-heeled, but still nothing to write home about.  When we seek out a business mentioned in the local tourist PR, we frequently find it no longer exists, and when it does, there may be more employees than patrons.  In Kingston, we have eaten at Redbones on the River with its view of the lake and okay food; at Copeland's "60's inspired diner," which didn't serve milkshakes; and at Gibson Girls Southern Goodies, which boasts of family recipes, but Conrad's soup was unseasoned canned tomatoes with rice and hamburger meat added, while my attempt at a high tea was underwhelming.

In the other direction from Harriman, the town of Rockwood has a two-block old brick downtown with Junior's, a decent down-home cooking spot that says it takes credit cards but their machine wasn't working either time I was there; the Live and Let Live drugstore with its small, unimpressive  soda fountain complete with its original 1880's green marble counter serving only ice cream items; and a pathetic "antique mall."  Rockwood has its own list of historic homes that we drove by yesterday, some quite lovely.

One day we drove 46 miles to the much publicized "historic Rugby village."  Deeming it a "fraud," Conrad didn't even get out of the car to see the four "historic" buildings (they claim to have ten buildings; we didn't find them).  But I visited the small museum and watched the video about this Utopian village founded to entice the second sons of British gentry, most of whom didn't really want to pursue any form of backbreaking farm life and instead spent more time building lawn tennis courts and digging out swimming holes in the river and then enjoying them, rather than farming.  I admit to being blown away by the Thomas Hughes Library, a small 1882 building housing its original 7,000 volume library in floor to ceiling book cases.  And, it was a nice drive.

Steam engine on our Chattanooga choo-choo ride

Our most successful ventures have been trips to Chattanooga and Nashville.  We drove two-and-a-half hours to Chattanooga to ride a steam train "Autumn Leaf Special" round trip to Sommerville, Georgia.  The 1950's passenger cars were pulled by an authentic steam engine with lots of whistle blowing and billowing steam.  A husband and wife team runs the steam engine - she shovels the coal, he drives the engine,   En route, we passed through one of the oldest railroad tunnels in Tennessee hollowed out of the rock of Missionary Ridge, by Civil War battlefields, and through farmland and towns full of fall foliage.

Practice before crew regatta on Tennessee River in Chattanooga

A day earlier, looking for a place to eat lunch in Chattanooga, we stumbled upon a regatta scene on the banks of the Tennessee River.  Over a hundred high school and college rowing teams from as far away as Texas and Florida were setting up and practicing for the weekend races.  The sun was shining on teenagers in their school colors and regatta gear carrying racing shells and sculls to the water or setting them up on racks .  The couple next to us on the outdoor patio of the restaurant had flown in from Austin, Texas; their son, a high school senior, had arrived with his teammates after an 18-hour bus trip -                                                                                                       ah, youth!


Incline Railway from the bottom of Lookout Mountain

In Chattanooga, we also rode up and down Lookout Mountain, a famed Civil War spot, on the mile-long Incline Railway, billed as "the world's steepest passenger railway."  Constructed in 1895 as a way for residents atop Lookout Mountain conveniently to get from their homes to Chattanooga and back, the trolley-style cars are on a single track, except where they pass each other in the middle, and powered by a counter-weight cable system where the bottom car starts up as the top car starts down.  At the top, the incline is 72.7%, and the view is all the way to the Great Smoky Mountains, a hundred miles away.

Last Friday we drove two-and-a-half hours from Harriman in another direction to Nashville to see a performance of the Grand Ole Opry.  That afternoon we visited the Lane Motor Museum, an eclectic collection of European cars (primarily Eastern European), and micro-cars.  All those tiny cars were a kick!

We aren't country music fans, but the performance that evening was tons of fun.  The show was in the old Ryman Theater where the Grand Ole Opry debuted in 1925.  The balcony is emblazoned with "1889" in gold, so we assume that's when the theater was built.  Unbeknowst to us, Friday night performances are still aired on the radio the way the originals were, so we were treated to an old-fashioned radio show along with the performing artists.  There were outstanding bluegrass groups with amazing fiddle, Dobro, mandolin and guitar playing, along with country singers like Vince Gill and Kathy Mattea, and the singing/comedy act of the legendary 89-year old, 4'8" tall "Little Jimmy" Dickens decked out in a glitzy cowboy outfit and giant cowboy hat.  But now it is all about getting home, and we can hardly wait!











