Annabelle's Beach

Have you ever watched Columbo, the TV murder mystery franchise?  

It spanned almost three decades, but for me, the best episodes were from the 1970s.  Their plots may not always be rock-solid, and dialog can often be unrealistic, but their cinematography often brims with compelling complexity.  

Columbo makes for great retro television because it celebrates its period optics.  Southern California's vintage estates, for example; before skyrocketing property values forced many owners to subdivide sprawling grounds.  Enormous luxury cars, before the mid-70's gas crisis forced automobile downsizing.  And larger-than-life clothing fashions that, frankly, are charming today because they have NOT withstood the test of time!

Nearly every episode is set in Los Angeles, and many involve the Pacific Ocean in some way.  A murderer is either throwing incriminating evidence into the Pacific, they live along the Pacific, they kill somebody on its beach, or they're piloting yachts just offshore.

My favorite Columbo episode is "Try and Catch Me".  It checks all the essential Columbo boxes, with a grand mansion, opulent European convertibles, lavish sets, gorgeous Pacific shots, and an emotive orchestral soundtrack.  It features an exceptionally well-crafted finale, with everything kept afloat by witty dialog in keeping with the franchise's efforts at being something of a comedy.  

In "Try and Catch Me", the diminutive, venerable Ruth Gordon plays an overly-assertive mystery writer who grew up in Massachusetts, but now lives on the West Coast.  Early in the episode, she's strolling along a Malibu beach with the man she ends up murdering.  Just before suddenly, two horses gallop around either side of them (talk about dramatic cinematic foreshadowing!), she bluntly offers an unsolicited comparison of America's two oceans.

"As for the broad Pacific, I find that rather an effeminate body of water," she declares.  Her stilted Boston Brahmin affectation clashes with LA's sun-soaked waves, rolling up from azure surf onto the sand.  "Down on the Cape, when I was a girl, I watched the Atlantic day and night.  How it churned and boiled and roared!"

"Nobody but you could put down a whole ocean!" chuckles her unsuspecting prey.

I've never seen the Pacific Ocean, but I've seen the Atlantic many times, been boating on it, and lived next to it.  My mother's family is from coastal Maine, and my paternal grandfather worked freighters back and forth across the Atlantic.  My maternal grandfather's father even died at sea when, in 1920, the 4-masted schooner he captained, the Amelia Zeeman, literally disappeared in the fabled Bermuda Triangle.

Personally, I don't believe there is such a thing as the Bermuda Triangle, at least in terms of there being a particularly nefarious zone for ships and aircraft in the Atlantic.  Nevertheless, as far as folkloric myths are concerned, don't you think it curious that the Pacific doesn't have any similarly significant section within its vast expanse boasting such notoriety?

Unlike some of my forebears, I don't have salt water in my veins, and I doubt I could identify one ocean from another like Columbo's protagonist presumes to do.  I've never been particularly fond of boats or being beyond the sight of land.  I'm content to live in landlocked north Texas, hours away from any salt water.  However, I've been to the Gulf of Mexico and to me, salt water there tastes and smells similar enough to the Atlantic's - albeit maybe cooked a bit more by Texas' far warmer climate!

In the painting above, we see a rather frothy waterscape as viewed from the domesticated interior of a building perched atop a rocky shore.  Tempestuous waves, lots of surf, and even blurry pine boughs all convey a dynamic of wind.  Quite close to shore, the prominent lip of an incoming wave can be seen, followed immediately by at least five more.  Whitewater from spent waves roils about the foreground.  It's obviously not a calm day, but it's not a hurricane, either, since plenty of sunlight illuminates everything.  A distant island or peninsula reaches into our sightline from the left, leaving the rest of the horizon open, as if to suggest an even greater body of water extends far beyond our sight.  Perhaps the tableau represents a scene from one of the Great Lakes, or an ocean?

When my Mom first saw this painting, she loved it.  You see, nostalgia immediately conditioned her to recognize the view from her Aunt Isabel's and Uncle Walter's cottage along Blue Hill Bay in Brooklin, Maine, west of Mount Desert Island.  When my father and I later saw it, we agreed with her.  And when my three eldest nephews saw it for the first time, they blurted out almost in unison, without any coaching, "That's Annabelle's Beach!"

