April and an Old Truck

 It’s a gradual awakening. For me and the house and various machinery as well as the lobstering business I insist on staying in contrary to any common sense.

Here at 33 South Road, Matinicus Isle, Maine, the Easter vibe comes not in pastel or fluorescent pinks, oranges or yellows, crocuses, daffodils or forsythia blossoms, but in dirt-crusted black. 

The truck Megan paid $800 for in 2014 is now in its 11th season here. Hundreds of trips have been made up and down the island with as many traps as would stay stacked on the bed. The black Mazda pickup truck has had its share of malfunctions and breakdowns, but picture tightening battery terminals after lugging the battery up out of the basement, tipping some fresh gas in, sweet talking the dodgy starter until she comes to life and then watching the black beauty rise up out of the dead grass as the tires are inflated. That is resurrection. 

The lawnmower obliges, though it feels wrong to just about need mittens to cut the grass. Buoys get inspected for weak bridles and cleaned prior to this year’s fluorescent blue and orange coat. A few need my initials and license number re-branded into them.

So it goes with me as well. I really do my best to adapt to the mainland, but once I’m boots on the ground here I realize how much I need the crazy that comes with this remote island; how much I need the raw connection to the environment; how good it feels to be picking up dry broken limbs off the yard and warming myself with them a little later by the stove. I realize how much I cram down and out of sight the suffocating sensations of the suburbia that the mainland coast is becoming. As wonderful as it is, it’s usually not working for me by April, and I don’t consciously realize why I’m such a drag. Then again in November, the fear of cold man winter will have me grateful for a comfy nest. 

Thinking further out than just the yearly migratory cycle, this place reminds me I need the wildness and impracticality, if for no other reason than to remember how showing up here one April long past felt like being released from confinement. I felt there was adventure ahead in life and I was right. I often do not feel that way these days, so it’s good I came out and fired up black beauty one more time in April.

Dark Objects Lurking in the Center of the Galaxy

 ‘If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plan.’ To which I say ‘if you want to make God piss her pants in hysterics, tell her your plan for fixing something in an old house.

For a couple years after moving in to the house at 33 South Road, I had no real idea what was in the barn. There was a canyon running through to the oil tanks and a little storage space on the right. 

The rest of the space was packed with scrap metal, furniture, tangled bits of dead fishing gear, lumber scraps and uncategorized debris. As I began picking through the periphery, I was unaware that lurking further in were dark, obscure and extremely dense objects at the center of the galaxy. 

These consisted of a half dozen steam power era woodworking tools. Not the brightly colored Ryobi, Makita or DeWalt types, but massively built planers, lathes, bandsaws and a drill press. I had no use for these things, which I believe were operated by a system of overhead belts and pulleys supplied with power at one source, perhaps a steam engine or team of oxen. I did, however, have plenty of use for the space they occupied. 

Some devices could be slid, walked, crowbarred or pried out of the barn, but a couple of them required an excavator to snake its hydraulic strong-arm into the barn and lift them out. 

When the floor was cleared, it was evident that even if these dense cores didn’t bend spacetime, they certainly bent the barn floor. Crushed would be more accurate. The deep divot also bounced a good bit. 

The floor has been bugging me for a number of years now and I figured (which is where God starts in to chuckling) that I could just pull up the broken floorboards, splice a couple of joists in, replace the floorboards and have a beer while admiring my fine work.

The first length came up easily enough, but only revealed another layer of planking running perpendicular to the upper layer. This may seem crazy, but pulling up other floorboards showed more of the exact same planking down below. 

Well.      Ok.      So I’ll take up some of both layers and fix the collapsed joists, right? Mmmm. Except that over here is a column on top of both layers of floor which seems to be supporting a carrying beam. And another one over here. So, if these were removed, I would a) have a lot more work just to get at the problem, and b) possibly find myself wearing the upper level of the structure.

Next is the search for a demo blade to fit my reciprocating saw, and some exploratory surgery on the worst affected area. The reveal was not encouraging. 

There is often a point in any challenging project where I think of just covering everything back over and quietly walking out backwards, whistling offhandedly and finding something else to do.  

What I found was that my forebears thought it was ok to just lay support beams on dirt, and that the support beams mostly didn’t exist any more. 

