Letting the inner child out for a while

Today was one of those I-Actually-Did-Something days. One of those days that come all too infrequently, these days. What I did was go to a Model Train and Doll House show at the armory in Augusta. I love both model trains and doll houses, so when I saw the sign yesterday, on my way to Burger King to get a Whopper without onions and a chocolate milk shake, and saw that the entry fee was only $4, I determined to go.

Not only that, I actually asked someone to go with me. As I've mentioned here before, too often I don't do things because I have no one to do them with. In this case, I didn't really mind going alone, but thought it would be a pleasant activity to share with someone, and also thought that the staff member with whom I am most sympatico might actually be interested in going, too. And she was but, alas, the show was only running today, and she was already committed to going shopping with her mother.

So I went alone. Out into the freezing cold day -- after two days when it got up into the 40s, to everyone's aston-ishment and delight, it is now back to being Winter in Maine -- and making the what is beginning to seem like such a long drive, from my house to the street in Augusta where most things happen (Western Avenue, which sports two shopping centers, numerous fast-food places as well as a lot of small businesses, the Post Office, the best hotel in town, the office of the local newspaper and yes, the armory) -- and joining the queue behind all the people with little kids in tow, so I could fork up my $4.

The show was not what I expected. I thought there would be lots of neat doll houses and running trains to ogle at. There were some of each, but not that many. There was an absolutely marvelous doll house in the form of a light house, with a beautifully done room on each of the three levels. The only thing I wondered about was why the woman who made it had put the bedroom on the second floor, and the living room on the top. "People" -- and there were figures in the kitchen on the ground floor -- would have to go through the bedroom to get to the living room. But the woman's work was meticulous. And feeling the way I do about lighthouses, well, you just know I would have loved to be able to add that one to my non-existent collection.

There was also a doll house that cost $600. It looked like a McMansion. Also beautifully done, but $600?

Several model train clubs -- Maine 3 Railers, Great Falls Railroad Club -- had displays of running trains. My favorite train was the Bangor-Aroostook, a train line that actually served that massive county in the north of Maine from the 1890s through the 1960s. What really charmed me were the all the Maine-specific cars that made up the train: an Oakhurst milk car (Oakhurst being a major Maine dairy), a presumably refrigerated Maine Lobster car, heating oil being transported in a Downeast Energy car, etc., etc.

Perhaps the best display was produced by Model Rail Scenes, apparently a branch or project of the Central Maine Railroad Club. Wonderful buildings for the train that was running to glide past -- a milk stop, with tiny old-fashioned metal milk containers waiting on the platform, farm buildings, a general store with outhouse. I came away with their card, which directed me to their web site (www. modelrailscenes.com), which showed me that all these items can be purchased as kits, with prices ranging from $60 for the milk stop, to $200 for a switch tower, to $325 for the barn/silo/shed. Just imagine what it must cost to outfit a complete countryside for your train to roll through!

However, despite these few displays, what the show mainly consisted of was people selling train cars -- never saw so many little train cars in one place, most lying on their sides in little boxes -- and the tiny, adorable, in some cases exquisite furnishings, and dolls, that go in doll houses. I don't have a doll house, or a child with a doll house, so obviously I wasn't going to be buying any of the doll furniture -- especially with prices like $59 for a miniature table-with-two-chairs, or $54 for a tiny rocking chair (think how much it would cost to fully furnish a doll house at those prices! These are not inexpensive hobbies.) -- and while I would love to be able to buy a whole train, with a track for it to run on, and cunning little buildings to go with it, such a purchase would not only fall into the luxury category, in which I may not, as a rule, indulge; but also, where on earth would I put the thing? Not an inch of available space in my house (which is so small it could almost qualify as a Doll House).