Stuck In Harriman, Tennessee

10/26/12:  We started home a week ago.  The boat is wrapped for the winter, it was getting cold in mid-coast Maine, and a local bank was advertising, "Loans for winter heating oil."  We drive over some of our favorite Maine country roads through low rolling hills covered in trees clothed in gold and orange leaves, and through the quaint old river towns of Wiscasset and Bath, dotted with New England church steeples.

At Brunswick we get onto the interstate and then onto toll roads, crossing the bridge with Kittery, Maine at one end and Portsmouth, New Hmapshire at the other.  It is windy and raining, but we are heading for California sunshine!  We pass Lawrence, Massachusttes, an old mill town where my daughter Katherine's Harvard roommate and friend, Nicole, grew up and is now a teacher.  The smoke stacks and red brick mill buildings still stand, largely deserted now.  We bypass Boston.  As dusk descends we are on the Massachusetts Turnpike and the fall folige is brilliant in the waning light of the day - full of the reds we did not see in Maine, along with oranges and golds.

The next morning when we get on the road, the sky is clear and the ground hugs pockets of evaporating fog in its hollows.  Along both sides of the highway trees crowd together, garbed in fiery fall foliage.  We are in Connecticut, passing red brick towns: Waterbury, Middlebury, Southbury.  Soon we are in New York State, paralleling the Hudson River.  There is a big barge being towed by a tug boat on the river - right where we will be sailing next spring.

The New York roads are as poorly maintained as the ones in California - we feel at home, dodging the potholes!  Our route edges us by New York City with signs: "Welcome to the Bronx," "Henry Hudson Parkway," "Welcome to Manhattan," and we are happy that it is not a work day when the roads would be jammed.  We drive on an ancient highway under the George Washington Bridge, and around and around, until we are up on the old suspension bridge, across the Hudson River and into New Jersey.  We pass through some of the more unattractive parts of New Jersey, highlighted by belching smoke, and a dreary wasteland of the detritus of industry before we move into the beautiful forested hills of rural New Jersey - the land where Washington crossed the Delaware.

Into Pennsylvania and across the Delaware River, through long, low hills covered in golden and green-leaved forests and valleys of farmland with domed grain silos.  We are in Pennsylvania Dutch country with pristine farms but also many fields of drought-stunted corn.  Now it is across the   Mason-Dixon Line and into Maryland where we spend the night in Hagerstown.

Searching for my caffeine fix the next morning, we see a bit of Hagerstown, which seems to be an old coal town, a classic northeastern industrial town.  There are so many different churches all over Hagerstown, one after the other.  It is hard to believe they were once filled with different ethnic religious sects of worshippers who came from all over Europe to seek their fortunes in America.  Brick is everywhere and in all architectural styles.  We pass many brick rowhouses: some are Victorian with decorative bay windows and plaster gingerbread, some are severe brick facades but with welcoming wooden front porches to soften them, some are more modern townhouses.
Back on the freeway, we pass a turnoff to the Civil War battle site of Antietam, and another to the "C&O Canal" (the Chesapeake and Ohio).  On through West Virginia and into Virginia.  There are signs to the "Shenandoah Battlefields," to "Stonewall Jackson's Office," to "George Washington's Office."  We drive through the wide Shenandoah Valley on our way to the Blue Ridge Mountains.  The valley has huge systems of underground caverns, and giant holes in the ground that people base jump into; the hills are covered with millions of trees. 


Hills covered in fall foliage

We enter the 450-mile Blue Ridge Parkway through Shenandoah National Park.  It is a sunny day with puffs of white clouds.  We open the roof of the Tracker and cruise along the two-lane road: through fall-leaved forests, and by low stone walls built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930's, with stops at scenic overlooks of the Shenandoah Valley and of endless hills covered by millions and millions of trees in all shades of the fall colors. 



An overlook along the Blue Ridge Parkway

We exit the national park, and the next day continue on the Blue Ridge Parkway through autumn-hued hardwood forests and views across the valleys of millions upon millions of deciduous trees of many shades marching over hills that stretch to the horizon. 



Lower tier of Crabtree Falls

We detour on a windy mountain road for a short walk to the five-tiers of Crabtree Falls.  Back again on the parkway, we start to see some evergreens, and move into lower altitudes with open farmland and homes amid the forestland.


That night we decide it is time to leave the parkway and head west for home.  We will pick up the Blue Ridge Parkway from the other end when we return next spring.  OMG, we are 123 miles from Nashville on an upgrade on Interstate 40 when the Tracker's engine blows.  This is serious engine failure; the new water pump has disintegrated, the radiator is melted, and the engine is toast.  We are stuck in Harriman, Tennessee for at least a week while we wait for the arrival of a low-mileage, used Tracker engine that Conrad orders, and it's installation.  Fortunately we are both OK and the garage that will fix the Tracker appears to have excellent mechanics.  Harriman is small but it is in pretty country.

