It seems that June and July have been consumed with perpetual motion: driving, packing, unpacking, and moving items to the car, then moving the car! The last two weeks of June we visited Portland, Me., Halifax, N.S., with stops in the rain at the “Ovens” and Peggy’s cove on the way thereto; then Baddeck, N. S. in the area designated as Cape Breton; from which we circled the entire peninsula or cape (183 miles) but the driving for that leg we let others do. The rest of N.S. was a ride down its west coast after stops at Antigonish (not to be confused with Ingonish on Cape Breton), and Wolfville, with an end at our port of entry Yarmouth. We sailed back to
Portland arriving for an overnight stay before driving down the coast to Plymouth, Mass. We closed the month of June, including June’s birthday on the 29th in the town of the “Rock”, Plymouth Rock that is.
On that birthday day (the number of which will be left unreported) we went to watch the Whales in the Stellwagen Bank. The area is located in Massachusetts Bay and is approximately 26 miles long and 6 miles wide. It is between the Capes Cod and Ann. The Stellwagen Bank functions as “whale restaurant”. Due to the contours of the ocean bottom and the action of the water currents, large quantities of plankton collect in the water on and around the bank. Plankton, single celled plants and animals, are the first step in all ocean food webs. Plankton is fed upon by small fish, which in turn becomes food for whales.
I went as the “doubting Thomas” and became a believer. We saw several Finbacks cavorting in the sea (if a 60 to 70 foot long mammal of some 50+ tons could be said to “cavort”!) We also saw Minkes, which are whales of 20 to30 feet in length and run around a mere 10 tons! It was what June wished for her birthday and she got her birthday wish plus a beautiful day on the water. We had a “whale of a time”. (Groans permitted!) The twins and I agreed that the whales knowing Grandmom was coming decided they better show up or get you know what!! So they did and we, the boat crew and some 40 passengers, stayed an extra hour to watch them do what they do best to celebrate Grandma’s day.
The day prior to this grand celebration we visited the Mayflower II and the Pilgrim Plantation outside the town. They both have added realism to the costume by the actor, or portrayer, speaking only in “eld” English, as spoken in the 1600’s. For example, I asked one of the sailors what he was eating – it looked like a thick gray hard cookie, which we might call” hardtack”. He said” a biscuit” at about the same time I asked if it was “hardtack” He looked at me quizzically and repeated the word, “hardtack, hmm…that’s when the sail is caught in the wind and we must work with it…or something like that I’d say…” I thought how apt, the only “tack” people in the 1600 would know would be one referring to sailing, not anything near our nails or the sea biscuit we now call “hardtack”.
I know I was warned about writing a travelogue but couldn’t resist a short report on our latest trekking. We did manage while doing that to catch up on some of our reading. As I noted in my last report I was reading an Abe Lincoln biography…and no, I did not know him personally. Winifred recalled a similar incident to the one reported to you last month involving her oldest, Rita Pat, and my Dad, her granddad. She apparently had been learning about the American Revolution and its participants here in Philadelphia, and wondered if Grandpop had known any of them. He being a Philadelphia lawyer, and they having played an important part in that revolution, it is not surprising she might have thought so. Age is in the eyes of the beholder and as we all know is “relative”.
While reading about Abe I also came across two smaller pocket books by Calvin Trillin that grabbed my interest. One was the “Deadline Poet” the other “Remembering Denny”. The deadline poet covered the years from Regan to Clinton using light verse or doggerel. It began with Sununu (Regan’s Chief of Staff at one time). He couldn’t get the “entertainingly arrogant and euphoniously named” politician out of his head. He composed a verse for his column in the “The Nation” and it became such a hit with his editor he had orders to produce more. The verse was entitled: IF YOU KNEW WHAT SUNUNU! Thus was born the “Deadline Poet”. The book was hilarious in its viewpoints and sarcasm. It included one on the Phillies (he deviated occasionally from politicians, world leaders, world crises, to movie stars, and sports) entitled:
THE PHILLIES VS. TORONTO.
Toronto is a snappy team – all svelte,
No over gut that covers up the belt.
The Phillies? Ah, that rinky-dink brigade:
Resembling a bed that’s left unmade,
They look as if they’d find a grate palatial.
Their hair’s a tangled mess – that’s head
And facial.
They chew large wads of gum and gunk.
What ‘s more?
The stuff they spit will eat away the floor.
The Phillies are the answer to my dream:
Who would have thought that slobs could have a team?