Actually, what I really wished was that I had not only the permission of my Friends organization to make such a purchase, but also some cold hard cash from them, so that I could get a small train with tracks for the library. This is obviously something for which I have no money in my regular budget, but is the sort of thing the Friends have paid for in the past. Two Christmases in a row we had the loan of a cute little train that ran 'round and 'round our Christmas tree, to the enchantment of many a child, and many a non-child. But then the fellow who had lent us the train died, and that was the end of that. In December of 2009 I was thinking of trying to find such a set to buy and donate to the library, as I was a little more flush then than I am most Christmases. However, to my real surprise, I couldn't find a place in the area that sold electric trains! None of the local stores like Target or Wal-Mart carried them, nor did the little independent toy store to be found in one of those shopping centers on Western Ave., not even the much publicized Red Dragon Toys, south of here in the town of Brunswick. Goodness, don't little boys get train sets anymore? So anyway, I gave up that notion for the time being.

But before I left the show today I spent a dollar on a raffle ticket for a complete train layout. Won't know who won until next December, but that would be just in time for Christmas...

Riding the Maine Eastern

Last Saturday I did something I've been wanting to do ever since I discovered that an excursion train runs between Brunswick (half an hour south of where I live) to Rockland, on the coast. I took that train trip. I had hesitated over making the trip up to now because of the cost, or what I thought was the cost, i.e., $60 round trip. The alumnae association of Simmons College, where I went to library school, was offering the trip, plus lunch, plus admission to the highly regarded Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, for what I thought was $15 less than that regular round trip fare alone. As it turns out, the round-trip fare at this time of year is only $40, but I feel the extras included in my trip made it worthwhile.

Naturally the weather was miserable. We have had weeks and weeks of glorious, dry weather, so last Saturday it rained. And was chillier than the forecasts had led me to believe it would be. I found myself underdressed, which is very unusual for me. I tend to take into consideration every possible contingency, as physical discomfort completely distracts me from whatever I might be trying to do. In this instance I needed a top layer, like, say, a raincoat. And I could have used some gloves. Standing in line waiting to get on the train (for a good 20 minutes), and later walking from the train station to the restaurant where we were to have lunch, I had to dredge up what little Maine stoicism I've managed to accrue in four years. But at least I did have an umbrella.

My first surprise was the train "station" in Brunswick. The infor-mation card I had from Simmons directed me to a new depot on Maine Street, but that is not yet in operation. I had to go into the bank behind it and ask where the train station was. After a series of right and left turns I found myself at a big, empty, unpaved lot, weeds all around. There was a small hut on the far side of the lot beside, yes, a railroad track. Very unprepossessing for an operation that caters to tourists!

I was wildly early, which is also very unusual for me. However, I had been determined not to repeat the debacle of my trip to New York this summer, when I missed the train due to a combination of leaving too late, and then taking the wrong exit off the turnpike. So I had to sit in my car for a good half hour, until the sight of others getting out of their cars -- which had been gradually arriving as I sat there -- suggested to me that the train must be arriving. This proved to be a false alarm -- the train was coming, but over there aways, and then it disappeared. At the end of the day, when we returned from Rockland, I learned why: the train has to drive a distance down the track, and then back up onto a different track, that runs to the empty lot. By the time of this enlightenment it had been a very long day -- officially 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., though since I'd been 45 minutes early it was that much longer for me -- and this tedious maneuver, which added a good ten minutes to our "arrival," (and we were running late anyway), made the corners of my mouth turn down. One hopes this will not be necessary when the new depot is up and running.

The Simmons group was supposed to have use of the Parlor Car, but it turned out tickets had been sold to individual passengers for that area (I used the restroom in there at one point, and could see nothing that suggested a parlor, saw nothing but regular seats, but apparently there is a "variety of seating and table configurations" at the far end, which supposedly justify paying $15 more a ticket), so we were pretty much on our own. Eventually the woman who had organized the trip, who went my coatless/gloveless state several levels better by wearing shorts, got permission from the conductor for our group to use the cafe car, which was not open for business because the help hadn't shown up . (We are obviously not talking Amtrak here.) However, by the time she got around to telling those of us in the car I was in, I was comfortably ensconced, in one of those train configurations where two seats face two other seats, and you have to watch out for one another's toes and knees, with two delightful ladies from New Jersey, who were on a separate bus tour (their bus would be picking them up in Rockland). I saw no reason to move. I hadn't come on this trip to hobnob with people I hadn't seen in 25 years (I knew no one in the Simmons group anyway), but for the pleasure of riding a train, and to look at fall foliage, which I was hoping would be more impressive than that in my own neighborhood.

