Lea Wait's Blog, page 305

Weekend Update: September 27-28, 2014

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Susan Vaughan (Monday), Dorothy Cannell (Tuesday), John Clark (Wednesday), Sarah Graves (Thursday), and Kate Flora (Friday).

In the news department, here’s what’s happening with some of us who blog regularly at Maine Crime Writers:

from Kaitlyn Dunnett: The first review is out for Ho-Ho-Homicide (publication date October 28) and it’s a nice one from Publisher’s Weekly, calling the book the “enjoyable eighth” in the series and Liss MacCrimmon “engaging” and “level-headed.” The best line? That I “skillfully” use “misdirection to keep the reader guessing to the end.”  I can live with that!

 

from Barb Ross: I’m thrilled that Kensington has renewed my contract and will be publishing books 4, 5 & 6 in the Maine Clambake Mystery series. I’m working on Book 4 right now and can’t wait to find out what happens.

from Kate Flora: An interesting interview about cadaver dogs, and how dog lore can help writers with their plots at:

http://thrillwriting.blogspot.com/2014/09/cadaver-dogs-information-for-writers.html

Kate will be at the Newport Cultural Center Saturday morning at 11:00 to talk about her new true crime, Death Dealer.

An invitation to readers of this blog: Do you have news relating to Maine, Crime, or Writing? We’d love to hear from you. Just comment below to share. Don’t forget that comments are entered for a chance to win our wonderful basket of books and the very special moose and lobster cookie cutters.

 

And a reminder: If your library, school, or organization is looking for a speaker, we are often available to talk about the writing process, research, where we get our ideas, and other mysteries of the business. Contact Kate Flora: mailto: kateflora@gmail.com

 

A Few of My Favorite Witticisms

James Hayman: One of my great pleasures is chuckling over the wit of others. In this blog I’d like to share a few of the great one (and two and three) liners from some of my favorite writers, performers, actors, comics, quarterbacks and catchers. In my opinion the all time champ is, without question, Dorothy Parker.   But others also deserve a place in the pantheon of wit. Here are just a few examples of cleverness that I enjoy repeating at cocktail parties when conversation fails and the guests’ spirits need to be picked up. If you have some of your own favorites, please share them with the rest of us.

“I used to be Snow White-but I drifted.” Mae West.

“You can lead a whore to culture, but you can’t make her think.” –Dorothy Parker

“I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered until I read the description in the catalogue: No good in a bed, but fine against a wall.” –Eleanor Roosevelt.

“Until I was thirteen I thought my name was SHUT UP.”- Joe Namath

“I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.”-Woody Allen.

“If all the girls attending this year’s Yale senior prom were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”-Dorothy Parker.

“The Statue of Liberty is no longer saying ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses.’ These days she’s got a baseball bat and is yelling ‘You want a piece of me?’ “- Robin Williams.

“What do you get when you cross an insomniac, an agnostic and a dyslexic?   Someone who stays up all night wondering if there is a Dog.” -Groucho Marx.

“I’d love to have a martini, two at the very most, three I’m under the table, four I’m under the host”-Dorothy Parker.

“You’d better cut that pizza into four slices. I’m not hungry enough to eat six.”- Yogi Berra.

“His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.”-Mae West.

“I tend to place my wives under a pedestal.” –Woody Allen.

“He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.” –Billy Wilder.

“If women ran the world we wouldn’t have wars. Just intense negotiations every twenty eight days.” –Robin Williams.

“What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case I definitely overpaid for my carpet.”-Woody Allen.

“Of course I talk to myself. I not only like a good speaker, I also appreciate an intelligent audience.”-Dorothy Parker.

“I’m not a member of any organized political party. I’m a Democrat.” –Will Rogers.

“Sex without love is a meaningless experience. But as far as meaningless experiences go, it’s pretty damn good.” -Woody Allen.

“Outside of a dog a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”- Groucho Marx.

“Puritanism may be defined as the haunting fear that somebody, somewhere may actually be having a good time.”- H.L. Mencken.

“The towels were so thick in that hotel, I could hardly close my suitcase.”-Yogi Berra.

“I am is reportedly the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be that I do is the longest?” –George Carlin.

“Tell him I was too fucking busy—or maybe it was vice-versa.” –Dorothy Parker (message to her agent.)

“The food here is not only terrible, the portions are too small.” –Woody Allen.

“A fool and his money are soon elected.” –Will Rogers.

