A Day Trip For Grouper

I’m back, to paraphrase Jack Nicholson’s character in "The Shining" (an otherwise forgettable movie). I do not feel quite as demented as his Jack Torrance, but then again, I have recently returned from an extended summer hiatus in Maine where I spent several weeks decompressing from the routines of daily life. "In America," John Steinbeck once confessed, "it is said that it takes three weeks to rest from the rigors of a two-week vacation." Well, I’ve been away longer than that yet I am happy to get back in the saddle and resume my regular weekly schedule. Thank you for your patience during my absence.

This is the posting I had promised before going on hiatus, but last minute deadlines prevented me from posting this one before we left home. So, voila! As promised, this week’s offering is from a very different edge of America; a trip to Florida’s Gulf Coast, a jaunt predicated by a long overdue visit with my mother and the opportunity to spend some time with my ailing father in a local nursing home.
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I am reminded of something Tom McGuane once wrote about dialogues between fathers and sons. They are something "that goes on fairly regularly. It’s just something that men have. It’s our cross to bear, this unwitting and unwilling conversation with our fathers . . . It’s something you never get away from." So I flew down to Florida to continue the dialogue, and wonder for how much longer?

Over the past two decades, when my folks were, for the most part, living on the northern fringe of the Tampa Bay metroplex, my visits have included trips out on the Gulf of Mexico with Dad in search of grouper, those ugly yet oh so delicious denizens of offshore limestone reefs and various man-made structures and wrecks. These trips always began from Tarpon Springs, a Greek infused fishing and shrimping port along the southern edge of the Anclote River before it flows into the Gulf. We caught some pretty nice fish on those trips. So on this latest trip I decided I would sneak off for a day of fishing, weather permitting. After all, as John Steinbeck stated so succinctly, "for a man to admit a distaste for fishing would be like denouncing mother love or hating moonlight." Unfortunately, Dad could not go this time around. Furthermore, I was unable to book a trip out of Tarpon Springs on such short notice and I was referred instead to another boat operating out of Port Richey, a few miles up the coast.

I awoke before dawn, made a couple of sandwiches and threw a six-pack of beer into a small cooler, and a few minutes later I was driving up U.S. Route 19, a continuum of strip malls, pawn shops, surf shops, liquor stores, trailer parks, and adult bookstores. At this early hour almost everything was closed and there was very little traffic. I had a feeling it was going to be a good day just as the first few raindrops popped across my windshield. A light rain continued to fall as I arrived at the dock adjacent to the highway bridge across the Pithlachascotee River (known locally as the "Cotee" - pronounced "Coat-ee"), one of several mid-coast blackwater rivers and creeks flowing into the Gulf of Mexico.

The "Miss Virginia," a 58-foot, twin-diesel boat fully equipped for grouper fishing out on the open Gulf, was moored between the bridge and the local Hooters franchise, still dark and silent at this early hour. I was putting my gear aboard when the engines rumbled to life at 7am, the vibrations running from the soles of my feet , up my spine to the top of my skull. The hair roots began to buzz and the sweet diesel fumes overpowered the freshening salt breezes blowing off the Gulf. Raindrops pimpled the rainbows of petrol-stained water as small baitfish and mullet, a silvery surface glint, moved upriver on the floodtide.

A few minutes later we slipped the mooring lines to enter the Cotee for our outward trip to the Gulf. The river’s original course has been much altered in recent years by the construction of concrete-walled saltwater channels surrounding "McMansions" and high-rise luxury condominium complexes of every size and description. Even Millers Bayou has been completely reconfigured and dredged to support its extensive marinas. Gone are the mangrove backwaters that were here when I first began to regularly visit this area back in the mid-1960s. I tried to remember what it looked like as we navigated the river channel through a no wake zone designed, not to minimize shoreline erosion, but to avoid upsetting the million dollar yachts moored in Millers Bayou. As we continued down river I spotted a few people out on their docks as they prepared their boats for a day on the water. The rain had stopped and patches of blue sky appeared in the west . . . a good sign because that is exactly where we were headed. Soon we reached the breakwater jetty at the river’s mouth; oldsters and young kids stood on the rocks casting to redfish (known in some quarters as red drum or channel bass) and sea trout that frequent this stretch of the coastline.

Moving into the Gulf we followed the red and green channel markers across the Intracoastal Waterway, many of them crowned with elaborate osprey nests. Here we caught the organic odors of the mud flats before they were inundated by the incoming tide. Smaller boats - skiffs and Boston Whalers - manned by anglers lie anchored along the channel’s edge. Beyond the last channel marker the captain finally opened up the diesel engines creating twin roiling humps of whitewater that quickly expanded into an arrowhead wake as we crossed into the deeper bluewater of the Gulf. To our port was Green Key, at the mouth of Oyster Creek, and beyond that the tall smokestack of the power plant at the mouth of the Anclote River which was always a key reference point when our boats returned to Tarpon Springs after a day of fishing on the Gulf. There, too, was the tree-fringed northern shoreline of Anclote Key.

To our starboard, beginning just a mile beyond the jetty, we spotted the first of the few remaining stilt houses found along the Pasco County coastline. At one time over two dozen of these structures could be found in this area, anchored into a limestone ridge that parallels the coastline, but Hurricane Gladys, which struck in October 1968, destroyed many of them. These stilt houses date back to the very early 20th century, and a few more were constructed in the 1920s so that fishermen could clean and pack their catch of mullet before a runboat circulating among the stilt houses collected the catch and transported it to a processing plant farther up the coast, at Cedar Key. Their heyday, however, began in the late 1940s, when people used them as weekend and vacation getaways until the day Gladys blew through. A few were rebuilt, but no new construction was permitted after 1968. Eventually the Florida legislature ruled that all of these structures would have to be removed by 1999. Those who own them, many of whom apparently have deep pockets, appealed this ruling and the deadline has now been extended to 2019, as long as another major hurricane does not come through and make it a moot point. Eventually they will be gone, and so I enjoyed their presence as we headed farther into the Gulf, seeking out the fishing grounds that lie beyond the western horizon.

Our goal was isolated coordinates where we would not have to compete with other boats. The coastline gradually became a thin, dark pencil line on the horizon astern. Gulls and cormorants, even an occasional pelican, followed us and we watched with interest as they plunged into schools of baitfish. After an hour or so the captain throttled down as we approached a couple of buoys which the mates snagged with gaffing hooks. Attached to each was a length of rope which was retrieved hand over hand until large wire traps full of pinfish were brought aboard and their contents placed into the bait barrels. A block of frozen chum was inserted into the traps before they were returned to the water. They will be full of bait when the "Miss Virginia" returns on her next trip into the Gulf. The thumping diesels resumed as we headed farther into the Gulf. We began to get our gear ready; we wanted to start fishing as soon as we found our spot.

The earlier overcast eventually burned off leaving us with a spectacularly clear day for fishing. Around 9:30am the bluewater became a paler green as shoal water rose to meet the boat about 25 miles out. Here the depth ran 15-30 feet, with limestone reef outcrops on a sandy bottom. The boat slowed to a crawl as the captain navigated us into position. Moments later the anchor chain rattled out and the diesels went silent. We had reached the honey hole, the meat bucket, and it was time to go fishing.

Baitfish were breaking on the surface; black and silver glints in the bright sunlight as the surface grew restless. This would have been exciting back home on the Chesapeake Bay where such action meant that bluefish and rockfish (striped bass) were churning through the baitfish forcing them to the surface in a mad attempt to save themselves. But we would be fishing deep, and we were more interested in the shadows that darkened the depths of aquamarine shoal waters. The pinfish brought on board earlier, and cut strips of squid, would serve as bait on this trip.

We hoped we had located some promising bottom structure where black and gag grouper (22 inch minimum), and my personal favorite, red grouper (20 inch minimum), liked to hang out. Our sturdy boat rods were equipped with 80-pound test monofilament line and 10-12 ounces of weight necessary to get the bait down to the bottom. Once there, a couple of cranks on the reel brought the bait up a few feet and then it was just a process of jigging the line up and down. This was not sight fishing; the quarry was much too deep for that. This was also not trophy fishing while strapped into a fighting chair. This was toes dug into the scuppers fishing; dropping your weighted and baited hook down to the bottom and then jigging until, all of a sudden, it feels like someone tied an anvil to the end of your line. After that it is crank and pull until you see the sunlight sparkle off the fish’s scales as you bring it to the surface where it is netted by the mate. We were also catching much smaller white grunt, so called because of the sound they emit once they are removed from the water. Although our primary target was grouper, we were happy to add these tropical snapper to our catch buckets while we waited for their big brothers to show up.

