Category Archives: Sense of place

Morning

The gulls woke me up at the crack of dawn. Every morning they sit on the rooftops around our building screaming: Auw! Auw! Kee! Kee! Kee! Kee! Kyoh! Kyoh! Kyoh! Kyoh! With an effort of will I tuned them out and went back to sleep. I don’t know when Carol got up.

A cicada wakes me up much later. It must be sitting on the volunteer maple that sprouted up right next the the building behind us and which is now twelve feet tall. This cicada sounds just like the cicadas I listened to on hot summer afternoons when I was a kid. It almost lulls me back to sleep: zzzZZZZZ…. It seems to go on forever.

When it stops, I get up. I happen to glance in the mirror. If I’m not going to kid myself, my hair is more gray than blond now. It’s my day off and it’s still summer, so I forget to shave.

I stand in the kitchen. A cicada buzzes in the tree across the street. I hear a gull screaming in the distance. We bought a blueberry pie yesterday at the farmers market, and there is one small slice left this morning. I know I’m going to eat it for breakfast. There’s one slice of pie left, I say to Carol. It’s yours, she says, and looks back at her computer. I make a pot of tea, and slide the blueberry pie onto a dark green plate.

At its height

This week has been filled with those perfect days we sometimes get in late August, when it feels like autumn at night yet becomes pleasantly hot by mid-day; when we are drawn outdoors to let the mellow sun drive the last of the New England cold out of our bones.

Summer is at its height: the parking lot for the Martha’s Vineyard ferry is as almost as full as you’ll ever see it; and there are as many cars as you’ll ever see over on State Pier near where the Cuttyhunk ferry docks.

A few tourists are even wandering around New Bedford, far from their usual haunts. Usually, tourists in New Bedford walk one block from the National Park’s visitor center down to the Whaling Museum, and then get back in their cars and drive away. But today, Carol and I saw several tourists in other, less-touristy, areas. We saw a man pushing a stroller on Macarthur Drive near Fisherman’s Wharf, where he was accosted by one of the more insistent panhandlers (the fellow who once, when I told him I didn’t have any money for him, screamed at me: “Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit!”). Only a perfect summer day could draw a tourist to walk along Macarthur Drive.

If I had any doubt that summer is at its height, at it sfull glory right now, that doubt would have been eradicated by the farmer’s market on Thursday. While I stood in line at each farmer’s table, waiting my turn, I looked over the biggest diversity of produce we’ll see all year: blueberries, plums, peaches, pears, summer apples, cataloupe; broccoli, tomatoes, zucchini, yellow straightneck squash, patty-pan squash, acorn squash, lettuce, kale, collards, pole beans, bush beans, garlic; gladiolas, sunflowers, and other cut flowers. There were so many things for sale I’ve forgotten them all.

Summer is at its height, yet the sun sets three minutes earlier every day; I keep getting surprised by how soon it grows dark. Summer is at its height, but yesterday I planted some more fall flowers, white and red chrysanthemums, and tied up the asters. And today I seeded our tiny little raised-bed garden with a fall planting of Swiss chard.

Khakis as a regional marker

When I was out visiting my sister in Indiana, we got to talking about regional differences in the United States. One of my sister’s friends looked down at the trousers I was wearing — somewhat threadbare khakis with a coffee stain or grease stain here and there.

This woman, who is from California, smiled when she saw my khakis. “You Easterners with your khakis. You always wear khakis. It’s cute.”

I did not tell her about the pair of vintage Levi 501s that I bought when we lived in Oakland. I just smiled and said, “Of course we wear khakis. They’re very practical.” Which is true:– even with coffee and grease stains, khakis can look fairly respectable.

On the long drive back to New England, at a rest area near Albany, I saw a man wearing khaki pants and a neat tan shirt and a baseball cap, and I knew I was getting close to home:– there is a certain class of New England working man — cabinetmakers, high-end landscapers, sculptors even — for whom that is a kind of uniform. Then there are the upper middle class New Englanders who wear crisply-pressed khakis pants with boat shoes and woven leather belts, which is another way to wear khaki pants. And there are the guys like me, ministers and teachers and people in the non-profit world, who wear khakis and button-down Oxford shirts with ties to the office. But it is true that I did not see anyone wearing khakis when I was in Indiana.