Which it was, if not wildly so. For much of the trip you are riding through woods, often so thick with underbrush that you can't see far into them. Smears of red and orange, the colors that have been so noticeably missing in the Augusta area. Every now and then you come out into open marsh land, with rivulets of water full of lily pads winding through the golden reeds. Occasionally there are green fields beyond the marshes, with comfortable old New England farm houses, and the occasional cow. When we got closer to Rockland there were fields with more cows, much closer to the track, and Betty, one of my New Jersey ladies, said, "They aren't sitting down. They're supposed to sit down when it's raining." Obviously uneducated cows.

The most exciting part of the trip was just beyond the town of Wiscassett, when the train crosses a cove of the Sheepscot River. All of a sudden you do not see a rocky embankment sloping down from the edge of the train to the water, you see nothing but water. And water that is very close, not a good distance away, as when crossing a bridge. "Yikes!" I cried, glancing out, and down. "This has got to be one narrow railroad track; you can't even see it!" "Oh, my," said Betty. "Do you suppose we're safe?" "Can you swim?" I asked.

The only way to go

For my recent trip to New York I took the train. Some time ago I swore never again to do any major driving through the Northeast, due to the relentless heavy traffic, which can produce intolerable levels of stress in me. I broke that promise to myself when I drove to Pennsylvania to attend my goddaughter's graduation -- nothing like high motivation to get you to do something you've sworn never to do -- but I was lucky in not encountering really nerve-wracking traffic until Connecticut, on my return trip. Nonetheless it is absolutely impossible to avoid nerve-wracking traffic in driving to New York, so I don't do it.

The train is a wonderful way to go. A few years ago Amtrak reinstated service between Portland and Boston -- the Downeaster -- so you can even go the whole way by train, though you must get yourself from the station the Downeaster arrives at (North Station) to one of the stations the train to New York departs from (South Station or Back Bay). You either have to go by subway, lugging your luggage and hoping you don't miss your connection, or taxi, paying that extra bit (and, if the traffic's bad, hoping you don't miss your connection). Despite this hassle, I like to take the train the whole way, enamoured of train travel as I am; but for reasons we won't go into as it would cast me in a bad light, I managed to miss the Portland-Boston train. Big trauma. However, the bus station is in the same place as the train station, and they just put me on the next bus (as the woman behind the counter said reassuringly, "Somebody misses the train every day); the bus station in Boston is right next door to South Station, so making my connection was painless, and from then on it was a very pleasant trip.

But not, of course, perfect. Perfection is, we are told, reserved for the next life. (If there's no next life that means there is no per-fection anywhere which makes you wonder, why do humans even have that concept?!) In the Things Could Be Better Dept.: the cafe car had no Diet Coke, only Pepsi. I do not like Pepsi at all -- and am deeply offended by places that assume they are interchangeable, and serve you the one when you've ordered the other -- so was forced to consume water with my hot dog. I do realize that my dilemma is no worse than that suffered by those (surely few) souls out there who prefer Pepsi, every time they encounter a place that carries only Coke. Nonetheless, since Coke is vastly more popular in this country than Pepsi, I really think the cafe car should offer it. I was going to say as much in the online survey I answered when I returned from my trip (because of the promised chance at $500 free travel), but there was never a place for such input.

In the Pleasant Surprises Dept., the cafe car served the best kind of hotdogs there are, Hebrew National.

I was, happily, traveling on the Quiet Car, so was not bothered by people jabbering away on their cell phones or holding noisy conversations with one another. For me and people like me (who ask the dental hygienist to turn off the T.V. that is always running in each of the work cubicles at the dentist's office), the person who first thought of having a Quiet Car on trains was a genius.