We fished for five hours and we managed to bring a few legal grouper on board. I caught several red grouper measuring 17-19 inches and weighing several pounds each. Nice fish, and fun to catch, but unfortunately below the minimum. Back they went to grow a little bigger. In fact there were very few keepers on that trip. But the grunts kept us busy all day and I had a catch bucket full of them when we weighed anchor for the return trip. Grouper fishing is not rocket science. "It has always been my private conviction," Steinbeck once wrote, "that any man who pits his intelligence against a fish and loses has it coming." I tend to agree with him. But it does take patience. I went fishing in order to relax and clean out my head. It is a respite from life’s burden and a chance for renewal. "The fisherman’s eyes get a dreaming look and he turns inward on his own thoughts, inspecting himself and his world in quiet," Steinbeck added. "Because he is fishing, he is safe from interruption. He can rest detached from the stress and pressures of his life or anybody’s life." He knew what he was talking about.

There are a lot of sore muscles at the end of a day of grouper fishing. Arms and shoulders ache from jigging your line for several hours, and, hopefully, from pulling ten-pound grouper from the depths. Feet, ankles and calves are tight from trying to keep one’s balance on a pitching deck while jigging and catching fish. Even though I used copious amounts of sunblock, my skin felt dry and crackly. It is surprising how exhausting a day of grouper fishing can be. On the way back almost all of my fellow anglers retreated inside where they found a spot for a nap. Others played cards, or finally got around to eating something (you don’t waste time eating when you are on top of good fish). Not surprising, a few cans of beer were consumed(beer drinking never seems to interfere with fishing).

After stowing my gear, I took my sandwiches and beer and moved to the top of an equipment locker on the bow, directly below and in the shade of the pilothouse. From there I could observe our trip back to port while chatting with the captain and the mates as they went about securing lines and scrubbing the decks free of a day’s fishy detritus. The seas stretched out in every direction and I was sorry the day was coming to an end. Before long the shapes of the high-rise condos began to lift above the eastern horizon, their details and features becoming more apparent as we approached the coastline. The stilt houses appeared to port, Green Key to starboard, and the captain reduced speed as we approached the first channel markers. From there we encountered an almost unbroken parade of yachts and other pleasure craft as they moved in and out of the Cotee River. The dock was certainly livelier upon our return; a rainy, dreary morning gave way to a most beautiful day. I guess it really makes no difference which port you fish from. I made it back safe, happy, and with an impressive stringer of fish.

The next day I went to visit my dad at the nursing home. I told him about my fishing trip on the Gulf and showed him some of the photos I had taken. He asked if I had managed to catch any grouper and so I shared with him the fabulous tale of the fine specimens I was able to argue out of the depths . . . some very respectable red grouper. He peered over the tops of his glasses and asked if any of them were keepers. I showed him the photo of a particularly attractive 19-incher and boasted, "The trophy of the day." "OK, but 19 inches isn’t a keeper," he said as he shook his head and looked out the window at nothing in particular. I showed him again the photograph of the long stringer of grunts lying on the dock. "Nothing wrong with those," he admitted. "They are pretty good eating."

I went back to Mom’s place where she cooked up a batch of grunt filets which we had for lunch before it was time for me to drive down to the Tampa airport to catch my flight back to Baltimore. They are pretty good eating . . . especially when you caught them on a beautiful day far out in the Gulf of Mexico. On the flight home I promised myself that I would plan another fishing trip on the Gulf, and next time I would catch some of the groupers I had to throw back this time around. My dad will want to see photos of the ones that did not get away. After all, it is my cross to bear.

NEXT WEEK: What I Did On My Summer Vacation

On Summer Hiatus - Will Return on August 30th

I am taking a long-awaited, desperately needed, and well-deserved break to rest the synapses and recharge my batteries. I will return with a new posting on Sunday, August 30th - “A Day Trip for Grouper.” In the meantime, check out the "from the mountain" section in the left-hand sidebar for occasional updates while I am away. Enjoy your summer and you will be hearing from me again in late August.

A Place to Linger

I will not deny that I am a city person. I guess I always have been. Most of my life has been spent in one big city or another, and I always tend to gravitate toward civilization. I cannot explain this attraction to cities, and I can think of any number of good reasons why I should drop everything and strike out to the hinterlands where I might find the peace and tranquility of rural life that one cannot really enjoy in an urban environment. Many years ago I had one all too brief encounter with country living. It had a big impact on me and to this day it is perhaps the pretense I use to explain my frequent escapes from the city. What I cannot figure out, however, is why I always seem to come back to this hectic way of life.

My parents, on the one hand, were not city people by nature as they both grew up in the farmlands of southwestern Michigan and moved to the city lured only by better offers of employment - Dad worked as an engineer for Montgomery Ward - and other opportunities. I, on the other hand, come by my affinity for the city honestly. I was born on Chicago's South Side, not far from the stock yards and Midway Field. Perhaps it was there, among neighborhoods peopled with Lithuanians, Poles, Serbs and other nationalities and ethnic groups, who came to this country after the war, that my earliest impressions and memories took shape; where urban life struck its first deep and resonant chord. It is lucky for me, then, that my parents' rural roots and values run deep and as a family we frequently headed for my grandparents' Michigan farm for holidays and summer visits and, I suspect, for my parents' much needed spiritual renewal.

Through these visits I became familiar with an environment and lifestyle much different from the one I knew in Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, and the other cities and towns I would grow up in. Edward Abbey, pondering his adopted home in the Arizona desert, once remarked that "every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place, the one true home, known or unknown, actual or visionary." That Michigan farm, with its weather-beaten house, barn and outbuildings, its pastures and fields of alfalfa, asparagus and corn, muted my recollections of the city and soon came to represent what I thought life could and should be. We would always return to the city, but those early childhood memories of the farm and the Michigan countryside proved durable and deeply ingrained. They are as alive today as they were over fifty years ago.

"If you don't want to live in a city," Frank Lloyd Wright once wrote, " pick a spot ten miles beyond its outermost limits - and then go fifty files further." He was right. Only 120 miles separate Chicago's South Side and my grandparents’ Michigan farmstead. The urban sprawl of Chicago and its environs, including Gary's oil refineries and steel mills, even in those days, was gradually encroaching on the farmlands of northern Indiana. It seemed that with each passing year we had to travel a little further to escape the city. I recall my parents' hope that the rural landscape of their youth would be spared this fate and would remain free from the contagions of the city; the Michigan farmstead was somehow beyond the pale.

When I first started visiting the Michigan farmstead and the nearby town of Paw Paw, small Midwestern towns were still vital economic centers, providing for the needs of the local residents and farmers as well as serving as a market for the local harvests. Thorstein Veblen claimed back in 1923 that the country town was one of the great American institutions, even the cornerstone of American society in that it played an important role in shaping public sentiment and giving character to American culture. Yet even in the mid-1950s one could see that their vitality and economic viability were greatly diminished.

Others from my parents' generation were also leaving their small towns and farms to seek better opportunities and jobs in the cities. Yet I sense that these choices were made more out of necessity than as a conscious escape from provincial attitudes. From time to time, my parents, along with the others, tried to return to the values of their youth that somehow managed to survive the changing times. Through our frequent visits to the Michigan farmstead, I came to believe that my parents had not left these rural landscapes for the concrete and noise of the cities; they were in some small way trying to figure out how they could escape back to the farm and their rural past. By returning, they in some small way validated their values which they hoped would somehow survive with their children. Their nostalgia was infectious and I have yet to find a cure. I have never looked for one either.

Paw Paw is not a unique town. There are many others like it throughout the United States. Despite its rather unique name, Paw Paw has not yet entered the pantheon of similar small towns whose people and lifestyles are celebrated, even immortalized in American literature - places like Sinclair Lewis' Sauk Center, Minnesota; Willa Cather's Red Cloud, Nebraska; Mark Twain's Hannibal, Missouri; Edgar Lee Master's Spoon River, Illinois; or Sherwood Anderson's Clyde, Ohio.

