It’s high summer in Tenants Harbor. Dinghies are tooling about, bicyclers are lined up at the Happy Clam’s ice cream window, and RB has been declared an event and a destination, even though our wine on the porch was for their EYES only. Tom Gjelten’s Bacardi is the second bestseller of the summer (3 copies sold), Woody Holton’s Abigail Adams practically flew off the shelf and a shrewd reader spotted Anna Pavord’s Tulip: The Story of the Flower that has Made Men Mad with it’s possible likenesses to our recent Wall Street fiasco.
Where are you all? People who only knew about RB from the blog stopped by, so having never been here is no excuse. And, based on conversations from last summer, I’m figuring out what themes I have five books about so you can stop in before you pick up the key to your cottage, choose themed treasures, then read yourself through a most memorable vacation ever. How about, for example, the Amazon and Mexico (I need Arturo Perez Reverte’s Queen of the South to make the five) or Henry Knox with a side trip to Montpelier or WW II fiction or murder mysteries around the world (I even have one set in North Korea) or, or, or. The fun is figuring out what (at least) five books will make you relish even more your time here and stop by for a withdrawal read for the flight home. (“Thin, light-weight paper,” they requested, and chose Dava Sobel’s Longitude and Roy Hoxham’s Great Hedge of India.)
Figure #90. Remember?
But there was a Fall nip in the early morning air last Saturday, and though it made the coffee and just-picked blueberries taste even better, it seemed early. I don’t know if a neighbor’s warning that “the Caribbeans are coming” referred to a type of boat, their home moorings, or something else entirely, but I do know that a whole batch of boat folks stopped by RB even before they saw the sign on the tree because they were moored afront the TH Boat Yard which is near but hidden behind the trees across the road and RB was the first stoppable place on their way down Sea Street. Here’s to many more Boat Yard barbecues.
I loved Harry Dolan’s Bad Things Happen and am 200 pages into my coveted (British paperback) copy of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. The poplar is whispering. Times are good.
Fig. #91. "Or is this what you remember?