Time Fries! (27 page)
Authors: Fay Jacobs
August 9
Yesterday, we arrived in beautiful Chester, Nova Scotia, where we are visiting a friend in a house with spectacular water views. This morning said friend had me out walking three point five miles. Who is this typing and what have they done with Fay? We are having a positively grand time, even if I may need to detox from the great outdoors when we return.
August 14
Except for the 3-4 mile forced marches, we have had an amazingly relaxing time. We traveled across to the Northern shore one day for lunch at Lucketts Winery, where they have scrumptious food and drink, plus, in the middle of the vineyard, an old-fashioned English red phone booth. And, from it, you can call anywhere in the world for free. Hence, their most popular wine is Phone Box Red and Phone Box White.
For the past few days Bon and I did little but lounge on the deck reading (Bon), writing (me), and having a vacation from our vacation. By today a soupy fog rolled in. We could hardly see the drinks in our hands. We managed.
August 16
Now we get it when locals say there are two seasons here, winter and construction. We drove, through miles of road cones and flaggers to a teeny lake community in the center of Nova Scotia. We'd been invited to stay with two women we met last year at the campground in Lunenburg. They have a spectacular log home, decorated entirely in Southwestern Cowboy décor, with Georgia O'Keefe cattle skulls and boots and spurs everywhere. It's really a showplace, overlooking a small river and lake.
One of the cowgirls took me on my first all-terrain-vehicle ride and it was a doozyâwe flew along snowmobile trails, through rutted roads and humongous mud puddles. I came
back laughing, covered in terrain.
Canada is so cool. While the gals are the only lesbians in the community, back in June they threw a Pride Party and all their straight neighbors came in rainbow shirts. But the girls were sure glad to see us and have an opportunity to make U-Haul jokes, and chat about the fall of DOMA, Edie Windsor, and other topics their neighbors aren't apt to discuss.
Tomorrow we have plans for a ferry ride to Big Tancook Island, where they make sauerkraut.
August 17
Trip
Advison.com
will hear from us. We called the trip The Hunger Games. Took the 1 p.m. ferry to the island to discover only one restaurant, which appeared less than clean, with rude staff. Asked about the art gallery and we heard it was closed. That was ITâ¦nothing else on the island! What about the sauerkraut? It seems that 25 years ago a couple of deer swam over from the mainland, went back, and told all their friends, and the herd came back to decimate the cabbage patch. No more sauerkraut. You'd think the islanders could manage to grow a head of cabbage or two during rutting season, but no.
So we walked around the islandâFOR FOUR HOURS!âon dirt roads, amid a thundering barrage of pre-teens on ATVs, kicking up dust storms in our faces. A police car drove by, but when it got close we saw that the star on the door said BEER PATROL and the officers appeared to be bubbas. Cue the banjo music!
Got back to the ferry an hour early, âcause believe me we did not want to miss it. And you could hear our stomachs rumbling over the ferry engines. Okay, some of the scenery was pretty, but jeesh, a trip to nowhere. I don't even want to think about Little Tancook Island. As for the editor of
1000 Places to See Before You Die
, her credibility is kaput.
August 18
Luxuriated at the waterfront and readied ourselves for the trip home. Cleaning out the RV fridge was like Survivor Nova Scotia, due to their complex and stringently regulated
recycling system. There's a compost “wet” bin, a plastics/aluminum “dry” bin, a paper bin and, as if that's not enough to put me in the loony bin, a garbage pail for the rest. Panicked we'd goof, leaving a hostess gift of a $200 fine or jail, we drove to the grocery store and furtivelyâas furtive as you can be in a 27 foot recreational vehicleâstarted lobbing trash into what we hoped were the right slots. Luckily, Bonnie and Clyde weren't nabbed.
We've loved our stay in Nova Scotia and the two weeks before that in Montreal and Quebecâ¦but we are happy to be heading home. The very last days of the trip, we had plenty of moxie. Read on and you will see why.
It started with the soap. A friend said her Mom often had nighttime leg spasms and somebody suggested she sleep with a bar of Dove soap in the bed to quell the cramps. Mom laughed until she tried it and reluctantly admitted it seemed to work.
So, after walking the hills and climbing the Quebec City ramparts, when my mate complained of an overnight charley horse, I returned from the store with a solution.
“I bought you a Dove Bar.”
Her eyes lit up with a vision of the wrong kind of Dove Bar. Realizing my error, I quickly added “No, no, not ice cream, a bar of Dove soap!”
“Excuse me?” she stuttered, crestfallen.
“I heard that sleeping with a bar of Dove soap in bed can lessen or even prevent leg cramps.”