Located between Kalamazoo and Lake Michigan, it is the center of a well-established, but less well-known wine producing area. There are two family-owned wineries in town where grapes and fruit grown on nearby farms and in orchards throughout the surrounding countryside are transformed into wines and sherries which are then distributed throughout the upper Midwest. When Jerry Ford, from nearby Grand Rapids, moved into the White House in the summer of 1974, he took some Michigan wines with him. For the most part, however, their fame is limited to the Midwest.

Paw Paw also serves the nearby family farms. Machinery is brought to town for parts and repairs. The local corn crop was trucked to the farmers co-op in town, just across South Michigan Street from the wineries, where it was ground into feed for cows, pigs and chicken. At dawn each morning, trucks from the dairy in Kalamazoo traveled the country roads picking up the milk produced that morning and the previous evening.

Many of these institutions and practices have grown obsolete, or are dwindling and vanishing altogether. The wineries are still small and family-owned although they have expanded their output somewhat, and tour buses stop from time to time to disgorge tourists into the tasting rooms before heading back out to Interstate 94 on their way to Chicago or Detroit. Most of the vineyards and orchards are still there although many of them are now owned by corporations and syndicates. Those that remain in private hands are small and non-competitive on the open market. Every year their numbers grow fewer as families are compelled to sell them to the corporations or lose them to the banks. Others are left fallow or converted to other crops.

The family farms are also quickly disappearing as land is sold and subdivided for suburban tracts as Kalamazoo moves in from the East. Farm machinery has either been sold or is left to rust in the fields or beside the dilapidated barns that now punctuate the shrinking rural landscape. There are fewer cows, pigs and chickens. The co-op in town was torn down a few years ago and a McDonalds was built in its place. The tour buses stop there too. Paw Paw is still there - probably always will be - yet I wonder whether its character is somewhat diminished by these changes.

Only in more recent years have I come to recognize and understand these changes. As a young boy on short visits I was only interested in my own little world on the Michigan farmstead, playing in the fields and in the barn. I fondly recall the Saturday morning drives into the co-op with my grandfather, stopping by the A&W stand for a root beer float on the way back to the farm. The changes that were to come to Paw Paw, to its basic values and its way of life, were of little concern to me then.

After my time living on the Michigan farmstead and attending Acorn School (see December 2008 columns), I returned to a city life which continued as it had before - back under the bright lights and the hum of civilization. My visits to my grandparents' farm became more infrequent as I grew older, and each time I returned I noticed more changes, more intrusions into the peace and tranquility. Rural life was no longer simple and quixotic as my childhood perceptions led me to believe. By 1966, Acorn School was gone and today that patch of ground is neglected and overgrown. Many of the neighboring fields have since been sold and subdivided and suburban-style tract housing is beginning to sprout up here and there. I imagine a house will someday stand where we use to study and play, thinking that all of this would never change.

I discovered that Paw Paw, and other small towns like it, suffers from many of the same problems found in larger towns and cities; they are not secure from violent crime, child abuse and drugs, problems we commonly associate with urban life. Small towns and rural areas do, however, differ from cities in that their economic viability suffers to a greater degree from governmental indifference or outright neglect; the ground swells created by a string of recessions and their attendant economic slowdowns and budget cuts, the development of agribusiness, or the increasing foreign takeover of American agriculture, reach the small towns and family farms long before similar effects are experienced in the cities where they guarantee the attention of the national media. Farm families were defaulting on their loans bills and selling their farms long before white collar workers and government bureaucrats began to receive their pink slips. Perhaps, if we had paid more attention to the disappearance of the American dream in the small towns, this country may have avoided the predicament in which it now finds itself.

Like Abbey's desert solitaire, I still carry in my heart and mind those childhood images of the rural landscape of southwestern Michigan. Though I have continued to live in an urban environment, I still think fondly of the Michigan farmstead of my youth. "This Midwest. A dissonance of parts and people, we are a consonance of towns," writes William Gass in his In the Heart of the Heart of the Country. "Our outlook never really urban, never rural either, we enlarge and linger at the same time, as Alice both changed and remained in her story." Today my escapes to the countryside are an attempt to grasp these fleeting images. Perhaps someday I will find them and hold them tightly until those bright city lights, that abiding hum, fade away. And I will linger there forever.

One Step Over the Line - Part 2

Last week I wrote about the problems and inconvenience one encounters when the US-Canadian border runs through the middle of a populated area, in that instance the border separating Derby Line, Vermont and Stanstead, Québec. This week I want to focus on the border where it occurs in an unpopulated and generally wilderness area; "the nearly invisible boundary . . . through lush hills that blurred the line no matter how aggressively it was chainsawed and weed-whacked," writes Jim Lynch in Border Songs. "From there, as thin as a rumour, the line cut through lakes and swamps and forest and fields." So I traveled to the far northern tip of New Hampshire, where, upon first blush, one side of the line does not look all that different from the other side . . . until you look (and listen) a little closer.
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U.S. Route 3 begins in Cambridge, Massachusetts, not far from the campus of Harvard University, and continues north through that state before running the entire length of New Hampshire where it is also known as the Daniel Webster Highway. After passing through Franconia Notch, in the White Mountains, it becomes the principle highway serving Coös County and the Great North Woods. Once it reaches Lancaster, it parallels the Connecticut River and Vermont border until it reaches West Stewartstown, just across the river from Canaan, Vermont in the general vicinity of the 45th parallel. This latitude was designated by the Treaty of Paris of 1783, at the end of the American Revolution, as the boundary of British North America - later Canada - and the United States between the St. Lawrence River, in update New York, and the Connecticut River. Unfortunately, neither the British nor the Americans could agree exactly where the parallel ran; there were discrepancies as much as 13 miles in one direction or the other, depending who one talked to. The matter was finally put to the King of the Netherlands who settled the dispute (sort of) by splitting the difference between the conflicting claims. In 1842, the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, which ultimately defined the boundary, placed the 45th parallel along a line surveyed prior to the Revolution, in 1771-1774. But discrepancies remained, and still exist today.

The international boundary departs from the 45th parallel when it intersects Hall Stream, at Beecher Falls, Vermont, near its confluence with the Connecticut River. From there the border runs northward along the middle of Hall Stream, the northwesternmost headwater of the Connecticut River, until it intersects the height of land separating the watersheds of the Atlantic Ocean (the Connecticut River flows 360 miles south to its debouchment into Long Island Sound) and St. Lawrence River, to the north, as defined by the Treaty of Paris. This stretch of the border was also disputed by Britain and the United States which led to the establishment of the short-lived Republic of Indian Stream.

While the United States recognized Hall Stream and the height of land as the official border established by treaty, Great Britain claimed all territory – 282 square miles - west of the Connecticut River and above the 45th parallel. The few hardy settler families who lived in this disputed territory found themselves taxed and otherwise harassed by both the British and American authorities and chose to take their destiny into their own hands. On July 9, 1832, the independent minded "Streamers" established the Republic of Indian Stream with its own constitution and bill of rights, legislature, courts, army, and currency. Over the next three years they lived in relative peace and quiet interrupted only by an occasional incident to remind all concerned that the dispute between Britain and the United States remained unresolved. Finally, in 1835, the republic’s legislature voted to throw its lot with the United States through annexation. The area was occupied by the New Hampshire militia, and in January 1836 Great Britain relinquished its claim and U.S. jurisdiction was recognized a few months later. The territory of the former Indian Stream Republic became the town of Pittsburg in 1840, the largest township in the United States. As with the dispute over the exact location of the 45th parallel, this territorial dispute between Great Britain and the United States was also formally resolved by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842.

U.S. Route 3's original northern terminus was Colebrook, New Hampshire until 1926, but the highway was extended a few miles north to West Stewartstown, in 1928, and to the village of Pittsburg in 1937. From West Stewartstown, the highway and river turn in an generally northeastern direction, and arriving in Pittsburg, the river, now wholly in New Hampshire, flows through unbroken forests and past Lake Francis and the four Connecticut Lakes forming the primary headwaters of the Connecticut River. This is the Great North Woods in the truest sense. I am reminded of a scene in the 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate when Eugenie Rose Cheney (Janet Leigh) tells Major Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra) that she once spent a summer at a camp on Lake Francis. Marco, who was originally from New Hampshire, responded: "That’s pretty far north." You can’t go much farther north before you find yourself speaking French.