Harriman, Tennessee

Our laptop crashed before we left Maine, so I can't download photographs to the blog; the car is out of commission, so we can't go home.  Yikes!  At least the people here at the Days Inn are giving us a deal on the room and letting me use the computer in the lobby, although the ability to send emails does not appear to be with in its capacity....



Back in the Land of the Living

10/12/12: At last we have some answers about Conrad's health.  After a summer of feeling punk, he was finally feeling so awful that he contacted his doctor in Stockton who sent him off to the local Emergency Room.  With the small population here and the nearby upscale communities of Camden and Rockport, the local hospital is quite small, but excellent.  Conrad only waited for a matter of minutes before he saw a doctor and was put through a battery of tests that ruled out leukemia, an undetected heart attack, or any damage to his kidneys, liver, heart and lungs.  After dodging all of that, almost anything sounds like good news!

But no wonder he has been feeling lousy - he's extremely anemic.  His red blood cells were way low and very small.  He stayed in the hospital overnight, and had a transfusion of three units of blood.  The doctor suspected internal bleeding in his stomach; put him out and ran a camera down his throat and into his stomach.  No bleeding in his stomach so they let him out of the hospital, and told him to have a colonoscopy when he is back in California.  His red blood cell count is still below normal, and he is now on high dosages of iron and vitamin C to take care of that.  Finally we know why he has been so tired, frequently dizzy, out of breath after the slightest exertion, and generally feeling like crap for many months.  Since the transfusions, Conrad is full of energy, and is hard at work trying to make up lost time on the boat.  He is focused on completing the AC wiring and finishing new compartments for the boat batteries in the lazerette (the space beneath the cockpit floor) before we call an end to work for this year.  Our rent at 7 Mountains Motel is paid through October18th, and then we'll head for home.

A house in historic Rockport

With fall here, it is raining frequently, day and night, and we are having the first nighttime temperatures below freezing.  Sadly, the rain knocked most of the leaves off of the trees before the cold snap set them afire.  No spectacular fall colors in Maine for us, alas.  Still, it is gorgeous, and on the days it is clear, I walk miles through the quiet streets and low hills of this historic town of Rockport, established in 1769.  My walks take me by lovely old homes (like the one above), many dating from the mid-1800's.  I especially like all of the dry rock walls everywhere (like the one below).

Dry rock wall in a Rockport garden

There are only about 3,000 residents in Rockport, and what a pretty place to live.  Much less touristy than its next-door-neighbor, Camden, the "village"of Rockport has only a few retail establishments, including an occasionally open gift shop "Uncommon Luxuries" (the items are limited and pricey), a photograph gallery, a wine shop, a coffee bar located in someone's home, a seafood store, an excellent restaurant, plus the post office, the library, and the old Rockport Opera House.

Rockport Harbor

Andree, the seal

Rockport Harbor lies below the town, and is filled with moored, as well as moving, sailboats, lobster boats and two, many-masted schooners that take passengers out for long weekends.  There is a stone statute of Andree, the seal, who became a local fisherman's pet; returning to Rockport Harbor every spring where he was doted upon by locals and tourists alike, until he died of old age.

Old lime kilns at Rockport Harbor

Old kilns at the harbor are preserved to show the history of the limestone transported by train from local quarries and dumped into the top of kilns where coal fires below super-heated the stone.  After the lime was leached out, it was put into barrels, loaded on ships in the harbor, and sent to Boston and New York to be used in plaster and mortar.  This continued into the early 1900's.

Rockport Opera House stage and decorative screen

A hike up the hillside from the harbor takes me past the old Rockport Opera House where in early October the free Bay Chamber Music Fall Foliage Concert gave me a chance to see the handsome, historic interior of the opera house with its elaborately painted, period screen on the stage, and the curved second-floor balcony.

Balcony of the Rockport Opera House.

Just up the street from the opera house I discover the Rockport Public Library with free WiFi, free computer use, a paperback book lending library, and the usual hardbacks, and DVD's, along with comfy wing chairs to curl up in while reading.  Of course, now that we've been here since August 23rd, it takes me until October to find that a Mah Jongg group meets at the library Wednesday nights and Saturday mornings.  I have the opportunity to play with them four times before heading back to my much missed Stockton Mah Jongg group.