At one point a woman sitting a few seats back from me did start jabbering away, in Spanish, on her phone. I got up, walked back, and politely but firmly said, "Excuse me, you're not supposed to use your phone on this car." There are signs hanging from the ceiling saying this, as well as paper notices in each empty seat; the conductor also announces this when the train first starts, and at any stop where a lot of people get on. However, this woman waves me away with "This is an emergency." Since the woman had been laughing and talking in a cheerfully animated way I was quite sure this wasn't true, but it didn't occur to me at the time to say, "Even if it's an emergency, you need to go to another car to use your phone."

Almost immediately, two different men went back to attempt to shut her up. One of them, shaking the printed notice at her, said, "Are you stupid? Can't you read?" The woman had plunked her large suitcase down in the space next to her, as she could not lift it to the rack overhead and apparently was not trusting enough to leave it in the large-luggage area at the back; one of the angry men went so far as to carry this suitcase off to that area. I think this action more than anything got the woman off her phone, though she was spitting "You shut up! You stupid!" at the same time.

The irony of making a noisy stink on the Quiet Car because someone was not being quiet enough seemed not to occur to these two gentlemen. I also thought how un-Maine-like their behavior was; no question these guys lived in Boston, or New York, or some other big city where aggressive behavior is the norm, and often necessary for 1) self-protection and 2) to get results. It took a few minutes for a sense of calm and serenity to reinstate itself in the car, but then I was able to go back to gazing out the window, dozing, and reading. Yes, sir, the only way to go.

The rail trail

This morning I walked a mile on the Rail Trail, then the mile back to my car. The Rail Trail is a very pleasant paved walk running from Augusta through Hallowell and Farmingdale to Gardiner. It follows, funnily enough, the old railroad track, which in turn follows the Kennebec River.

The railroad no longer runs along this stretch of track, though there has been some talk of extending the Downeaster line, which runs between Portland and Boston, north to Brunswick, and diehard train fans cherish a hope that eventually train service as far north as Augusta could resume. Last May there was a special chartered train trip between Rockland, on the coast, and Augusta, with the train stopping for a couple of hours in Hallowell, so people could sight-see and attend the annual meeting of the Maine Rail Group (a "non-profit group working to enhance rail service in Maine"), one of the sponsors of the trip. The old Hallowell depot was located just across the street from the library, and while the depot building is no longer there, the platform is, and that's where the train stopped. I was able to run out with the library's digital camera and take a few pictures of the 50s era train, as it huffed and clanged in place.

But back to the trail that runs beside the rail. The trail is much used, by joggers, bicyclists, women pushing baby carriages, couples walking their dog, individual strollers like myself. This morning traffic on the trail was moderate; several times I was quite alone, which was especially pleasant. Just me, the wide, blue river down below – easily seen because our deciduous trees are still without leaves (yes, on April 19th – this is Maine, don't forget – though green buds are beginning to bulge and split), steep, granite-slab-littered embankments reaching up on the other side to the backs of houses that line Route 201, the road that runs through the four communities, and that I follow every day to and from work.

Indeed, the sound of traffic was the only thing that kept the experience from being perfect. Just can't escape the eternal hum of the combustion engine (will electric cars be quieter? Hybrids?) I think about my friend Linda, and her lovely home in Connecticut, just off the Wilbur Cross Highway. You can't see the road, thanks to all the trees (in New England trees hide a multitude of sins), but you can hear it, at all hours of the day and night. Same thing on the Rail Trail, though there is the occasional moment of silence, when there doesn't happen to be any traffic going in either direction.

This morning I wanted to walk a part of the Trail that I'd never been able to see from the road. At the southern end of Hallowell the path disappears under 201 and cannot be seen again for quite some time, until you get to about the middle of Farmingdale, when all of a sudden the trail is running right beside the road. So I was exploring, venturing into unknown territory, something I always enjoy doing (I often turn down a street or road I've never been down, just to see where it goes).

I walked a different stretch of the trail a year or so ago, starting at the northern end of Hallowell and walking about a mile into Augusta. Then I had especially enjoyed a little wooded area high on a bluff above the river. I had stood and looked down through the trees at a couple of motor boats whizzing up the river, then back again.