“I’ve been in more laps than a napkin.”- Mae West.

“Always go to other people’s funerals. Otherwise they won’t go to yours.”-Yogi Berra.

“What’s the difference between an enzyme and a hormone? You can’t hear an enzyme.”-Dorothy Parker.

“I find television very educational. Every time somebody turns one on, I go in the other room and read a book.”-Groucho Marx.

“’I’d call him a sadistic, hippophilic necrophile. But that would be beating a dead horse.” Woody Allen.

“Anyone who hates small children and cute animals can’t be all bad.”-W.C. Fields.

“I only like two kinds of men, domestic and imported.”-Mae West.

“I’m not going to buy my kids an encyclopedia. Let them walk to school like I did.”-Yogi Berra.

“My grandmother started walking five miles a day when she was sixty. She’s ninety seven now and we don’t know where the hell she is.” –Ellen DeGeneres.

“Bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night.” –Woody Allen.

“A hard man is good to find.” –Mae West.

“Reminds me of my safari in Africa. Somebody forgot the corkscrew and for several days we had nothing to eat but food and water.” –W.C. Fields.

“This is not a book to be tossed away lightly. It should be thrown with great force.” –Dorothy Parker.

“Women should be obscene and not heard.” –Groucho Marx.

“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re still happy.” –Dorothy Parker.

Living in Maine vs Vacationing

Lea Wait, here. And although many people (from away) now consider me a Maine writer, I am very conscious of the fact that a) I was born in Boston. And b) I’ve only lived in Maine full-time since 1998.

Of course, I vacationed here (“vacationed” being defined as anywhere from ten days to six weeks while I was in school and/or working) for (gulp) over fifty years before that. In only one year did I fail to get to Maine: the first year after I’d graduated from college and had a “real” job. The kind of corporate job where you didn’t get any days off for the first twelve months. My mother sent me a framed sprig of sea lavender with a note “not to forget.” That framed sprig was on my office desk every one of the thirty years I worked in New York and New Jersey. I didn’t forget. And wished I was in Maine.

Now, miraculously, I’m here. Dream come true. I work for myself — although frequent emails from one of the four companies that have published my books remind me that I still have deadlines. But I’m no longer writing corporate communications of varying sorts, or developing strategies for a corporation I want to leave, or representing a company I respected … but that stole weekends and evenings as well as the basic ten hours a day I worked there.

I live in Maine.

June Lupine

The first week I lived here I was thrilled to exchange my New Jersey drivers’ license for one from Maine. I registered to vote at my new address. And I put Maine license plates on my car. (I’m still smile when I see those license plates.)

Today, just two weeks short of sixteen years later, I’m still excited to be here. I still look out the windows of my home and silently rejoice. I breathe in the salt air. And then I sit down at my desk and get to work.

When I moved to Maine I assumed my sisters and children and all their families would visit often. That hasn’t happened. Jobs and marriages and family obligations have taken them further away from Maine. Yes, sometimes they visit. But not often.

But during these years I’ve married, something I never dreamed of when I moved here, and I’ve made friends, in person and on line. I’m not lonely. But, looking at SEPTEMBER on the calendar today has reminded me how different the Maine I vacationed in was from the Maine I live in now.

When I vacationed here, I ate seafood every day, and lobsters often. Now I eat lobsters when we have guests, and seafood occasionally. My husband prefers meat, and I don’t argue. After all, I used to be the cook. Now he is.

When I vacationed here I went to the beach at least once a summer, went on “tour boats” out of places like Boothbay Harbor, and sat on the rocks at Pemaquid. This year I haven’t seen a beach or a been out on a boat of any kind, although (when I

Stone wall in Early Autumn

had guests) I did get to Pemaquid once.

I used to spend days in antique shops and flea markets and at auctions and antique shows. Since I now sell antique prints only out of my home, by appointment, and still have a large inventory, the only antique show I went to this summer was a show I exhibited in. Now I spend my time in libraries and bookstores and art galleries, since my husband is an artist.

When I vacationed here, I got to know part of mid-coast Maine. Now that I live here as an author I’ve visited schools and libraries from the southern part of York County to the northern reaches of Aroostook County. I have a much wider picture of the state than I did before.