My newest discovery is Three Dogs Cafe, a great place to hang out that is only blocks away from our motel..  I still cannot get used to how things are done here in terms of locations for public and private enterprises.  The local DMV is out in the country where you'd least expect it, so is the large local furniture store, and Three Dogs Cafe is along a busy two-lane highway with no other retail places near it.

Matthew shows off a few of the pastries at Three Dogs Cafe

Fireplace at Three Dogs Cafe

 The Three Dogs Cafe parking lot is hidden behind the building where the parked cars aren't visible from the street.  Only from curiosity and boredom was I drawn, after many weeks at the motel, to walk up the driveway.  What a surprise - inside is a large, airy, high-beamed room with a double-sided stone fireplace that heats the entire place in winter; tables and chairs for dining on one side of the fireplace, and sofas and armchairs on the other.  There are three life-sized, stuffed animals - "three dogs" - inside the cafe, and in the yard next door are the real ones: a black labrador, a chocolate lab, and a golden.  The pastry counter that is at least twenty feet long is filled with cakes, pies, cookies - a dangerous place to visit!  They offer free WiFi and wonderful salads, sandwiches, and soups like lobster and crab chowder, and coffee drinks to satisfy my caffeine soul.  The wing chairs covered with fabric picturing labradors are a perfect place to spend a few hours with a book, computer or postcards to write, and a cup of coffee.

Mary Forristall making OFA calls from her Camden home

I also have a new circle of women pals who meet three nights a week at a local home to make calls for OFA, President Obama's re-election campaign.  Maine has four electoral votes that are handled entirely differently from California's - two of the votes here go to the candidate who wins the most votes in the state; each of the others is allotted to the two Congressional districts.  Whichever Presidential candidate wins the most votes in a district gets the electoral vote of that district.  Although Maine generally is blue in Presidential elections, there are Republican vote-getters on the ground this time in rural Maine's Second Congressional District.  Usually we would be making calls into New Hampshire, but this year we are making calls into Maine's Second District.  Thursday night Mary and the gang are throwing a potluck good-by party for me, and it will be my last night of making calls until I'm back in Stockton   See everyone at home soon!

Dumb Luck

9/10/12: Here we are back in Maine.  And, right away we have one of our run-ins with dumb luck.  Our first night back we need a motel while we are having one of the trailer legs straightened (it is not wise to drive

7 Mountains Motel, Rockport, Maine - our room at far left

away pulling the tiny tent trailer without the legs retracted).  Always looking for a bargain, we try a motel in Rockport that we had noticed was closed earlier in the summer, until we saw it being shown by a realtor one day and open for business the next.

Rockport Harbor

After a night there, we are offered a deal we can't refuse - a month's stay at $200 less than it costs us at our old camp spot on the cove in Lobster Buoy Campsites.  Not only that, but there is an indoor bathroom for mid-night needs, not a portable outhouse to trek to in the dark, AND a refrigerator, microwave, TV, air conditioning, and heat.  Did I mention that Rockport is home to a stunning small harbor, beautiful old homes, great places to walk, and is right next to Rockland, where the boat is?

Conrad seems to be feeling better and is back at work on the boat.  He is focusing on the electrical system right now, and our new goal is to get the boat ready this year, keep having fun in Maine, and launch the boat next spring.  And, while we were in California for Katherine's wedding, the Rockland Democratic Headquarters moved to within a few blocks of the boatyard, giving me lots of nearby volunteer work to pursue while Conrad works.

For fun, on my birthday we drive on back country roads through rolling hills smothered in trees, by little lakes, cat tail-edged ponds, and villages with quaint old white wooden, steepled churches.

At Sheepscot (love these Maine names), we arrive at the Wiscasset, Waterville and Farmington Railway to ride a narrow-gauge train pulled by an original small steam engine dating from 1904.

The WW&F was the last of five narrow-gauge rail systems built in Maine, hauling freight and passengers from 1895 until closing down in 1933. 

66th birthday - OMG!

In 1985, a local man began fulfilling his childhood dream to rebuild the WW&F.  First purchasing what remained of the railroad's right of way and building an engine house, Harry Percival called on a growing group of volunteers who learned how to lay track and rebuilt five miles of rail line.  Now they're working on another mile of the old 58-mile run from the deep-water river port of Wiscasset, and have replicated the original station house, freight house, and water tank, with a car shed, turntable and other projects still in the works.

The ride is full of billowing clouds of steam and smoke, the smell of burning coal, and the blowing engine whistle.  The little steam engine chugs up steep grades through forest land and by a stream, complete with a beaver dam and the sighting of the beaver himself.  Great birthday fun!

