Notes from Maine - 2023/09/03
I’m sorry to report that Bonnie died.
Warning: today’s post is filled with gossip from half-a-century ago, open talk of urology, and a ton of hearsay that I may or may not be making up.
Bonnie and Dick were very good friends of my grandparents, although they belonged more to my father’s generation. If I’m remembering right, back in the fifties, Dick’s best friend said, “Watch my girl for me while I’m in the army, will you?” Dick watched Bonnie for more than fifty years. When my Dad moved up here, he and Dick were best friends for a while—always getting into hijinks.
Across the stream from Dick and Bonnie, one time Phyllis’s nephew got ”stove-up” and had to be dragged out of a ditch. I mention this because one time I got stove-up at the corner of the Crank Road and Dick dragged me out of a ditch. They were two different incidents with very different causes.
First, the “stove-up” part. If a boat is stave-up, it means that a hole has been bashed in its hull and it needs repair. Around Dunn Road, fifty years ago, stove-up meant one thing: your car is off the road and you can’t get it out. There was a famous time that Lyle stove-up on the way home from Town Hall, right near Hamilton Pond. But that’s not related to the time that Phyllis’s nephew stove-up.
Phyllis’s nephew (Greg? Gary?) was driving home one evening, trying to calculate how fast his wheels were turning. I’m not certain what the nephew (Glen? Jerry?) did for a living, but I would guess he was some sort of engineer or something. The nephew (let’s just call him Greg) was tired and trying to stay awake by doing a math problem. Knowing his miles-per-hour, maybe Greg calculated how many feet-per-second he was going, and from that divided by the circumference of the wheel? If he was going 30 miles-per-hour, that means 66 feet-per-second. Let’s assume that the rim is 15 inches…
Greg was doing all that math in his head when he ran off the road.
He “stove-up” if you will.
A lot of people were talking about how Greg stove-up. I think they thought that his accident was silly or absentminded. I understood it. Before cellphones, podcasts, easily acquired books on tape, etc., it was tough to stay awake and aware when driving home from work. I did the Greg calculation a couple of times, just for fun. The hard part is coming up with an accurate radius for the wheel. Back then, I knew my tire size (P235/75 R15 M+S OWL). I didn’t have much money and I called around to get a decent deal when I needed tires. I memorized the tire designation and for some reason I still remember it. The P235 means that the width of the tread is metric and 235mm. 75 is the aspect ratio of sidewall to tread, so 0.75 * 235 = 176-ish mm = about 7 inches. You have to add that to the rim size, which is 15 inches (the R15 above). The M+S means that they’re for mud and snow. OWL stands for Outlined White Letters. Fascinating, right? That’s why Greg stove-up.
I stove-up because of ice on the road. It was -16º F (-27º C) that night and it was my first winter in Maine. No big deal, I was less than two miles from my grandparents’ house. But, being my first winter, I didn’t have a decent jacket, boots, a hat, or gloves in the car. I left work (second shift at Digital) with nothing more than jeans and a light jacket. I’m not sure why I was coming home on the Crank Road. That detail makes the whole story questionable, but see my original disclaimer…
Anyway, I stove-up and tried to walk home. I didn’t make it far. The Dunns’ lights were on, so I knocked. Dick answered the door in his underwear. The wood stove was cranked. It must have been eighty degrees in there (+27º C). He put on coveralls, grabbed his keys, and had me back on the road in seconds.
Back to Lyle (he stove-up on Route 135 near Hamilton Pond). When I first moved to Maine, and I was living with my grandparents, Lyle stopped me on the road one day.
“Everything okay with your folks?” he asked.
“Sure?” I said, shrugging.
We were standing in the road, talking. That’s when Dick pulled up and said hi.
“It’s just that I’ve seen a foreign car out front lately,” Lyle said. He meant my car. It was an Olds, but I had Virginia plates. That’s what he meant by foreign. “I figured maybe someone died. If your people have any land for sale…”
I told Lyle that the car was mine, nobody was dead, and nothing was for sale. Lyle was forever trying to acquire land back then. A decade later, my father was buying land off of Lyle, but at this point Lyle was still in acquisition mode.
Dick asked if we were going to be long, blocking the road.
Lyle said, “Where you off to anyways?”
“I’ve got a date with Dr. Petty,” Dick said.
Lyle raised his eyebrows, nodded, and said, “Oh, she’s good—real good.”
“Says you,” Dick said. “Last time I saw her, she took one of my nuts off.”
Lyle smiled and asked, “You remember that time I was working timber and the logs rolled and snagged me?”
Dick said, “Of course.”
Lyle pointed at him and said, “Dr. Petty was the one who saved the other half of my pecker.”
At this time, I was in my early twenties and I had no idea how I had landed in the middle of this conversation. Later, Lyle disclosed the same injury in another conversation when my father was present. Leave it to Dad to come up with the perfect follow-up question.
Dad asked, “Which half?”