Before I lived here full-time I’d only made brief visits to Maine in months other than July and August. Now I look forward to seeing autumn colors and ice on the rivers and reflections of snow-covered land in blue water. I know a little bit about wood stoves. (My husband has become an expert.) I have bags of “snakes” to put along window ledges to keep out drafts. My wardrobe leans heavily toward flannel shirts, sweat pants, and wool sweaters. I put Christmas wreaths on all our doors and don’t feel guilty about leaving them up until February. (Some people have wreaths on all their doors and windows, and leave them up until April.) I open champagne when the first crocuses appear.

I loved vacationing in Maine. But there is so much more to Maine than Vacationland. Living here? ‘year ’round? It’s the best.

It took me a few years to live my dream. But, every day, I thank the fates that brought me here — to vacation all those years, and, finally, to live where my heart has always been.

Stephen King’s Mystery Solved

When Stephen King was just two years old, his father went out for cigarettes and never returned.

“When people ask you why he left,” his mother would instruct, “say he’s in the Navy and that he’s at sea.” She’d follow up with, “That may not be a lie.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

               The mystery of just who Donald Edwin King was – and where he was from — has stymied the great fiction author his whole life.

That is, until the PBS show “Finding Your Roots” intervened and shed a little light.  King was one of the three guests on last night’s installment, an episode that featured others searching for their long-absent fathers.

Vicki Doudera here. In the event you missed it, let me tell you a little of what transpired.

The fist thing that “Finding Your Roots” discovered was that King’s father’s surname was not originally King.

No, until he was 23, Donald Edwin King’s last name was “Pollack.”

Although no one knows why the name was switched, this discovery helped the show’s genealogists trace back generations to King’s fourth great-grandfather, James Pollock, who, after the American Revolution, emigrated from Ireland to the U.S. This was clearly news to King.

Did Stephen ever suspect he had Irish roots? He said he’d always wondered if his belief in fairies, combined with a stellar ability to tell great stories, had something to do with the Emerald Isle.  When asked how he felt knowing about James Pollock and his lineage, King said that it felt like “a foundation under you.”

A separate branch of King’s family tree revealed another fact: a third great-grandfather, Enoch Bowden, was a Methodist church leader and judge who left Tennessee for the north because he was against slavery. King was visibly proud to discover his ancestor’s moral fortitude.

Many other secrets were revealed to our master of mystery. (His DNA, for example, shows that he is 99% European.) I watched the show thinking how writing a story is one way of solving a question, of finding an answer that just could be possible. Perhaps King was unconsciously trying to solve his own puzzle while writing some of his books.

What’s the mystery in your family history? And how does it influence your life? Are you still looking for the answer to a puzzle that’s stymied you?

A Rose by Any Other Name

Al Lamanda here. When I was a kid in school in New York, in The Bronx, especially grades six through eight, every kid in my class had a really cool nickname except one. Me. My friends were called Ack-Ack, Muskie, Coop, Big C, Little C and (yeah, I never figured it out, either) Chicken Boy. Around the neighborhood, there was Yoo Hoo, (because he drank a lot of it) Knuckles, (not because he was tough, but because he constantly cracked them) Tulip, (because his last name was Flowers) Boo-Boo, (he really did look like Yogi’s sidekick) Mr. Magoo, (the guy was blind as a bat and refused to wear his glasses. You could play hide and seek with him and never even have to hide) Worms, (you don’t want to know why) Nose, (seriously, the honker on the kid was amazing) Snots, (enough said about that) Spokes, (he got his pants caught in his bike wheel on Gun Hill Road and caused a six-car pile-up) Hair Ball, (to this day I swear he coughed one up) and my personal favorite, my Uncle Sal (his real name was Sam and one time I asked him why he was called Sal. He said, “For short.”)

So that’s the way it was back in The Bronx, when I was a kid. A rough and tumble neighborhood full of rough and tumble kids with some very odd names that reflected some very odd times. As for my lack of a nickname, I was born a nice Italian kid and my parents hung Alphonso on me as a moniker. (go ahead, try to make something cool out of that, I dare you) Snots tried to hang Alpo on me and got a black eye for his trouble. (I would have hit him in the nose, but there was that snot thing to consider) I’m thankful that my youth was spent prior to Happy Days hitting the air because I would have entered high school as the Fonz, and that would have been very un-cool indeed.

So my life has been spent as Al, and cool nickname aside, it hasn’t been so bad. It’s easy to spell and I was usually picked first in schoolyard games. (that ABC thing) Then, a few years ago, nickname disaster struck. Let me back that up for a moment. I’ve written several screen plays and (to my amazement) actually sold a few of them. The producer who bought one of them flew me down to the Florida Keys to help scout locations. Mostly what I did was stand around and gorge myself on Key Line pie, sweat and drink iced-water. I think this is called being an associate producer. Anyway, while there, I came across this street sign.