President Obama speaks in Portsmouth, N.H.

Meanwhile, no doubt like most of you, we have been following the Republican and Democratic conventions with interest.  My daughter, Liz, is behind the scenes at the Democrats' convention in Charlotte, fact checking the 130 speeches with some of her research team from the Obama Re-election Campaign, and we are hoping to catch a glimpse of her on TV.  We don't.  But, on Maine TV we learn that the President will be coming to Portsmouth, New Hampshire for an outdoor event the day after the convention.

We manage to get tickets and join thousands waiting  for the Obamas and Bidens to arrive on September 7th..  Even Conrad is excited!  The

Me with POTUS in background

sun is out and after standing in it for over four hours, I am very happy that I am in Portsmouth, New Hampshire's 70-degree weather and not in California's Central Valley heat.

I end up standing right in front of the stage and podium where I hear both Joe Biden and Barack Obama speak.  It is simply amazing to be so close to the President and Vice-President of the United States!  Michelle Obama and Jill Biden are there.  I just can't believe that I am too!!! 

The over-the-top moment for me is when all of them leave the platform after the speeches and start walking along the line of people close to the stage to speak to and shake hands with us.  I actually touch and talk to the President of the United States!  And then Michele, Vice President Biden and Jill Biden.  I am beyond excited.

I was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire when my father was stationed at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard after World War II ended.  Now this location will have even more meaning for me.  How I wish my mother and father were still alive and here to experience this day.

True Love Trumps the Camden Opera House

7/29/12: I had hoped to add a new posting about the Camden Opera House before we returned to California at the end of July for the joyous wedding of my daughter, Katherine, and her fiancee, Kemble Pope.  But you know what happens to the best laid plans.... 

Katherine and Kemble wed in the Woods' walnut grove in the Capay Valley, outside of Davis, California.

 Now we are back in Maine, so here goes with the delayed posting.  In June, I was lucky enough to have a private tour of the Camden Opera House while we were staying in Camden.  In July, Conrad and I went to a showing at the opera house of Forrest Gump because it featured some nearby sights, like the Marshall Point Lighthouse, and a number of locals as film extras.  Since then I've meant to write about the opera house.

Grand staircase to the Camden Opera House

The opera house is a charming Victorian-era theater, still much used by the Camden community.  When it  was built in 1894, it was the tallest building in the county with its three brick stories.  The opera building's auditorium is on the second and third floors, with various municipal offices on the first floor.

For the Forrest Gump performance, we climbed the grand staircase from the street up to the halls of the opera house.  The auditorium and entry are hung with grand chandeliers, and the opera hall boasts a horseshoe balcony, antique moldings, detailed restorations of Victorian friezes, and beautifully replicated gilt stenciling.

 

The Camden Opera House stage

The interior was originally decorated by Willis Carleton, a lifelong resident of nearby Rockport who painted stage scenery in New York as a career.  In 1993, a hundred-year renovation of the opera house replicated Carleton's stereo relief decoration in gold and white on the stage's arch, balcony front, and loge boxes.  The auditorium itself is 36 feet by 33 feet and was originally constructed complete with a set of scenery and opera chairs.  There was a kitchen, ticket office and checkroom to the left of the main landing; and on the right were individual rooms.  Today, the layout is almost the same.

View of opera house balcony and orchestra seating

 

Opening night, June 6, 1894, featured the Boston Opera Company's performance of "Maritama", followed by a grand ball with music by the company orchestra.  Shortly after that, the opera hall was booked by the Justin Adams Co., with scenery arriving from Boston.  The local Vinalhaven fire station rented the space next for a demonstration drill and a Firemen's Ball.

 

In the early 1900's, with the advent of movies, three short movies were shown at the opera house on Saturday evenings followed by dancing to the tunes of an orchestra playing from the orchestra pit. Traveling shows continued to perform at the opera house, including the sensational (at the time) 1908 melodrama "How Women Ruin Men."  Later, in 1919, Gladys Kirk and her entourage appeared for one night only; the advertisement for their show reading "there is nothing left to the imagination."  If they had only known what the world would be like today!

Boxes at the opera house

Firemen's Balls continued to draw large crowds each year.  And, in the 1930's and 1940's the opera house hosted many big bands as locals danced the foxtrot, waltz, and later, the Lindy.  Community groups performed in minstrel shows, and local schools staged plays, speaking contests, and graduations at the opera house.  Traveling shows included appearances by Mae West, Tallulah Bankhead, Lillian Gish, and other famous performers of the day.