Many of their early summers were spent on Aunt Isabel's beach, years after both Isabel and Walter had passed away, as their heirs own it and let us use it whenever we'd visit Maine.  Mom called it "Aunt Isabel's beach", but somehow, the nephews always heard "Annabelle", perhaps because that was the name of a character in one of their childrens' stories.  So for all practical purposes, it became "Annabelle's Beach" to us and remains fondly so today.

Imagine our surprise, however, when Edith, one of Mom's cousins who lived in Maine her entire life, visited us in Texas.  "Do you recognize the place this painting appears to depict?" Mom playfully challenged, expecting her cousin to say it was their Aunt Isabel and Uncle Walter's place.  But nope, Cousin Edith stood and stared and then leaned forward and squinted at the painting, before finally giving up.  "No, I don't know where this is," she conceded.

"Doesn't it look like Uncle Walter and Aunt Isabel's waterfront cottage in Brooklin?" Mom prodded her cousin.  But no; again, Cousin Edith shook her head.  She turned to her husband, who would have been acquainted with the scene as well, yet he politely shrugged his shoulders for lack of recognizing it himself.

So there's that.  Nevertheless, at least for my more immediate family, this painting reminds us of the delightful Maine shore at a beautiful property we could enjoy at our leisure - without also having to pay Maine's staggering waterfront taxes for the privilege!  All we had to do was remember to re-latch the chain across their private gravel driveway when we left.

In case you're wondering, that one-bedroom, three-season house was built in the 1950s, and far closer to the shore than would be permitted by law (or logic) today.  Having the surf roiling so near an interior room represents a sensation that no contemporary building permit or insurance policy would allow for new construction, due to environmental concerns over erosion and fluctuating sea levels.  Indeed, a series of strong storms this past winter pushed many new rocks up against freshly-exposed roots from the waterline's pine trees, and "Annabelle's" heirs (who winter in Arizona) told Mom earlier this summer that even the shape of the shore had appeared to change.

What makes this picture ironic, however, isn't that Cousin Edith and her husband didn't identify it as being "Annabelle's".  What makes this picture ironic is that its artist, a next-door neighbor of ours here in Texas, painted it while living in Santiago, Chile.  

Those are her glasses, her coffee mug, and her sugar bowl.  And this was the view out of her apartment's window.  Overlooking... the Pacific Ocean!   

Definitely not how I'd consider an "effeminate body of water" to appear, is it?

Well, that depiction was ostensibly spoken by a Columbo murderer.  So, in keeping with the lieutenant's signature phrase, she was simply wrong about "one more thing".

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Maine's Coastal Reach

 

When I was a kid in upstate New York, my parents regularly took us to Maine to visit Mom's parents.  We spent every Thanksgiving in Maine, plus at least one annual summertime trip.  

I loved my grandparents, especially my grandmother's scratch-made biscuits and sumptuous peanut butter cookies.  However, my childhood self found Maine to be dull and boring overall.  Nothing but quaint buildings, bucolic scenery, and chilly salt water.

Sounds okay to you, though; right?  Indeed, now that I'm older, I realize how superficially my childhood self perceived Maine's rugged charms.

My mother grew up in New England.  Partly in Massachusetts, but mostly in coastal Maine.  Sedgwick, to be exact, on Maine's rural Blue Hill Peninsula.  And yes, just north of its eponymously-named town, there is a solitary hill whose thick forest of spruces and pines actually imparts hints of blue in just the right, misty light.

Living on a peninsula, obviously, means that one's community is surrounded by water on three sides.  Which, by extension, means that water plays a significant role in one's way of life.  Sedgwick's economy may have historically relied on family farms, blueberry barrens, and a couple of sawmills, but back then, as today, the people there live lives regulated by the salt water, its tides, its weather, and a geography literally sculpted by the sea.

Mom's parents eventually settled in my grandfather's mother's house, situated on an old country road, high above the shore of Eggemoggin Reach, between Sedgwick's tiny village and a tall suspension bridge linking the peninsula with Deer Isle.

You've probably never heard of Eggemoggin Reach.  Shucks, you've probably never heard of a reach at all, at least relative to a body of water.  So, here you go:  In English nautical terminology, a "reach" is a saltwater channel between the mainland and a relatively contiguous collection of outer islands, with ready access to the ocean from either end.  

