Sandbox Camp Tales from a Maine Storyteller

By Randy Randall

A collection of stories and essays written by Randy Randall of Saco, Maine. His stories tell what it was like to grow up in the 40’s and 50’s and 60’s in Maine. Some of his other stories relate his adventures in the Maine woods and along the Maine coast. The stories that make up this collection have appeared in magazines such as “No Umbrella,” “Wolf Moon Journal.” “The Maine Sportsman” and “Points East Magazine.”

The book had its beginnings when Randy wrote the stories for his own family to read at their wilderness cabin. That old log cabin is named “The Sandbox” and so the collection of stories became “Sandbox Camp Tales”. Randy’s tales are the stories of many families who love the outdoors and recreate in the wild places. He freely admits that other families might see themselves in his stories and they may have had similar experiences. He has been gratified when his readers have sought him out just so they could meet him and tell him their own stories after reading his. The stories and essays are short and easy to read. In fact his sons have accused him of writing the perfect “Maine backhouse reader” because each story is just about the right length. His topics and ideas range from raising pigs on the family farm to climbing Mt. Katahdin with a bunch of other old timers. He tells about canoe trips on Maine rivers and bicycling along Maine beaches.

Randy and his family operate a small boat marina on the coast of Maine and some of his stories come from that experience. It’s as if everyone was sitting around a campfire on a summer evening and people begin telling stories; only Randy tells the most charming and the most compelling and the most humorous ones. You will be enchanted too by his easy style and his obvious love for his state and the friends and family he shares it with. Randy believes we should not take our selves too seriously and hopes that you’ll crack just the hint of a smile as you spend a few minutes seeing the world through his eyes. His stories are true and unpretentious. They come out of a lifetime of keen observations of the people and animals, the hills and rocks and rivers that make up the Pine Tree State.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Randy Randall
• Release date: Nov 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465809858

Book preview

Sandbox Camp Tales

from a Maine Storyteller

One man’s view from his camp in Maine

by Randy Randall

Copyright 2008 Randy Randall

Smashwords Edition

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Dedication

This book is dedicated to my mother who read to me when I was a child.

Contents

Introduction

Section I To Be from Maine

To Be from Maine

The Summer Complaint

Bicycle Thoughts

Boiled Mittens

Hen Clams

Quiet Please!

Blueberry Nirvana

Break-ins

Raising Pigs

The Loggers’ Priest

Beanhole Adventures

Section II Salt Water and White Water

Progress on the Machias

Fire on the Island

Marina Critters

Spring Happens at Our Marina

How to Git Out!

Meet the Marina Kids

Could Somebody Pass the Karo Syrup?

Flood Stage on the Saco

Launching Ramp Circus

Kenduskeag Canoe Race

Section III Old Guys on the Mountain

Curse of the Canoe Cart

Ice Fishing You Say?

How to Sink Ice Fishing Traps

Don’t Burn The Camp Down!

Nearly Frozen to Death on Moosehead Lake

Old Guys on the Mountain

Wet Day Fire

Sleeping Out At Ten Below

Lessons of Canoes and Cadillacs

That Little Episode with the Ski Boots

Section IV A Matter of Some Importance

A Matter of Some Importance

Floating to Spain

Walking The Loop

Tatter-Tail

Cody

A Milkman’s Christmas

New Shoes

Treasure Hunts

Lightning Camp

Strandings

Old Salts, Geezers: Dockside Superintendents

Small Things

My Christmas Blessing

Parting Thoughts

Credits

Introduction

Welcome. Come on in. Pull up a chair. Coffee’s still warm and the cups are clean. There’s a beer in the fridge. I’ll just throw another log on the fire.

Oh, the name? Well yes, it is kind of unusual, but you see being located as we are right on the beach, there’s sand everywhere. Besides the place is shaped pretty much like a box anyway so we called it the Sandbox. The sandbox is where the children come to play, and that’s just what we’ve done. We’ve been coming here to rusticate and enjoy life for about twenty-seven years now.

Sure, there’s some that have been here at the lake longer than us, and some a lot newer, but we’ve earned the right to be where we are. We know these parts pretty well. I suppose we could have called it Sandbox Cabin. It is a cabin, considering it’s built from logs, but here in Maine a cabin in the woods is called a camp. Who knows? Maybe it goes back to those old logging days, when the fellers would go back in the woods and cut trees all winter. They used to build log cabins and such to live in, and they called them lumber camps.