And as much as I would have liked to think the Keys had rolled out the red carpet for me, they hadn’t. The Allamanda is a cute little flower that grows all over the place in the Keys and hence the street name. Anyway, when I left the Keys, where it was eighty-seven degrees and returned home to snow on the ground Maine, I forgot about the cute little flower that bore a resemblance to my name and got to shoveling.

Spring rolled around and I was invited to speak in my old hometown of New York City at the book event Day of Dialogue. I had just been nominated for the Edgar Award and things were going pretty well. The day of the event arrived and I flew into New York and so far so good. Until after the event when the host and I were chatting in a hallway. The host informed me that every time she tried to Google my name for some additional bio material she kept getting this cute little flower that seems to grow just about everywhere. So, I googled myself, something I never do and found that dozens of pages are dedicated to the cute little Allamanda plant. (yes, I’ll wait while you Google me and see for yourself) Still no big deal. So far.

After the event, I was invited to dinner with some people from the biggest publishers in the business, including those that took a chance on my Edgar nominee Sunset. During the chit-chat that took place during dinner, someone asked for my bio and someone else said to Google it.

Disaster. The Googling took place and after a while I was asked why Googling Al Lamanda brings up nothing but this cute little plant known as the buttercup. And there it was, the nickname I had lacked my entire life. Buttercup. By the time dinner was over and the laughter died down, (took way longer than it should have) I knew this one wasn’t going away easy.

So the kid from a tough Bronx neighborhood, a former US Marine and amateur boxer of forty fights with the mug and knuckles to prove it, writer of tough guy mysteries had a nickname at last. Buttercup. And yes, years later I do receive emails that begin with Dear Buttercup, or Hey BC, (like my Uncle Sal, BC for short) and I’ve even been asked to autograph a book or two with my less than desirable nom de plume.

Not exactly cool nickname material for the old gang back in The Bronx for sure. So if ever you find yourself in the company of a guy called Ack-Ack, Muskie, Knuckles or Snots, please keep this to yourself.

And remember to keep a safe distance of at least six feet from Snots for the obvious reasons.

Al Lamanda is the author of the Edgar Award nominated mystery novel Sunset. The sequel, Sunrise, was voted best crime fiction novel of 2013 by the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. His latest work titled First Light was released in July 2014.

http://www.amazon.com/Al-Lamanda/e/B001JPC4T0/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

 

Amazing Mazes

Kaitlyn Dunnett here, musing about mazes.I’ve always liked the idea of mazes. The reality? Not so much.

On a visit to Hampton Court Palace, where one of the most famous mazes in the world is located, I totally chickened out before I’d gone a dozen steps inside. I’m not normally claustrophobic, but there was something about those high solid green walls that freaked me out. It wasn’t that I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to find my way to the exit. Not really. After all, there were lots of other people going through the maze and somewhere there was a way out. But the hedges were higher than I was tall. I couldn’t see over them without jumping up in the air and I couldn’t see very far ahead because of the twists and turns of the pattern. I did a rapid about face and got myself out of there while the getting was good!

That said, I happily used a maze in one of the non-mystery historical novels I wrote as Kate Emerson. No one got lost, although there was some hanky-panky going on at the center. I made mention of a corn maze in Vampires, Bones, and Treacle Scones although I didn’t end up using it in a scene. But then, when I started work on Ho-Ho-Homicide, set on a Christmas tree farm, it occurred to me that it might be possible to create a Christmas-tree maze. The problem, of course, was why would anyone do that? I admit it took me awhile to come up with a reason. And then I had to figure out how to use the maze in the plot. Sometimes this is called “writing yourself into a corner.” Fortunately, in the cozy mystery genre, especially the segment of it that accepts humor in mysteries, eccentric characters and the things they do are acceptable. Although I’m nowhere near as funny, I like to think of myself as writing in the tradition of Charlotte MacLeod, Joan Hess, and our own Dorothy Cannell.

Mazes still fascinate me, as long as I don’t actually have to set foot in one. When in England, quite possibly at Hampton Court, I purchased a booklet entitled Mazes: Ancient and Modern by Robert Field. It’s a wonderful, colorfully illustrated look at  hedge mazes, labyrinths, and designs in turf and stone—the latter are nice low mazes even I would walk through! There are also mazes in mosaic floors. One look at some of the patterns in various mazes is enough to reveal that there is a link between mazes and puzzles and thus, of course, to mysteries. I seem to recall maze puzzles in kids’ magazines when I was young, where you were supposed to use a pencil to find the way to the middle. Maybe that’s where I got the idea it was easy.