Longer pause this time. Yup, looks the same from over on this side. 

To filibuster, I started digging the dirt and rocks out and hoping the subconscious would craft me a plan. In addition to many five gallon buckets of dirt and good sized hunks of granite, there were an old drill bit, a number of bones, a vertebra section and what I believe was a horse’s tooth. 

Better has to be good enough this time. Short of rebuilding the entire bottom half of the structure, the best I could come up with was to prop the new joists up on bricks and roofing shingles and jack the floor up as far as possible, then nail it all together again. 

Once the new stringers were stood in place and elevated, everything else went back together in a half hour or so. I suppose to some extent I was just sewing the patient back together with a shorter term fix, but better is good enough.

The swooping contour is mostly straightened and the trampoline effect is gone. I wouldn’t want to set up a billiard table there or try to store a giant cast iron lathe, but balance has mostly been restored in the galaxy. 

Showers when one is caked filthy and sore are way more satisfying than ones before an office day. 

A Bad Day on the Boat (still beats a good day elsewhere)

 Those close to me would be justifiably sick of my bitchiness. As for many, this has been a bumpy summer for me. To compound the daily challenges, I've missed no opportunity to respond as poorly as possible, take offense at everything and make the worst of every situation. It could be the Delta variant and its promises of future masking, lockdowns, business disruption and braying about tyranny and oppression by those hell bent on incubating new variants. It could be that we're supposed to be going 33 and 1/3 in August, but it's more like 78 rpms with work demands. It could be bad wiring in my brain or the stankin' heat. 

Nowhere have I been more sour than in my office work. Things are actually great in that enterprise, but again I'm snatching misery from the jaws of happiness whenever possible. I don't understand me that way, but that's how it is. [cue the Babe mice: 'The Way Things Are']

Today, for example, the trap hauling day started with a visual migraine and unexpected trip back to the wharf for a snort of immutrex, which if you have migraines, I highly recommend. Laurie and I then set forth out of the harbor on a truly beautiful morning. There were a couple of lobsters here and there so all was going pretty well. 

About half way through our gear, two things happened. Actually, one thing didn't happen and the other thing really, really did. The thing that didn't happen was the pot hauler rotating such that my trap would come up. Quick and confused look at the switch. Move the handle back and forth. Nope. Seconds later, I discovered the thing that did happen, which was a boisterous fountain of bright red hydraulic fluid arcing across the forward compartment and down into the bilge. 

Fortunately, we weren't far from the harbor, and Laurie is way cooler under duress than I am. She got a bucket under the fountain so I could get most of the way in without committing environmental infractions. 

Just outside the breakwater, Jeb, savior in many a situation in Matinicus Harbor, came out and towed me to the mooring. 

I've taken apart a few hydraulic components, but the usual fog of breakdown stress had me questioning whether to lefty lucy or righty-righty to get the substantial fittings apart. I also prefer not to break things such that a small problem gets much bigger. The top piece came apart with a few swears and a pipe wrench. The bottom fitting pretty much gave me the finger with its rusted threads. Glistening though they were with recently liberated fluid, there was no give. 

Uncertainty about how something comes apart or goes together is often the hardest step of any repair, especially for those of us who have no training and only know how to deal with what they've already broken. I understand alternators, fuel and pressure sensor lines, temperature gauges, gear coolers, steering valves and other things I've become familiar with only when they fail. 

Clayton, as always, is the go-to person because he has broken everything that can be broken on a boat as well as a few that make Art Stanley, guru of all things marine diesel, to say 'well, I've never seen that before.' My sense is that Clayton is very proud of those moments. For me, he always knows the what and how that I do not. 

Since he was just climbing the ladder as we paddled in, I asked. "Thrust and pipe wrenches." Laurie interpreted that as muscle and wrenches, but Thrust with a capital T is spray goo that penetrates stubborn rusted parts even better than WD-40 or PB Blaster. I helped myself to a can and an extra wrench from his shop and had the business apart a few minutes later, plus a couple of paddles across the harbor. 