They won their league. They almost won it all,
Despite their flab, their high cholesterol.
Toronto won. How sad! For this amounts
To evidence that neatness really counts.
It says it all in rhyme. Those were certainly the thoughts many of us had about “those Phillies”. There is also no doubt that with them now losing 11 of their last 12 games the fans would love to have that “rag-tag rinky-dink” group back.
Calvin’s other book was not a light one but a tribute to a classmate (Yale ’57) who committed suicide at the age of 55. He was Roger D. Hansen when he died but for his Yale classmates, Calvin included, he was and will always be “Denny”. When Trillin knew him he was the embodiment of the All-American boy, an athlete, scholar, letter winner from a small town high school in California, with a “million dollar” smile. They, Calvin and Denny, had the small town background in common but beyond that Denny had it all. Life Magazine covered Denny’s life at Yale, as well as his graduation. He was a shooting star and he left the pad of Yale to enter Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. His classmates, half jokingly and half seriously, said he would one day be
“President”. He had the wit, the manner, the class, and that every present “million dollar” smile. The book is Calvin Trillin’s search to find an answer to his terrible ending. He finds a great number of answers but none really satisfy. It is, as the cover reports: “In so doing (his search for an answer) he (Trillin) also reflects upon the American fifties, offering a provocative look at the way we were–rather than the way we thought we were –and its consequences” I read it with much personal interest being a graduate around that time. His observations of the mores and goals espoused in those days were some of what I heard and remembered. Somewhere in the story he refers to the “knapsack of success” that was placed upon the back of great achiever in those days. He or she goes off carrying it with hope. He then disappoints in some small way and the sack gets heavier. He hasn’t risen to “his potential”. The sack can grow and crush its carrier if he can’t learn to live with a failure or a disappointment. It appears that Denny was a victim of this.
In addition apparently he was unable to accept his discovered homosexuality. It, homosexuality, would never have fit in the thinking and make up of a shooting star of the ’50s. He was a lonely man who never figured out what life was all about and a large part of the blame has to be placed on his rarefied beginning at the top. He also lacked the greatest healer of all for apparent failures…a family, loving companion or friends.
A bit of trivia we saw in this book is worth noting. It seems that Roger D. Hansen, “Denny”, had a grandfather named Lauritz Hansen. He came from Norway and was a sea captain. He was the last Captain of the Moshulu. This was one of the last commercial sailing ships. It came into my life in the 1980’s when the ship became a restaurant at the Penn’s Landing. June who worked at Second and Walnut would often meet me there and we dined on a few occasions. It later burned or had a fire and was closed. Now in 1996 it is back again refurbished and at a new location on the Delaware, closer to Washington Ave now. June and I noticed it on our last visit to the Chart House and hope to revisit the Moshulu. The same ship that Denny’s grandfather captained.
I’m working my way through “God, a Biography”. I say “working my way through” or studying as opposed to “reading”. I just read John Grisham’s latest “Runaway Jury”, “God, a biography” is written by “Jack” Miles – you don’t read Mr. Miles, you peruse him. Another thought is that “Jack” is not the kind of name you associate with sentences like:
“The relationship between the plot of the Bible
And the character of monotheism’s God, a deity who
Was, historically, a precipitate of Semitic polytheism,
Is thus intricate but coherent.” Or,
“The story of God-as-creator and mankind-as-progenitor
Unfolds like a jejune two-part musical invention
That by contrapuntal repetition and variation becomes
An elaborate and magnificent fugue.”
The name “Jack” brings to mind a strong athletic type, like Jack Armstrong, the All American Boy. These sentences might more likely be the product of some one named: Willard Sterne Randall, or David Herbert Donald, or Hans Kung, not “Jack”! Do you ever notice that despite Shakespeare’s admonition of “What’s in a name? A rose…” we still make associations when we hear a name? I notice, or so it seems, that writers of historical biographies, like those above, tend towards three names. It is then fitting that they might pontificate – but Jack just doesn’t hack it, no? It isn’t a name we associate with erudition, or ponderous sentences. But then neither is the names, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and their works certainly if not considered ‘erudite’ has had a lasting influence.
A bit of verse written over 150 years ago in praise of the nature of women: “Not she with trait’rous kiss her Saviour stung, Not she denied him with unholy tongue, she, while apostles shrank, could danger brave, Last at his cross, and earliest at his grave” Easton S. Barrett (1822).
Hope to see some you as we venture north in the end of August.