Weekend Update: September 20-21, 2014

Next week at Maine Crime Writers there will be posts by Kaitlyn Dunnett (Monday), Al Lamanda (Tuesday), Vicki Doudera (Wednesday), Lea Wait (Thursday), and James Hayman (Friday).

In the news department, here’s what’s happening with some of us who blog regularly at Maine Crime Writers . . .

and it looks as if everyone is busy writing. Have a great weekend everyone!

An invitation to readers of this blog: Do you have news relating to Maine, Crime, or Writing? We’d love to hear from you. Just comment below to share. Don’t forget that comments are entered for a chance to win our wonderful basket of books and the very special moose and lobster cookie cutters.

 

And a reminder: If your library, school, or organization is looking for a speaker, we are often available to talk about the writing process, research, where we get our ideas, and other mysteries of the business. Contact Kate Flora: mailto: kateflora@gmail.com

 

A Writer’s Police Academy? Seriously?

Kate Flora here. The weekend after Labor Day, I joined more than two hundred other writers in Greensboro, North Carolina, for an annual conference organized by the tireless and charming Lee Lofland, http://www.leelofland.com/wordpress/ designed to teach crime writers how to write better cops and crime scenes. Or, as the WPA motto goes:

 

 

With the help of the Guilford Technical Community College facilities, and an amazing faculty that included a police S.E.R.T. assistant commander, a tattooed Louisiana police chief, two retired ATF special agents, a secret service agent, a police officer who has served as a prostitute decoy, an expert on jail and corrections procedures, an explosives and hazardous materials specialist, a microbiologist, and many, many more, we had in-depth classes, demonstrations, lectures and simulations designed to help us write better scenes and more accurate characters.

Over the course of the next three days, we learned about police culture, did driving simulations, did simulated fire arms training (FATS), learned how to set up a prostitution sting, and heard a terrifying lecture on ebola and other biologicals and how they might be made or acquired and dispersed. We watched EMTs handle an accident scene, watched explosives experts blow a door, and saw how they would light a woodland crime scene at night.

On Thursday night, I had the good fortune to win the lottery that let me go on a ride-along with a Guilford County police officer. It was a very quiet night. I often say that if a city or town wants a quiet night on their streets, they ought to take me along in the car. I have a very calming effect on the criminal population. It might have been disappointing, except that any officer with seventeen years of experience has stories to tell. And so, around nine p.m. or so, when we passed a guy walking along a country road and turned around to go back and check him, and I asked why, I got to hear a truly amazing story.

What the officer had in his trunk.

 

The officer I was riding with told me the story of a night five years earlier when he’d passed another man walking the roadside at 4:00 a.m. and stopped to check him. The check came back that the man was wanted on federal warrants. When the officer got out again to detain him, the man pulled out a hidden gun and started firing and he ended up on the ground, trying to draw his weapon while the bad guy stood over him.

There was video in the car https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEr07ECPyh8 so the entire gun battle was recorded and he was able to pull it up on his computer so I could watch it. Then, as we drove the dark, quiet streets, he told me about the whole thing, about the aftermath, even about how he went about making the phone to call his wife to tell her he’d been shot at and had shot someone. It was moving, and powerful, and once again, left me so grateful for the generosity of police officers who are willing to talk to us crime writers so we can get it right.

One event I signed up for was building searches. I thought they’d just walk us through a building and tell us how they’d do it and tell us what they were looking for. No such thing. We had fake guns, we had teams, and we had an abandoned apartment complex to search for bad guys. And there WERE bad guys hiding inside. The question was whether we could shoot them before they shot us. It definitely made my adrenalin climb, especially when we’d searched the whole place and HAD NOT YET FOUND THE BAD GUY. But he was still in there somewhere.

For days after I got home, every sound in the house made me scurry around, looking under beds and in closets and wondering why I was doing it without backup.

I already do a lot of research for my books, and ask cops questions all the time about what their training would have them do in a particular situation. This gave me more experience, greater insights, and a team of experts to answer my questions down the line. Best of all, it let me imagine scenarios and deepened my appreciation for the cop’s life.

Special guests include some of my favorite writers: Michael Connelly, Lisa Gardner, and Alafair Burke.