I had thought that the Rail Trail was specific to this area, but have learned there are rail trails all over the country. There's even (of course) an organization, the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, dedicated to supporting and publicizing these walking (biking, jogging) paths. And the organization has (of course) a web site: www.railstotrails.org/index.html. Walking does everybody good, and walking where there is beauty to be seen and peace to be enjoyed is an absolute positive. So...more power to them.

What a way to go

I returned today from a trip by train to Boston. I went down to spend the holiday with my friend Rick, as I have several times over the past few years. Normally I drive down, but the weather was supposed to be bad, and I really didn’t feel like dealing with the inevitable heavy traffic between Portland and Boston, and especially right around Boston, while also dealing with snow/sleet/rain and whatever else the weather decided to throw at us. So I made the decision to take the train. This necessitated an hour’s drive to Portland, but that was better than a total of two and a half to three hours driving, and traffic is never that bad between Augusta and Portland.

I was so glad I made this decision, even though the weather turned out to be not-all-that bad. I felt completely relaxed when I arrived, rather than a frazzled wreck. I was able to read, snack, doze, gaze out the window at the snowy landscape, and go to the bathroom whenever I needed to, rather than having to remain determinedly alert the whole time, lose time by pulling into a rest area when I needed to relieve myself, and do any snack-consumption while keeping one hand on the wheel and eyes on the road, an awkward business at best.

Actually, I would have to say that riding the train is a kind of heaven: the heaven of going – getting somewhere – accomplishing something, without having to exert any energy, or even remain alert.

I got my laugh of the trip when, following an announcement by the conductor as to why we had stopped (so that a train going in the other direction could go by on a stretch of single track up ahead), a man across the aisle muttered, “Right, better to stop – let’s not test the law of physics.” And a moment later he added, “It’s like that old math problem: if one train is heading north at 50 miles an hour...”

Some observations on the trip: a large, old, red-brick church across the street from the Dover, New Hampshire station, whose steeply slanted roof was dripping dramatically with long, pointed icicles. The small city of Haverhill, Massachusetts, with more huge old, red brick buildings, covered with a zillion windows, than anyplace I’ve ever seen. This has to have been some mill town. A quick perusal of its web site shows that, indeed, shoe manufacturing was the town’s main industry for 180 years. It sits on the Merrimack River, which would have provided the water power needed to run all those mills.

Then: it has always amazed me the way trains run right behind houses, or directly across the street from them. The reason it amazes me is that trains make a lot of noise, and the people in those houses must live with that noise several times a day. Besides the hoarse howl of its whistle whenever it’s approaching a crossing, there is the deep rumble of the engine. I know how loud that can be, because I could hear the rumble of the 11:30 train every night when I lived in my cabin-on-the-lake...and that train was a good half mile away. Imagine if it were at the bottom of your back yard!

I noticed this especially as the train was passing through Old Orchard Beach, a popular summer resort town just south of Portland. It’s a town of slapped-together motels, tacky arcades and local eateries (like Lisa’s Pizza). Also, of course, the Atlantic Ocean, which is no mean attraction. The town is very popular with vacationing Quebecois. The motels are all closed up for the winter, but in the summer the folks in many of those rooms are slap up against the railroad track. This would certainly be another factor in my having no desire whatsoever to stay in Old Orchard Beach.

The train arrives at and leaves from North Station in Boston, a very unprepossessing space beneath what was formerly Boston Garden, home of the Boston Celtics, now called BankNorth Garden. The main thing I noticed in the waiting area were the uncomfortable benches. They were attractive, looking like park benches with fancy black iron arms and legs, but the backs sloped, making it virtually impossible to sit up straight. You are all but forced to slouch down on your tailbone. Poor design in spades, and you have to wonder: what were they thinking.

