Our Island: A Fourteen-Month Journal of Life on Swan’S Island, Maine, in the Seventies

By Donald Junkins

About Junkins novel Orchards of Almonds:

Don Junkins semi-autobiographical novel, Orchards of Almonds, blossoms with a Camelot-studded cast of characters that includes Kennedys alive and dead, LBJ and company, Reagan, and dozens of California politicos, academics, Viet Nam protesters and movie stars. . . . Junkinsas much the poet in design as in languagehas achieved another triumph of deftness, irony and grace.

Allen Josephs (On Hemingway and Spain)

I was bowled over by Puss. I have never read, in any other literary work, such a profoundly pure and honest and dead-on rendering of the young girl. And that coupled with her extraordinary father/daughter relationship, it moved me deeply. He did for that relationship what Hemingway did for father and son in Indian Camp.

Linda Miller (Letters from the Lost Generation: Gerald and Sara Murphy and Friends)

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781491777428

Donald Junkins

Donald Junkins has published eleven books of poetry and two novels, plus Busters Book: a study of his familys contributions to American wars. He directed the MFA Program at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, for ten years and has won three National Endowment of the Arts awards. He also won the New Letters Prize for Poetry.

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Copyright © 2015 Donald Junkins.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-7743-5 (sc)

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iUniverse rev. date: 11/30/2015

