I believe that the New England steel band movement was started in Blue Hill over forty years ago and spread like wildfire over the northeastern states (a slight exaggeration). The instruments used are oil drums whose top surfaces have been hammered to create dimples tuned to specific notes.
Local folks study to learn how to play those things using mallets or drumsticks, and the band we heard was quite large, putting out music that was exciting, rhythmic, and full bodied. It was hard to sit still, and lots of people were moving to the beat. Unfortunately, I couldn't get Nancy, Pat, or Liz to dance with me.
We thought it would be interesting for our dogs Sophia and Tammy Faye to meet and interact with the O'Gradys' Finn. With our girls weighing in at 11 and 15 pounds, and Finn hitting the scale at almost 200, I was curious whether Tammy Faye and Sophia would recognize Finn as being of the same species. Certainly the variation of dog breeds is a tribute to the power of evolution.
We took our dogs over to the O'Gradys' house and introduced them. At first Finn, a gentle giant if ever there was one, was super curious and lumbered after them, sniffing and nudging, and our little ones fled, mostly. But soon everybody got comfortable and essentially ignored each other.
Every Tuesday afternoon Pat and Liz drive to Castine, another coastal town in the area, to meet with friends and listen to jazz at the Pentagoet Inn. On this occasion we were invited to join them, and the plan was to leave the three dogs at home alone. A door was left open to the outside so they could do their business in a fenced-in yard, shown above.
Castine is supposedly one of the oldest towns in Maine, and it has quite a history. It's full of charming and impressive homes, many on the bay. A physician we know from Santa Cruz owns a large house there, currently up for sale, and Pat was hoping that we would fall in love with it and the town and move there. We wandered the streets of Castine and learned by looking in realtors' windows that local home prices are not unreasonable.
We joined a couple, Hal and Lee, on the porch of the Pentagoet Inn, at the corner table reserved for their circle of friends who meet every Tuesday, when a local jazz trio plays during the summer. We learned that Lee is the author of quite a few books and a university professor, and Hal is a journalist - once an editor at Time Magazine - and currently a self-described leftist political writer. Fascinating people, fun to talk with.
We had ordered drinks and dinner and were talking and listening to the wonderful jazz trio, who were also on the porch, when I looked over and saw the bass player, an older gentleman, do a face plant on the deck in front of him. "Is there a doctor in the house?" Pat and I went over, and Pat, a recently retired cardiologist, knelt beside him, did a cursory exam and talked with the patient, who was conscious and said that he had felt overheated (and it was an unseasonably hot afternoon) before falling. He complained of some temporary chest pressure, but with time he looked and felt better. A local ambulance arrived, and the attendants took an EKG, which Pat read as normal. The patient was taken to a local hospital ER to be checked out. Pat felt it was probably just a fainting spell. Deeply grateful, the inn's owner said that Pat would get free drinks there for life.
Before long the musicians - now a duo - began playing again. The food was outstanding, Nancy loved her cocktail, the conversation was stimulating, the jazz was excellent, and it was a memorable experience. If we lived anywhere close by, Nancy and I would certainly make a Tuesday habit of joining the O'Gradys and their friends there. Incidentally, when the bills arrived, Pat had been charged for his drinks, in full.
Finally we headed back to the O'Gradys' home to pick up Tammy Faye and Sophia. About halfway there, Nancy's phone rang. It was a young woman who said that they were neighbors of Pat and Liz who were driving along when they saw ahead of them, in the middle of the road, a mostly white dog, unattended. They picked her up, were able to read three phone numbers on her collar tags, and had been calling for some time. Castine is in a Verizon dead zone, so this was the first attempt that got through, other than one to our friend Linda in Scotts Valley, California, who had declined to fly out.
We arranged to meet them on the road, and indeed it was our Sophia, no worse for wear, who was handed over to us. We'll be forever grateful to that wonderful young woman and her dad for saving our dear girl.
Incredibly, we later learned that another neighbor had also - earlier - found Sophia on the road. She had then carried her over to the fenced-in area adjacent to the O'Gradys' home and saw evidence that Sophia had dug her way out, under the fence. Tammy Faye was still there, as was Finn, so she knew that this was where Sophia was supposed to be. She returned Sophia to the yard and placed some big rocks to block her escape. Those measures, obviously, proved inadequate.
Luckily, Sophia is largely a white dog and therefore visible at night in automobile headlights. It doesn't bear thinking of what might have happened if she were a black dog and hard to see. Or if she had wandered off down the road, in which case Nancy and I would have been roaming the neighborhood all night, shining flashlights and calling out to her.
Sophia is a bit neurotic and subject to separation anxiety. Specifically, she sometimes becomes frantic if Nancy isn't around. In an unfamiliar home, especially with the noise of intermittent fireworks (this was the night before July 4th), and missing her mom, she made her great escape - twice! - by tunneling to freedom. Resourceful. Terrifying. It certainly would have ruined our trip if anything had happened to either of our beloved animals.
On the fourth of July it was our turn to host, at our RV park. This happened to be the apex of the severe heat wave that was hitting the East Coast, and the temperature was well into the nineties. Pat and Liz brought Finn. That great beast, with his heavy coat, tends to get overheated, so we spent most of the visit inside our air-conditioned motorhome. We served traditonal hot dogs and hamburgers and Pat made Margaritas. The animals, including our little escape artist, got along just fine.
We walked around the campground, and Finn, as usual, was the center of attention. Children, especially, were fascinated by him.
Here is the gang at the campground, making our rounds. That's the little troublemaker at far left.
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