They were also a few little things wrong on the trains: going down, the hydraulics were broken on the door at the end of my car, meaning you couldn’t open it by touching the pad, so the conductor left it open, making for a drafty ride (I eventually spread my coat over my legs). In that same car you couldn’t be absolutely sure the bathroom door was locked, since the little light only stayed on if you held the lock in the forward position. If you let it go, the light went off. Did that mean the locking mechanism had been disengaged? Since I have a real aversion to the idea of someone walking in on me while I am about this very private business, I sat on the toilet holding the lock in place...

All of these things that need taking care of make me wonder: couldn’t we use some of that stimulus package money Barak Obama is promising to bolster the train industry? Put people to work repairing train cars? Maybe redesign some waiting room benches?

From music to art

A couple of weekends ago I did something I’ve been wanting to do ever since I first heard their ad on the radio (good ol’ WBACH again): I went to visit the Wiscasset Bay Gallery in the town that claims to be the “prettiest village in Maine.” Quite as much I love listening to music, I love looking at art. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that these two, along with traveling and writing, are among my primary joys in life (and what are yours?) But looking at art is a pleasure I rarely indulge in these days, for some murky reasons, not least of which is that I very rarely do anything for pleasure these days. I work, eat (and cook, and grocery shop, and clean up), and sleep. That seems to be it, to far too great an extent. I could now go into the reasons for this being the case, but we’ll save that for another time.

I don’t know if it really is the “prettiest village in Maine” – seems a rather presumptuous claim to me – but Wiscasset certainly has all the requirements: big old New England houses, with big old New England trees, little shops along the short business stretch of Main Street, which is also Route 1 (which you can take the full length of the Maine coast, if you’ve got all the time in the world and the patience of Job). The shops lean heavily in the direction of Antiques, which is typical of small Maine towns. I sometimes wonder: where do all these antiques come from? How is it there are enough to fill all these hundred of shops?

The village is up one of the myriad jagged fingers of the sea that make the Maine coast so tattered. To see it today it’s hard to believe that in the 1700s it was the largest seaport north of Boston. Where on this particular Saturday afternoon I saw only one small motor boat, complete with dog, there would once have been lined up a dozen tall-masted sailing ships.

The gallery, which is right there on Main, a short distance from the bridge that spans the Sheepscot River, had plenty of lovely art, that was depressingly expensive. There was one large seascape by the artist Keith Oehmig that I would have purchased on the spot for my friend Ernest – who loves the sea, and even more, where the sea meets the land: beaches, small seaports, docks and marinas – had it not been that the $8,500 price tag was out of my league. But, then, for this Starving Librarian anything over, say, $50 would be out of her league. I committed the amusing faux pas of asking the genteel saleswoman – and the salespeople in art galleries always seem to be genteel, or insufferably hoity, so rare to encounter just plain folks in such positions – about the artist “whose work you seem to have so much of – is his name Ohmia?”

“Eh-mig,” she pronounced, (I’d read it wrong, thought the final ‘g’ was an ‘a’.) “And actually, that’s my husband. This is his gallery.” I felt suitably foolish, but she laughingly assured me that everyone got the name wrong, and she did not seem to be offended at what might have been perceived as a wondering why they had so much of this one particular artist’s work.

Actually, most of his paintings are good, and a few are quite good. And I think he must be a pretty remarkable person – according to their web site he began collecting and dealing in art in 1985, at the ripe old age of 22, having graduated from college only the year before. So here he is at 45 with his classy little gallery, and he paints. Nice work if you can get it. And oh, yes, he’s originally from Tennessee. Here’s obviously someone who chose his home...

On my way back to my car – parked down the side street that lies just above the river – I heard the hoarse yelling of a train, signaling its approach to a crossing. This little side street ends at a public boat slip, and just before that is the railroad line. So I got to watch an old train, that looked like it was from the 50s, come chugging in, pause long enough for people to get on or off, and then roll away, toward (as I later learned) its ultimate destination of Rockland, farther up the coast.

A perusal of the Internet told me that this was the Maine Eastern Railroad, that runs May through October between Brunswick and Rockland, allowing passengers to see all the little coastal towns and scenery in-between. And this makes me think ‘hmmm.’ Because another of the joys of my life is trains.