Contents

Dedication

Preface

Swans Island Journal

1973-74

June 29, 1973

June 30, 1973

July 1, 1973

July 2, 1973

July 3, 1973

July 4, 1973

July 5, 1973

July 6, 1973

July 7, 1973

July 8, 1973

July 9, 1973

July 10, 1973

July 11, 1973

July 12, 1973

July 13, 1973

July 14, 1973

July 15, 1973

July 16, 1973

July 17, 1973

July 18, 1973

July 19, 1973

July 20, 1973

July 21, 1973

July 22, 1973

July 23, 1973

July 24, 1973

July 25, 1973

July 26, 1973

July 27, 1973

July 28, 1973

July 29, 1973

July 30, 1973

July 31, 1973

August 1, 1973

August 2, 1973

August 3, 1973

August 4, 1973

August 5, 1973

August 6, 1973

August 7, 1973

August 8, 1973

August 9, 1973

August 10, 1973

August 11, 1973

August 12, 1973

August 13, 1973

August 14, 1973

August 15, 1973

August 16, 1973

August 17, 1973

August 18, 1973

August 19, 1973

August 20, 1973

August 21, 1973

August 22, 1973

August 23, 1973

August 24, 1973

August 25, 1973

August 26, 1973

August 27, 1973

August 28, 1973

August 29, 1973

August 30, 1973

August 31, 1973

September 1, 1973

September 2, 1973

September 3, 1973

September 4, 1971

September 5, 1973

September 6, 1973

September 7, 1973

September 8, 1973

September 9, 1973

September 10, 1973

September 11, 1973

September 12, 1973

September 13, 1973

September 14, 1973

September 15, 1973

September 16, 1973

September 17, 1973

September 18, 1973

September 19, 1973

September 20, 1973

September 21, 1973

September 22, 1973

September 23, 1973

September 24, 1973

September 25, 1973

September 26, 1973

September 27, 1973

September 28, 1973

September 29, 1973

September 30, 1973

October 1, 1973

October 2, 1973

October 3, 1973

October 4, 1973

October 5, 1973

October 6, 1973

October 7, 1973

October 8, 1973

October 9, 1973

October 10, 1973

October 11, 1973

October 12, 1973

October 13, 1973

October 14, 1973

October 15, 1973

October 16, 1973

October 17, 1973

October 18, 1973

October 19, 1973

October 20, 1973

October 21, 1973

October 22, 1973

October 23, 1973

October 24, 1973

October 25, 1973

October 26, 1973

October 27, 1973

October 28, 1973

October 29, 1973

October 30, 1973

October 31, 1973

November 1, 1973

November 2, 1973

November 3, 1973

November 4, 1973

November 5, 1973

November 6, 1973

November 7, 1973

November 8, 1973

November 9, 1973

November 10, 1973

November 11, 1973

November 12, 1973

November 13, 1973

November 14, 1973

November 15, 1973

November 16, 1973

November 17, 1973

November 18, 1973

November 19, 1973

November 20, 1973

November 21, 1973

November 22, 1973

November 23, 1973

November 24, 1973

November 25, 1973

November 26, 1973

November 27, 1973

November 28, 1973

November 29, 1973

November 30, 1973

December 1, 1973

December 2, 1973

December 3, 1973

December 4, 1973

December 5, 1973

December 6, 1973

December 7, 1973

December 8, 1973

December 9, 1973

December 10, 1973

December 11, 1973

December 12, 1973

December 13, 1973

December 14, 1973

December 15, 1973

December 16, 1973

December 17, 1973

December 18, 1973

December 19, 1973

December 20, 1973

December 21, 1973

December 22, 1973

December 23, 1973

December 24, 1973

December 25, 1973

December 26, 1973

December 27, 1973

December 28, 1973

December 29, 1973

December 30, 1973

December 31, 1973

January 1, 1974

January 2, 1974

January 3, 1974

January 4, 1974

January 5, 1974

January 6, 1974

January 7, 1974

January 8, 1974

January 9, 1974

January 10, 1974

January 11, 1974

January 12, 1974

January 13, 1974

January 14, 1974

January 15, 1974

January 16, 1974

January 17, 1974

January 18, 1974

January 19, 1974

January 20, 1974

January 21, 1974

January 22, 1974

January 23, 1974

January 24, 1974

January 25, 1974

January 26, 1974

January 27, 1974

January 28, 1974

January 29, 1974

January 30, 1974

January 31, 1974

February 1, 1974

February 2, 1974

February 3, 1974

February 4, 1974

February 5, 1974

February 6, 1974

February 7, 1974

February 8, 1974

February 9, 1974

February 10, 1974

February 11, 1974

February 12, 1974

February 13, 1974

February 14, 1974

February 15, 1974

February 16, 1974

February 17, 1974

February 18, 1974

February19, 1974

February 20, 1974

February 21, 1974

February 22, 1974

February 23, 1974

February 24, 1974

February 25, 1974

February 26, 1974

February 27, 1974

February 28, 1974

March 1, 1974

March 2, 1974

March 3, 1974

March 4, 1974

March 5, 1974

March 6, 1974

March 7, 1974

March 8, 1974

March 9, 1974

March 10, 1974

March 11, 1974

March 12, 1974

March 13, 1974

March 14, 1974

March 15, 1974

March 16, 1974

March 17, 1974

March 18, 1974

March 19, 1974

March 20, 1974

March 21, 1974

March 22, 1974

March 23, 1974

March 24, 1974

March 25, 1974

March 26, 1974

March 27, 1974

March 28, 1974

March 29, 1974

March 30, 1974

March 31, 1974

April 1, 1974

April 2, 1974

April 3, 1974

April 4, 1974

April 5, 1974

April 6, 1974

April 7, 1974

April 8, 1974

April 9, 1974

April 10, 1974

April 11, 1974

April 12, 1974

April 13, 1974

April 14, 1974

April 15, 1974

April 16, 1974

April 17, 1974

April 18, 1974

April 19, 1974

April 20, 1974

April 21, 1974

April 22, 1974

April 23, 1974

April 24, 1974

April 25, 1974

April 26, 1972

April 27, 1974

April 28, 1974

April 29, 1974

April 30, 1974

May 1, 1974

May 2, 1974

May 3, 1974

May 4, 1974

May 5, 1974

May 6, 1974

May 7, 1974

May 8, 1974

May 9, 1974

May 10, 1974

May 11, 1974

May 12, 1974

May 13, 1974

May 14, 1974

May 15, 1974

May 16, 1974

May 17, 1974

May 18, 1974

May 19, 1974

May 20, 1974

May 21, 1974

May 22, 1974

May 23, 1974

May 24, 1974

May 25, 1975

May 26, 1974

May 27, 1974

May 28, 1974

May 29, 1974

May 30, 1974

May 31, 1974

June 1, 1974

June 2, 1974

June 3, 1974

June 4, 1974

June 6, 1974

June 7, 1974

June 8, 1974

June 9, 1974

June 10, 1974

June 11, 1974

June 12, 1974

June 13, 1974

June 14, 1974

June 15, 1974

June 16, 1974

June 17, 1974

June 18, 1974

June 19, 1974

June 20, 1974

June 21, 1974

June 22, 1974

June 23, 1974

June 24, 1974

June 25, 1974

June 26, 1974

June 27, 1974

June 28, 1974

June 29, 1974

June 30, 1974

July 1, 1974

July 2, 1974

July 3, 1974

July 4, 1974

July 5, 1974

July 6, 1974

July 7, 1974

July 8, 1974

July 9, 1974

July 10, 1974

July 11, 1974

July 12, 1974

July 13, 1974

July 14, 1974

July 15, 1974

July 16, 1974

July 17, 1974

July 18, 1974

July 19, 1974

July 20, 1974

July 21, 1974

July 22, 1974

July 23, 1974

July 24, 1974

July 25, 1974

July 26, 1974

July 27, 1974

July 28, 1974

July 29, 1974

July 30, 1974

July 31, 1974

August 1, 1974

August 2, 1974

August 3, 1974

August 4, 1974

August 5, 1974

August 6, 1974

August 7, 1974

August 8, 1974

August 9, 1974

August 10, 1974

August 11, 1974

August 12, 1974

August 13, 1974

August 14, 1974

August 15, 1974

August 16, 1974

August 17, 1974

August 18, 1974

August 19, 1974

August 20, 1974

August 21, 1974

August 22, 1974

August 23, 1974

August 24, 1974

August 25, 1974

August 26, 1974

August 27, 1974

August 28, 1974

August 29, 1974

August 30, 1974

August 31, 1974

September 1, 1974

Bibliography of Books about Swans Island

Dedication

To Robert Bagg, forever colleague and friend, who discovered Swans Island with me on a happy afternoon in the spring of 1968

With special thanks to Islanders Sonny Sprague, Dexter Lee, and Candy Joyce;

In memory of Islanders Bud Staples, Gleason Scott, and Russell Burns

Preface

IN THE LATE SPRING of 1973-74, our family, including two primary school boys who attended the island school and a ninth grade daughter who took the ferry back and forth every day to the high school in Ellsworth, lived on a lobstering island four miles out in Blue Hill Bay off the downeast coast of Maine. The house was unfinished when we moved in and four high front windows, forty feet from the water, went in during Thanksgiving week. Our heating consisted of a kerosene stove and a fireplace with a 52" inch heatilator. My wife and I sang in the local churches’ choir (alternating weekly services in the Methodist and Baptist churches) and I and the two boys infrequently went on overnight fishing trips (cod and hake) with an island commercial fishing family, the Smiths, on their boat, Bounty. I also helped as a cook with the island men who prepared the pancakes and eggs for the summer Sunday breakfasts at the Oddfellows Hall in Swans Island Village. My wife was one of the cooks for the weekly school lunches at the primary school. I directed the play put on by the Island Players in the cold Oddfellows Hall in March and then again during the summer when the summer people had arrived. Our island friends (we had summered three summers previously to my sabbatical year, twice on the Morrison tent ground a mile or so from our house on Red Point Road, and once tenting on the property itself), meant the most to us of anything that happened to us during the year.

During those three earlier summers, we burned seemingly unending piles of slash left on our acre of land by the recent pulpers on the island. We had a close view of near offshore islands such as Ram Island and the two Sisters, all three unoccupied, plus Long Island Plantation with a year round population of fifty hardy Mainites. Cars had been introduced to Swans Island as recently as the 60’s, (it has maintained a winter population of nearly 350 for years before and since,) and during our stay the local engineer of the ferry, Steve Harriman, organized a removal of abandoned cars on the island, and the final figure was remarkable, nearly five hundred. Equally remarkable was the friendliness and kindness of the islanders themselves during the long winter and two summers when we became part of their lives and their community.