Well, the way I see it, we are all authors and poets and songwriters. We write our own stories and sing our own songs by the way we live. Some seem to create beauty and joy, and others just seem to get by. Of course for a lot of us that’s enough, and we don’t feel compelled to tell anyone else about our lives. On the other hand, there are some like me, I suppose, who enjoy telling stories and rehashing things that have happened during their life.

Some storytellers like a campfire and a small audience. Others will go out on stage and entertain a houseful of folks. Me, I just like to write about things. I’ve been lucky. Some of my work has been published so I know that a few of my pieces have been read by a wider audience. Then again, I’ve got some other things I’ve never published and I’ve just held on to them because it’s very difficult, I’ve found, to let go of things I’ve dreamed up.

You can probably tell by now that this book is about stories and other things I have written. A lot of them have to do with life in the Maine outdoors—some adventures we’ve had right here at the old Sandbox. Others tell about family matters, or growing up here in Maine back in the forties, fifties and sixties. There are also a few pieces about our marina. We just happen to own and operate a small family marina down on the coast and the goings-on there are always good for a few stories. Then there are a few serious essays; pieces that deal with life issues and great questions. I expect every writer has a fling at doing something of a philosophical nature, so I’m no different.

Now when you begin reading you might also discover a disparity in the quality and what I might call the maturity of some of these stories. That’s because I am an apprentice writer and for better or worse I have chosen to include some of my first attempts as well as more recent work. That’s okay with me because those first pieces were written with a lot of care and enthusiasm and if there’s anything I think that distinguishes someone learning a new trade, whether it’s a new artist or writer or carpenter or furnace repair guy, it’s their enthusiasm for the project. They may not get it perfect the first time, but all the fun is in the learning and the trying. I hope that initial joy I experienced in writing these stories comes through.

If you’ll step over to the bookshelf there beside the wood stove you’ll see a large white binder. Take that down and you’ll be holding the first Sandbox Camp Tales. I put that together a few seasons ago just for us here at the camp. After I retired I began to pay more attention to writing and worked a little harder at getting some things published. I’ve actually been pretty fortunate that way and have found a few folks who liked what I wrote well enough to include some of my work in their magazines and papers. In a few instances I’ve actually been paid for my writing. When that happened I figured I’d finally arrived as a writer, although I still prefer to say I’m an apprentice because I’m learning new things every day and practicing to get better.

Actually I think of myself as a raconteur, which is a storyteller of sorts. Webster says that’s a person who excels in telling anecdotes. I don’t know about the excelling part, but I enjoy reading and writing, and somehow calling myself a raconteur seems to add an element of stylishness which makes what I do seem more artistic and more credible. The title also reminds me of my Franco-American friends and their great tradition of storytelling.

Now if you’re a stickler for accuracy and truth in advertising so to speak, then you may find a few things to criticize in my stories because sometimes I’ve been a little free with names, places and events. Oh it’s all true, more or less. All of these stories are based on real events that either happened to me or to my family or friends. Writers, I think, are a lot like artists, who with a few well-placed brush strokes or the inspired selection of a particular color can embellish and improve on real life or at least help us see the scene in a new light or a new way.

Like some artists, I’m more interested in creating a feeling or a mood by the words I choose and the sentences I construct. As I say, all of my stories are based on real events, but more than that, when you read the pieces I want you to get the feeling of what it might have been like to have been with me on that trip or to have witnessed that event. I want you to see the humor in the situation or the irony or feel the joy or the sadness.

Most of all I hope these little pieces will make you smile; even if it’s just one of those sly little grins or the slightest turning up of the corners of your mouth. For some reason I seem to think much of what we do in life is humorous. I know we take ourselves way too seriously, and that in general there’s not enough laughter in the world. So if you crack just the slightest smile when you read some of these stories I will feel as though the old Sandbox Storyteller has done his job.

Now you just get comfortable there in the old easy chair and flip through the pages. When you see something that grabs your attention, stop and enjoy a few minutes looking at the world through my eyes. I’ll just mosey out back here and get a few more logs for the fire. In a few minutes we should hear the loons singing their songs out on the lake and see the moon rise. The evening is still young and the lamps will burn on into the night.

To Be from Maine

Imagine God is in his or her heaven and all the new souls are lined up waiting to make their debut on Earth. Just as a new baby is born, God pulls the lever, and swoosh, a new soul becomes a girl or a boy—Muslim, Greek, Christian, Swedish or Chinese. One after another new personalities appear all over the Earth celebrated by cries of joy for the birth of a new human. All in an instant you become you, with your eye color, your hair, your skin tone, your language, your culture, your family and your home on the planet. For some their birthplace assumes a huge importance in their lives and their personalities. So it is for people born in Maine, those people who by the accident of their birth happen to have landed in the Pine Tree State, this thumb of granite and spruce that seems only tenuously attached to the rest of the USA.