 

 

 

 

 

Like everyone who attended says, I can’t wait to go back again next year. Registration opens in January after an intense countdown, and it usually sells out in a day. But if you’re interested in an insider’s view of the many things cops do—through the incredible generosity of the WPA instructors, you can have it in just three crazy days.

 

 

 

 

You Might Be a Maine Mystery Writer If…

Hi, I’m Sarah Graves and I’m a Maine mystery writer. I live in Eastport, a tiny island town about as far downeast as you can get without invading Canada, and I write the Home Repair is Homicide series of mysteries starring Jacobia Tiptree, an amateur old-house repair enthusiast and reluctant sleuth. Jake’s an ex-Wall-Street money manager whose wealthy clients were so crooked, their limousines should’ve been flying the Jolly Roger, and in her newest book, KNOCKDOWN, she thinks she’s buried her unsavory past. But we know what happens when people think that, don’t we?

Eastport, Maine

Are you a Maine mystery writer?

Anyway, back to this blog: it occurs to me that some readers here might be mystery-writers, too. But are you a Maine mystery writer? After all, writing in Maine is for the most part like writing anywhere else: you just stare at a blank screen until drops of blood pop out of your forehead and fall to the keyboard. And location alone isn’t enough, is it? There are “Maine writers” who are really NYC-ers, for instance, and vice versa. So in case you’re unsure about whether you’re really one of us, here are some signs. You might be a Maine mystery writer – or as we say around here, crime writer —  if:

Off to the booksigning!

1. You routinely drive 300 miles or more for book-signing events; extra credit if your vehicle is repaired with Bondo and/or silver duct tape.

2. The drinks at your publication parties are Moxie and Allen’s Coffee Brandy (bonus points if you mix them).

Eastport from above

3. You write best on a diet of lobster rolls, “chowdah,” and blueberry pie (add points for moose stew, salt fish dinner, or smoked salmon on a stick; double points if you salted the fish).

4. When people ask if you’re “right out straight” working on the new book, you reply “Ayuh.” (But you’re not past deadline, so you don’t feel too “spleeny” about it.)

Jake’s project

5. Nine months out of twelve, your writing-buddy is a propane gadget named Mr. Heater. For a woodstove or pellet stove, award yourself high honors.

6. Your books are reviewed in the island newspapers, Working Waterfront and Quoddy Tides. (Special credit for mention in Uncle Henry’s.)

Research is important!

7. You deduct a wool hat, a red-and-black plaid wool jacket, and fingerless gloves as “office equipment.”

8. Your overnight “express” mail takes three days.

9. The theme music for Murder, She Wrote makes you break out in hives. (Extra credit for anaphylactic shock.)

10. You’d rather lose a body part than your internet connection. To keep your email access, it can be an important body part; you are, after all, way out here in the puckerbrush.

End of a writing day in Maine

And there you have it! These are just a few of the ways you can be pretty certain that you’re a real Maine mystery writer (or crime writer!); I’m sure my colleagues on this blog have even more and better ones to suggest. But if you can say ‘that’s me!’ to most of the points above, you could be a member of the club – so wipe the blood droplets off your keyboard, please, and write us up another one of those wicked good Maine mysteries.

(This list was first published back in 2011, and because I’m running faster and faster but only getting behinder and behinder, here it is again!)

Train Love

John Clark talking about my love affair with trains. I don’t know if Kate remembers, but when we were kids playing on the side lawn under giant locust trees and the humidity was just right, we could hear the train whistle when it passed by the depot down in Warren. The sound carried a good ten miles and made me pause when I heard it. Union, where we grew up, had its own spur line, the Georges Valley Railroad which ceased operation sometime in the mid 1930s. It offered passenger service, but was used mostly to haul limestone from local quarries.

This is the locomotive from the old line between Warren and Union.

That early memory planted an interest that was further fueled every time I saw or heard a train. Unfortunately, passenger service in Maine ceased in 1956 when I was eight, so I had to wait a long time to ride a train.

It wasn’t until I went off to college at Arizona State University in Tempe back in 1966, that I got a big boost in my train love. I lived in an old dorm my freshman year that had been built by the WPA. It was drab concrete, three stories high with an open courtyard that caught and amplified sounds and smells. The train coming into Phoenix passed south of campus before looping in parallel with the main highway through town. It turned again and went into Phoenix via the huge stockyard south of the metro area. When the wind and what little humidity we had were just right, the sound of an inbound freight train was so powerful you could close your eyes and imagine it coming right through the dormitory. That, coupled by the alternating scent of the stockyard and orange blossoms, created an indelible memory.