Swans Island Journal

1973-74

June 29, 1973

WE DROVE OUT OF the Sunderland driveway at 9:20 a.m., after Daniel found Mardie’s $20 bill under the station wagon, and after I pulled the iron handle off the house door trying to get it locked for the Whiteheads. I drove the U-Haul truck (8900 lbs. empty weight: 30 ft.) with Theodore and the dog, Little Bear, our Malamute. The dog frothed and vomited saliva and Dramamine for the first couple of hours, and Theodore wiped her mouth and threw the tissues onto the wet floor under my feet. By the time we reached Miller’s Falls I had learned to handle the truck pretty well. Mardie drove the station wagon with Karn, Daniel, the two cats, Big Mac and Pussy Willow (who was sick with the Dramamine and howled and frothed for some time) and the guinea pig. She stayed on our tail, and we didn’t find out until we arrived at Bass Harbor that the U-Haul truck brake light wasn’t working, and Mart almost piled into us on two occasions. We stopped once on 495 around Amesbury at a rest stop so Thee could urinate, and agreed to stop in Portsmouth to get gas and we’d eat sandwiches that Karn would make in the wagon. We stopped again on the Maine turnpike about an hour below Augusta. Thee and I sang songs: K, K, K Katy, I’m looking Over a Four Leaf Clover, and Roll Out the Barrel, which Thee liked best.

We arrived at Bass harbor at 5:08 p.m. and were vehicles #12 & #13 in line. Molly Langford, who was #2 in line, heard me tell the ferry man that if we couldn’t get both truck and wagon on this trip, I’d like to transfer 400 lbs. of frozen meat to the wagon,—she said she’d pull out, if we’d give her, her friend & two kids a ride to her house on the island, and she’d get her car in the morning.

On the ferry, Mardie and I drank warm beer. The fog made droplets of water on the long hairs on the sides of Mardie face. Thee and I got out of the truck because the rear end stuck out over the water by a couple feet and the thin rope they tied around the back wouldn’t have kept a bag of mushrooms from slipping over the edge. Thee and I went into the passenger cabin and sang Roll Out the Barrel a couple more times before Johnny Morrison came in and talked to us about the weather, which had been bad. Said the new cable from the mainland was 18 feet ft. short and that they were going to splice it. We went directly to Morrison’s restaurant and talked to Mertic and Roger, his nephew, who had just been made the new town cop,—they were eating macaroni dinners. While waiting for Mardie to drop off Molly, I ordered a pizza for Thee and four fried clam dinners. Mertic said that Clyde Torrey had a stroke but that he could write now and his speech was getting better. Clyde asked for turnip seed for next year and said he might be around for another year—so Mertic thought he’d be OK. Mertic hasn’t any teeth yet and has lost a lot of weight (we found out the next day he has diabetes.) Roger said he hasn’t flown the plane much because of the fog. No campers to speak of. Some people from New Jersey stayed for ten days or so and gave up on the fog and went home. The worst spring in five years. There hasn’t been a dance yet, but Mertic thinks they’ll have one soon. I drove to Bud & Melita Staples’ with the meat and Bud, Clint and I loaded it into his empty freezer in the cellar. Bud plugged it in the night before just in case I brought more than I thought I would. Said it’d be empty until venison season: Might have two or three in there this winter. When we got to Ram Island cove and the house, we couldn’t see it until I backed the truck behind Bob Bagg’s house and put the flashlight on it. We were happy to see it sitting in there against the fir and pine trees. We all went over and walked around inside the house that Gleason had built for us. Jim Gillespie came over so we went over and looked around his unfinished house and had a Scotch. Thee went directly to the ledges and was throwing rocks into the surf in the pitch black when I went and got him.

We slept in the Bagg’s house. I had a semi-nightmare and woke up Mardie at 3:00 a.m. (we heard the cuckoo clock downstairs) to tell her. I was in a good place, something like but not California—near the water. I hit a baseball and couldn’t find it. I drove the car off a high ledge and landed in the water. I couldn’t get Mardie to stop smoking. Her pack of cigarettes turned out to be like the paperback cover of my Sandpipers book when I crumpled it up and threw it in the water. I couldn’t get her to pay attention to me. We drowsed until five a.m. when Daniel got dressed and started down the stairs until I sent him back to bed. Gleason Scott pulled in his truck around 7:30 a.m.

June 30, 1973

GLEASON & BUDDY WERE putting in the long bank of under-windows on the north side of our house when I went over. Mardie made me pancakes, coffee and an egg for breakfast. We unloaded the truck and put the stuff into the Bagg’s house. Gleason saw me lower the golf clubs down and commented several times on it during the day. The last time, he was driving out around 4:45 p.m.: Better take those golf clubs over to Mertic and have him salt them down. You won’t be using them for a year.

Earlier, Gleason and I looked at the round septic tank that Bud Staples had set on the ground—and we talked about the best place to put a flat tank. Later, we figured out what I should order when I went to Ellsworth with the truck (U-Haul) on Monday. He figured the deck alone would cost $1000. I asked him for a bill soon so I could tell if I was going to be arrested for bank robbery or not.

The sun came out around noontime and we caught glimpses of the Sisters islands during the early afternoon. Mardie napped and read a book of Sappho’s poems. The kids played around and finally got a Monopoly game going.

The three dogs are trying to work things out (Little Bear and Gillespie’s Mushroom and Holly). Little Bear is jumpy and aggressive, snaps at Mush and Gillespie whacks Mushroom. The fog came back in heavy around 3:30 p.m., and it got wet and a bit raw. I talked with Gleason sitting in his truck before he left for the day and he broke out a bottle of Apricot flavored brandy! (You want a drink, Buddy? Buddy nods yes. Get the bottle! Buddy reaches under the seat and pulls out a paper bag with a pint in it. Just one, Gleason says. But he gave me another before they drove off.) Last winter, Gleason got an idea for a sign for our house, Junkins’ Dream, so he had Gillespie make it. It was on the house when we arrived. Gleason told me today, it should also say that it was his goddam nightmare. I told him I’d put it underneath the sign.

I played Crazy Eights and Rummy with Thee, and Daniel and Karn beat him in Monopoly. We had Dinty Moore’s beef stew on toast for supper. Late in the afternoon, I opened the House of Lords’ Scotch that Travis Barnes gave me when I was in Augusta, Georgia, April 20 this spring, from the old Bearden liquor closet. Travis told me to open it on a foggy day on Swans Island and think of the Barnes in Georgia, so we did. It has a smoky flavor like sour mash Scotch. Little Bear got into something rotten in the late afternoon and rolled in it.