Then it was her turn to laugh so hard she got a cramp in her side.
This episode would have been forgotten if it weren't for the cruelty of mapmakers in Fundy Park, Nova Scotia. The park map showed color-coded walks and hikes. A purple dotted line offered a short stroll “suitable for everyone.” Surely we could up our game to the green level, promising a 2.5 kilometer walk, “comfortable for almost everyone.”
Now look, I know I'm a senior citizen. I've been happily accepting discounts the whole trip. But the map specifically did not say “except you, grandma,” and in fact went on to list three higher levels of black, brown and red walks in the park.
You know where this is going, which, obviously we didn't.
We started along the path, all alone in the forest, stepping between chunky roots and hefty rocks. About five minutes in my mate asked if I had bars on the cell phone. Was she concerned we'd finally see the moose we'd been hunting at the highway
moose crossing signs?
From a path littered with tree roots and boulders, going straight downhill, I might add, the terrain changed with the addition of mud holes rivaling the La Brea tar pits. Crossing brooks and rivulets with ungainly Olympic broad jumps, I wondered just how gracefully the rest of the almost everybodys had handled this part of the green line.
Hearing foot traffic behind us, we were quickly overtaken by a pack of laughing twenty-somethings skipping down the rocky, rooted trail like it was the yellow brick road.
“I think the easy purple line meant for people over 30,” I muttered.
“You want to turn back before we see the waterfalls?”
“No, in for a penny, in for a hip replacement.”
We continued our downward spiral through gunky mud puddles and giant root canals when I stopped to take a few notes on my iPhone.
“What are you doing?”
“Channeling Henry David Thoreau. Walden Pond was probably a dotted purple line.”
When we came to a clearing with a great big toppled tree across the path I tripped getting over it. If Fay falls in the forest and there's no one there to laugh is it still humiliating? Yes, yes it is.
Now mind you, this whole time we hadn't seen anybody coming back
up
the trail. We had gotten an early start, but the lack of return trippers did worry me. Finally, a family with fit-looking parents and two fit-looking teenage boys rose from the depths, looking no worse for wear. Their golden doodle wasn't so lucky. The poor thing was panting and drooling with his tongue hanging out.
When they were safely out of earshot my loving mate said “I hate to tell you, but right now you're looking a little like that doodle dog.”
I would have said something snarky but I was too busy panting and drooling.
Finally, we made it to the falls, where those twenty-somethings were swimming and laughing. We took the requisite photos of the falls and steeled ourselves to head back up the green mile and three quarters. It was agony to realize that 2.5K had been only half the ordeal.
Without going into further torturous detail, the climb out of the great dismal swamp took a long time and was very nearly our waterloo. Not only were we exhausted but, having been drinking water like good hikers, a loo was exactly what we needed. I knew if we followed time honored tradition to stop in the woods to relieve ourselves, that's exactly when other hikers would catch us with our proverbial and actual pants down.
So we soldiered on, taking as much time as our bladders would allow, hoisting ourselves back up to civilization. Reaching the parking lot, we patted ourselves on the back for a job well done. Also to stop the coughing.
I cannot imagine hiking the park's black or brown dotted routes and the thin red line must be for mountain goats and mental cases. And speaking of craziness, I'm back at the bar of soap thing again.
Later, as our sinews stiffened from exertion followed by hours of sitting on our butts around the glorious campfire, it was time for lights out.
“Hey,” I said, feeling the first twinges of leg cramps. “Hand over the Dove bar.”
And for the first time ever, I would not have preferred chocolate.
For a carbonated soft drink I didn't taste until recently,
MoxieâDistinctively Different
, has played an enormous role in my life.
By my late twenties, I'd heard the vocabulary word “moxie” of course, a noun synonymous for determination, courage and spunk. And at the time, I'd surely lost mine. I was fleeing a suffocating marriage, questioning my sexuality and had pretty much nowhere to go.
I was a scared, closeted lesbian in her twenties, who showed up on the doorstep of a liberal, socially conscious, recently widowed, heterosexual friend in her mid-fifties. I stood there with two cat-carriers (inhabited), the clothes on my back and the need for a place to reinvent myself.
My friend Mary Jane invited me to make a nest in the basement of her home and I stayed for over four years. We'd been casual friends before but became grand lifelong family members.
I adored Mary Jane's wicked sense of humor and her adventurous nature. She taught me to drink booze without mixers, got me to grow up a little, proved absolutely nonjudgmental in a hostile and homophobic world, and gave me the courage and good-natured push to come out of the closet.
