Up at the very northeast corner of Maine is a small old town called Lubeck. The only pay phone is in front of the convenience store, which was a hopping place at 8:05 pm (the grocery store closed at 8:00 pm). While Barry was on the phone with his Mom, I watched a car pull up with an older couple inside. They got out, and the fellow lit up like a light bulb when he found something on the ground beside his car. “Guess people just don’t like these ol’ pennies any more,” I heard him say to the woman as they went into the store.

On their way out, I chatted with the man briefly and he explained his reaction to the pennies. “Years ago, I promised God that any money I found would be His.” I smiled at him, and encouraged, he continued. “Once time, I was down on my luck, found $20. It was real tempting to keep that for myself! But when you make a promise to the Lord like that, you better keep it!” He winked at me, wished me safe travels, and drove into the night.

We spent the night at the Lubeck boat ramp. Learned a lesson or two about boat ramp parking lots. First of all, they’re great places to make out in your car. Which means there was plenty of noise and activity there at night, even though the boat ramp was not in use. Also, if there are commercial fisherman, don’t expect to sleep in. They all showed up for work about 5 am.

So at 6 am, we were at the tiny border crossing between Lubeck and the Canadian island of Campobello. We planned to visit Franklin Roosevelt’s summer home there, the little 37-room “cottage” where he contracted polio. The border guard asked our intentions, and we answered truthfully that we were only planning to be there for the day. Later that day, we found out we could take two ferries and be on the New Brunswick mainland without any additional border hassles. After all our worries about crossing the Canadian border and being searched for contraband guns, meat, or fruit, it was completely anticlimactic. We were in, and we were going to stay — not one day, but several months.

Passing through Bangor, Maine, we were surprised and delighted to find our visit coincided with the (free!) National Folk Festival. We weren’t familiar with the festival, but evidently it moves to a new location every three years. Bangor’s a small city, or maybe just a big town, with some real economic problems. The festival didn’t seem any bigger than Seattle’s annual Folklife, but it was a big deal for little Bangor, bringing in much-needed tourist dollars and sparking revitalization of their waterfront.

At first glance, I didn’t see familiar names in the program. Then we sat down in the shade (92 Fahrenheit, so it was the only hot day in Bangor all year), listened to a Grammy-winning Dobro player, and read the program in depth. Henry Butler! I’d heard Henry play the piano live, on the radio in New Orleans, and I knew we were in for a treat. Then I saw that Solas was a band formed by Seamus Eagan — I knew him from his solo album. He was a child prodigy who won the all-Ireland prize in just about every Celtic instrument. A Tejano band called Los Fantasmas del Valle* consisted of three guys in their 60’s who’d been playing together for 40 years, and their new accordionist, at 20, younger than the band itself.

It was a memorable musical day. The Tejano band had us up on the floor dancing, and I could see why they recruited that young pipsqueak for the squeezebox. He was great, and he carried the melodies flawlessly. We were way at the back of the tent for Solas, but I could see which one was Seamus Eagan — he was the fellow who played three different instruments just during the first song. And Henry Butler was just fantastic. He’s totally blind, so he looks a little awkward when he’s sitting on stage and not playing. But once he starts tickling those ivories, it’s like magic. If I wasn’t sitting on the ground, I would have been on the edge of my seat. We gave him a standing ovation, which he couldn’t see, but a number of us (including yours truly) were shouting, “We love you, Henry!” which got his attention.

After the show, we stood in line to get Henry’s autograph. He wrote his full name out, very slowly, with a black marker on the disc itself. I told him of my brother, who’s also blind and named Henry. But he cheats and just writes “Hank” — four letters, all upper case, easy! Henry laughed. I got the feeling he likes taking his time writing his autograph, because he gets to flirt with the ladies. Lucky for me!

*Author’s note: When we get good Internet access, we get a little too excited. I wrote the above entry and published it without checking it over — I accidently sent it out to a bunch of readers without replacing “???” with “Los Fantasmas del Valle!”

**Another author’s note: One reason I love Henry Butler so much is that the following quote is attributed to him: “I decided, after listening to much of the jazz music that was coming out on all the labels, that something wasn’t right. I believe that jazz, generally speaking, is going into a tank … I think I have a chance in my life right now to push the envelope in the blues arena. I was starting not to have as much fun [in jazz}, not because I could not play, but because I was feeling the whole thing was more limiting. I just wanted to have fun and gig.” Right on, Henry. I am sooooooo with you about jazz vs. blues!

When we were driving through New Brunswick in the Squid Wagon, we saw these ladders several times, and we don’t know exactly what they are for. You can’t see it clearly in this picture, but there are some ropes which would allow the height or angle of them to be adjusted somewhat.

This picture was taken on Deer Island, in the Bay of Fundy in a little cove. I think that there is still some commercial fishing going on there, so these might be for fishing. They definitely are in the part of the Bay that has pretty big tides, probably 25 or 30 feet.

If you know what these are, leave a comment…heck, even if you have a decent guess, leave a comment!

I’m sitting in a city park in Bangor, Maine. We’ve become fans of such parks, places where we can stay for hours and write, picnic, use the bathroom, and meet interesting people. Some things are still free.

