Knowing Perfect When You Have It.

I had a perfect weekend. And I knew it at the time.

Best friends, beautiful weather, long hikes, tooling around in the '28 Model A, cafe time, good food and drink, naps, girl talk, movie night.

Picnics: one wooded, one at the beach. Lobster and champagne on the porch at sunset.

It was summer distilled into the purest 54 hours I am likely to see in '09. I am open to having even better times, I am simply saying that this- this was a large dose of divinity for which I am unfailingly grateful. When I look back on my summer, I will be able to say "hot damn, I got a chance to thoroughly enjoy it, in the moment."

I may have got a sunburn on my knees, but this just means I won't have to rouge 'em when I roll my stockings down.

Well, Sweet Jesus, What's the Fourth Without A Little Red?

Continuing tales of harrowing Island life:

The Fourth of July just isn't my bag. And after the fire, I wasn't really feeling pip pip and full of patriotic pep. I've got a guilt hangover, seeing as I am partially responsible for the tank truck not being full (refilling it had been assigned to me and Marshall). Yes, the fire department salvaged more of the house than expected, but even more could have been saved if we'd had high flow from the get-go.

I'm also an introvert in a state of recovery; it'd been over two weeks of living with an intense extrovert and a crew of workers knocking about the house, as well as the influx of summer people on the island. Like Garbo, I just vanted to be alone.

I did perch myself on the new railings of the porch, coffee in hand, to watch the parade go by. It took approximately five minutes. Brevity is the soul of wit.

I spent the rest of the day puttering and greedily grasping at the sunshine: I did laundry so I could finally use my new laundry line (old school spinning square variety, so you can hide your dainties on the inner lines, and cloak them with less personal articles on the outer lines); I also hoped to dry out my mouldering soul by sunbathing; I made pies. All along, I was dreading the fact I would have to go out to party simply to keep up appearances.

At long last, it was time to head out, the pies had cooled and I could no longer put off my social obligations. I called for a ride, and the guy who arrived to escort me was one I had not seen since the summer before, when he had stumbled drunkenly into my darkened house, up my stairs, and into my room, because he wanted to continue the evening's conversation. On the brief drive over, he noted that one of the things I'd said to him last summer stuck- "you know, you could choose to be awesome." Two months ago he decided to stop drinking.

He also brought me up to speed on what I had missed at the party; who was there, what had gone on. It was about 6:30 at this point, and a friend he'd brought out had already sliced a good chunk of his own thumb off while cutting a lemon. When it became apparent that the bleeding wasn't going to stop readily, they'd given him a couple of options: they could call the EMT, or they could cauterize it.

It's the island.

So they cleaned a poker up, heated it with a blow torch, gave him rope to bite on, and three of them held him down.

Yep.

When I got there, he didn't have a lot of color, but the alcohol they deemed it fair to give him seemed to have dimmed the pain. Over the course of the evening he looked less and less waxy. The EMT did eventually migrate to the party, and upon examining the injury, pulled the self-appointed medics aside to tell them "you didn't even cauterize it, you just burnt the shit out of it! But it'll be fine if he just keeps it clean."

When it got dark and fireworks started to go off, a bunch of us headed up to the top of the house, where there's a small platform on the peak, which affords just about a 360 degree view- there are no handy stairs to the platform (interior or exterior), but there are ropes rigged to help a person scale to the ridgepole, once you've climbed off the second floor deck and out onto the roof.

Yeah, I am afraid of heights, but there was a jerry-rigged rope. A girl's got to have a sense of adventure. And I got to watch fireworks from the following towns: Stonington, Someplace not Blue Hill But In That Vicinity, Swan's Island, MDI, Vinalhaven, Camden, and other less obvious hamlets. There were of course also the fire works on the Island being shot off by my 13 year old former student.

After the fire works were over, I scrambled back down, recovered my beer, and rejoined the party. It was not too long after, when the next injury walked through the door, this man bleeding from a head wound. We're really not a vicious people, just an accident prone people (though I would point out that no one was injured in the shimmying up and down the roof). Two guys had been wrasslin' outside, and Linc lacerated his scalp on a rock. It was just as well that the EMT had moved to our party.

By eleven I extricated myself, and my timing was pretty impeccable- three whole beers into the night, I was tipy enough to be singing House of the Rising Sun, but sober enough to be singing it under my breath. The moon was nearly full, the sky had yet to cloud over with rain. It was the first moonlit walk I'd had in a long time, June not being a terribly cooperative month in terms of allowing us to see stars, planets, and satellites.

This morning I was up bright an early to take out trash, and was just deliberating whether or not to go to the cafe, when my early-morning cafe buddy drove by in his flatbed Model T: I threw up my bedroom window sash, leaned out and yelled his name- his hearing must be good, because by the time I'd grabbed my wallet, slipped into sandals, and skipped down stairs, he'd backed into my driveway.