Is this guy watching us?

Just before Easter break in 1968, those of us who were active in the anti-war movement, heard that there was going to be a huge march in San Francisco on Easter Sunday. We couldn’t snag a ride, so Bill Fortner, Jack Truehauff and I decided to go there by hopping freight trains from Phoenix. Bill did some research regarding the feasibility of doing so and late one night, we found ourselves wandering around the freight yard looking for an open boxcar that might be heading in the direction we wanted to go. Since that was 46 years ago, I’m a bit hazy on specifics and Bill may have bribed a yard employee with a beer or some weed. In any event, we hopped aboard and after a short wait, the car jerked and we were off.

Sure wouldn’t like to lose a shoe out here!

When it started getting light, we were shocked to see how long the train was. We could look ahead of us where the tracks curved and saw that there were seven locomotives pulling what must have been a mile long train. Desert scenery and plenty of wildlife kept us entertained. When the train stopped, as freight trains are wont to do at places and intervals that make sense to the gods and engineers that control them, we hopped off. Welcome to Boron, California (yup, the place where that 20 Mule Team Borax is mined and boxed). We wandered around and Bill ran into a couple bikers who said we could sleep in a junk car behind the shack where they lived. We were tired and dirty, so we weren’t fussy, but when we started hearing strange noises and seeing fire shoot past the shack window on the inside, we beat feet and shelled out for a motel room half a mile down the road. Slightly wiser the following morning, Bill managed to find out from another railroad employee what train we needed to hop. He neglected to learn that there was no direct route from Boron to San Francisco and we rode that train all the way to Rosewood which was just north of Sacramento.

I guess I shouldn’t tell Beth about that rattler by her left foot, eh?

Northern California in early April is as frosty as Maine and by the time the train stopped, we were chilled to the bone. Fortunately the guys in the caboose were friendly and let us warm up and have some of their coffee. The ride from Rosewood to Oakland is one I’ll never forget. We traveled through miles of marsh that was alive with deer, birds and flowers. When we circled around the edge of the back bay, it was amazing to see the huge fleet of mothballed naval vessels at anchor. Unlike the guys in the caboose back in Rosewood, the railroad detectives who met us when the train arrived, weren’t very friendly and were ready to arrest us. In hindsight, I can’t blame them because a lot of munitions, weapons and other stuff destined for Vietnam was shipped out of the Bay area and the possibility that we were saboteurs wasn’t unrealistic, Fortunately we were able to convince them we were a trio of not too savvy college students who were trying a cheap way to travel.

Early in the Durango-Silverton run.

We were meeting a friend of Bill and Jack’s who had graduated from ASU with a business degree the year before. He’d put his education to good use. Allegedly he was the third biggest dealer in San Francisco at the time, using his legitimate job as a conductor on the cable cars as a cover while he sold pretty much everything under the sun that was mind altering. One look at the stuff on the shelves in his kitchen convinced me he was the real deal. He lived one block below Haight-Ashbury and when we headed around the corner and I got my first look at wall to wall freaks, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. There were hippies everywhere, the air was full of incense and marijuana and music was coming from open windows and street bands in abundance. We hit the Fillmore, Golden Gate Park and on Sunday, were part of what was at that time the largest antiwar march in the U.S.

By the time we were ready to return, Bill had done a little more research on how to get back by train without as many unexpected surprises. However, we all know that life is what happens in between your plans. We headed out of Oakland just before dark and not long after sunset, we went through a long tunnel. There are no words adequate to describe the sensation of bouncing on a hard floor in absolute blackness while the only thing you can hear is the amplified roar of the train as it’s hurtling through the tunnel. The next day, we switched from a boxcar to a flatcar carrying a couple trailer bodies. We did so because we wanted to have a better view of the passing scenery. Bad move. Not long afterward, we were flying across the edge of the Mojave Desert when the wind kicked up and we went through a small sandstorm. Even with our faces covered by our t-shirts, breathing was a challenge. By the time the train stopped in the middle of nowhere, we were desperate for a more protected place, but before we could find an open car, the train started moving, so we had to settle for the tiny grated platform at the end of a tank car. Looking back, I’m amazed one of us wasn’t killed during that part of the return journey. We thought we might be able to hop off as it passed through Kingman, but jumping from a train that’s doing 25 miles an hour is not a good idea, so we stayed put. The train started climbing as the sun set. The temperature dropped and when we leveled off in the high country, the train sped up, creating a wind chill that made holding on to anything almost impossible.