Since 1940, the highway has run all the way to the international border at the northern tip of the state, its only official port of entry to and from Canada. Prior to that an unimproved gravel road built by Canadian customs (although on American soil) ran the last 12 miles from Second Connecticut Lake. Over 8,500 people, including U.S. and Canadian politicians and bands from both countries, attended the dedication of a new U.S. customs house after it was erected at the border in September 1939. The Boston Post described it as the "most sightly port of entry east of Chicago." It was closed during the winter, however, when the gravel road was covered by several feet of snow and impassable until the spring thaw. This really was the end of the road, in more ways than one. Even today, with a well-paved highway all the way to the border, it is an unforgiving place to those who do not come prepared for the wilderness conditions and unpredictable weather.

About three miles south of the border there is a small wooden cross along the edge of the highway. Here, on May 10, 1940, the body of an unidentified Native American man was found. According to records in Chartierville, a small Québec village a few miles beyond the border, the man used an alias when he stayed at a hotel in that town and registered with the Canadian authorities on February 22, 1940. He set off for Pittsburg, New Hampshire ill-prepared for the minus zero temperatures and deep snow and more than likely died of exposure many miles from his destination. His body was later buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave in West Stewartstown and the cross, which has long been cared for by the U.S. customs agents stationed up the road, is often festooned with flowers and coins left by curious travelers. It is one of the few evidences of mankind along the final dozen miles of U.S. Route 3. Other than the paved highway this area has not changed much in the past 70 years. Just hills, forest, and water; certainly a lonely place to die without a name.

A couple of miles farther up the road, and just short of the border, one comes to Third Connecticut Lake. I first discovered this special place some 15 years ago, and I return here every chance I get during all seasons. It is a place I like to go to be alone. I have watched massive thunderstorms approach from the west over the height of land marking the border beyond the far shore of the lake. I have been there when an early January blizzard created whiteout conditions. Usually the only sounds I hear there are the haunting cries of a loon family carried along on a wilderness zephyr. Standing at the lake’s edge one can look north to the ridge saddle where U.S. Route 3 ends at the border, a solitary light marking the location of the customs station.

The northern terminus of U.S. Route 3 is perhaps one of the loneliest and isolated border crossings . . . at least on the American side. There are twin boundary monuments – even here there is an 18-inch discrepancy - a no man’s land - as to where the actual border is located. The granite for these and similar border pylons was mined west of here, in Beebe, Québec. In 1902, the International Boundary Commission chose granite to replace cast iron monuments from New York to Maine. The first monuments, beginning in 1843, were made of cast iron and there have been 18 different styles over the years. Stainless steel border monuments remain in use from Minnesota to Washington State and the Pacific Ocean, this due to the fact that the Americans prefer concrete (mined in Canada) while the Canadians prefer metal (manufactured in the USA). An American and Canadian flag fly nearby and an inspection station, one for each country, is situated on either side of the line. As a result of the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. has now installed a gate across the road which it can close at its discretion even though the border remains open 24/7. Otherwise, the border is marked only by the width and state of repair of the macadam roadway and by a 30-foot wide clear-cut swath through the surrounding woodland following the path of the border . . . the end of the Great North Woods and the American wilderness.

The Pittsburg customs station is a place to park to pick up a cell-phone tower down in the valley in Canada since there is no cell-phone service to speak of among the isolated hills and hallows on the U.S. side of the line. Here, too, hikers are free to wander the clear-cut swath to the top of a nearby hill, and in doing so they cross back and forth across the border a dozen times or more. The only physical evidence of the international boundary is the occasional metallic benchmarks anchored to rock ledges along the trail. Near the top of the hill known as Mount Prospect (elevation 2550 feet) the trail heads off into the woods on the American side, and from there it is just a short distance to Fourth Connecticut Lake, actually just a small pond, and the true head of the Connecticut River, the longest river in New England. "The Connecticut is not a majestic river," writes Walter Hard in his 1947 book about the river, part of "The Rivers of America" series. "It is, rather, a friendly stream, which invites intimacy and elicits affection." It’s why I find myself coming back here time and time again.

On the Canadian side, Québec Route 253 descends straight as an arrow down the long northern face of Magnetic Hill to Chartierville a few kilometers in the distance. A patchwork of dairy farms, cultivated fields and rolling hills stretch out to the horizon. "Geographically, culturally, economically, the difference between the two countries here on the New Hampshire-Québec line are astounding," Howard Frank Mosher writes in North Country: A Personal Journey (1997). "I don’t know this yet [he was just beginning his trip along the border when he passed through Pittsburg and wrote this], but in no place along the entire border, from Maine to the Pacific, will the contrast between the Canadian and the U.S. sides of the line be so abrupt and noticeable." Once over the line, there is no way to ignore the fact that you are in a new place. The Canadian customs agent greets you in French and all signs are posted in that language. Arriving in Chartierville, just a few kilometers over the border, you are hard pressed to find anyone who can speak a word of English. In fact, it is difficult to meet anyone who has been beyond that height of land to the south and the foreign country that lies beyond. Why go there? On the other side of the ridge in nothing but wilderness for miles. Montréal, Canada’s second largest city, and the largest French-speaking city after Paris, is less than two hours away to the west.

The border following the 45th parallel is an arbitrary line running west to east across the map. Here, however, on the rooftop of New Hampshire, the border follows a natural fault line between the Atlantic Ocean, to the south, and the St. Lawrence River, to the north, which also separates American wilderness from cultivated Canadian farmland. One may have the impression that this is a forgotten border . . . out of sight and out of mind. Not true. The woods are full of movement and other sensory devices tied to computers. Helicopters and aircraft patrol the skies as do unmanned drones. This border can be quickly sealed off, if it becomes necessary to do so. I try not to think too hard about this. I come up to this area to appreciate its isolation, its solitude, its end-of-the-road atmospherics. I walk down to the edge of Third Connecticut Lake. There is a freshening breeze as white clouds scud from Canada across the ridge into the United States and back into Canada, free as the wind guiding them on their journey. I listen to the loons ululating across the lake. There is no need to go any farther. I have arrived.

NEXT WEEK: A Place to Linger

One Step Over the Line - Part 1

This and next week’s essays focus literally on the "edge of America," in this case the northern border with Canada. Join me as I take a step over the line.
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The United States and Canada have shared the longest undefended border in the world - over 5000 miles compared with the more restricted border with Mexico at approximately 1900 miles. Jim Lynch, in his very recent novel Border Songs, refers to the northern US boundary as "the nonchalant border, a geographical handshake." But all this changed on the morning of September 11, 2001. Even so, there are less than one thousand US Border Patrol personnel stationed along the entire US-Canadian border. Contrast this with the almost 12,000 agents stationed along the border with Mexico. Nevertheless, the border with Canada has long been viewed as an almost "nonsensical" border. A few questions from the friendly agent and a polite wave to continue. No more!

I have long been fascinated by borders. "Interesting thing about borders. Before you cross them you must stand on a threshold," Joy E. Stock, the editor of Wild River Review recently wrote. "And at that threshold you have a decision to make: Do you go forward or do you turn back?" This threshold, and the choice whether to cross it, presents one with a rather unique dilemma when one visits the US-Canadian border at Derby Line, Vermont / Stanstead, Québec. Here the border runs directly through both communities, cutting across streets, yards, and even some buildings.

With a population of just over 3000, Stanstead, created in 1995 by the merger of three picturesque villages, Stanstead Plain, Rock Island and Beebe Plain, has a rich history and architectural heritage and is considered by some as one of the most picturesque towns in all of Québec. This area was settled shortly after the American Revolution by loyalists fleeing north into what would become an English-speaking enclave known as the Eastern Townships. Derby Line, on the American side, is much smaller, with a population hovering near 800. Main Street is wide and tree-lined with many large homes reminding the visitor of the community’s rich past. As it approaches the border, however, the road narrows through a rather worn-out downtown, the only activity focused on the US port of entry and customs station and a combination gas station and convenience store across the street. For most of their shared history, Derby Line and Rock Island (Stanstead) have behaved like a single community. The drinking water for both towns comes from wells in Canada which is then stored in a reservoir in the United States and distributed by Canadians. Same goes for sewage although I can’t say for certain who get’s the best end of the stick here. The realities of the 21st Century have changed all this . . . perhaps forever.

