Nomad News - Volume 2 - No. 29

"There's No Copyright on Common Sense"

MAINE (Con't) CHESTER PHILBROOKS: Chester and Martha Philbrooks were friends of the family. Chester was a local fisherman and worked at the School (Bancroft School where my Dad worked) during the summer months. Martha made donuts like you never experienced. The best of today's donut makers would be arrested for fraud if one was set alongside one of Martha's creations. They were best if picked up just after they came out of the boiling greasepot and left to drain on yesterday's newspaper. Just the odor would set your taste buds on fire. The Philbrooks lived on top of the hill from the wharf, next to the Post Office.

One year we arrived in Owls Head to discover Chester had taken up residence in the state penitentiary in Thomaston. Seems like he had taken a second job, like some of the other fishermen, and discovered he could make more money running "hooch" in from an off-shore vessel than he could fishing. With his knowledge of Penobscot Bay waters he was able to elude the Coast Guard for some time. Frugal as he was, he saved his money and bought a new boat that was "guaranteed" to outrun anything the Coast Guard had. Alas, on his first trip off-shore the "Coasties" got their man and the "guarantee" warranted him a spell in the "pen".

Next to Martha's donuts, the next best treat was one of my mother's wild blueberry pies; unsurpassed to this day. There is something about the Maine coastal blueberries than cannot be duplicated. Just like Jersey corn to this day and Jersey tomatoes before 1940, when they started to genetically change them so they could be harvested by machines. When we were kids in Haddonfield the line of horse and wagonloads of tomatoes would be horse nose to wagon on the way to Campbells Soup, ten miles west in Camden.

Got away from Maine for a bit and I want to recall another fisherman, Pete Reed. Mr. Reed was a big friendly man that fished for cod and haddock and was also "in charge" of the wharf. We rented a house from Doctor McBeth, a rare female doctor at that time, on The Point. The Point is the easterly end of Owls Head harbor. We would watch for Pete Reed to return with his catch and then my mother would give me a dime and tell me to go for a "ten cent haddock". It seemed like Mr. Reed always gave me a "bigger ten-cent haddock" than he gave my brother or sister. The Reeds had a son, Pete Jr. about our age but we never had much engagement with local kids as they all worked during the summer with their fathers or doing other necessary jobs around the wharf or around the boats. I renewed my acquaintance with Pete Jr. when I purchased the cottage on Spruce Head Island. At that time Pete was in charge of the wharf, just like his father before him and I would stop by to pick up my daily lobster that was dropped in a pot of boiling water for fifteen minutes and then eaten with delight. Ah!

Another long ago delightful experiences were the family picnics in Maine. Several families would get together and row off to Sheeps Island or another nearby island for a picnic. First chore was to gather a hugh pile of drift wood for a fire. Then the women would set out the homemade foods and goodies like my mother's blueberry pie. While this was going on we kids would dig through the bottomless pits of clam shells, discarded long ago by Indian tribes, looking for artifacts. We never found anything but that didn't minimize the expectancy time after time. Now, for the biggest event of the day. Just about dusk we would hear the fog horn of the distant Boston Boat, a passenger ship that ran from Boston to Rockland, as it steamed up the channel. This would be the signal to light the pile of driftwood and by the time the ship reached our location the fire would be roaring, the ship's captain would pull the whistle halyard and we would wave to the passengers as they waved back.

Before I leave Maine, I nearly forgot about the super-delicious wild strawberries that grew in abundance on The Point. If you have never tasted a wild strawberry, especially the Maine ones, you have missed one of childhood's treasures. What they lacked in size they more than made up for with their sweet wild taste.

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IF YOU AREN'T SCARED YOU HAVEN'T BEEN LISTENING:

"This is a public health epidemic. We are struggling to find a cure for AIDS, we are struggling to find a cure for cancer; we know the cure for this public health epidemic---getting rid of guns."
Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education. The most extreme anti-gun member of Obama's cabinet.
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DAY 3 - GLENN BECK'S "Reasonable Questions for unreasonable times"
- Why does the FCC have a diversity "czar"?
- Who is Mark Lloyd and how does he plan to "balance" the airwaves?
- Cass Sunstein once said he wants to balance the Internet; is that next?
- Will broadcasters who leave the airwaves be allowed to go to satellite or Internet without government regulation?
- Is there any place (that has a mass audience) where the government won't regulate free speech?
- Why does it seem every member of the Obama advisory team hates capitalism, unless those companies (like G.E.) are in bed with the administration?
- If Mark Lloyd has his way, stations who don't comply to the governments definition of "public interest" will have to pay a massive fine to help support public broadcasting:
What will the definition of "public interest" be?
Who defines "public interest"?
Why should it be balanced? Because it's public airwaves? (Well, there are public highways
that go past my house and I don't count how many Republicans and Democrats are driving
on them)
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YOU DIDN'T READ/HEAR THIS IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA: "Recently there was a conference call arranged by the National Endowment for the Arts, with a representative of the White House, for potential grantees or actual grantees of the federal government, subsidies--the theme of it was how the arts community could advance the president's agenda. Now I don't know how many laws that breaks, but I am sure there are some". Andrew Breitbart writing in the "Washington Times".

Hawkeye