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| Note: All of Day 3's photos are actual photos (no ghosts of Melville), if any altering was done it was to better represent what was already there.
Monday was the day we chose to hit the bluest ocean of the Atlantic. It's been three years since I've walked her shores. Every time my family does make it out though, we take a picture in from of Motif No. 1, an extremely photogenic building. Don't ask me why but local lore has it that it's the most photographed building in the state. More on Rockport later.
[Red Skiff]
Most importantly this was the day that we ate at Flav's Red Skiff, where I ordered their fish cake and beans. Let me tell you not only did the waitress think they were the best item on the menu, Yankee Magazine has declared them the best fish cakes in New England. I would tend to agree.
After lunch we stopped by the house of Aunt Jan and Uncle Wally. Over the last three years they have been in the process of developing some sea-side property. Absolutely gorgeous. People, I've seen heaven and it looks a lot like a house in the rocky coves of Cape Ann. Let's start you off with the view from the family room. Then I'll take you on the nickel tour of the inside.
Complete with surround sound.
Nicest kitchen you ever saw.
You know, for breakfast.
Downstairs office, this might be the only room other than the restrooms without an ocean view.
Master bedroom.
Guest bedroom
Chairs in the guest room so you can watch the thunderstorms in comfort.
Upstairs office through a mirror.
Office decoration.
Upstairs game room with a sign above the door reading, "The Salty Dog Tavern."
It was really a great house with genius architecture, sharp design sense, and excellent sound system. What really slays me is the backyard. Come on, let's take a look.
This picture was stitched together from five photos of the cove. I just felt so bad for you guys not being able to take in the whole view at once, but hey, I do what I can. I'm only no the laptop so, it's not my best photoshopping.
This guy was the best dog ever. His name is McGregor also known as Squirrel, and he kept up with me on the rocks. Sure he'd get himself stuck every once in a while, but this guy had some real moves.
After running around by the ocean for a while with the dog and a nice, long sit down in the sea breeze the family went to back into Rockport for some saltwater taffy.
Welcome to Bear Skin Neck, named so because of the actions of one Ebenezer Babson. While on the small peninsula, which was then Sandy Bay, Babson encountered a large bear. So, bringing his knife to the ready he engaged the beast in mortal combat, skinned it, and set the hide by the shore. It was the lobstermen of the cape, gathering their traps nearby that renamed the area, and henceforth the world has known Bear Skin Neck.
Little note of interest, I've seen the knife in the Rockport museum, it was about as long as my forearm.
Look closely to see the man battling the beast.
It's been a tradition that I climb out on the breakwater every time I visit. I meant to take a photo of it, but there is a sign that read "Pass this point at your own risk," it always makes me feel cooler than I am.
Today I leave you with this man. Roy Moore of Roy Moore's Lobster Pool. When I asked him for his photo, he grabbed a nearby broom handle and asked, "With or without the stick?"
"With please."
*click*
"Alrighty, have a nice day, and hey," he said, "play nice."
"Will do sir... will do."
-Latino | | |
| Day 2 of the trip was still a lot of reading in the car, though I haven't quite found old Zeke as entertaining as he was the other day. Once we were into Massachusetts we set course for the Birkshires and decided to pop in and pay Arrowhead a visit, which was the residence of one Herman Meville, I guess houses used to have names or something. I tried to ask Herm about it, but he wasn't very talkative that day.
The works Melville wrote at Arrowhead included Moby-Dick, Pierre, The Confidence-Man, Israel Potter, The Piazza Tales, and such short stories as "I and My Chimney,"Â "Benito Cereno,"Â "Bartleby the Scrivener,"Â and "The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids."Â
Arrowhead influenced him greatly in his writing. The view of Mount Greylock from his study window, the one that brought him to Arrowhead, was said to be his inspiration for the white whale in Moby-Dick. He dedicated his next novel, Pierre, to Mount Greylock. His short story, "The Piazza," Â begins at Arrowhead and takes a magical journey to the mountain.
Afterwards we all were a little hungry so we stopped in Stockbridge, made famous by artist/illustrater Norman Rockwell. If you'll observe the image above, Rockwell's "Home for Christmas" you'll see the Red Lion Inn, which is where I partook of some lovely pub style chili.
