Tag: spruce island 2014

Uncle Frank’s 90th

The real excuse to get everybody together was to celebrate Uncle Frank’s 90th, and we did so at Stonington’s Fishermen’s Friend. The company, of course, was 99% of the point, but the restaurant did a surprisingly good job of food and service for the 27 of us. Frank is still as inventive and analytical and good-humored as ever, we should all be so lucky.

Kudos to Ed and Vickie for organizing and we look forward to seeing y’all again soon, or at least sooner!

Under the boardwalk

Crabby

On successive nights, we had lobster dinner and crab dinner. Lobsters are easy: boil, crack, eat. Crabs by contrast are a chore… It takes a whole lot of effort to make a mouthful.

Victory Chimes

The Victory Chimes cruises up and down the Maine coastline, and it looks like a fun way to spend a day or three.

Before this trip, we bought Robert McCloskey’s book Time of Wonder, about summering in Maine. Reading it again on the island, it was a cool surprise to see the Victory Chimes mentioned, a detail we’d overlooked the first time. Almost 60 years later, the rhythm of that area hasn’t changed much.

The Penobscot Narrows Bridge

The family that owns Spruce Island rose to (well, actually maintained might be a better word: there’s a lot of pedigree here) prominence with the success of their Eastern Steamboat Line, which was a force in Boston commercial shipping and passenger transport for many years. Among many distinctions earned by patriarch Eugene was his rapid response to the great Halifax explosion in WWI.

Fire code requires a lot of fire extinguishers in rentals, and sometimes that seems excessive. But, I guess even the most anti-government libertarian would agree that a ratio of one extinguisher per blowtorch makes sense.