The Gillespies went out for dinner—mentioned Donnie Staples new eating place next to the Teen Center in Atlantic. They just drove in a short while ago (10:05 p.m.). Mardie is reading a book on the Greeks, from Bob’s shelf, and the kids are asleep. So’s the dog. The tide must be high because I can hear the surf above the motor of the generator. Mardie said this evening that she wasn’t going to worry about the house. I said that more would probably get done that way. Mart: I’m going to float. We have talked off and on since we arrived about heat next winter. Everybody except Gleason has told us we are going to freeze but we don’t think so. If we have to, we can cut through the floor and build a cement enclosure for a heating unit, but we’re going to have a 54" fireplace with electric blowers in the sides and back—and we bought a fine oil stove from Mrs. Higgins last winter for $25., which will throw a lot of heat.

July 1, 1973

MARDIE AND I SAW an American eagle this afternoon, coming back from Bud & Melita Staples’—on Red Point road just before the Otter Ponds area. The white, red and black markings were clearly visible. Mardie poked me after I said it was an honor to see one and said: See what good things happen to us on Swans Island?

We had gone with the generator to Buddy Martin’s house because the starter rope seemed to have frozen. Buddy thought at one point that it had thrown a rod, but I got some oil at Bud Staples and filled it up and it turned out to be all right. Buddy asked me if I had seen Gleason and mentioned that he was hitting it up last night. Buddy didn’t know if he would work Monday but figured that Gleason had so much work to do that it wouldn’t last more than a day.

In the morning I built a fire in the fireplace and the kids played rummy, and then Canasta with Mardie. I couldn’t start the generator so I sat around and tried to recover from it. A little before noon Bobby and Molly Langford showed up with two friends and children. We showed them the house, had coffee, and the Kavanaghs arrived at the Gillespies and then came over. It was almost two p.m. before they left. The Ames girls also arrived and stayed until late afternoon.

I walked around our land and decided that the best place for the septic tank would be directly in front, underneath the deck, so when Bud & Melita came over for supper we walked it together and he agreed that it was a good place. He said that it should be 10 feet from the house but nobody’d know. We also decided to drop two or three truckloads of gravel on Bob’s land so Bud could drive the truck over instead of the backhoe.

We broiled the T-bone steaks over charcoal and Bud told deer stories and twine stories. Mostly about him and Buddy Martin shooting the deer along this road. Bud gets two or three every year.

It rained on and off all day. About one p.m. the fog blew out and we could see the lighthouse on Duck Island, but by three it was fogged in again. Bud & Melita went home about ten because Melita was going to dig clams on the 4:30 a.m. tide. Gillespie brought over the papers to sign for the power cooperative. Bud witnessed our signatures and thought that we should have power in a couple of weeks. He has blasted for our pole already. He told me some stories about Banks and low-bidding with the Toziers. On one job Bud bid $11,000 and the Toziers $16,000. Banks took Bud’s bid to Bob Tozier and later told Bud that the Toziers had underbid Bud by $500. The Toziers had the bid at $10,500. It was for the new road coming in now, and Bud is happy that he didn’t get the bid because the Toziers’ original bid of $16,000 was right. The Toziers are losing money on the road.

July 2, 1973

I HEARD GILLESPIE DRIVE out early. At the time I thought he was catching the 8:30 a.m. ferry, but when I asked Kent Gardner at the office when I drove in around 9:30, he said Gillespie caught the early (7:00 a.m.) boat. I got up thinking that I would go off with the U-Haul truck on the 8:30 myself, but when I got downstairs I decided that it was probably full, being Monday morning, and I might as well get the 10:00 a.m. I made some instant coffee, had a bowl of raisin bran, and started writing in the diary when Mardie came down. I asked her if she’d go off with me in the wagon since I didn’t think I could count on getting back on the island with Gillespie. She got the children’s breakfast and we dropped them off at the Ames’ with lunches.

(I left Karn at the corner of the ferry road along Mackerel Cove for Mardie to pick up in the wagon.) Mardie got to the ferry landing about 9:45 and we decided to visit the Tainters since the boat didn’t leave until 10:45. Mardie visited with Lena who had her granddaughter Faith with her, and I went down to George’s wharf where he was working inside. We shook hands and he told me he’d ripped out the fiber glass inside the sloop, and he’d have to re-glass inside the sloop and replace a few timbers. He’d do it within a week because he had other work to do; also told me that no one ever froze on Swans Island in the winter and that either a pot stove or a floor burner would do fine. He said he lived in a shack you could see through, covered with tar paper, one winter—it swayed in the wind—but he didn’t freeze. He said he got cold sometimes though, had to keep a fire going every winter.

Lena made a cup of coffee for me in one of those large size porcelain drinking cups that my mother used to drink coffee out of. It tasted good and I drank it all before we had to leave for the ferry at 10:20.

When we got there I realized that the cardboard with Gleason’s lumber order on it was back at Bob’s house. I left the ferry landing at about 10:28 in the wagon, got the list at 10:40, and was back at the ferry about 10:47. As I roared down the road people standing outside the ferry office were waving me onto the boat so I kept going down the ramp. Mardie and Donnie Staples were walking from the ferry toward the parked U-Haul truck and I got out and let Donnie drive the wagon on board. I got in the U-Haul and drove her on. It just fit, and they hooked the chain around the rear of the truck.

In Bass Harbor, we gassed both wagon and truck and drove to Ellsworth to deposit the truck. Because Frank’s Arco in Sunderland hadn’t given me the yellow receipt, we had to wait about 45 minutes before we got our $25 deposit refund ($14.00 extra fee for over-mileage). Then we went to Ellsworth Builders and ordered cement, windows, partition lumber, finish wood and deck spruce. We ate lunch at a diner (lobster salad, fried haddock, graham cracker pie) and shopped for food, gas stove fuel, rain slickers and beer.

We got hung up on the road between Ellsworth and Southwest Harbor and missed the 3:45 ferry, for which we had a reservation. We made it again for the 5:15, drove to Southwest Harbor, had a beer at the Sou’Wester, looked at yarn, bought a Japanese pine tree and arrived at the ferry a few minutes before five.