A "reach" generally runs longitudinally, so sailing vessels can navigate under winds coming along their side.  As far as I've been able to determine, after scouring several charts of Maine's coast, the state only has two major reaches, Eggemoggin and Moosabec.  And for Eggemoggin, Deer Isle serves as the buffer from the open ocean, creating the channel for Eggemoggin Reach's ten-mile stretch.

In our post-modern society, with a mature aviation industry, and space exploration now dominated by private enterprise, a ten-mile protected salt water passage may sound irrelevant.  But that didn't used to be the case.  Long before Europeans discovered Maine - and waged part of America's Revolutionary War along the peninsula's western shore - Native Americans had already named this body of water.  Their choice, "Eggemoggin", roughly translates into "a narrowed waterway with fish".  From their apt name, they likely recognized how its geography provides valuable benefits, both for people living along it, and traversing upon it.  If you've ever experienced severe weather that comes directly off of an ocean, you can appreciate how Deer Isle's presence shelters the reach and mainland from the worst winds, tides, waves, and precipitation that can wreak havoc on coastlines.

Today, maybe even because it's something of an anachronism, Eggemoggin Reach claims considerable prestige as a premier channel for sailing enthusiasts.  Every August, for example, the world's largest wooden boat sailing race takes place there, the Eggemoggin Reach Regatta.  And one of the world's foremost publishers dedicated to wooden boatbuilding, appropriately named "The Wooden Boat", is based on the shores of the reach, in Brooklin, just east of Sedgwick.

Neither Deer Isle nor the Blue Hill Peninsula have ever been heavily populated.  And Maine has plenty of islands that have no physical link to the mainland.  So perhaps even more than the elite boating it hosts, the most unexpected aspect of Eggemoggin Reach can be found in its dramatic suspension superstructure, the Deer Isle - Sedgwick Bridge.

In the 1930s, when Maine planners decided to build a link from Deer Isle to the mainland, they could have engineered a causeway.  Or a shallow, "normal" bridge.  But several considerations led to a suspension structure as their eventual option.  These considerations did include the reach's pedigree as a sailing channel for tall-masted ships, but practically, engineers also factored for powerful tidal currents relative to the depth of the reach's channel, which limited the number and spacing of support pilings.  There were also issues of sourcing materials and labor, both of which were in sparse supply in the area.  

Like most of the young men who lived there then, my grandfather worked on that bridge.  He was injured when he was up, high and obscure, on a scaffold that somebody on the ground mistakenly moved, throwing him down, and knocking four of his bottom front teeth out of his mouth.

Yeah, that was long before OSHA.

To help solve both the materials and labor problems - the carelessness which led to my grandfather's injury probably not an anomaly - the bridge ended up getting partially pre-fabricated in Staten Island.  New York City was much closer to steel mills, rail yards, and a deeply skilled workforce.  Sophisticated, engineered steel structural components were then barged up to Maine, for final assembly like a giant 3-D puzzle.  The whole process ended up setting a precedent for suspension bridge construction.

Turn-about is fair play, however, since much of the granite cladding countless towers in Manhattan during that era - including the Empire State Building - came from quarries in Deer Isle!  

It's also worth noting that every year, tens of millions of dollars worth of crustaceous cargo gets trucked over that bridge from the bustling harbor in Deer Isle's largest village, Stonington - one of the world's lobster capitals.

I say all of that as a prelude for what you're about to see.  Call it "context", if you will.  

To the casual observer, this body of water in these upcoming photos may look like any ordinary lake, or maybe a river.  And not just because these photos are of poor quality.  Hey, they were taken by non-digital cameras a couple of decades ago, and I'm a bad photographer.  But these are scenes from my grandparents' home on Eggemoggin Reach, and that is Deer Isle in the distance.  The water you see is salt water, straight from the Atlantic Ocean, and this body of water is tidal, meaning the water is constantly moving; either coming in, or going out.

Even as a kid, looking out to the reach at various times during the day, and realizing how much the tide had come in or gone out, was impressive to me.  I could check the times for high and low tides listed in the local newspaper, and sure enough, there the water's edge would be!  Day in and day out, rain or shine, the tide never stops.

