The Moose and the Wedding Cake
“Did you hear about the moose that went to Matinicus?”
That was literally the bystander chitchat after loading freight into the U-Haul on a recent ferry. It wasn’t I who asked that question. I am not likely to be surprised anymore by anything people want to send across the water. It was still funny.
Among the more common items of freight—building materials from area lumberyards; things on pallets dropped off at Knowlton’s warehouse on Route 90 by some interstate trucker; appliances—I had, a few weeks ago, Jeff’s stuffed moose head. I was just impressed that he’d brought his own load straps. Of course, our neighbor Jeff does know a thing or two about freight handling. He’s got his name on half the truck mudflaps in Maine. Still, I am not asked to haul a moose head, or any other example of the taxidermical arts, all that frequently.
We all know that deliveries to islands are not always about the ferry. The expression “When Pigs Fly” got real when a Matinicus couple, previously summer only, took the job teaching school one year and had to figure out about becoming year-rounders. This obligated them to pack up the pet pig and bring her to the island. Like many who adopt a cute little pot-bellied pig no bigger than a watermelon, apprising it an intelligent and possibly humorous companion, our friends had to face the reality that this pig had never stopped growing. Penny did not much like eating her vegetables, or other healthy snacks, and like any red-blooded American teenager was much more interested in junk food.
Lured into the largest dog crate available with Guinness stout and Oreo cookies, Penny was then boxed, sedated, and dispatched to Matinicus via Cessna 207. Penobscot Island Air pilot Roger Robertson, a who grew up flying freight around northern Canada in the same plane, took it absolutely in stride. I mean it about the Guinness and the Oreos, by the way.
In the old days, the grunt work of freight handling was much more hand-over-hand, without the aid of trucks. I am reminded of Doug and Pat who brought enough bricks to Matinicus in paper grocery bags to build a chimney and a nice big hearth for a full-sized wood cookstove. They hauled the bricks, six or eight at a time, in their own small boat all the way from Fort Williams in Cape Elizabeth. The price was right I guess, as the town of Cape Elizabeth was giving away bricks, after taking down some of the military structures at the decommissioned WWII base which once protected Portland Harbor from the enemy. This is absolutely true. I could not make it up. These people were my in-laws.
Time and tide may wait for no man, but we humans do have to wait for them. I was involved in one bit of neighborly heavy lifting when our friend Marcia’s refrigerator died on Matinicus, and no truck on any ferry was scheduled soon enough to help (we saw even fewer state ferries in those days). A refrigerator could be purchased over the phone, and wheeled down the ramp to George’s passenger boat (now Penobscot Island Air’s passenger boat) the Robin R. at Journey’s End Marine in Rockland, but unloading it from said boat here would require high tide. That would be at 11:00 pm. We all showed up. With a couple of headlamps, five people, and a hand-truck, we successfully delivered the new fridge to the homeowner before her milk went sour, and then went home to bed.
Recently, I was talking with the crew of the Island Transporter about moving heavy things for another story in another paper. The Transporter is a 100-or-so foot (OK; 31 meter) landing-craft type freight vessel, purpose-built to bring heavy loads— well-drillers, stuff like that—to nearly-inaccessible places. We sang the praises of Cote Crane and talked about dump trucks, and shipping containers filled with offshore power station kit, and last summer’s Vinalhaven paving job that took maybe eight Transporter trips a day for weeks. Something like that. Then, one of the guys mentioned the wedding cake, and they all grinned. Evidently one of the more stylish North Haven weddings required the Island Transporter--which, remember, specializes in heavy trucking over water--to carry a caterer’s van, with four nimble handlers in the back to stabilize (I’m imagining white gloves,) and thus was delivered a large wedding cake.
Maybe it’s a metaphor. I’m going to go with that, because metaphor is Greek for “carry across.” That’s what we do, with bags of bricks and late-night appliance delivery, bush planes carrying Old MacDonald’s Farm, and Island Transporters laden with 18 cubic-yard triaxles (and sometimes lighter things): we metaphor. Make of that what you like.