On the ferry trip we stayed in the car and read the Boston Globe with the reports of flooding in Ludlow, Vermont and western Mass., and drank some S.S. Pierce port wine. The bay was completely socked in with fog. When we got off we drove toward the Ames, met our kids walking on the road, and drove to Clyde Torrey’s to give him a pint of bourbon. He was very excited and it was difficult to understand him because of the speech impediment from his shock last spring. He showed us three different bottles of paregoric he had stashed away, took a swig from one of them, looked for letters which he couldn’t find, and displayed his new portable radio. He seemed to have moved into the house from his cars. When we were leaving he told us one of his cats had had kittens which were three inches long.

Back at the house, Thee and I got on our boots and took off for clamming. We went to Mackerel Cove where Sheldon Torrey was clamming, along with Nancy Kavanagh and her two visiting friends. After three quarters of an hour we had a bucketful and drove Sheldon home. While they were steaming, the kids ate baked beans, bread & butter & milk, and Mardie & I read Mary McGrory’s column on Nixon and Harry Voorhes, now 71 and visiting Washington, who commented on Nixon’s excess ferocity, then and now.

The cats went wild over the little scallop muscles left on the soft shell clams. We ate about 3/5 of what we dug and I put the rest in the refrigerator. As Thee and I drove in I noticed that the Gillespie-Bagg power pole had been put in today. I had expected to see Bud Staples working in front of our house with his backhoe, but he wasn’t there.

Driving in the first night (Friday) we saw a doe cross in front of the U-Haul truck just at the one mile mark. Tonight, with Thee, I caught just a glimpse of a huge white tail about ½ mile in. Thee said he saw it, but I don’t think he did.

July 3, 1973

BUD STAPLES DROPPED IN around ten this morning and we had coffee. Clint and a helper were drilling the hole for Gillespie’s power pole up on the road. They struck water through the ledge at five feet. Later, when I went up to watch, Clint let me drill with the compressor, and I realized for the first time that the drill rotates circularly as well as vertically.

Bud told us a story about drinking flavored brandy. He thought of it because Buddy Martin had come home from work and told Bud that Gleason was drinking. Bud had an uncle Clyde Staples and he & Bud were crossing from the mainland in his boat when Bud was in his early 20’s. He asked Bud if he had anything to drink and Bud brought out a pint of cherry brandy. Uncle Clyde called it a woman’s drink and asked Bud why he didn’t buy good liquor. Bud said goddamnit he bought what he liked and if Uncle Clyde wanted a different kind he could buy it himself. Before they got to Swans Island they had finished off about two thirds of it. Bud: On an empty stomach it snagged on pretty fast. When they did get there Uncle Clyde asked Bud if he could take the bottle with him and Bud said he could because he had another pint. Clyde told his wife he was going to take the boat around to the other side of the island and that he’d be home in an hour. He didn’t get home until midnight, and his wife had everyone on the island looking for him. The next day Clyde asked Bud what the hell he put in the bottle, Bud told him, Nothing, it’s only a woman’s drink. Then Bud said, It’s sixty proof stuff.

I drove over to Gleason’s to get the key to the barn on City Point where Gleason stowed our gear from last summer. Gleason was in bed and Cassie explained that she thought he was more resting than drinking. He was exhausted. She got him a six pack of beer the day before but he hadn’t finished it yet. She asked me if we liked our sign, Junkins Dream, that Gillespie had made for us. She and Gleason thought it up last winter. She’d wanted Gillespie to make it bigger. Cassie said, You’re not going to take it down are you? I told her we loved it and certainly were not going to take it down. She let me have a couple keys to try out, but neither worked on the barn lock and I came back and found the right key in Gleason’s pick-up.

All our sleeping bags were musty from wintering and the eye holes of the fishing poles had rusted, but everything was intact. The rear bicycle tires were flat and I drove to Bill Sprague’s and got air in them. At Myron Sprague’s store I got penny candy for the children who were at the Ames. Myron, after I told him we were staying on the island for fifteen months: You absolutely have to stay here that long?

I drove back with the car loaded with camping stuff and put some of it in our house where Mardie was sweeping, and some on Bagg’s deck to air out. While Mardie and I were deciding on the floor plan, Theodore came in and said he had seen an American eagle fly by and perch on a tree down on Red Point.

Mardie and I went over Gillespie’s (we were on our way to take a walk when Jimmy yelled over) and had a couple of Scotches. When the kids came home from the Ames on their bikes, we had steamers. I went up for a nap and was too tired to go to Mertic’s for the sing-a-long and dance. Mardie took the children and told me later that on the way they had seen two deer and three teen-age woodcocks in the road.

July 4, 1973

WE DROVE TO THE ferry landing at 10:30 a.m. for Ferry Day. It was foggy and overcast so we all wore our new slickers that we got at Mammoth Mart in Ellsworth last Monday. The park, up in back of the ferry office and next to the new library, was strewn with picnic tables, people, and concrete block fireplaces steaming with lobsters and clams. Areas were set apart for hot dogs, home-made pies and coffee, desserts (fudge). We went in and saw the library. On the way out I told Helena Bailey that I would give them some poetry books (they had seven books including a R.P.T. Coffin, Frost, and Willis Barnstone’s modern European anthology.) She said No heavy stuff. You college professors all like that heavy stuff. Something light, like Frost.

Junkins: You mean no good stuff.

Bailey: Something that people will pick off the shelves.

Wesley Staples: Maybe there should be something for everybody.

Junkins: "You think Frost is ‘light?’

Bailey: Until they pick him off the shelf.

We met Bud and Melita. Bud told us that somebody told him he danced a couple dances with Mardie last night. Mardie told him he had a good time. We got in line about noon and all had a steamed lobster, biscuits, potato salad, tossed salad, hot butter in a paper cup. I ate all of mine and everybody gave me their lobster body, so I was eating for a half hour after everyone else was finished.

Russell Burns came by and said that he thought about coming down with a stick of dynamite the night before and waking me up for the dance. Then Daniel, Mardie and I had pie (I had two pieces of chocolate graham cracker and coffee.)