The crew dealing with a hot bearing in the middle of nowhere

Okay, we thought, this thing has to slow down when it reaches Flagstaff. Nope, that sucker went right through at 25 or better and we all had visions of having to ride all the way to New Mexico. By then it had begun to snow. When the train halted half an hour later, we didn’t hesitate. We hopped off. Jack had lost a shoe during the sandstorm and we were filthy with wild hair, scraggly beards and wearing t-shirts in an early spring blizzard. When we found a dirt road, we knocked on the first house we found and I’m pretty sure we scared the hell out of the woman who peeked out a window. She never answered the door and promptly turned off the lights, so we staggered off down the road. A few minutes later, we were stopped by a deputy sheriff. Fortunately, he was an ASU dropout and had been in one of the fraternities. I was in one myself and we knew a few people in common. He drove us into Flagstaff where we cleaned up and took a bus back to campus in time for the resumption of classes.

Royal Gorge Bridge

It was a long time before my next real train ride. When our daughters were in grade school, we took the now defunct Belfast and Moosehead train from Belfast to Brooks where the local church hosted a dinner followed by a play. We saw them put on “The Belle of Amherst.” The girls enjoyed this excursion, especially the staged train robbery on the way home.

Four years ago, Beth and I decided it was time we took a real vacation, so we signed up to go on a package tour that included five old train lines in Colorado. We started with the Durango and Silverton Railroad. That’s the one featured in Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid and seeing the place where the stunt doubles jumped into the river makes you really appreciate what these people go through. We saw mule deer and elk as well as plenty of abandoned mines high up on hills. At one point, we passed by and then under a very long and well concealed zip line that’s part of an ultra exclusive resort.

Air Force Academy Chapel

The next day, we went on what was my favorite train, the Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad which covers 64 miles. There were times when we could see rivers at the bottom of canyons that looked like tiny streams and at one point we were racing a couple mule deer. Halfway through the ride, the train stops at a restored station in the middle of nowhere at the same time as the train coming from the other direction. Passengers from both trains are treated to one of the best and most bountiful meals I’ve ever seen. Local people pack everything in by truck every day the train runs and have a great time doing so. After lunch, everyone switches trains and off you go

The third train was the Rio Grande Scenic Railroad that took us through pretty remote country that featured lots of wildflowers and mountain views. It was the following day that we went on the only non steam train, the Royal Gorge Route. This parallels a river that’s extremely popular with whitewater rafters. You can also see an old water pipe hanging from the side of cliffs in many spots. The highlight is when you pass under the bridge spanning the gorge. It takes a few moments to truly appreciate just how high and how long this span really is. It’s one that completely insane people bungee jump from.

We were on a bus between trains and there was time built in to enjoy several of the ancient Native American ruins as well as some spectacular high country. I particularly liked the lookout where we could see Monument Valley way off to the west, as well as the mufti-denomenational chapel at the Air Force Academy.

Our final train was the one that took us to the top of Pike’s Peak. Even though it was late June, we arrived at the summit in a light snow storm. It didn’t take long for my body to realize that there’s far less oxygen at 14,000 feet. I had to use the wall in the gift shop to prop myself up until I stopped seeing spots. I was in awe of the folks working in the gift shop and snack bar because I was barely able to walk and they came up every day and worked. Despite the lack of oxygen and summit snowstorm, the view coming up and returning was terrific. We saw golden marmots (think high altitude woodchucks), more elk and mule deer, hawks and wild mountain waterfalls as well as giant slabs of rock that look like they could fall on you at any moment.

Starting the descent from Pike’s Peak.

Beth and I realized we wanted to do another train trip, but this time go through the Canadian Rockies. That’s on our agenda for next June, so expect a report on it shortly after we return. Our daughters, both married now, remembered the long ago dinner theater train ride and treated us to the abbreviated ride on the Belfast line last Sunday. The train, lovingly preserved by local enthusiasts, goes up the line for half an hour and then reverses. While we didn’t see any game, the woman who took our tickets said that deer are common, one even refusing to get off the tracks a few weeks ago and the day before, the train had to slow to let a beaver cross the tracks. It’s a fun and nostalgic experience, that at $14.00 is a real bargain.

Belfast & Moosehead station