A garrulous fellow stopped by to chat while we were cooking breakfast. He would have been an interesting companion for our meal, except that his choice of topics was a little too gross for the breakfast table. He got onto the subject of his adult bout with chicken pox and all the complications of it. When he started describing a rectal exam, I wished we’d picked a different park.

Back in upstate New York, we’d stopped for the night in a place called Sharon Springs. It had a number of old hotels, huge multi-story edifices with historical plaques — this one was built in 1910, this one in 1920. Things were always burning down; one block had a plaque saying that it had held the biggest hotel of all, but it had burned down and the block had sat almost vacant for almost a hundred years. It had the feeling of a resort town that had gone under before the Great Depression, and was only starting to come back.

Looking for a quiet place to park for the night, we chose the vacant block, across the street from the Hotel columbia, a small, old hotel. Sitting in the van, invisible behind our tinted windows, we noticed that the folks going into and out of the hotel were all dressed in black. The men had long beards and hats — presumably Orthodox Jew — and drove mini-vans with New Jersey license plates.

In a city park in Canajoharie, a few miles down the road, an older lady with a portable oxygen tank stopped to talk. I asked her about Sharon Springs and the Jewish connection. “Oh yes,” she said, “in the old days — this was before your time — all the Jewish folks used to come up here from the City, on the train.” I thought her topic was wandering as she started telling me about the park in Canajoharie, how it used to be different before it was fixed up, it used to flood a lot, but there was always a lot of fishing there. But she was just setting the stage.

“The Jewish ladies used to sit up here, where the parking lot is, in their long black dresses. When someone would pull in an ugly old carp — you know what a carp is, don’t you? Nasty old bottom feeders — anyway, when someone landed a big old carp, the Jewish ladies would start to clap their hands. Then they’d rush down to the bottom of the hill and try to outbid each other to buy that ugly old fish. They had to take it back to the rabbi, while it was still alive, you know, to be kosher and everything.

“I asked one of those ladies, once, how they cooked the carp. She told me they gutted it, then boiled it until the bones fell to the bottom. Then they fished out the bones and added potatoes and carrots, and made a kind of fish stew.” She made a face at the thought of the stew.

“The Amish used to fish here, too; sometimes you’d see a half a dozen buggies parked here. They never had fishing licenses, and a friend of mine decided to have a little joke once. He drove a volunteer ambulance with a loudspeaker. coming across the bridge, he saw a bunch of Amish folks fishing. Over his speaker, he announced, ‘THIS IS THE GAME WARDEN. I’LL BE COMING DOWN THERE IN FIVE MINUTES TO CHECK LICENSES.’ Well, those Amish folks just went nuts. They grabbed their stuff and ran for the hills. They thought he was for real.” Chuckling at the memory, she went on her way, leaving us to our breakfast picnic.

Yesterday, we spent hours in the city park in Rangely, Maine. It was a beautiful place, just down the road from Mooselookmeguntic. Our Kerry bumper sticker initiated a conversation with a fellow there about books, politics (he saw our Kerry bumper sticker), places. He’s a cross-country ski racer who’s been in Rangely for 45 years, admitting that he came, “before everyone else was here.” When he recommended that we visit a certain part of the Maine coast, we decided to head there next. Given where he lives, he’s a well-qualified judge of beautiful places.

Inertia has this way of grabbing me and Barry. When we travel, we just keep going. When we stop, it’s hard to get going again.

We were sitting in a Wal-Mart parking lot in New Hampshire, discussing our options. To get out of inertia’s grasp, we’d just driven out of Moose River without making further plans. Were there things to see in New Hampshire? If so, what, besides the cheapest liquor stores in the U.S.?

Barry surprised me.

“You know that ‘Old Man in the Mountain’ that’s on the New Hampshire quarter and all their road signs? If we passed within ten miles of it, I’d like to stop.”

I looked at my guidebook (copyright 2003) and my road map (one index finger = 10 miles), and right there at Wal-Mart, we were less than 10 miles from it.

We drove to a special “viewing area” at Franconia Notch State Park. There was a massive, multi-level parking lot with hundreds of parking spaces. I thought to myself, “Must be off season; there are only about six cars here.”

Skipping the museum and gift shop, we headed down the quarter-mile path. At the end, a sign dramatically pronounced, “Here above your heads…” We looked up. Above our heads was a green mountain, no old man. I turned around, looked all about me, craning my neck. Then the other, newer sign registered on my consciousness.

In May 2003, the old man’s face fell. New Hampshire lost its proudest landmark. This, despite almost a century of work to shore it up with cables, cement, and fiberglass. Time — and acid rain — weakened the chin, and it tumbled off, taking lips, nose, and forehead along with it.

And now, New Hampshire is a state with lots of parking, restrooms, a gift shop, and a nice trail. But no face. The face now resides on mugs, quarters, t-shirts, road signs — and postcards. Strangely, none of the postcards show the place as it is now, despite having a year to get new ones printed.

Nobody, except me, wants a postcard of the Old Man Whose Face Fell Off the Mountain.