Rest area story

I’m back on the New York State Thruway, sitting in the rest area that’s nearest Buffalo. This is one of those rest areas where they put the fast food joints and the toilets in a big complex in the median between the eastbound and westbound roads, so you cross a pedestrian bridge to get from the parking area to the toilets. A few days ago, I was sitting just a few tables away from where I am now. This place is pretty depressing — vaguely dirty, crowded, ugly, two lonely picnic tables on this little grassy area next to a huge parking area — a sad contrast to the lovely rest areas in Ohio and Indiana.

When I was last here, I finished my lousy coffee and greasy French fries, closed up my laptop, and walked back to my car. I got in the car, rolled down the window, and was about to start up the engine when a man walked up.

“Did you lock your car?” he said. He was about my age, accompanied by two kids who were about ten or twelve.

“I think so,” I said.

“Because there was this gang of kids stealing stuff from cars,” he said.

I looked at the seat beside me. Everything was just as I had left it. “It looks like everything is here,” I said.

“They stole a purse out of our car,” he said. “Guess they went from car to car trying doors. A bunch of other people got hit, too. Someone saw them taking off in a black Mercedes.”

“Wow,” I said. “Business must be good if they can afford a Mercedes.”

“Yeah,” he said. “All we have is an old minivan.”

“All I got is this old Toyota,” I said. “Geez, rest areas can be pretty rough places, but you don’t expect something like that.”

“Well, we called the state troopers. And here they come,” he said, looking down the ramp from the interstate, where a brown state trooper’s car was pulling in to the rest area.

“I’m really sorry this happened to you,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said, starting to walk away. “Thanks…” His kids followed him, silent, just following their dad.

State fair

Today, my sister Jean took me to the Indiana State Fair in Indianapolis. We spent about six hours at the fair. On the drive home again, Jean asked, “What was your favorite part?”

“The chickens,” I said. “I walked down this one aisle of chickens, and one of them went roh-ah-roh-ah-roh, and then another one responded, and then another one, and another one. And then they stopped for a minute, until another one of them started in crowing. What was your favorite part?”

“The Percherons,” Jean immediately responded. We had gone into the draft horse barn to visit the Percherons early in the day, and stayed long enough to see some of the draft horse competitions later in the evening. “But,” added Jean, “I also liked the Shetland sheep. They were so cute, and all fuzzy, with the little feet, just like a cartoon sheep.”

“And we got good Fair junk,” I added.

“Like what?” asked Jean. “What did you get at the fair? I didn’t see you buy anything.”

I reminded her that we had both gotten free Indiana University tote bags at the IU booth;– and that when we stopped at the deep-fried vegetables stand, my large soda had come in a 24 ounce plastic cup emblazoned with the “Dr. Vegetable Deep Fried Veggies” logo on the side.

“Oh, that,” she said. She was just jealous because her 24 ounce plastic cup is boring and merely states “Fresh Squeezed — Ice Cold LEMONADE” on the side.

It was a very satisfying day at the fair.

Percherons at the State Fair

Jean watching one of the excellent horsewomen
at the Ladies Percheron Cart competition at the Indiana State Fair.

Liveblogging from the highway

Sitting here at a highway rest area outside Buffalo, New York, I have a few observations about highway rest areas:

  1. All the rest areas on the New York State Thruway have free wifi. This is good.
  2. Some rest areas no longer have water fountains (it’s as if they’re trying to force you to buy bottled water). This is bad.
  3. The rest area on the Mass Turnpike between I-290 and I-84 has a farmers market on Saturday mornings in season. This is good.
  4. None of the rest areas I have stopped at today have picnic tables — if you bring your own food (as I did), you wind up sitting in your car to eat. This is bad.
  5. My ’93 Toyota Camry got 34.4 miles per gallon. This is good.
  6. At the rest area where I bought gas today, there was a TV over the gas pump, playing some stupid daytime TV show. This is bad.