From the time they are born, some Mainers can’t wait to leave the state and spend the rest of their lives plotting how they will escape across the border at Kittery and never, ever return. Yet there are others who know from childhood somehow that Maine is a special spot on Earth and take some of their identity from their rugged birth place. So precious is this birthright that people not born in Maine often wish they had been and spend a good part of their lives trying to make up for the deficiency. They may live here, they may own property, they may raise their kids here, and they may even die here, but always will be denied that one most desirable accolade of being a native. Some come very close. As close to a genuine Mainer as they could ever hope to be, and would be worthy of the title Mainer except cruel fate landed them in Massachusetts on their birthday.

Maine is a poor state by many measurements. Rich in many ways too, but generally Maine’s people are poor and rank up there with Appalachia in poverty rates and welfare checks. Thank goodness for so many of these poor souls having been born in Rumford, Presque Isle or Bangor, because that distinction is often the only achievement they can take pride in. By virtue of their birth, they are true Mainers and no matter how generous or gregarious their new neighbor from away may be, no matter how much he may contribute to the town, or to the tax base or to the schools and church and the grange, he will forever remain a little lower on the social scale because he’s not a native. The Mainer may not have a car that will pass inspection or have decent teeth or a tight roof above his head, but he’s got the one thing people from away can’t ever hope to have and that is—he was born here.

What is it that can so root a person to his home country or state? Is it the air he breathes when he opens his mouth and cries that very first time? Or is it perhaps those invisible loops of magnetic force which project from the surface of the Earth? Maybe the magnetism jiggles the molecules in his head, like the imprint a loon chick might receive when it cracks out of its egg, and forever after he can only feel at home when he’s on Maine soil. Who knows? We know how strong the attraction can be. Something gets into your soul and wherever you travel on Earth there is always that impatient tug that says you’re away from home and that home is Maine.

I have some telling examples of this in my own family. When my brother-in-law had his chance to climb the corporate ladder, he eagerly moved his young family south. They would return for Christmas and when the holiday was over they’d pack up and head home and everyone in the car would cry as they crossed the Piscataquis Bridge and left Maine behind. Eventually the forces calling them back to Maine grew too strong and he gave up a promising career, sold their home and moved back. It was like starting their life all over again.

Both he and his wife had to rejoin the workforce and, Maine having the poor economy that it does, they had to settle for significantly lower wages than they had been earning out of state, but they were home in Maine and that was worth a lot.

In the other case, my sister followed her career Army officer husband around the world finally settling on the west coast where they remain today. They’ve visited here many times. Their children even think of themselves as Mainers even though they’ve never lived here. They probably will never return, but I know she looks forward every month to receiving her copy of Downeast Magazine. If you talk to some in the family they’ll tell you that sister and her husband have squandered their birthright by choosing to become people from away.

Writers and artists have for years tried to put into words or songs or pictures what it means to be from Maine. Artists from away; those near-Mainers who have loved the state and its people all their life have become famous, some very famous, for their depictions of Maine and Maine people. Some of the most famous American authors of the past two centuries have lived and traveled and written in Maine, and many of them are so strongly associated with the state that few people know that many of these writers were not natives.

Maybe it’s the very remoteness of Maine that appeals. Like Montana or Alaska where the populations are small and you can spend a day on a river or in the woods and never run into another person. Maybe it’s the history of the place that keeps us rooted here. There are some historians who will argue that Maine could have been one of the first places discovered in the new world. We know for sure there were European fishermen catching and drying cod on Maine islands long before the Pilgrims ever set foot at Plymouth. Maybe those of us born here are really Canadians, and were it not for the Aroostook War, we would be contentedly living in another of the Maritime Provinces boarded on the West by New Hampshire!

In the end, I suppose it’s rather useless to ask why something is so. Better that we should just acknowledge the gift and be thankful for it. The world is filled with unbelievable places of unimaginable beauty and people live everywhere. Maine is blessed to be one of those places and it’s ours. By right of our birth in this stony, rugged, forested, wet place, we own it. There’s a loyalty too that we natives hold for our home. We take a sort of stubborn pride in the place, in its cold winters and muddy springs and long distances and craggy coast. It’s not like pioneering exactly but somehow we become vested in the place. Starting from our birthday we invest our lives and build capital in the land and the shore. As if Maine becomes us, and we become Maine.