The rest of the day was a merry-go-round of calling Penobscot Island Air, finding out they had a plane landing in 5 minutes, calling Megan to pick up the dead hose from PIA, her getting it to NAPA to fabricate a new one and a lengthy cleanup process wherein multiple gallons of hydraulic/salt water broth were pumped out of the bilge into buckets followed by a great deal of swabbing, wiping and scrubbing. Added features were having to find my phone on the road in 3 separate pieces after taking pictures of the hose and carelessly leaving the phone on my truck hood. 

Throughout the day, I was more content than I've been for weeks in the office. A bad day fishing...

Breaking Bar

 May 19, 2021 - One of the difficult things I've had to learn as a perpetual novice lobster boat operator is that diesel engines need to get run hahhd at least once a day. "It's the worst thing for 'em, idling around all day hauling traps," Art Stanley told me, "those engines need to work."  

My instinct is to baby every machine- to go easy around every corner and over every bump, start and stop gradually - be gentle. 

This I learned from Malcolm. Before leaving for college, I only ever had one job, starting in 3rd grade or so. I started by following Lucille around taking care of shrubs and 'helping' with yard work, lamenting my fate when weeding on a wet mosquito-filled morning, but also marveling at my $.25/hr salary when I got it. I graduated to mowing lawns, and then headed for the big time with Malcolm and the haying crew, where I stayed until leaving home at 18, learning about the coefficient of friction,  weight in motion and to operate and respect heavy machinery with big metal teeth.

Back to Malcolm. One year he purchased an F-150, for, I believe, $100.00, and got many seasons out of it on the farm. He could drive a vehicle slower than anyone else I've known. I believe I could count each RPM, especially on those rare occasions when 2nd or even 3rd gear was called for. Perhaps the velocity dilation actually changed time in that truck, which could possibly explain the longevity of what was already a fully depreciated piece of equipment. It probably also helped that the 1970s F-150 was made of actual metal.

What I took from these lessons was to try and feel the moving parts and joints, listen to the mechanical conversation from the vehicle, and go easy on 'er. You'll get a little more from things that way even if the world passes you by.

As much as I respect Art's advice, Mal's is hardwired. Which brings us to Black Beauty.

Megan bought a 1996 Mazda B4000 pickup truck for $800.00 in the Spring of 2014. Already fully depreciated itself before journeying to Matinicus, BB has trucked every single trap from my yard to the Steamboat Wharf and back for 7 seasons, going into #8. Well, almost every trap. At the end of last season, while trucking gear back from the wharf, a pronounced smell of burning rubber and overheating temp gauge put a premature end to Black Beauty's season. 

I ordered a serpentine belt from NAPA last week. Somewhat amazingly, there is a decal beneath the hood showing which pulleys the belt goes over and under and, more importantly, how to relieve enough tension to slip the belt onto the last one. There's also a fan to be navigated which makes for some Escher-esque spatial visualization in getting it threaded into position. Then the easy part is finished. 

The hard part is never having heard of a 'breaking bar.' I tried for a good long while to use my 3/8" socket handle to torque out the tension. Then I went and got a metal tube from the barn, thinking I could slide that over the socket handle for some extra yoink. Then I went and got a hacksaw so the tube would fit under the hood. Not happening this day.

Bart stopped in the next morning, and since his idea of winter relaxation is to tear down a '92 Volvo and rebuild it from scratch way prettier than brand new, I figured he might have some ideas. 'There's a hammer here. That can't be good. First, get rid of the hammer.' 

'ok.'

Bart's insight involved us applying a lot of upper body strength to push down on the tensioner and the belt at the same time. 20 minutes or so of stubborn diligence, but again, no.

The decal was trying to tell us something. It showed pulling up on the other side of the tensioner as the path to success, rather than pushing down on this side. The problem though, was that with the fan and its plastic hood getting in the way, there was no chance of getting the bulky tube and wrench combo into position. 

Clayton stopped in and mentioned a 'breaking bar.' Now I'd learnt something. I can see why it's good for breaking  stuck bolts, knuckles and for tantrums. This ingeniously simple implement is just a long, extra heavy, but relatively thin and stripped down version of a socket handle. 

 A few seconds of fiddling into place, one good yoink and on goes the belt through a combination of leverage and pulling in the right direction. 

Air in the tires, gasoline in the tank, a charged battery and she's off.