If you were to ask me what time I was up this morning, much like a philosopher or a lawyer, I would ask you to define your terms.
Because my mind might be up and romping about a full hour before my body was up. And for that full hour my mind would be on its feet, all alert and writing a story while I was still flat on my back with my eyes closed.
This morning I wrote an interesting story about my neighbor, Frank Hilt. But, as usual, I didn’t know where to start. I had the whole story except for the beginning. Was it Michener who had a similar problem getting started? Anyone reading Michener would have to wade through several million years of history before they got down to the Snipe family of Yoknapatawpa County [sic], by which time many lost interest.
And then there was Coleridge, who jumped right in but only got half of it on paper because he was interrupted and forgot where he was going. At least that’s what he said, knowing that his excuse was more interesting than the poem itself. I can identify with Coleridge; this morning Marsha asked me to take the kitchen scraps out to the crows.
And I can also identify with Michener because, although the motor is running, I never know how to get the thing in gear. There is nothing more important to a story than a record of the struggle to push in the clutch and get her in gear.
The great John Gould told me that in writing a story “it is how you handle it.” And to leave out everything that wasn’t necessary. Stephen King said the same thing in an excellent book on writing.
Good advice. But when I eliminated everything I had written that wasn’t necessary, there was nothing left.
I wanted to start out my story about Frank Hilt by saying that he was born and brought up in St. George, Maine. But that would mean no more than Timbuktu to a person from Fort Kent or Wells. And so it is with most of the towns and villages in Maine. Albion will always be shrouded in mystery. And the easiest way to find Benedicta is to Google “Undiscovered Maine.”
Very few people can tell you if Cherryfield and Gouldsboro are villages in the town of Stuben or if Stuben is a village in the town of Gouldsboro. Many tourists who passed through Washington County will swear that none of them exist at all.
So I feel obligated to inform you, my only reader, that St. George is very complicated. It is a town on a peninsula between the St. George River and Penobscot Bay. St. George, also called Wiley’s Corner, is the northernmost of the many villages in the town of St. George.
When I was a boy, 25 of the 40 or so houses were inhabited by my relatives. The 15 others belonged to newcomers who moved in after 1798. Among the other villages, and there are too many to mention here, are Long Cove, Tenants Harbor and Port Clyde. The St. George town office is in the village of Tenants Harbor, but Port Clyde became our cultural center when Linda Bean opened a Wyeth gallery in her store down there.
Phyllis Wyeth started and funded a great school in Port Clyde, The Herring Gut Learning Center. Students who might struggle with traditional schooling got hands-on training in raising oysters and other denizens of the deep.
Port Clyde was once Herring Gut on the charts. And even when I was a boy there was a working fish factory in Port Clyde where women cut their fingers while packing sardines. A Band-Aid was once inadvertently left hanging out of a can when it went through the sealer. Quality control picked it out and thumbtacked it to the bulletin board with a note, “Please trim off loose ends before sealing.” When we were in high school, our classmates from the lower town were referred to as “gut squeezers.”
You have just read about my neighbor Frank Hilt. Please permit me to explain this chronicle with my usual few but well-chosen words.
Years ago, Andy Wyeth painted a picture of an empty pasture and called the painting “The Brown Cow.” Even though there was no brown cow there. His wife probably called him to supper and he didn’t have time to put the cow in.
The humble Farmer can visited at thehumblefarmer.com.
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