Mardie and I talked with Sheldon and Tina Torrey. Sheldon showed me the evidence that his car had been rolled over on its side before he bought it, and also the copper tubing from his distributor to the cylinders.

We dropped off Daniel and Thee at the end of the ferry road in Atlantic so they could walk to the softball game at Maynard Staples’ field (Karn was already walking with some girls,) and Mardie and I drove to Gleason Scott’s. Gleason & Cassie were sitting in their kitchen drinking coffee. We went in and Gleason asked me if I had anything to drink in the car. He said he felt awful. I told him no but I had some back at the house and I’d get it for him. We talked about the work he’d been doing. He showed us the scar on his back and shoulder where he was operated on.

I drove Mardie to the ball game, got three bottles of beer and a half quart of Mr. Boston Scotch and drove it back to Gleason. He told me: I knew this was coming for three weeks. He got Cassie to find the blueprint from the magazine that he used to build the Jellison’s house from. When I told him that they ought to name the area from Black Point to Red Point, Scott Cove, and that he had built some beautiful houses, he said: Don’t think I’m not proud of it. He also said: You know what I think of you, don’t you? I said I didn’t and he said: You’re a good person. You trusted me the same way before you knew I was going to build a house for you as you do now. Before I left he told me that he came home one day last winter and got the idea of the sign and Cassie wrote Gillespie and asked him to make it. He said he thought of Donald’s Dream but he wanted it to be for all of us.

I went back to Staples’ store and Mardie & I drank a beer while we watched the ball game. Bud got in the back seat and we shared the beer. Mardie said, Today’s the 4th of July, isn’t it Bud?

Bud: I sure hope so. I hope it’s over by tonight. He said he had just had a nap and that he felt pretty bad. The aspirin he took this morning hadn’t helped any, so he had some Schenley’s and that helped a lot. He felt ready for anything now.

We drove Pam Ames home, stopped by Bud’s for coffee for a few minutes and drove home. After supper the Welches came over, then Gillespies, and the Ames. And then Bud & Melita & Lottie Bell and we shot off firecrackers, aerial bombs and sparklers that I had bought in Tennessee. Then we came in and sat by the fire and had a drink. The Welch’s stayed a little after everyone else had gone. Everyone thought the sparklers were the most fun, and the adults all remembered the July 4ths when they were kids.

Mardie told about Frankie Cogger in Lowell who lost his eye from a cherry bomb. Jim Gillespie told of packing a long pipe with powder and stuffing in it and shooting pigeons. Everyone remembered sky rockets. The day before, Bud Staples told of throwing up herring to a seagull and then a lighted firecracker—and blowing their heads off: My, wouldn’t I give my kids a spanking for that.

When everyone was waving the sparklers in circles in the fog and darkness, the glow shone like a halo around the Bagg’s deck. And the smoke hung low over all our heads and took a long time to drift away.

July 5, 1973

I HAD A HARD time starting the generator this morning. The engine ran but the power wouldn’t kick in for about twenty minutes. Finally the moisture dried out of the sparkplug box on the 220 unit and it caught. But the rain was fierce all day. The storm in New York delivered an inch or more in ten minutes in the morning and we caught the end of the hurricane all day. I drained the sludge and put new oil in the generator and drove to Bill Sprague’s (he has sold out to a lobsterman’s cooperative on the island) and got five gallons of gas. It rained hard. I stopped in at Buddy Martin’s and Gleason was still home, so I went over to Alice & Russell’s and drank coffee for an hour or so. Every once in a while the fog would clear and we could see over to the Morrison’s.

Russell told me that he was the one who found Sherman Joyce’s body (Bill Banks’ uncle or cousin) the winter he died. Said when he got back to the house to tell Banks, he had ripped mattresses apart and tore bureau drawers open looking for money. Russell also told me the time Sherman punched him on the jaw and made him see stars because Sherman thought Russell had stolen a chain of his. Russell had brought it back and someone else had borrowed it. Fifteen minutes later Sherman had forgotten he had hit him. Russell said he was 75 then. Said if he had hit him back he’d be in prison today.

We talked about my putting in a cement septic tank. If I built my own I’d have to throw in a lot of telephone wire and bedsprings to hold it together. Russell said I’d have to cement in under the house for the winter.

In the evening we played canasta until 10:30 or so, but didn’t finish the game—we decided to play tomorrow night.

July 6, 1973

WHEN LIGHT BROKE I could still see the fog but the high sky was blue so I knew it would clear. It turned out to be the best sunny day this year. We ate breakfast on the porch (French toast.) I went out after breakfast to see how things were shaping up. Bud Staples had gone to Bangor for the day. Buddy Martin said Gleason was still home, but he was better than yesterday and planned to work tomorrow. I went over to Gleason’s and stayed two hours and had a beer with him. He told me he thought the world of his fishing, but he didn’t think he’d get back into it. He also said he hated a liar and a thief. Honesty’s the only way, Donald. He told me he’d been married to Cassie for 36 years, that she ran the house, and how worried she was when he was in the hospital after his operations. He apologized for taking all this time off when I needed work done but I told him he was exhausted and he was right to do it. A man has to rest. Gleason’s been going straight for three years without a break. He said he’d get down here over the weekend. I told him Mardie was moving stuff over today.

On the way back I saw the Bangor cement truck with a cement septic tank on it, pull into the driveway where the public phone used to be, down from Bud’s. I backed in behind to talk to the fellow, got out to talk with Bob Tozier, and—the driver got back into his truck, backed into our car and stove in the rear door so you can’t open it. He never saw it was there.

I came home and started digging under the house for the base of the fireplace. Mardie had had the children lugging bags & boxes over and storing them on the second floor, and had then sent them to Quarry Pond to swim—on their bikes. I had also stopped in at the Ames to see if Mrs. Higgins had been around—she had gone back to Southwest Harbor the day before, where she works.

So I drove to Lowell Staples’ who lives in the trailer on the turn down from Minna Getty’s, and Mrs. Staples, her niece, gave me her phone number. I went back to Bud Staples, phoned her and also phoned Ellsworth Builders and ordered a 52" heatilator. They said the truck would be on the island next Tuesday with the windows, cement and lumber.