Unlike tropical beaches, which tend to be mostly sand, coastal Maine tends to be mostly rocky, with stones and boulders providing reliable benchmarks for gauging the tide's progress.  There was at least one boulder the size of a cargo van down at "our" shore which sometimes sat by itself with no water nearby, and other times was completely submerged.  That amazed me, because I'd been down to that boulder, walked around it, and tried to climb it, but couldn't - it was covered all over with slippery seaweed.  That wet, salty seaweed was proof of the amount of time it spent underwater!

Legally we never had "shore rights" access to the water.  As you can see, my family's property was on the "water view" side of the road, not the "waterfront" side.  We did, however, over all the decades my family owned that house, have a series of kindly neighbors across the road who gave us permission to go down their sloping meadow - it used to be a working hayfield - to the shore.

While it looks incredibly idyllic in photos, getting to and from the shore was a chore!  The walk back up to the house always seemed even longer and harder, since the meadow's slope is deceptively steep and long.  Fortunately, our neighbors always kept a path mowed, which made things easier.  One of the owners of that property, a wealthy divorcee from Mexico City, no less, owned a golf cart which she let my brother and I drive down there and back.  And it was fun - unless the sloping path's grass was wet, which significantly decreased her golf cart's traction.

(That particular neighbor also had a pristine, 1960s-vintage Mercedes sedan in her rebuilt barn - silver paint with bright red leather interior - but she didn't let us drive that, unfortunately!)

Perhaps it won't surprise you to learn that I don't really remember going down to the shore during our Thanksgiving visits.  Instead, I remember the biting wind, and the pellets of snow, and staying indoors a lot, guzzling my grandmother's homemade chicken soup! 

Meanwhile, it's Maine's beautiful summer days that truly are epic, and that I remember most fondly and nostalgically during our Texas summers, when our Lone Star sun may beam just as brightly, but always seems to lack the wholesome radiance of Maine's brilliant skies, and the sunlight's twinkling whiteness as it dances about the water's azure surface.

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Dining Tableography

You've already met my family's historic, well-used dining table:  Our antique farm table from upstate New York.

Now let me introduce you to my own dining table.  Not many people know I have one.  But I do.  I acquired it in New York also, but not from a rustic farm.  Instead, I bought it in an entirely different part of the Empire State:  Manhattan.

And although I've owned it since 1991, I can only remember ever dining on it precisely... once.

I'd been living with my aunt in her longtime Brooklyn apartment, while working in Lower Manhattan.  And I wanted my own place, but finding something both decent and affordable in such an expensive city isn't easy for most of us.  Eventually, I learned of a friend's apartment coming up for availability between Manhattan's Gramercy Park and Kip's Bay neighborhoods, on the East Side.  I'd have a roommate, but that's what made my rent manageable.

Although I'd heard horror stories about roommates - especially in a challenging place like New York City - I'm grateful to have had a surprisingly good experience with mine.  An amiable fellow around my age, he was Italian-American, a native of Staten Island, and a computer networking consultant.  We never had any money issues, or issues over noise, or personal space - or refrigerator space!

One of the ways we avoided food storage drama came from the fact that, well, I never cooked anything in that apartment.  Not only have I never enjoyed cooking, but apparently, I'd never realized how inhibiting bad kitchen aesthetics can be.

While ours was quite spacious for a Manhattan kitchen, it offered a diminutive, partly-rusted gas stove whose safety struck me as dubious at best.  Its refrigerator was also small, but surprisingly clean, so I did feel comfortable using it.  A deep, cast iron Art Deco sink broadcast its age by its porcelain's scrub-proof dinginess.  Worn, tattered, gray industrial carpeting ran from wall to wall, but never fit my definition of what "wall-to-wall" carpeting should look like!  Besides, I couldn't figure out how to clean it, and the fact that it was our kitchen flooring made me wonder how many generations of other people's food, grease, and germs were caught in its fibers. 

Our building opened in 1900, meaning its construction fell under the parameters of New York State's Tenement House Act of 1879.  Folks familiar with the city's byzantine building codes would call our apartment building an "Old Law" tenement, and that matters because it was New York's Tenement Act of 1901 that mandated indoor plumbing for residential structures.

You see, that one year between "Old Law" and "New Law" tenements represents a significant timeline for our apartment.  From the exposed water and sewer pipes throughout our 5-story walk-up, I'd deduced that its origins predated modern indoor plumbing, although it was only recently I learned it was only by one year!