It is changing, of course. The population is shifting. People from away are showing up every day and starting new businesses and buying homes and raising their kids and investing their lives here while our own kids are leaving. Tired of limited horizons and empty roads and very small towns with no opportunities, our children are finding other less harsh places to live, grow and carry on their lives. Still, there are some of us who won’t ever leave. We were born here, and we’ll probably die here. Between those two events our personal identities will be shaped and molded by our love for Maine.

You might say the place grows on you. Bit by bit, day by day, the nature and characteristics of Maine become part of our daily life. We grow accustomed to the sound of the perpetual surf pounding against the shore. If it weren’t there in the background we’d think something was amiss. We learn to accommodate the changeable seasons and to take weather delays and uncomfortable conditions in stride. We reach an equilibrium of existence with our neighbors and friends, respecting their right to privacy and to live their life as they see fit. We stretch our ingenuity in coping with the cold and ice, the poor economy and the inordinate tax burden. Nowadays we natives face the specter of losing our homes and wharves and land to the moneyed outsiders. People from away buy up ancestral property and there’s no way the natives can afford to compete. Hayfields have more value as housing developments and so we look for land trusts to help us continue farming, or lobstering, or cutting wood.

The future is uncertain. There may be a day when you’ll have to drive way back into the woods and the foothills to find any remaining natives. We will have all been forced to retreat away from the coast and the larger cities by the influx of migrants who come here seeking a simpler and saner life for themselves and their families. The only solace we will have is that no matter where these new arrivals may live or what they may do, they at least will never be able to claim they are true Mainers. That distinction will forever and always be reserved for those of us who were actually born here. In the end, for some of us, that may be just enough.

The Summer Complaint

There is that notion of Maine as Vacationland. We owe that idea and the title to Cornelia Fly Rod Crosby, the first Maine Guide, and her publicity cohorts at the Maine Central Railroad who coined the phrase sometime in the 1890s to extol the wonders of Maine’s North Woods. By so doing they lured thousands of sportsmen and tourists into the Pine Tree State over Maine Central’s tracks. For over a century now, Maine has had this uneasy relationship with tourists and the tourism business. The summer complaint we call them, and yet for some of us our lives and livelihood were regulated by the tourist season. If we weren’t busy getting ready to receive the annual influx; we were running errands for them or feeding them or selling them whatever we could dream up. The importance of tourism to Maine’s economy has been profound. For some of us our lives have been changed by Maine’s tourists. There are some folks in Maine who never laid eyes on a tourist, but by virtue of our family living in Old Orchard Beach, we were caught up in the tourism trade and the annual migration. Old Orchard Beach is famous throughout New England and Canada as a world class resort with seven glorious miles of white sandy beach and sunny summer weather. The place has been a tourist destination since before the Civil War.

Grandfather became involved with tourists just after the turn of the century. He owned one of the two auto service stations in Old Orchard Beach at that time, and a large part of his business had to do with summer people. In the early part of the century tourists came not just for a few days or a week, but for the season. They would stay for months in the grand hotels and great cottages situated along the expansive beach. These were well-to-do people from Boston and New York and Philadelphia and they would need their cars prepared for their stay. Grandfather would receive a telegram or a letter letting him know the Van Pelts would be arriving by train on the tenth, and that he should have their Pierce Arrow ready to meet the train. Gramps would pull the car out of its garage, tune it up, and clean it up and then at the appointed time drive to the railway station to meet the folks from away and turn the car over to Roger, their chauffeur. Gramps’ old friend Ernest would be there too, with his team and freight wagon ready to load all the Van Pelt luggage, the wardrobes and chests, and trundle them off to the Hotel Velvet or the grand family cottage at Ferry Beach. Just before Labor Day or just after, Gramps would again get a visit from Roger who would leave the touring car for Grandfather to winterize and lay up for the long cold months ahead. Gramps used a variety of garages and barns around town as places to store the summer peoples’ cars. There’s a family story about the hurricane of 1938, when Grandfather appeared unexpectedly at the high school to recruit a dozen boys out of their classes, so they could help drive the various stored cars up to dry ground and to safety away from the onrushing waves that flooded East and West Grand Avenues.

The tourist business came home to us when Mother decided she would rent rooms and take in guests. She and Dad moved a bed into the downstairs den, my sister Ruthie was banished to the summer porch and I was shuttled off to the cellar. Ruthie went to sleep by climbing through an open window out to her bed on the veranda. My foldout was situated between