I went out again to Bud’s and got steaks & hamburger for supper, went to the dump and shopped at Myron Sprague’s store for lettuce, paper plates and ice cream. Russell & Alice came over at six in Russell’s telephone truck. The kids came back from swimming—Daniel had a flat tire. Mardie had the charcoal going and I put on the hamburgers and the porterhouse steaks. We also had noodles and salad, maple walnut ice cream and chocolate sauce.

Russell & Alice liked the house, and Russell told me how much work there was to do there. I told him that Gleason told me this morning that I should use beach rocks instead of cement building blocks to cover in around the house. Russell said it would take a lot of hauling.

The Welch’s have come back on the island and they have a tent pitched on their cement platform.

After Russell & Alice went home we played Canasta until 10:00 p.m. The mosquitoes were coming in the cracks by the screens and the stars were out. The dog had to stay out on the porch because she had eaten into the Bagg’s couch the night before. She whimpered a little but finally settled down.

July 7, 1973

SECOND DAY OF GOOD weather. I dug down to the ledge under the house for the fireplace base. I got up at 6:45 expecting Gleason but he didn’t come. Mardie and I walked over to Bob & Pam Welch’s tent on the concrete cellar floor just after breakfast. They were noticing the black flies. Pam was going clamming with Jim Gillespie on the 10:30 tide.

While I was working underneath the house, Mardie tried to wash but the generator had trouble and we fooled with it for an hour before we discovered that the load was too big. Then she did four washes during the day.

I drove over to Ginny Staples but couldn’t find her. Russell said she had been selling stuff all day in front of Mrs. Higgins’ but I missed her. I drove around the island twice but couldn’t find her, so Karn and I bailed out the Bagg’s sailboat. We also looked into our sailboat on the shore and saw what George Tainter has done to her. She looked fine and needs a couple more days work. Gleason has sent off for another case of beer so it will be at least until Monday until he gets down to the back shore.

Stopped in to see Bud Staples and asked him about a concrete septic tank so he looked it up and it seemed too large an undertaking for a 750 gallon tank (64 inches high). Bud didn’t seem himself. He had been to Bangor again today and had been welding on his backhoe. He said he was trying to get down to our place but the rain had hurt and he hoped to get down Monday.

The Kavanaghs dropped in for a minute to say goodbye. They would be gone until August. Our children went with them to Quarry Pond, so I took a cold bath and changed clothes and Mardie & I went over to Gillespies for a drink, fried clams island style, hors d’oeuvres, and steamers. It was the best part of the day. I am discouraged not to have the windows in, and not much sign of getting them in for another week. The Baggs are coming on the 3:45 boat Monday and we have to get out of their house. Tomorrow is moving day. I just hope the weather holds.

The children walked in from the new road and said it seemed short. We all went to the dance at the Odd Fellows Hall. I didn’t have my pants on with the money so I borrowed $5 from Melita to get us all in. The music was hard rock—Captain Holmes’ daughter had an all-girl band. Daniel and Kathy Ames stuck together pretty close, but the Colbeth boy gave Daniel a lot of competition. Karn danced later with a boy she likes and danced up close with him. Mardie caught my eye while I was waltzing with Kathy Ames, and we had a smile over it.

Home at 11:30 and to bed.

July 8, 1973

MOVING DAY. I MADE Life cereal breakfasts and Daniel and Karn made three trips with cartons before it was served. Theodore slept a little late. After we got almost everything into our house we burned the paper cartons on the rockweed. The floor is still pretty well covered with boxes and fishing poles, guns, plants, books, and sleeping bags. If the weather holds we’ll be lucky, having no windows.

The sun is now out. Hot. The ducks keep swimming by. The Gillespies’s have friends over for breakfast—who have a big sloop in Burntcoat Harbor. They walk along the rocks down the cobble beach. Jim says later that a baby seal with a gash in it has washed up on our beach. Later, the sloop sails by out in front.

After lunch (noodles, sauerbraten) I drop everybody at Quarry Pond and get Buddy Martin who drives Gleason’s truck to Mrs. Higgins’ house—where Ginny Staples is waiting. We take door handles off the stove and work her onto the truck with the washing machine. The four-wheel drive prevents the wheels (tires) from digging into Mrs. Higgins’ grass, which is boggy.

The Welch’s go home today. They stop over and visit with Cassie before they take the mid-afternoon ferry. I see Clint & Lita Staples on Bud’s lawn so I stop and ask for Bud, who is out in the boat. Clint tells me that Bud is coughing a lot at night and is worried about his smoking. He is rolling his own now. Clint says they are hoping to get the power poles in tomorrow.

Buddy drives the truck down the new road, which we used for the first time today. The one third nearest us is still quite rocky, but from the Otter Ponds out is good. Gillespie comes over and we ease the stove down a 12" wide plank off the truck and set her on wood slats. Buddy and I carry the washing machine over and we all have some bourbon and water (bourbon left over from last summer).

Mardie is happy about the stove when I pick up everybody at the Quarry Pond. The stove is important to us—so is getting some progress towards a dry, warm house. She is also glad to move out of the Bagg’s house. At the pond the black flies are murderous, and after everyone swims across once as the older kids dive off the rocks, we drive home.

Ground beef, T-bone steak and stuffed grape leaves for supper. Mardie and I have a couple House of Lords Scotch drinks (from Georgia) and after supper we play one hand of Canasta. Karn wins.

Buddy told me today that Gleason couldn’t get the case of beer he sent off for yesterday and he was drinking vodka and root beer. He thought Gleason’d be some sick today. Buddy also let on that he owes the Internal Revenue from last year. He has his 22 ft. lobster boat, Runt, hauled up in his yard, and wants to put in a new engine. This one is pooched.

I took the mast and sail for the Sunfish over to Russell’s boatyard before getting the stove. Russell has several boats lined up on the runway to launch. Russell pronounces it, lanch.

July 9, 1973

BUDDY MARTIN SHOWED UP in Gleason’s truck around eight to put up the staging for the front windows. Gleason hadn’t gotten the beer he’d ordered over the weekend and got a couple quarts of vodka from Mertic. This morning he was drinking cooking sherry. Even at eight it was hot. Buddy put the handles on the sliding doors and did the front staging.