When Kerry Hadley, the manager of the opera house, gave me my tour, she showed me a refurbished room dedicated to Katharine "Kay" Aldridge Tucker, a legendary magazine model and star of many popular 1940's matinee serials, who later became a well-loved Camden resident.

As a thank you for the tour, I wrote a brochure for visitors to the Katharine Aldridge Tucker Room about Kay's life.  Her's is a fun and truly American story of a mischievous girl raised in genteel

Kay Aldridge as a Camden hostess

poverty who didn't know that there was such a thing as a model and had seen only a few movies before suddenly rocketing to fame as one of the world's top photographic models, and then pursuing a Hollywood film career.  

Last night there was a performance by the Maine Pro Musica Orchestra at the Camden Opera House with refreshments in the Katharine Aldridge Tucker Room at intermission.  I was invited as a guest and my brochure was distributed for the first time.  How fun is that?

Tenting Again

Intrepid Tracker and tiny tent trailer at Lobster Buoy Campsites

7/14/12: After luxurious living for the month of June in our rented Camden house, we are quite happily back to basics in our tiny tent trailer.  We hope that July brings good weather, but right away two afternoons of grumbling, rumbling thunderstorms, stunning sheet lightning, and torrents of rain put our fifty year-old old tent to the test.

Hallelujah - the rain rolls right off!  The first week it rains often in the night and often in the day, testing the tent, and making boat work impossible.  We are cozy in our canvas cave: reading, talking, listening to the Sacramento/Stockton NPR station on our smart phone.

As for our campground, it is a very special spot - the Lobster Buoy Campsites in South Thomaston, Maine with just forty sites.  The land has been in the same family since 1916, when it was farmed by Eleanor's (the current owner's) grandparents.  Their little “camp” (house) that they built the year they were married and given the land is still here at the top of the low hill that runs down to the cove, although a bathroom has long since been added to replace the "backhouse" (outhouse).  One of Eleanor's daughters lives in the little house now; the other daughter lives on a Maine island, population: 8 families.

Eleanor's mother, Mabel, lived on this property her entire life and died here at eighty-eight after a full day's work here on a tractor and riding lawn mower.  Sometime during Mabel and her husband's (Fred's) lifetime, they opened the campground, and it is now Eleanor's..

Island with house and horses.

The place is full of character and characters. Eleanor is an energetic, seeming seventy-something hippie with a blue bandana headband worn around her forehead and her shoulder-length, graying hair. Her partner, Doug, with his long hair, old-style prosthetic left arm, and taciturn manner, looks like someone she met during the summer of love. We keep discovering campers (who are now in trailers or RV's) who have been coming every summer for thirty or forty years and whose children and grandchildren now come.  And, they all have tales to tell around the campfire about Mabel and Fred, and the campground in years gone by.  The small bathhouse, with two showers each for the men and women, is old and funky but clean, with lots of hot water for the two quarters you put in the coin slots. There are still some of the apple trees from Fred's orchard, and at each campsite, a weathered wooden picnic table, and a rusted truck tire rim as a firepit.

Lobster Buoy Campsites cove and island with Osprey nest.

The cove is home to clams and lobster pots, and boats from dinghies to kayaks to motor boats to lobster boats.  There are at least nine small islands off the cove.  On one there is a visible house, and the family who owns it brings in horses to ride every summer.  Another island has a skeletal evergreen tree topped with an osprey's nest.  The legend is of a man who invested all of his life savings to purchase the island and started building a house on the ocean side until environmentalists won a lawsuit that stopped the development to protect the osprey.

At last, it does seem like Conrad's health is improving slowly. His neck and back are still a problem, but better.  He's off to the chiropracter again this morning.  He's decreased his blood pressure medication to a point where the dizziness has lessened (it's not gone entirely) and his blood pressure is still low.  No matter the boat work delay, we're having fun and eating lots and lots of lobster.

Conrad waiting for lobster.

Lobster prices are so low that some lobstermen aren't even going out because the cost of fuel and bait exceeds the price they get for their catch.  We are diligently doing our part to raise that price by eating lobster almost daily, and exploring local spots on the water where the lobster boats dock.  It seems as if every back road in the direction of the Atlantic leads to another lovely, granite-rocked cove, edged with evergreen forest.  We've eaten at simple lobster diners with picnic tables on docks, at a high quality restaurant with a large menu, and our favorite, a place where you bring everything you need to eat and drink except the lobster, which they cook for you on the spot and bring to your picnic table.
 