Gay male friends took us both drinking and disco-ing at DC's Lost and Found and other glitzy 70s gay bars, where we had Saturday night fever and loved the night life, loved to boogie.
Back at home. Mary Jane had an elderly Schnauzer named Max, who I also came to adore. After he passed, she brought home one determined, spunky Schnauzer puppy which she promptly named Moxie.
One day, Mary Jane and I wandered into an antique store to find an old embossed bottle that said Moxie Nerve Food on it. A hobby was born, as we discovered the history of the New
England soft drink called Moxie and started trolling antique stores seeking Moxie memorabilia. We collected cans, bottles, ad posters, paper fans and promotional materials. We even found a wooden Moxie yardstick.
Enter Bonnie. By 1982, Mary Jane had had a ringside seat to much of my coming out angst and dyke dating dramas. Mary Jane liked my lesbian and gay pals and she especially liked Bonnie when she came into my life. We all partied together and Mary Jane loved her status as mother hen and token straight.
When Bonnie and I bought our first home, I left most of my Moxie memorabilia behind with Mary Jane and she sent us off with a puppy sired by Moxie as a housewarming gift. The housewarming gift was more of a house wetting gift and we named the little pisher Max so the cycle could begin again.
For the next twenty years or more, we dined weekly with Mary Jane, often sought her advice and counsel and especially sought out antique stores on our New England travels to enhance her Moxie collection.
In 1998, just before we lost our beloved Max to old age, we'd gotten a Schnauzer puppy, and of course, his name had to be Moxie. A year later, our second puppy arrived with the name Paddy and we just went with it.
Clearly, along with my Moxie memorabilia compulsion, Mary Jane also gets alternating credit and blame for my Schnauzer addiction.
Bonnie and I remained close to Mary Jane through the years, until she passed away in 2005, taking with her a large chunk of my heart. Aside from the legacy of dog names and breed specificity she left me boxes of Moxie memorabilia. Our home has had a certain Moxie decorating panache for years.
My Moxie and Paddy are gone now too, and Bonnie and I are on temporary Schnauzer hiatus.
Ironically, just a few weeks ago, preparing for our downsizing move, I hosted a yard sale and sold most of the Moxie items to a collector who was thrilled to have them. I kept the original
embossed Moxie Nerve Food bottle, the Moxie yard stick and the memories.
But here's the astonishing thing. On the last day of our Canada/Maine vacation, a Wednesday, we saw a sign for the Union Blueberry Fest, happening about 15 minutes from our Maine campground.
On a complete whim, we drove to the fair, where, at the entrance, we saw a banner across the road.
Wednesday is Moxie Day!
it said, in the logo print of the soft drink. I grinned.
“What does that mean?” I asked the ticket-seller.
“Oh, at the museum, free samples of Moxie today.”
Museum? Yes, it was the Blueberry Fest, like a state fair, with goats and chickens, a midway and funnel cakes. But on the fairgrounds stood the Matthews Museum of Maine Heritage, featuring “our extensive Moxie Collection.”
I'd say it's the largest Moxie Museum in the world, but I have a feeling it's the only Moxie Museum in the world. The entire exhibit hall, almost as big as the RB Convention Center, was crammed with thousands upon thousands of Moxie bottles, ads, posters, soda wagons, soda fountain signs, crates, antique photographs and objects I'd never seen before.
Having inadvertently stepped into paradise, I chatted with the docents and learned about all things Moxie. Among the plethora of treasures and memorabilia, I was stunned to learn they do not have a single Moxie yardstick.
Needless to say, I spent much more time at the museum than at the blueberry spitting contest or the oxen vs. tractor pull (although that was a first for me). And I bought a bright orange souvenir Moxie hat and orange Moxie museum shirt. The staff, thrilled to have a visitor so fascinated with the collection, gave me several complimentary orange Moxie stickers, a drink cooler and more. As the new TV series says, orange IS the new black, so I'm all set.
Oh, and I tasted Moxie soda. Let's just say it's a cross between Coke and root beer, with quite a bit of fizz. I have a feeling it's been sweetened over the years to satisfy the
contemporary palate. In the old days, to earn the moniker nerve food, it probably had a lot more, well, moxie.
So I'm still reeling from the lucky coincidence that had us in the backwoods of Maine, stumbling across a Moxie Museum on Moxie Day, so I could indulge in this mini Moxie memoir.
We're heading home this morning. And when I get home, the first thing I will do is donate that Moxie yard stick to the museum. Downsizing, you know. In fact, from the minute we arrive home, we have ten, count âem, ten days to pack and vacate the house. On your markâ¦