So it was that I found myself in a bouyant mood on this sunlit fifth of July, double fisting coffee and hot cocoa, and eating doughnuts fresh from the fryolator.

On Fire

Thursday night I hosted the prospective new fellow and her husband- as the evening unfolded, it looked like they were going to have a good sampling of what life here is like- dinner, bookclub, volleyball, morning coffee at the cafe. They'd see some faces, and get a sense of the place. After volleyball, we chatted a while in the living room, until realizing it was heading up on 11pm, we retired for the night, with the plan to head out the door to Black Dinah at 7:15 to catch the first batch of doughnuts straight from the fat.

As I went to bed, I saw the first flashes of lightening from across the bay- insistent, bright, and a ways off. A lightening lover, I pulled my curtains back, leaving them open to the show, despite the fact that with my poor vision I would see nothing distinct. It had been a long day, but sleep was slow in coming, and as my mind churned the storm closed in, until it seemed right on top of us- a bolt would blind, and then immediately a crash of thunder would shake the house. Before I finally slipped to sleep in the midst of the crisis, I said my prayers for the island, that we wouldn't lose our civic building like Swan's Island did last year, that we wouldn't lose the church or school, that...

and finally I blacked out.

Only to wake to the ringing of my phone through the pitch black of my bedroom. The sun comes up early, very early, so this was the dead of night.

"Morgan, you're the only one who's answered the phone- the Cogan's house is on fire!"

I looked out my window and down the street toward the school, and sure enough, there was a huge orange glow, flames through the roof.

Not fully awake, I ran downstairs to the phone cabinet, pulled out the volunteer fire department phone tree, and attempted to make sense of it, picked a number, and called. Got the machine.

"Diane, this is Morgan, if you hear this, get up- the Cogan's new house is on fire."

And then, common sense kicked in, and I dialed 911, remembering that important people on island did finally have pagers. Hopefully even charged, turned on, and in earshot. Our dispatch goes through Rockland, and the phone call was very brief: structure fire, on Isle au Haut, right across from the fire station; an unoccupied building that was being renovated.

After calling it in, I got dressed, knocked on the door to the master bedroom, and let the prospective Fellow and her fellow know there was a fire, and that probably it would be all hands on deck, if they were willing to get dressed and pitch in as needed.

People were already arriving when I got there, and the chaos of poor coordination ensued. Pump trucks left untouched wouldn't start and had to be jumped; the tank truck had been emptied but not refilled; none of us had met or trained in a year. The fire chief lives at the other end of the island, and wasn't able to arrive until well into the effort.

A fire on an isolated island isn't as frightening as a fire on a boat, but man it is close. Everyone who arrived at the scene and saw the flames knew it was going to burn to the ground, and that we would be lucky to make sure it didn't spread.

Happily isolated island communities do tend to contain some fairly competant people- so in time (and not so much as it seemed), the effort was pulled together- people who knew what they were doing took charge, and people who didn't stayed out of the way until called on to run errands or hold/carry hose. Despite the difficulties in starting up, the system finally worked- and we pumped water from the stream next to the school into our collapsable 3,000 gallon holding pool; from there it went through the pump truck and fed three 1.5" firehoses. Once we had consistant pressure, and all three hoses, things began to look more hopeful. The wind had died down. The lightening had struck the upstairs and the fire was literally burning down- a slow process. I'd made the 911 call at about 3:30- by 6:30 the fire was under control; by 10:30 the construction crew (who ended up fighting the fire that was consuming their work) began to go in to salvage their tools. While badly burnt, much of the house was still standing.

From what I have heard, the comment thread on the BDN is full of upset mainland firefighters, chastising our guys for fighting with inadequate (read: nonexistant) personal protection equipment; for entering the building while it still smoldered; for venting the roof.

I suspect none of them have lived year round on an unbridged island. We don't have a lot in the way of services, equipment, or specific training. Most everything comes down to a certain amount of common sense and calculated risk taking. In a perfect world, we'd have time to properly organize the department (the nomination for fire chief at town meeting would not be met with a rousing choris of "not it!!!"), we'd have the tanker filled, and the trucks would be run on a weekly basis.

The island is not perfect.

But we got by, and now we know- pretty damned specifically- how we need to get better.

As to the prospective Fellow and her husband, time will tell how they responded to this literal trial by fire.





Photo by John Blaisdell, former resident of the house.

Driving Lessons

Really, I only started to drive when I moved to the island. Okay. Maybe I generally don't have a car while I live here. But when I have a car (that runs), I have a fun car. My intro to driving on IAH was in what is loosely considered to be "my" car- a red VW Golf from the early 1980s. It features an plein-air hatchback, and brakes that will go so far as to slow the car down until friction and gravity finally stop it. My lessons on how to drive a standard transmission car were minimal, and I only got a few chances to stall it in front of an audience before it stopped working. And when it refused to start, it did not do it in the privacy of my driveway, it refused in the store's parking lot. That was my first experience getting someone to tow me on the island. It would not be my last.