Dad was tickled to announce the Inn had be in business since 1773; thus the hearth they had seated us next to had been warming travelers before the signing of the Declaration of Independence was even a twinkle in Thomas Jefferson's eye. Dad ordered a Sam Adams Octoberfest, Mom's nursing the Harpoon IPA and the Diet Coke with the lemon would be mine; good thing I follow the lifestyle contract or I might be enjoying myself... closey.
"Come on in it's round the back, just a half a mile from the railroad track." For any Arlo Guthrie fans, this is also the Stockbridge of "Alice's Restaurant" fame. Unfortunately it has been closed for some time.
I leave you with this gentlemen, who was, and I kid you not, walking up and down Main Street Stockbridge for at least two hours smoking his pipe. Honestly he was just too perfect a photo to pass up.
-Latino | | |
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So it's the first day of the road trip, and I'm watching Ocean's 12 in a "Microtel" prepping for the photoblog. Today was just driving, or riding rather. My parents drove and I read the first hundred pages to Catcher in the Rye and slept. Not a bad day and not a bad book.
The copy I'm reading was purchased at a Halfpriced Bookstore, so it's not in the best condition and there are underlines and notes in the margins. Which I highly recommend, especially if the name "Zeke" is scrawled on the inside cover. This guy is a real literary genius. He's pretty much underlined all the important parts for me. So I decided to write down all the excerpts that Z commented on and render unto the internet: The Catcher in the Rye according to Zeke. This will probably only be funny if you've read it before, or feel free to hop on down to your library and follow along we me and old Zeke, he's really a prince.
[immediate sense of personality and familiarity]
[black ink = my notes]
"Over it! Holden, he's behaving like a perfect--I don't know what..."
[Holden Caulfield]
"But if you thought about him just enough and not too much, you could figure it out that he wasn't doing too bad for himself. For instance, one Sunday when some other guys and I were over there for hot chocolate, he showed us this old beat-up Navajo blanket that he and Mrs. Spencer'd bought off some Indian in Yellowstone Park. You could tell old Spencer'd got a big bang out of buying it. That's what I mean. You take somebody old as hell, like old Spencer, and they can get a big bang out of buying a blanket."
[pleasure in the common and simple (a sign of senility or wisdom?)]
"grippe"
[influenza]
"Grand. There's a word I really hate. It's a phony. I could puke every time I hear it."
[dubious of any real goodness]
"One of the biggest reason I left Elkton Hills was because I was surrounded by phonies"
[tired of fake people]
"I'll be all right, I'm just going through a phase right now. Everybody goes through phases and all, don't they?"
[confident his problem isn't really a problem]
"I hope not. I hope to hell not. I'd never yell 'Good luck!' at anybody. It sounds terrible, when you think about."
[Holden is unsatisfied with humanity to the point that he has even given up on himself.]
"I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful."
[he acknowledges his problems but refuses to change]
"you could get member of your family buried for about five buck apiece. You should see old Ossenburger. He probably just shoves them in a sack and dumps them in the river."
[Skeptical of any virtue]
"made a speech that lasted about ten hours."
[erag. of negativity]
"He told us we should always pray to God--talk to Him and all--wherever we were. He told us we ought to think of Jesus as our buddy and all. He said he talked to Jesus all the time. Even when he was driving his car. That killed me. I can just see the big phony bastard shifting into first gear and asking Jesus to send him a few more stiffs."
[skeptical]
"Yeah. She wouldn't move any of her kings. What she'd do, when she'd get a king, she wouldn't move it. She'd just leave it in the back row. She'd get them lined up in the back row. Then she'd never use them. She just liked the way they looked when they were all in the back row."
[love hinted at by focus on minute details]
"I oughta go down and at least say hello to her,"
[all thought, no action!]
"He's dead now. He got leukemia and died when we were up in Maine, on July 18, 1946. You'd have liked him. He was two years younger than I was, but he was about fifty times as intelligent."
[Someone he loved and respected, he lost, and his hope that people could be like him.]
"I told him he thought he could give the time to anybody he felt like. I told him he didn't even care if a girl kept all her kings in the back row or not, and the reason he didn't care was because he was a goddam stupid moron."
