MGC
Scrapmaker
Rollin Thrulow. He sounds like he knows his stuff. It sounds like he knows a lot about Rollin Thurlow and Jerry Stelmok.
OK, that out of the way, this morning my son and I had a lengthy phone conversation including about the article written by Thrulow. For us, it was an article that connects a lot of dots, family dots.
I was 12 the first time I went to Lubec. My father and I had paddled the Allagash (from Greenville). We were on our way home to New Hampshire and took a somewhat roundabout way home. There wasn't much there in those days. The sardine factory occupied the better part of the town, and except for a hardware store, there wasn't a heck of lot there to see. But there was a town dock, and if you picked up a few jigs at the hardware store and timed the tide, you could catch literal buckets of mackerel when the tide was pushing. The locals smoke them so there's never a problem giving away what you don't plan to eat.
A few years later my buddies and I were on our way home from the Allagash. On our way to Old Town, we found our way to Lubec and explored the town. The guys at the hardware store told us about a boat building school that had opened up over near the bridge. There wasn't anyone there, but there was a sign and some kind of sailboat sitting outside.
The next time I went back, the school was gone, but this time we heard about some guys who were building canoes. We never made our way to that shop so Rollins stories and images helped to fill in some gaps. Better yet, the connection to Tuttle and Island Falls is explained. For us, that story has a bit of extra special meaning because in a French Canadian canoe story kind of way that is hard to explain, my father had a 20 foot White built on Jerry's form by a long-ago WCHA member, Guy Cyr. That canoe, much like the ones that Jerry is posing with, is the one that my sons took their first canoe trips in.
The sardine factory is not there anymore. A big piece of it actually floated away under the bridge and ended up on the shore on the island, but the mackerel still hit jigs you can buy at the hardware store.
My son had a real crappy day at work yesterday. Frankly, I was a bit worried about him and his moral. When he called this morning, he was cheerful and full of chatter. He wanted to talk about how much he enjoyed reading Wooden Canoe when he got home last night. He was laughing about Rollins and Jerrys different writing styles and recalling how much that White canoe, our summers in Lubec, runs down the Allagash and the time we spent in Rollins shop help him to keep perspective. That issue of Wooden Canoe put his crappy workday in the rear-view mirror. He also commented on Bensons article and expressed appreciation for a really good issue.
OK, that out of the way, this morning my son and I had a lengthy phone conversation including about the article written by Thrulow. For us, it was an article that connects a lot of dots, family dots.
I was 12 the first time I went to Lubec. My father and I had paddled the Allagash (from Greenville). We were on our way home to New Hampshire and took a somewhat roundabout way home. There wasn't much there in those days. The sardine factory occupied the better part of the town, and except for a hardware store, there wasn't a heck of lot there to see. But there was a town dock, and if you picked up a few jigs at the hardware store and timed the tide, you could catch literal buckets of mackerel when the tide was pushing. The locals smoke them so there's never a problem giving away what you don't plan to eat.
A few years later my buddies and I were on our way home from the Allagash. On our way to Old Town, we found our way to Lubec and explored the town. The guys at the hardware store told us about a boat building school that had opened up over near the bridge. There wasn't anyone there, but there was a sign and some kind of sailboat sitting outside.
The next time I went back, the school was gone, but this time we heard about some guys who were building canoes. We never made our way to that shop so Rollins stories and images helped to fill in some gaps. Better yet, the connection to Tuttle and Island Falls is explained. For us, that story has a bit of extra special meaning because in a French Canadian canoe story kind of way that is hard to explain, my father had a 20 foot White built on Jerry's form by a long-ago WCHA member, Guy Cyr. That canoe, much like the ones that Jerry is posing with, is the one that my sons took their first canoe trips in.
The sardine factory is not there anymore. A big piece of it actually floated away under the bridge and ended up on the shore on the island, but the mackerel still hit jigs you can buy at the hardware store.
My son had a real crappy day at work yesterday. Frankly, I was a bit worried about him and his moral. When he called this morning, he was cheerful and full of chatter. He wanted to talk about how much he enjoyed reading Wooden Canoe when he got home last night. He was laughing about Rollins and Jerrys different writing styles and recalling how much that White canoe, our summers in Lubec, runs down the Allagash and the time we spent in Rollins shop help him to keep perspective. That issue of Wooden Canoe put his crappy workday in the rear-view mirror. He also commented on Bensons article and expressed appreciation for a really good issue.
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