With the Golf down, Alison and I switched over to Marshall's Jeep Willy- I drove it a few times, but hardly became proficient, and the whole double-clutch thing just eluded me all together. Alison's truck (Stella, 1980-2009, RIP) stood us in good enough stead for the winter. Come spring, I had bribed Ed White with sweets, and he got around to fixing the VW so she'd run. And then the learning began.

First there was the whole smooth transition between clutch and accelerator. Then there was downshifting. The latter did not come clear to me until one night of... lowered inhibitions... when I drove a friend home, and he ended up giving me a good lesson on how to drive my finicky-transmissioned Golf. From there, it was smooth sailing, and I only stalled on occasions when the car felt I needed some humbling. And it got a flat to teach me about sending tires off-island for patching. Then this summer the same tire went flat again to teach me how to purloin parts from other junkers, and how to change the tire my own damned self.

This is where Marshall, the owner of my house has come in handy. Because the car itself did not teach me how to use a jack, and the whole procedure of tire changing. Marshall did that. And to be fair and give credit where credit is due, a neighbor stopped his car in the middle of the road to supervise/lend his encouragement. So far the tire-changing feat of June '09 has been one of the great highlights of the '09 summer, though I suspect much of its status is due to the fact it was probably the only sunny day in the entire month of June. So I fixed the tire.

Feel the empowerment.

Not that the car would start. At that time.

Marshall hooked the battery up to a charger, and the car was not at all impressed. Another person (the Tall, for those readers who remember as far back as the autumn) stopped to check out the progress, or ultimately, lack thereof.

We claimed victory for the tire, admitted defeat regarding the engine, then headed back to the house for dinner.

I took a chance after volleyball that evening, hopped in, and she actually turned over: I was able to limp her from the school into my driveway. There she could be broken-down with dignity.

By this time, Marshall had his Model A running. Not really needing a second vehicle, there was no rush to fix the VW (money flowing, as it is, to the former mainland Jeep which I'm getting fixed up to be barged out as my island car). Marshall could drive where he chose, I could walk. All good. I was hoping he'd get the Willy running (so I could drive again), but the necessary Jeep parts had gone on the burn pile, an oversight on the part of Father William.

Now, I've mentioned that Marshall is a teacher, yes? This means that really, we could only go out in the Model A so many times before he was insisting I learn to drive it. After a while, and some questions, I had gotten vaguely used to the choke, which also controls the "mix" and the idea of a throttle on the right of the steering column, the spark to the left, and the fact that there's a starter that you push with your foot.

What one was to do with any or all of those was still frightening, but after Marshall cleaned the spark plugs, one's intuitive grasp of exactly how to fine-tune each of these in relation to the others became less important. And so I learned to drive.

As we packed up the truck last Wednesday, he reminded me that everything on the truck could be replaced, and that I was not to worry. Further more, he expected stories when he got back. Well, he got to have a story before he left.

Most people on the East coast are aware that basically the entire month of June was just miserable: when it wasn't raining, it was fogging up in preparation to rain. To keep everything in the truck bed dry, Marshall loosely threw a tarp over the pile. The tarp was a fine idea, the decision not to secure it was somewhat less fine. When we got to the landing, I was feeling comparatively good about starting the truck and driving, but was nervous about the inaugural trip backing down the dock.

It turned out I was nervous for good reason. At first it was just difficult to see over his stuff, and between trying to maneuver myself so I could see where I was going (the rearview is not adjustable and not set for someone of my stature- the single side mirror is cracked and hangs loose) and attempting to control a truck with no power steering, I was having a tough time of it.

Then the tarp flew up over the rear windshield, leaving me completely blind.

So I managed to get the truck to stop.

And really my timing was impeccable. The rear fender was just brushing a kiss on the wooden rail.

There was, blessedly and for once, not a large audience of adults- thank god Marshall was taking his own boat and not the mailboat. Once we had deposited his belongings on the float, and I had viciously stowed away the offending tarp, we said our goodbyes- when he once again reminded me of how anything and everything on the truck was replaceable- and I started up the truck without a hitch, and drove home, reversing flawlessly up the drive.

Obviously I did share the story with the greater island, and as always people were pretty kind, and just told me it wouldn't be the first time a person lost a truck off the dock. Apparently some years ago, Al Gordon left Billy Barter's truck in gear up in the parking lot, and it slowly found its way down the dock and off the side. It flipped in the air, and landed tires down. Billy was watching the whole process from his boat and was reduced to hysterical guffawing. According to reports, Al was just hysterical.