I first learned about Derby Line’s unique lot from my father when I was a kid; one of his army buddies from the war grew up there and I vowed that one day I would go there and see the place for myself. "How and when do we make the border crossings that change our lives?" Stock writes. "For, in many cases we have no choice, and cross them we must." That was the way I felt about Derby Line. Sally Ann and I finally had a chance during the summer of 1978 as we drove north to a vacation in Canada. We crossed the border there but did not have time to stop and explore. I have returned many times since, but last month the two of us had a chance to return together.

As we approached the border I was immediately struck by the increased security. Streets that use to run across the border with little or no fanfare (the only way you knew you were in one country or the other was whether the those red octagonal signs said "STOP" or "ARRÊT") are now marked with large signs telling drivers and pedestrians to report to the respective customs station if they cross the line, either intentionally or by mistake. So you need to be careful when you wander the streets or you might find yourself in a foreign country without realizing it. That is until a border patrol agent stops you and asked you whether you have reported to the customs station. And beginning June 1 you now need a passport to enter or reenter the United States. So you could end up SOL! Now there is even talk of stepping up security measures to permanently block or close-off unguarded streets shared by both communities, further dividing neighbors, family and friends.

Luckily, the rules are a bit different in instances where the international boundary cuts through buildings, or what is referred to hereabouts as "line houses." Residents or visitors to these buildings need not report if they cross the line once inside. This is only necessary if they exit that building to a different country than the one they entered the building from. This rule is nowhere more evident than at the Queen Anne Revival Haskell Free Library and Opera House, which sits squarely on the border. It was built here intentionally in 1901 and opened in 1904, a gift to the community by Mr. Carlos Haskell, a prominent local American businessman, and Martha Stewart Haskell, his Canadian-born wife. For over a century it has been used by residents from both sides of the border. The building’s two entrances, one leading into the library, and the other heading upstairs to the opera house, are located on the American side of the building, and Canadians must cross the border. Several security cameras operated by border patrol agents in both countries are posted on poles outside to monitor who goes in from where, and where they go when they leave. Library patrons are now warned not to park on the Canadian side of the building if they're American, or on the American side if they're Canadian. Play by the rules and you are fine.

We parked near the US customs house and walked the two blocks to the library. Main Street curves into Caswell Avenue which parallels the border. At the intersection of Caswell and Lee Street is a traditional granite border monument and a wide painted stripe across the street denoting the exact location of the international boundary. Here, too, are the warning signs and the security cameras. If there was once little fanfare in crossing the border to visit the library, there is no mistake where the border is today, or what will happen should you choose to ignore the warnings. Two green and white border patrol cars were parked at the intersection should someone try to push the envelope.

You enter the library while still on US soil, but once inside you are constantly reminded of the border by a black tape line on the floor. To your left is the Kenneth Baldwin International Reading Room where you can sit in one country while the person next to you is in another country. During the fall and winter of 1976, Howard Frank Mosher used to bring the manuscript of his novel Disappearances, a story about a Prohibition-era French-Canadian whisky smugglers, to the Haskell Library and purposefully chose a table straddling the border in the reading room. Proceed straightaway down the entrance hall and a small US and Canadian flag mark where a bookcase is divided by the border. Books on one side are in English, other side French. Arrive at the circulation desk and you are in Canada, Step around to the bathroom and you are back in the United States. Once you are inside you are free to move back and forth across the border at your leisure. The painted line does serve a practical purpose, however; it helps determine which portions of the building are covered by American or Canadian insurance policies and subjected to different building and fire and safety codes. The librarians are either citizens of the United States or Canada, or both . . . so-called "double-enders," – Canadians born in the US making them eligible for US citizenship – and probably bilingual.

One of the librarians on duty provided us with a quick history of the library before taking us upstairs so that we could see the opera house. Here, too, the black tape line indicates the border’s location. The entrance, lobby, and ticket office, and much of the theater seating lie within the United States. The stage and backstage areas are situated wholly within Canada. There is an urban myth that the Beatles came to the Haskell Opera House to meet and perform since legal problems kept members of the band from entering the United States. There is no truth to the story, but I would have loved to have had a ticket to that concert. Having crossed back and forth across the border at least two dozen times in the space of an hour, we finally left the library and walked back along Caswell Avenue. No need to stop at the customs house as we were never officially in Canada.

The Haskell Library and Opera House is not the only border anomaly in the area, but the other is fraught with problems. A couple miles to the west is the community of Beebe Plain, where the granite used to fabricate the international boundary monuments, is quarried. There the border literally runs down the southern edge of rue Canusa (Canada-USA). Those residing on the north side of the street are Canadian; those on the south side of the street are American. Although their yards and driveways lie within the United States, the street lies entirely within Canada. Each time the Americans leave their property by car they have to report to a border station at the end of the street - the US station if they are turning left, into the United States, or the Canadian station, if they are turning right, into Canada. Those on the Canadian side of the street need only report if they are entering the United States. Folks used to cross the street to visit. Now they must register with customs. Failure to do so can result in arrest and prosecution.

In addition to the peculiarities of the international border (different governments, cultures, currencies, systems of measurement), residents on each side of the line have to deal with another major problem that further divides their communities. Although the villages now making up Stanstead, as well as the rest of Eastern Townships, were once bastions of English language and culture in an otherwise French-speaking Québec, the population of l'Estrie (the Québécois designation for the Townships, has been predominantly francophone for more than a hundred years. Due to the more recent stringent language laws in Québec which recognize only French as the province’s official language, all signs are, and must be, in French, and this is the language heard most often on the street. Bilingualism is still relatively prevalent near the border, but less so the farther you travel north of the border.

There are some who have referred to the US-Canada boundary as an almost nonsensical border, one that separates two peoples who share a common language, culture, world view, and devotion to democracy. I am not sure this was ever true although it might look like that to some who have never really examined the differences up close. It has never been as simple as stepping across an arbitrary line drawn by some treaty. There is much more to it than that. There have always been differences, and they seem to be growing in magnitude and their consequences. This was never made so clear to me as during my recent visit to Derby Line, Vermont. The step over the line has become a much bigger one.
　
NEXT WEEK: One Step Over the Line - Part 2

Une Maudite Poutine

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Why is it that the subject of cheese always leads me down a whimsical path? I am already on record in this forum as being a confessed cheesehead (see the May 10 and May 17 postings), and my love of cheese extends to all types and manners of presentation. Probably one of my favorites is just plain old cheese curds, which you can’t find just anywhere in the United States. Not so, however, once you have crossed the border, especially in the heart of Québec dairy land in the Eastern Townships where they are readily available in grocery stores and the neighborhood dépanneur, or quick-stop market. Canada has never been a big consumer of cheese and I am not sure exactly why. Steven Jenkins, in his magisterial 500+ page Cheese Primer, dedicates only two pages to Canadian cheese, or the lack thereof. Most of Canada’s dairy cows are concentrated in Ontario and Québec, and this is where you do find some decent cheese . . . and cheese curds. More on that in a moment.

Having spent part of my youth in Wisconsin, I have grown up eating cheese curds like others eat popcorn or potato chips. They are best when they are fresh, eaten plain, right out of the bag. And they squeak when you eat them, so some refer to them as “squeaky cheese,” or just “squeaks.” Only fresh curds squeak. No two ways about it – you have to eat them when they are fresh.

I am not going to elaborate on the intricacies of cheesemaking. I will leave that to the experts. Suffice it to say, that the making of cheese all depends on what you do with the curds. They are good to eat just as they are, but the processing of curds can lead to a variety of tastes and textures. And the experts will tell you that the best tasting cheeses are produced from raw, or unpasteurized, milk. Curds contain casein, or milk protein, so they have to be good for you. Right?