After moving in I quickly met our neighbors across the hall from our third-floor apartment - a friendly brother and sister from Central America.  They told me they could see what they thought must have been our building's outhouse in the backyard, since that was the direction their unit faced (ours faced the street).  

Just to clarify:  It wasn't necessarily our kitchen's age that bothered me, but its aesthetics.  Maybe I was too picky, but I'd already had my aunt's vastly nicer Brooklyn kitchen as a template.  Hers wasn't quite as old as ours, she maintained it well, and we both kept it scrupulously clean.  I'd had no issues cooking in it, although I never pretended to be good at it, and my aunt knew she wasn't either, so neither of us had high expectations for our meals!

My roommate, on the other hand, often cooked in our Manhattan kitchen, and simply ignored what I considered its many defects.  Like my aunt and me, he didn't fancy himself as a foodie, which kinda surprised me, since most New York Italians I knew were excellent cooks.  One of them, a grandmotherly co-worker of mine who also lived in Staten Island, would regularly bring in a huge portion of pasta and peas cooked in olive oil for me (she never brought food for any other co-worker unless we were having an office party).  She'd playfully insist that my "Brooklyn auntie" should have been cooking more for me!

Come to think of it, I shouldn't have eaten her kind pasta at my desk at lunch, but taken it home for dinner to be reheated in a microwave.  And oh, yeah... maybe by now you've wondered why I haven't mentioned having one of those contraptions in my Manhattan kitchen.  To be honest, and prove how much I'm not a cook, I can't remember why neither my roommate nor I ever thought of getting a microwave.

I do recall my roommate getting a toaster.  But weekdays, on my way to the office, I always got either a "sesame with a schmear" (toasted bagel with cream cheese) or an enormous blueberry muffin, split at its top and stuffed with real butter, from various delis near the Wall Street subway downtown.  Weekend breakfasts were Entenmann's donuts or Belgian waffles at a brunch place up Third Avenue from my apartment.

And yes, my breakfast menu will become relevant soon.

What groceries I did purchase I got at a brand-new two-level supermarket a couple of blocks north on Third Avenue, near my Belgian brunch place.  It was situated inside an equally-new high-rise condominium tower, and I thought it was cool that we shoppers had to take an escalator (or elevator) down from street level, which featured mostly a glorified deli, to the main grocery aisles downstairs.

Our apartment consisted of five rooms plus a bathroom.  Upon entering, you'd immediately be in our kitchen, with the bathroom to your left.  Then came a middle room (which we dubbed the dining room), and then a front room.  Each of those living areas featured an attractive wall of exposed brick, and doorways to two small bedrooms.

And while they drastically compromised everyone's privacy, narrow air shafts between buildings on our block provided extra interior window space.  So our whole apartment was unexpectedly bright, with high ceilings and tall windows - even in that kitchen - providing excellent ambient light and cross-ventilation.

Those air shafts represented yet another structural legacy of the city's "Old Law" tenements.  That 1879 law mandated air shafts between buildings so that interior rooms had windows that opened to the outside.  Common interpretation of 1879 codes led builders to construct tenements that, when viewed from above, looked like the shape of dumbells because of those air shafts.  So another name for our tenement was "dumbell tenement", but not because of the people who built them or lived in them.

My Manhattan bedroom's "carpeting" is now a small area rug in Texas

I risk the mention of those air shafts because our windows opening to them were in walls built at an angle.  After moving in, I went down to the city's venerable ABC Carpet near Union Square and bought two floor rugs for myself that practically fit as de-facto wall-to-wall carpeting, except for those walls at angles for ventilation shafts.

Why spend money on rugs?  Well, mainly, because except for our kitchen and bathroom, our apartment's floors were ancient wood parquet that had not been maintained.  At all.  Many of its individual pieces were no longer anchored into their four-finger pattern, but resting loosely atop our downstairs neighbor's ceiling rafters.  Walking across our floors in bare feet usually meant moisture on our skin would pull some pieces out of the flooring.

Plus, we wanted to muffle our sounds for the benefit of our neighbors.

I know - such an outmoded thing anymore:  Being considerate of others, right?