[cares for who she is]
"I couldn't find my goddam hunting hat anywhere. Finally I found it. It was under the bed. I put it on, and turned the old peak around to the back, the way I liked it, and then I went over and took a look at my stupid face in the mirror."
[focus on the unimportant]
"Old Stradlater didn't even wake up,"
[his leaving goes unnoticed]
"Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad."
[can't accept gifts b/c he's not good enough for them]
"I stood for a while next to the stairs and took a last look down the goddam corridor. I was sort of crying. I don't know why."
[recognizes that there is still some good]
"Women kill me. They really do. I don't mean I'm over sexed or anything like that--although I am quite sexy. I just like them, I mean. They're always leaving their goddam bags out in the middle of the aisle."
[finds comfort in women]
"She wished me a lot of luck with the operation and all. She kept calling me Rudolf. Then she invited me to visit Ernie during the summer, at Gloucester, Massachusetts. She said their house was right on the beach, and they had a tennis court and all, but I just thanked her and told her I was goin to South America with my grandmother."
[embarrassed of who he is, and afraid of corrupt people, he becomes someone he isn't to avoid being hurt.]
"I was too depressed to care whether I had a good view or not."
[too depressed to enjoy life]
"The only reason I didn't do it was because I wasn't in the mood. If you're not in the mood, you can't do that stuff right."
[too depressed to embrace the goodness of life]
"Her name was Faith Cavendish"
[irony]
"You never saw a little kid so pretty and smart in your whole life. She's really smart. I mean she's had all A's ever since she started school. As a matter of fact, I'm the only dumb one in the family."
[grew up with people he wishes he could be] | | |
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Tock Tick v.2 coming soon | | |
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Today I was 17:
The chill of a Texas eve in early spring was welcome. Just about anything slides right off your back when you're gentle bobbing up and down on a horse. Yep, there I was in the Lone Star State riding my stead off into the sunset. I didn't bring a coat, didn't think I'd need one on a dude ranch, so yeah I was cold. But like I said, I didn't' mind.
Scooter was his name, and he was better than I was and he knew it. A horse, like all of God's animals were made to thrive in creation; he was at home, I was the stranger from out of town, and he treated me as such. Couldn't blame him either. About a year later I would later read a book by Monty Roberts, "The Man Who Talks to Horses." I'd learn then that horses actually communicate through the use of a quite sophisticated language of signs (over 100 have been recognized). I was probably one of about a hundred bipeds who curse this creatures back sending all kinds of mix messages. Humans can be such dumb animals sometimes.
So it was really natural that Scooter didn't like me much, ignorant savage that I was; but we did have some kicks together, and a conversation I would never forget. As the sun sank lower into the earth I started to go slower, until I could hold the rest of the group I was traveling with in my hand. It was then that I finally ran out of Johnny Cash songs to sing and realized a couple of the staff from the ranch were riding up next to me. Though this was a dude ranch, as the two men rode up to my side I accepted them as real cowboys. Being the outgoing and eager listener that I am, I started up a conversation.
I spoke of many things with my trail weathered companions, most of which I don't recall. However, there was one bit of speech that I do remember; somehow we got on the subject of what makes a real cowboy.
I wish I could tell you I remember his name but I don’t; so we’ll call him Wyatt. Wyatt looked of half Latino half Caucasian background, the tones of a Mexican with the features of an American; in all actuality not too outstanding in the looks department, but not bad either (though I’m no beauty prize winner in as much). Anyways, Wyatt looked ahead when he was talking to me, it was dark and such pointless niceties as eye contact were lost on a man such as this. He told me there are three kinds of cowboys.
First there are your “drugstore” band cowboys. These fellas you’ll find live’n in the cities or suburbs, they’ll look like a cowboy, sound like a cowboy, but have never actually been on the back of a horse.
Next we “actors,” they can pull it off a little better because they’ve rode around a little bit, might even own a horse, could even rope a little bit. But if you ask them to do anything with a cow, they don’t one which end is which. To this Wyatt added, “I hate these guys.”
Then there’s the third kinda cowboy. I asked him what the third kind of cowboy was, he said, “He’s like me, he’s lost in the city and hasn’t been there in about 15 years.”
Wyatt was a good man, he just seemed to accept me as he knew me; not really interested in getting to know me better, but just let me be as I was. I liked this.
So it goes, | | |
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