Miller Lobster Company - "diner on the dock."

Lighthouses and Lightheaded

6/30/12: This June was one of the rainiest Junes in the history of Maine. So, of course, it poured on June 23^rd, the first day of the Midcoast Maine Lighthouse Challenge, which was offering free admission to seven area lighthouses.  The next day was clear and I went to two lighthouses.  Both of the lighthouses I visited were quite small. Each had a home for the lightkeeper to live in, but the actual lighthouse was a small building at the end of a walkway some distance from the home.

Marshall Point Lighthouse at the end of a long, wooden ramp, and the Keeper's House

The Marshall Point Lighthouse is at the end of a long wooden ramp, which begins just steps away from the lightkeeper's house. If you've seen “Forrest Gump,” you've seen the lighthouse - it's where Forrest ends the eastern segment of his cross-country run.

Marshall Point Lightkeeper's House

The original Marshall Point Lighthouse was built in 1858 and had seven lard (oink, oink) oil lamps serving as the light.  Now it's all automated and electric – boring.  In the late 1800's, there was also a bell tower with a bronze bell weighing over a thousand pounds.  Inside the tower was a weight mechanism, somewhat like the one in a grandfather clock, and a hammer that went through the tower wall.  When it was foggy the lightkeeper wound the mechanism, just like he would for a grandfather clock.  One winding lasted 4½ hours with the hammer striking the bell every 20 seconds.  Now that's replaced by a boring automated foghorn. 

The original 1832 lightkeeper's house had one and a half foot thick, stone walls.  Lightning destroyed the house in 1893 – that must have been one huge thunder and lightning show!  The current two-story, white clapboard, Colonial Revival house replaced the stone one.  It must have a lightning rod on it....

The keeper's house contains a museum with lighthouse and lobstering memorabilia, including a large collection of lobster buoys.  It is amazing how many unique markings the lobstermen have come up with to paint the buoys that mark where their lobster pots lie on the ocean floor.- each lobsterman (there aren't very many lobsterwomen) has his own design and color scheme. 

An old stone quarry

Near the lighthouse there are a number of quarries that used to ship stone by sea to many places.  All the stone was cut by hand, and the museum has an exhibit of old stone cutting tools and photos of the stone cutters and the quarries.  In the days of horses and carriages, the quarries supplied most of the cobblestones for New York City.  The first ones cut and shipped were too large for the horses' hoofs, and they slipped on them and were often injured.  They tried cutting smaller cobblestones and those worked.

Fresnel lense light at Owl's Head

Next, I went to the Owl's Head Lighthouse. The lightkeeper's house there is at the base of a hill and I climbed steep stairs up the hill to the lighthouse, which sits on a cliff overlooking Rockland Harbor (where our boat is). The lighthouse was built in 1852, and still uses its original, beautiful fresnel lense.

Ships did founder at Owl's Head, and the lighthouse was necessary.  The most dramatic tale is of the “two frozen lovers” who were shipwrecked on the point during a blizzard in the 1850's.  A small schooner was anchored at a point not far from Owl's Head one stormy night, and the captain went ashore leaving the first mate, and a seaman aboard, along with the one passenger – the first mate's fiancee, Lydia. 

Around midnight, as the storm intensified, the cables holding the ship snapped and it drifted across the bay and smashed onto the rocky ledges south of Owl's Head.  The three on board huddled on the deck of the ship under blankets, and as the schooner was breaking up, the seaman managed to climb over the ice-covered rocks to shore.  He was saved by the lighthousekeeper who just happened to be driving by in a sleigh.  A dozen men were rounded up to rescue the remaining pair and managed to get aboard the remnants of the ship, only to find the two lovers frozen inside a block of ice.

Steep stairs to Owl's Head Lighthouse, which sits perched on the edge of a cliff

Leaving nothing to chance, the rescuers wrestled the block of ice to the keeper's house and started thawing it out in the kitchen.  They chipped away the ice around the two lovers and kept them in cold water, slowly raising the temperature.  As the water warmed, the rescuers were able to move and massage the limbs of the pair.  Amazingly, after two hours of exercising and massaging, Lydia showed signs of life.  And, after another hour, the first mate opened his eyes and asked where he was.  The next day both were able to eat and drink.  All three miraculously recovered, and the two frozen lovers married to live happily ever after.

Meanwhile, back at the boat, work is slowed by rain and health problems.  Conrad has been having bad back and neck problems.  Having to replace the starter on the Tracker wasn't very good for his neck.  Without the hydraulic lift that he uses in his shop at home, he had to contort his tall body to reach everything.  Three visits to a chiropracter have helped, but our bodies are not as forgiving as they once were.  Yes, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.