Well, maybe a couple of intricacies of cheesemaking. You have to know where curds come from. So first off, you take the casein and introduce various bacteria to start the process. Then comes the addition of rennet (produced in the stomach lining of various animals) which encourages coagulation. My mouth is watering already. Once the mixture is allowed to set and the temperature raised a bit, the result is a nice, rubbery (and squeaky) unripened cheese curd. Some are fine cut, and others are course nuggets, depending on what type of cheese one is making. But I am not really interested in the final product here. I am interested in the curds, and only the curds. I recommend the coarse cut curds. Personal preference I guess. Put them in a bag; put them in the store as quickly as possible to guarantee their briny freshness. You buy them, you eat them right out of the bag. They squeak, and I am in cheese heaven.

For many years I thought cheese curds were all you needed to be happy. I was wrong. And so this tale takes on an international flavor as I discovered how cheese curds were taken to the next, and perhaps ultimate, level. I’m talking about “poutine.” Some say the word is derived from the English “pudding,” although I favor the argument that it is a québécois joual bastardization of the French “poutitè,” meaning a “hodge podge.” The conversation no longer revolves just around cheese curd. Now taters and gravy come into play.

There is an urban myth, which may actually be the truth of the matter, claiming that Fernand LaChance, who in the late 1950's ran a small restaurant called Le Lutin Qui Rit [The Laughing Elf], in the Eastern Townships of Québec, was the first person to mix together French fries, unripened cheese curds, and hot gravy and place them before Eddy Lanaisse, a paying customer. In fact, as the story goes, it was Lanaisse who suggested the ingredients in the first place. Having completed the concoction to Lanaisse’s specifications, LaChance confessed “ça va faire une maudite poutine” [what a bloody mess].” Many people who now sit down to their first serving of what is known simply as “poutine,” may heartily agree with him. Not so this cheesehead when he was first introduced to this Québécois delicacy a decade later, in a small casse croûte, or diner, in St.-Jean-sur-Richelieu, a town near Montréal, which also lays claim to the distinction of being the birthplace of poutine.

There is also some debate as to the true origins of poutine. There was another fellow over in Drummondville, Québec, who strongly asserted that he was the inventor and his obituary (as did LaChance’s) underscored his claim. Maybe it is a surprise that anyone at all takes credit for poutine; there are some who find it an embarrassment. Robert Bourassa, a former Québec premier once had other places he had to be when asked at a press conference if he ate poutine although I suspect he ate it from time to time whether he would fess up to it or not. Mitsou Gélinas, a well-known singer and actress in her native Québec, eating her first plate of poutine equated the experience with eating "that stuff that’s in your nose.”

Regardless of its origins, poutine is now a mainstay of Québécois cuisine. And it has also spread beyond the border to Québec, to other areas of Canada and even to the good ole USA. I have found it on the menu in such diverse locales as, Portland, Maine and in St. Petersburg, Florida. A friend in Halifax, Nova Scotia recently pointed out to me that poutine is available there for take-out delivery. Will wonders never cease? Some have added other ingredients – BBQ and marinara sauce – to make poutine their own. Martin Picard, Tony Bourdain’s Montréal frère de race (soul brother), serves “poutine au fois gras” at his landmark restaurant Au Pied de Cochon (at $23 Canadian). I will freely admit that I have tried it there . . . and it is wonderful! But I am not sure why this is all necessary. Fries, cheese curds and thick, dark gravy really says it all!

I was reintroduced to poutine several years ago when my family and I stopped for dinner in Errol, a small crossroads village in far northern New Hampshire. There was on the menu along with something billed as a “Mooseburger” which was actually just a large hamburger with melted cheese curds on top. My wife and son had never heard of poutine before and so I shared with them what I knew about it while enjoying the Mooseburger with a side order of poutine. The evening ended with us laughing about a scheme to open a nationwide chain of poutine palaces to introduce Americans to this wonderful Québécois treat.

I have never given up my predilection for cheese curds, and I eat them every chance I can score a bag or two (usually any time I find myself north of the 45th Parallel), but seldom do I have an opportunity to delight in “une maudite poutine.” Over the past year Americans have been talking and voting for change. Maybe it’s time to resurrect the idea of a “Stevie’s Poutine Palace” chain . Maybe this will give the American economy the kick in the pants it has been looking for . . . one bloody mess as a solution for another.

NEXT WEEK: One Step Over the Line - Part 1

Andrew's World

I am very pleased with all the wonderful comments about “Zwei Smarte Boys." My old friend Bob Goebel wrote me a very nice note, and Professor Dufner’s daughter, our longtime friend from those halcyon Tucson days, is coming to visit us this week here in Maryland.

For this week’s essay I return to Cushing, Maine. The photographs I took during a recent visit in late May. I make reference to two paintings and a drawing by Andrew Wyeth. For copyright reasons I am not able to reproduce them here, but I am providing hyperlinks so that you can view them online at the appropriate time.

[*] http://jssgallery.org/Other_Artists/Andrew_Wyeth/Christinas_World.htm

[**] http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/features/hoving/hoving5-18-4.asp

[***] http://books.google.com/books?id=55_8LDfJKgwC&pg=RA3-PA304&lpg=RA3-PA304&dq=Christina+Olson+funeral+wyeth&source=bl&ots=refU1aqeWK&sig=3dzcdcQlJVF8plzUO82s8JVDG3M&hl=en&ei=SyYoSs6pH5WltgfaibmuAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5#PRA3-PA303,M1

I apologize for the inconvenience, but I want the reader to be able to understand what I am writing about.
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To date I have dedicated two essays to the recent death of Andrew Wyeth who passed away in January at the age of 91. One describes a visit to Wyeth’s native Brandywine River Valley, in southeastern Pennsylvania, shortly after his death (“Remembering Andrew Wyeth,” on February 2), while the other recounts my road trip through Wyeth country along the midcoast of Maine the day after his death (“Beyond Snow Hill: A Few More Parting Words,” on February 9). I recently returned from yet another visit to Cushing, Maine and the Olson House, that old graying clapboard farmhouse above the St. George River, at Hathorne Point. Here Wyeth painted off and on for many years, and from an upstairs window he sketched the crippled Christina Olson in 1948 as she crawled home across the neighboring field after visiting her parents’ grave at the small family cemetery situated on a bluff above Maple Juice Cove. It is a moment in time captured in the now iconic Wyeth painting, “Christina’s World.”[*] “I just couldn’t stay away from there,” Wyeth would later say. “I’d always seem to gravitate back to the house . . . It was Maine.”

Although I had visited the cemetery before, I was not able to reach it on that cold January afternoon the day after Andrew Wyeth died. It and the surrounding fields were encased in deep snow and ice, and dusk was quickly descending. On this most recent visit, however, I found the Olson House and Hathorne Point much transformed since my wintertime visit. Spring along the Maine coast was approaching its zenith; the lilacs and apple trees were in full bloom and the fields and pastures were covered in yellow dandelions and white carpets of Queen Anne’s Lace. Once again Sally Ann and I wandered though the field where Christina made her tortured journey some sixty years earlier, down to the small, shaded cemetery where she lies buried next to her parents and her brother Alvardo. She and Al had lived their entire lives in that old house up the hill. The cemetery contains the graves of other members of the Olson family, as well as those of farming and sea-going families who have called this point of land home for generations, including the Hathorne family whose earliest members came to this area from Salem, Massachusetts in the mid-18th century. It was Hathornes who originally built and resided in the farmhouse, what Betsy Wyeth called that “weathered ship stranded on a hilltop.”

There was another important change since our last visit to the cemetery. Entering, one encounters a new gravestone - a simple, unpolished stone with the inscription “Andrew Wyeth 1917-2009.” I had always assumed that he would be buried in the family plot in Chadds Ford, near the farm where he lived during the winter and spring, or out on Benner Island, where the St. George River flows into the sea and where he has lived and painted for years. In accordance with his wishes, he was buried in this small and mostly forgotten cemetery. He could not be buried next to Christina as he would have liked; the Olson plot is situated in the rear of the cemetery and there is no space available there. So his final resting place is centrally located at the entrance and serves as a counterpoint to Christina’s. I cannot think of a more fitting place for him to be buried. It was here on Hathorne Point and in the surrounding Cushing countryside that he seemed most at home. These were the landscapes and people of so many of his paintings.