For the dining room, which was next to my bedroom, my rug measures about 11 x 7.  And for my bedroom, the rug measures about 7 x 5.  I still have them, here in Texas, and I never fail to draw amazement from visitors when I describe how they fit almost like carpeting in that Manhattan apartment.

With my "wall-to-wall" dining room carpeting!

And here, now, behold:  My Manhattan apartment's dining table.  I purchased it at a Scandinavian furniture store on East 57th Street.  Its manufacturer's mark is Brdr. Furbo in Spottrup, Denmark.  I particularly liked its Mid-Century Modern minimalism, and its drop-leaf flexibility.  I set it up against our dining room's exposed brick wall, and the two complimented each other well.  Down the block from our apartment was a store that sold solid oak furniture made in what had been Yugoslavia, so I purchased two plain, lightly-stained chairs which flanked the table.

Comparing my family's antique farm table and my Danish table, I now see similarities I doubt I considered back when I was browsing that furniture shop on 57th Street.  For one thing, both tables were acquired in the Empire State.  Secondly, both feature expandability, yet have a pleasing aesthetic in their minimal configuration.  With both leaves dropped to the side of their pedestal, my Manhattan table stood elegantly yet unobtrusively for years in our Texas home's hallway.

But as I pointed out earlier, one glaring distinction differentiates these two tables that have played important roles in my life:  While I've eaten countless meals at our family's farm table, I can recall eating only one meal at my Manhattan dining table.  One.  And I remember what it was:  Kellogg's corn flakes with canned peaches.  For my dinner, not even breakfast.  

I never eat cereal for breakfast.

Both angled leaves can drop
to create an ever-slimmer profile

Hey - I've already explained:  I'm no gastronome.  And corn flakes with canned peaches was a common dinner of mine in Manhattan because it was incredibly easy after a long day at the office.  It did contain a certain nutritional value.  And if you don't think that's enough food for a healthy meal, consider that it was almost always followed by Ben and Jerry's ice cream.  Even in the wintertime!  

Meanwhile, my roommate frequently ate at this table, both restaurant food, and food he'd cooked in our kitchen.  He recognized how odd it was that I never ate at my own table, and would occasionally check with me to see whether I was leaving it pristine as some sort of museum piece, or if he really could use it without annoying me!  And I'd tell him to please use it and justify my purchase of it.

So where did I usually eat my apartment meals?  In a corner of my small bedroom, on a captain's bed I'd inherited from the previous tenant (who'd moved to Europe), propped up by pillows, watching my TV.

As I'd dine atop that bed, I'd look through my open bedroom door out onto my beautiful, glowing Danish table up against our stylish exposed brick wall, and try to talk myself into using it.  So one time, I did.  I probably remember it because it happened only once.

I never did it again because frankly, I don't enjoy eating by myself.  Even having that other empty chair at my official dining table seemed to reinforce a loneliness that pervaded my Gotham experience.  I eventually learned it's a common irony for many folks living in the middle of a metropolitan area with approximately 15 million other people.  But that's small comfort, right?  At least it helps explain one reason I ended up in therapy!  

If my roommate's schedule had been the same as mine, and he ate his meals at approximately the same time I did, perhaps we'd have coordinated a menu plan or even brought our separate food to the same table to eat together.  But as a consultant, his hours usually were all over the place.

However, I don't want to give the impression that I ate all my Manhattan dinners in my bedroom, or that they were all corn flakes and canned peaches!  Or that they were all laced with self-pity.

A couple of other single friends from my church and I decided that since we were otherwise alone in The Greatest City On Earth, we couldn't let our relationship status stand in the way of exploring some of our planet's best cuisine.  One of my friends was originally from India, and worked as an accountant for a major cosmetics corporation.  The other was originally from the Caribbean, and taught at an elite Upper East Side prep school.  Between our diverse backgrounds, we managed to find a variety of genuine, culturally-significant, non-touristy restaurants around Manhattan many Friday evenings that filled our appetites without draining our wallets. 

So... does rolling all that together help explain why my Danish dining table remains in excellent condition today?  Had I known I'd only personally dine on it once, I wouldn't have purchased it to begin with.  But looking back now, I realize it came to serve as a learning experience for me, even if it served me only one actual meal. 

And maybe my roommate was on to something:  When he wondered if I was intentionally preserving it as some sort of museum artifact, maybe that's what I've unintentionally ended up doing after all!

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