As if that isn't enough, he is having lots of dizzy spells during which he cannot even stay standing.  Since dizziness is one of the side effects of his blood pressure medicine, he asked his doctor to prescribe a new medication, and the dizzy spells got worse!   Recently he tried cutting back on the amount of the medication while monitoring his blood pressure levels, and things seem to be improving.  But, it's raining again....


I think our three year plan of boat renovation and travel before we ship the Flussmaus to Europe is becoming a four year plan!  The boat isn't close to ready, but we are having fun and in a beautiful place.  It's hard to complain about having to be in Maine longer than expected.

Things Never Go As Expected

On Father's Day, Conrad got tools and I got lobster!

6/21/2012:  Our Camden living room is littered with shipments we've received for the boat - a compost toilet (to replace the currently installed, old marine toilet), a gimbaled cook top (because there's no cook top and this kind keeps the pots on it level when the boat isn't, and clamped on so nothing spills), tools (a Father's Day Sale scores an 18 volt drill, circular saw, sawzall, flashlight, battery charger, batteries and a tool bag for $99), marine refrigerator (to go under the steering station seat), marine batteries and battery charger, AC converter, rotary saw, and a marine band radio.  There's a six-gallon hot water heater on order, and three "foot pumps" to help conserve water (if you want water, you have to pump it, not just turn on the spigot).  If it's not here yet, it soon will be....

Rockland Breakwater Lighthouse

 On Saturday, there were lobster boat races in Rockland.  Every harbor has races in the summer between the boats of the lobster fleet moored in its harbor.  I catch a few of the races when I hike out the mile-long Rockland Breakwater across the flat-topped, giant, granite blocks of the breakwater to the historic lighthouse at its end.  It's the first Maine lighthouse I've been inside and I explore the two-story living quarters of the lighthouse keeper, and climb up to the light. 

Rockland Breakwater stretching (from mid-left side of photograph) out into the harbor

Conrad is still struggling with the masts.  The spreader ends were so corroded when the boat was taken out of the water and the masts taken down five years ago, that the ends had to be forcibly removed from the spreader.  (A spreader "spreads" the sail at its top when the top is flat instead of pointed; then you may have a smaller, triangular topsail above that.)  Conrad spends a lot of time researching on our laptop and discovers that the manufacturer of our masts and rigging no longer is in business.  He is able to find out who bought the stock in case we need another spreader, and also finds an entirely different outfit that still makes replacement ends for the spreader we have.  The new ends arrived yesterday and we

Spreader end and bar of soap

hope they will be sufficient, so we don't have to buy a new spreader, which would be even bigger bucks than new ends - $200 for these itty bitty black things, pierced by a U-bolt (a free turning short, U-shaped bolt).

The engine and transmission oil analysis is back.  Good news - no heavy metals in the oil samples, so no rebuilding of the engine or a new engine necessary (whew - that would have likely taken the rest of the summer).  Conrad's current major project is figuring out the best technique to remove the windows without stripping away the thin fiberglass around them.  Our recent Maine rain revealed that some of the windows leak now the boat isn't covered in plastic.  We were hoping to put off replacing windows until the future, but it's obvious that some of them can't wait.  So last week we took a four-hour round trip drive to see samples of marine Plexiglas, and ordered two 4' x 8' smoke gray sheets.  Tuesday we repeated the trip with our trailer to pick up the order, driving through sylvan inland countryside pocketed with small and large lakes, farms and hardwood forests, and crossing over rivers and deep inlets from the sea.

Going to get Plexiglas, we cross the Sheepscot River to Wiscasset, founded in the 1600's, with its classic church steeples.

Once he has some old windows out, Conrad will cut the Plexiglas to fit, and bolt and caulk it to the space where the old windows are.  None of these things are small tasks and our time in Maine is looking like it will be longer than we expected.

The view from our camp site at Lobster Buoy Campground

 We are out of our rental at the end of June but we've found a gorgeous, funky hideaway called the Lobster Buoy Campground to move to.  The aging hippie owner, with a blue bandanna headband tied around her shoulder-length, graying hair, has some summer campers who have been coming for over twenty years to her campground and home at the head of a cove near Owl Harbor.  The 40 camp sites all have views of the cove, and we reserve one starting July 1.  Now that the rain seems to have subsided (well, there were only a few, brief thunder showers this morning), we're hoping for a terrific time there in our tiny tent trailer.