Mardie cleaned the Bagg’s house from top to bottom and I arranged the stuff in ours: put the plants around the windows, brought the picnic table in, made the boys’ beds upstairs. There’s a strange sounding bird that’s been working its way down from Red Point and is cawing over in the next lot behind the wetlands.

Daniel and I started making a corduroy bridge with driftwood and pieces of throw away wood to the car through our woods. I threw a dead baby seal back into the low tide. I think the dog had rolled in it first.

The children took their bikes to Quarry Pond to meet the Ames. Buddy left at noontime to take Cassie home—she was opening a house on City Point.

Mardie and I went swimming with the dog in a tide pool. I gave the dog periwinkles and she would try to chew them one at a time and then drop them. After a while she would put her nose down into the water a couple of inches. We got cooled off for the first time in the day. It was so hot Bud Staples didn’t come into the woods to do the rest of the power poles.

The Baggs arrived later and said it was 99º in Camden. We helped them unload and had a couple vodka and tonics with them. Their three older boys stayed home to go to music school. Bob told of his conversation with Banks earlier this summer when he told Banks he was a liar. Banks said he got riled when he got the letter from our lawyer, and that I had made enemies on Swans Island. Bob told me he said that was a crock of shit. When he asked Banks who they were, he wouldn’t say. I worried about it until I went to bed, but I can’t do anything about it and I don’t think it’s true. Bob called Banks an evil man.

Gillespie went off island on the early ferry to do his one week’s work this month. Elsie came over once but we had the generator going and it was difficult to talk. Mardie was giving me a haircut, and Elsie said if she ever gave Jimmie one her sense of humor might get the best of her. Mardie did a splendid job, cutting on the slant, so it looked like Sylvio had cut it. We asked the boys if they wanted one, but they weren’t ready.

The boys pedaled home while we were having a drink with the Baggs, and Karn had stayed at the Ames. Later she & Pam hitchhiked home and Karn got her stuff and they walked out the new road and hitchhiked back. Mardie made egg sandwiches, salad for supper & Thee made some iced tea with no ice.

The mosquitoes got fierce. We used a lot of the 6-12 spray before and after we went to bed, which was right after dark. The boys slept upstairs, Mardie and I down. When the Baggs’ generator went off we fell asleep.

July 10, 1973

GOT UP AFTER SEVEN to the sounds of Elsie’s dogs barking. (Buddy Martin & Cassie were over there to start the generator.) Overcast, but warm and signs of burning off hot. Grapenuts for breakfast. The other day Theodore reminded us that Euell Gibbons says they taste like wild hickory nuts. Today, Thee is up last and gets cornflakes.

Daniel and I worked on the walkway through the woods to the car. Then the children take their bikes (Daniel and Theodore, because Karn slept over) to the Ames. I work on the walkway until 11:15.

About seven-thirty I hear Bud Staples blow the dynamite for the Welch’s power pole and the ground shakes from the blast. Then I hear the backhoe up by the car, working on the hole for our pole. I walk up and Dan McGlaughlin asks me if I’ve written my thesis yet. It strikes me as working hard on the literary and I told him over the noise of the backhoe that I wrote it twenty years ago.

Clint Staples was running the backhoe and I asked him if he could bring it down after a while and do our septic tank. He said he didn’t think so because someone just came and gave Bud twenty four hours to move a power pole or they’d shut off their own power, so Bud was pulling everything off to go over the other side of the island. Clint said they’d be back down this afternoon or tomorrow. Said it was 105º in Rockland yesterday: That’s some hot!

Mardie and I drove out to Morrison’s restaurant and I cashed my $16 check from the Antioch Review for the squirrel hunting poem. We started out the new road and thought we’d have to turn back when we got to Tozier’s caterpillar, but I moved a few rocks and we scraped over the rough spot. Lobster roll, coffee, fresh hot blueberry pie and ice cream for lunch. We sat so we could look across Blue Hill Bay to Mt. Desert Island. It cheered up both of us.

We went to Bud’s to pay Mileta back her $5 and Bud came in before we left. He was upset about being pulled off the job for someone who already had power. But he needed a sixth pole and he was going to get it on this job (a cousin by marriage of Mileta’s: Dexter) and they’d have to pay for it. We went in to watch Attorney General Mitchell on the Watergate hearings but it was noon recess. Bud said that if it was up to him he’d let them pull off their power: Seems to me it’s just like cutting off your nose to spite your face. He said he’d been feeling bad over the weekend; lips all swollen, so he was rolling his own cigarettes: I have to do something with my hands.

We drove over to Gleason’s and had a beer with him. We told him what Buddy had said about the Internal Revenue and Gleason said he thought something was in the wind—but asked us not to talk about it in front of Cassie. The Internal Revenue had already served papers on him twice in the past.

Gleason told us that Sherman Joyce’s illegitimate son, from whom Banks swindled away the property on the island, should have had half the whole thing. The boy’s mother was Haddie Staples, sister to Maynard Staples at the Post Office. Gleason said it was the original reason why Wesley Staples wouldn’t let Banks build the Red Point Road down in back of the Otter Ponds.

Gleason said he had no use for Eliason. Said he brought people in from New York and shot seventeen deer. He predicted we’d have trouble down here about November 1: Write that down somewhere.

Gleason said he liked to kid people a little if he liked them: But if I don’t like you, I won’t have anything to do with you.

Gleason said that the night Paul Colbeth drowned he sent young Bruce home from the shore. He was starting to take off his shirt, thinking he heard his father calling for help. When Bruce came by the house crying, Cassie asked him what he was crying about: My daddy just drowned! Gleason had kidded Paul that morning that Ronald Reagan and Shirley Temple would be president and vice-president of the United States. Cassie said Paul said, Shit! About the drowning, both Gleason and Cassie said: No one knows exactly what happened out there. The older Paul was an excellent swimmer.

Cassie called the young Paul a smart Alec. Gleason said he was all right and Cassie agreed. He’s just been led astray.

Cassie fumed about the cupboard Gleason had built for Dorothy Colbeth and wasn’t paid for (until last week.) Dorothy claimed Gleason had gypped her—said others hadn’t