Edgar Allen Beem, an authority on Maine art who knew Wyeth for two decades, views “Christina’s World” as “essentially a surrogate self-portrait, a picture of Wyeth’s own defiant independence embodied in a deliberate outsider . . . a visual meditation on mortality.” He also views the large grassy fields in this and other works as Wyeth’s representation of N.C. Wyeth, his “larger than life father.” But Wyeth’s paintings of the Brandywine Valley and the coast of Maine also elicited a great deal of criticism from his contemporaries. Peter Schjeldahl, the art critic for The New Yorker, has long referred to Wyeth and his art as “hermetic” and with limited appeal.

You cannot look at Wyeth’s art without looking into the man himself. They were his life . . . and they also foretold his eventual death. I have previously written of the missing reveler in “Snow Hill,” and I am reminded of a Wyeth interview with Thomas Hoving back in 2000, when he referred to a large tempera painting, “Long Limb,” [***] which he had completed the previous year. It is minimalist in its representations, like so many of Wyeth’s paintings. There are two rolling hills covered with dried grasses, much like the grass we see in “Christina’s World,” and a single patch of melting snow. In the foreground there is a single long limb with a few dried leaves still clinging to it. “The patch of snow is my grave,” Wyeth told Hoving. “The withered leaves on the tree are my friends who passed away.” Wyeth was telling us he wanted to be surrounded by his friends when the final call came. He is certainly among friends on Hathorne Point.

When Christina Olson died in January 1968, Wyeth traveled from Pennsylvania to Maine to attend her funeral and burial. The day before the service he went alone out to the Olson House and wandered through the now empty house. It was snowing that day, and the silence was broken only by the workmen’s jackhammers as they broke up the frozen soil to open Christina’s grave. Before he left, Wyeth wandered down through the snow and ice to the cemetery (something I was reluctant to do when I visited the house the day after he died) and made a quick pencil sketch - “The Day Before Christina’s Funeral” - of the foreboding grave.** It is a rather stark drawing, but stunning in its simplicity as it captures the isolation and loneliness of the place. Boards had been placed over the open hole, a pile of dirt nearby with a few tombstones visible behind it. In the background the Olson house and barn appear much as they do in “Christina’s World,” the field she crawled across blanketed in snow. I am struck by one of the tombstones, the most prominent in the drawing as it is darker than the others and stands in a direct line between the open grave and the house on the hill. Another foretelling of Wyeth’s own death? It is the same shape and color as his own tombstone.

Every time I visit Hathorne Point I think of it in terms of Christina’s world. Andrew Wyeth only interpreted it and presented it to his audience. All this has changed now. Andrew Wyeth, long a visitor to these fields and waters, has finally come home. It is now Andrew’s World. Perhaps it always was.

NEXT WEEK: Une Maudite Poutine

Zwei Smarte Boys

I knew absolutely no one when I first arrived in Tucson in January 1974 to begin graduate studies at the University of Arizona. I had never been to the campus or the city before, having arranged my acceptance there entirely by letter and telephone. To say the very least, it was an eye-opening and humbling experience for me. I arrived early enough to have a few days to orient myself to my new surroundings and to figure out just what the hell I was thinking when I left behind everything and everyone I knew and struck off on some new adventure in the desert Southwest. Soon enough I found myself standing in lines around campus as I registered for classes and searched for a campus job (I landed one as a research assistant in the civil engineering department) in order to earn a little mad money for incidental expenses (bar tabs, bail, etc.). I also had my first face-to-face meeting with the chairperson of the Department of German; the individual who accepted me into the graduate program and who would ultimately hold my destiny in his hands.

Professor Max Dufner was born June 17, 1920, in Switzerland. Raised in southern Germany, he immigrated to the United States with his family as a young boy, settling in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He served as an interpreter in the US Army during the war, and eventually received his Ph.D. in German from the University of Illinois. He taught at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor for several years before moving his young family to Tucson where he became chairperson of the German Department. I knew him only by name and bona fides when I first walked into his small, book-filled office on the third floor of the Modern Language Building . . . my home for the next two and a half years.

He arose from behind his desk, everything on it neatly stacked and in its proper place, to shake my hand and invite me to be seated. A rather short man with neatly cropped and graying hair, horned-rimmed glasses, and sporting a shirt and tie encased in his buttoned-up tweed sports coat. He was quite proper and formal as he spoke with gravity about my course work over the coming semesters. Even so, his small, thin-lipped mouth evidenced an almost perpetual hint of a smile. I would come to know him as a man of towering intellect who over those early months left me intimidated more often than I might have admitted at the time. That said, I liked him from the very first moment I met him. I knew he would “ride me hard and put me up wet,” but I welcomed the challenge and the opportunities he offered me.

I took a number of courses under Professor Dufner - a rather grueling seminar in classical German literature during that first semester. This was followed by a two semester seminar during which my fellow graduate students and I attempted to dissect the intricacies of Goethe’s Faust (Parts I and II) line by line, and word by word. This remains one of my most rewarding academic experiences. Professor Dufner made literature come alive for me for the very first time. When I made my oral defense at the completion of my master’s program, Professor Dufner asked me a number of probing questions about Goethe’s masterpiece, and upon the completion of my response he turned to the others on my examination committee, a wide smile this time, and said “Herr Rogers kann Goethe.” [Mr. Rogers knows Goethe.] No higher praise in my book!

My Faust studies were perhaps eclipsed only by an independent study seminar on the writings of Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) which I attended along with Robert Goebel, a fellow comrade-in-arms and a true friend ever since. The two of us would attend weekly meetings in Professor Dufner’s office where he would grill us on minutiae pertaining to this most enigmatic and challenging German poet. At the end of this colloquium, Bob and I were invited to present the results of our independent research before the Palmenorden: Die Forschungsgemeinschaft des Germanistischen Instituts [The Order of the Palm: The Research Society of the Germanic Institute]. All the while Professor Dufner sat in the front row and gently nodded his head up and down, his tight-lipped smile telling us we had done our job well. Not much was said, but we knew.

The departmental faculty and graduate students would occasionally meet on Friday evenings for a traditional “Stammtisch.” This is not easily translated into English but it refers to a table in a bar or restaurant which is reserved for the same guests and usually by invitation only. Our “Stammtisch” was any table located on the outdoor patio of the Cushing Street Bar, an adobe structure dating back to 1860, when Tucson was just a small, dusty desert outpost. During our time it had become a popular watering hole in the historic Barrio Viejo, on the southern fringe of downtown. These evening gatherings offered an opportunity for professors and students . . . a small community of German scholars . . . to sit down over pitchers of beer and bring down the more formal classroom barriers. And since most of us graduate students were also teaching assistants, it taught us a valuable lesson – to remember where we came from, how we got to where we are, and what we hoped to pass on to our own students who look to us for knowledge and guidance.

Following our baptism under fire before the Palmenorden, Bob Goebel and I were feted at one of these gatherings on Cushing Street. We rode to the event with Professor Dufner, and not much more was said about our presentation. Instead, Professor Dufner told us about an article by Nina Gruenenberg in a recent edition of the German weekly newspaper, Die Zeit. The subject of the article was the rapid ascendency of two members of West Germany’s Social Democratic Party in the city halls of the old Hanseatic cities of Bremen and Hamburg. But Professor Dufner was not that concerned about this matter. Instead, he locked on the title of the article - “Zwei smarte Boys” - as a prime example of what he hated most . . . the corruption of the German language, the language of Goethe, Schiller, and Hölderlin, by what he referred to as “gemixte Pickles,” a rather obvious reference to the 1927 book of the same title in which Kurt M. Stein collected a selection of poems and other verse written in a mixture of German and English. This was nothing new to Bob and myself. You did not have to sit long in one of Professor Dufner’s classes to understand his deep and abiding love of his native language (although he spoke English without the slightest hint of a German accent). He instilled this same love into his students. One could only hope to understand the literature if one loved and respected the language in which it is written.

During our tenure at the University of Arizona, Bob and I probably had the closest relationship with Professor Dufner of any of our fellow graduate students, and he and I came to refer to him affectionately (but never to his face) as “Dumax,” or simply “the Du” (a clever, we thought, play on the usage of the familiar/intimate “you” in German). To this very day, Bob and I still refer to him as such for we can only think of him with respect and affection. He made us what we are today.

