from Gene’s Notebook

…rain and more rain in the endless woods of Maine, and I pedal off to the side of the slick black road to buy some vegetables from three drenched kids, a fat white cabbage and a shapely green pepper. I drop the rain-coated cabbage into my backpack, and then I bite into the rain-coated pepper; how had they ripened in weeks of rain and scant sun?

One of the kids says, “If you like fresh food, go down to my grandfather. He has free-range chickens with some great eggs.”

I say, “Is that all your grandfather does?”

“Yes, he’s retired, retired early, from eye problems that he got from sawdust in the mill.” Ever the mills, ever the sawdust, ever the woods ….

I wonder how he can see the eggs, and ask the kid.

“Oh! He just feels around in the nest!” and I can see the man, fumbling for warm eggs ….

“Maybe I will go see him, the chickens and get some,” I say and pedal off, drenched and pleased.

But I never get to his grandfather’s, too many hills , too far, too much rain.

A day later, at a rural store, and again there is rain, I start speaking with a millworker, and casually ask if she knows the former millworker who now sells eggs.

She indeed does; it’s her sister’s husband.

I tell her what the kid said about the man’s eyes, and she bursts out, “Now that’s a story! His eyes are fine. He’s too lazy to work, and is a drunk and lousy to my sister.”

“Wow! There are two versions of him.”

“Guess so,” she says, “but mine is right!” and then she pops some chocolaty cake into her mouth, gets into a rusted car and drives away.

I never got the man’s eggs, but I did get some from other free-range chickens, these raised by a Californian who moved to Maine’s woods to get away from the Pacific Coast’s rush.

“I got away,” she says, “but sure got a surprise, deep snow, so deep that when the town plows I can’t even see the road after the snow has been banked.” She then went off to milk a mooing black cow ….

…and her story, is there another version …?

Eugene “Gene” Novogrodsky
August 24, 2008