Bob left Tucson before I did to work on a kibbutz in Israel while pondering his future academic plans. He eventually went on to Rutgers where he received his Ph.D in German before joining the faculties of the Virginia Military Institute, and later James Madison where he remains today a tenured professor. My wife and I moved from Tucson in the summer of 1976, the day after America celebrated it’s bicentennial. We spent July 4th packing up our small shoe box apartment and watched the festivities on our cheap black and white television. That evening we wandered over to campus to watch the fireworks. We ran into the Du and his family and we sat together and he asked me about my plans as I prepared to resume my graduate studies at the University of Maryland at College Park. We had come a long way together since that first meeting in his office two and half years earlier. I no longer thought of him only as a professor and mentor. We had become “Kollegen” [colleagues]. But more importantly, we had become friends. During those two and a half years he always referred to me as Herr Rogers. That final evening in Tucson, he shook my hand and patted me on the shoulder and said “Good luck to you, Steve. You will do well.”

The Du and I exchanged letters during the years after I left Tucson, and I saw him on occasion. My work took me to Tucson a couple of times and I was a dinner guest in his home. His eldest daughter, who was an undergraduate student at the University of Arizona when I was there, became a good friend and we frequently saw her and her husband after they moved east. The Du and his family would come to visit and there were chances to resume our contacts.

The last time I would see him was around Christmas, in 1993. The Dufner family had gathered for the holidays at his daughter’s home and this afforded the opportunity for Bob Goebel and I to meet with our friend and mentor . . . the first time the three of us were together in almost 20 years. Sitting in that drawing room in Richmond, our beloved Dumax asked us whether we remembered that drive to the Cushing Street Bar, in the Spring of 1975, and that article in Die Zeit? It was then that he confided in us that he always considered Bob and me his “zwei smarte Boys;” he was always confident that we would both make something of ourselves in the community of German scholarship. Any remaining barriers between professor and student came down that day. We had become, in every sense of the word, “Kollegen.” My wife, a photographer who tries to be prepared for any and all “Kodak moments,” would from time to time carry potential photographic props. On this occasion it was a bag of cheap dime store sunglasses that would frequently show up in photographs of family and friends. That day, before it was time to part company, Sally Ann took some group pictures. As a lark, we brought out the sunglasses, and to my utter surprise, the Du agreed to a formal portrait with his zwei smarte Boys. This photograph says a thousand words I need not say here.

Professor Max Dufner passed away in Tucson just over a decade ago, on May 22, 1999. After his death, his daughter shared with me several things her father had said and written about me over the years; one being the letter of recommendation he wrote on my behalf when I applied to the University of Maryland. She also gave me a number of prized books from her father’s library - volumes of Schiller, Goethe and Hölderlin, many of them full of neatly written notes, the same volumes he used in the classes in which I was a student. They now have an honored place in my own library.

I think of my old friend often, and always fondly. I have, over the years, been blessed with many fathers . . . men who have conducted me through various stages of my life and provided support and guidance in my own explorations. Professor Dufner - the Du - stands close to the pinnacle of these fatherly figures. I miss him, and I will never forget him as long as I draw breath. This boy would not have turned out smart without him. Thanks, Max!

NEXT WEEK: Andrew’s World

Confessions of a Cheesehead - Part 2

Last week I provided some interesting historical tidbits about cheese and how I became a Cheesehead. This week I want to share a few more personal anecdotes. As far back as I can remember I have always been fond of cheese. Cheese was a staple at my house when I was growing up. Nothing fancy, mind you, but respectable cheeses. I’m not talking Velvetta and Cheese-Whiz (which I am happy to ascribe to French origins), but your generic cheddars and Swiss cheeses.

Cheese was always on the table at my maternal grandparents’ Michigan farmstead regardless of the meal being served. I remember it melted over toast at breakfast, and my grandmother applied generous slices to my sandwiches which went into my lunch pail before I headed off to Acorn School. A block of cheese was back on the table when supper was ready and I always had a slice or two with whatever was being served that night. My paternal grandparents lived in a small town not far from the farmstead, and they always served cheese with their meals. I also enjoyed sneaking into their refrigerator to snitch a few pieces in between meals. The candy was always out of reach and dealt out in small portions at certain times. But cheese . . . cheese was OK! Nothing wrong with eating cheese. It was good for you . . . helped make a body strong, a mind sharp. So I always associated cheese with my grandparents. Go visit them and you get to eat cheese pretty much any time you want.

The last time I saw my paternal grandparents was during the spring of 1974. I was in graduate school at the University of Arizona, and I spent my spring break with them in San Diego where they settled in their later years. At the end of my week-long visit (yes, cheese was on the table every day), my grandmother packed some sandwiches for me for the long trip back to Tucson. Each contained a generous slab of cheese. Right before I left, my grandfather stuffed a brown paper package into my pack. “I wanted to give you something I know you will like,” he said as he patted me on the shoulder. When I got back to my apartment later than night I opened the package and found a large wheel of Wisconsin cheddar. It was a final gift passed from one generation to another. They watched me grow up just as they watched me drive away that final time. They knew me. So it is not hard to understand how I became a Cheesehead. I grew up understanding that cheese was a part of every meal. It’s like baby’s milk in my book!

I have eaten cheeses of every description from around the world (more on this in a moment), but I must confess that my favorite cheese is one that has long tugged at my heartstrings for a variety of reasons. “Bon Brie” was once produced by a small independent cheesemaker in Mapleton, Wisconsin. We would frequently drive out there on weekends to pick up a five-pound block wrapped in red and silver foil. I loved the smell of the old barn where the cheese was produced and stored. I can smell it now as I sit here writing this. It never really goes away. When I went off to college in Florida, my parents would occasionally send me a care package, and it would always contain some Bon Brie Cheese from Mapleton, still wrapped in that familiar red and silver foil. During the year I lived and studied in Germany I received additional packages from home . . . all containing some “Bon Brie.” I received an entire five-pound block for Christmas, and my German friends could not understand why I would want cheese from America when there were so many fine cheeses to be had locally. If someone is not a Cheesehead, they can never hope to understand. “Bon Brie Cheese” evokes a lot of very special memories. Unfortunately, the cheesemaker in Mapleton went out of business a few years back. A black date on my calendar!

A couple of weeks ago I attended what has become for me an annual cheese extravaganza. Each spring for the past five or six years the National Geographic Society here in Washington, DC has sponsored an evening with Steven Jenkins, who is, without a doubt, America’s best known cheesemonger (and, in my book, an honorary Cheesehead). He shares his phenomenal knowledge of cheeses, the places they come from, and the people who produce them. The highlight of these events, however, is the opportunity to taste a wide variety of cheeses seldom seen on this side of the Big Pond due to their ephemeral nature and the cost to import them. Jenkins is always joined by master sommelier Joshua Wesson, cofounder of Best Cellars (and also an honorary Cheesehead), who presents, along with very witty repartee, an interesting selection of wines to compliment the cheeses. I recall another episode of “The West Wing” in which the still fictional Leo McGarry arrives at the White House before dawn only to complain how bad the traffic is around town. Ultimately, he is forced to detour around a police cordon at the National Geographic Society, on 16th Street, just a few blocks north of the White House. McGarry’s equally fictional deputy asks what possibly could be going on at the National Geographic Society to require a police cordon? The answer is very simple . . . the annual cheese extravaganza with Steven Jenkins and Joshua Wesson!

Writing this I suddenly feel very hungry. I think I will head down to the kitchen and prepare a cheeseboard to be served with a nice Pinot Grigio. Tonight I imagine I will dream of cheese. It won’t be the first time, and it certainly won’t be the last. It’s in my blood. In the meantime I will leave you with an interesting cheese fact which you can ponder at your discretion: Did you know that what appears to be the remains of some sort of cheese was once discovered in Egyptian tombs over 4,000 years old? And archeologists tell us that cheese was being made from cow and goat milk in Mesopotamia before 6000 BC! You can look it up!

NEXT WEEK: I will be on a well-deserved hiatus until June 7 when I return with “Zwei Smarte Boys,” a tribute to a good friend and mentor. Until then I am off on another road trip through northern New England and Québec, digging up new tales and random thoughts from the Edge of America and beyond.