T is for Three-Fingered Willy

For as long as I can remember Three-Fingered Willy has haunted the woods around my Grandmother’s house in Maine.

My maternal grandmother lived in a two bedroom home and with barely any room had a bunkhouse for storage and for the grandchildren to use when we visited. Really a small shack, the bunkhouse had three windows with stapled in screens and shutters on the outside of the building. My grandfather used it as a workshop as well, so there was a ton of old tools, cans and odds and ends.

It was my greatest joy to spend the summers with my siblings and cousins running through the pine trees, playing on the beach and having lobster bakes with all the family gathered around the stone fire pit in my grandmother’s yard. As twilight eased into night and fireflies twinkled in the trees, we would sit around the dying fire, making s’mores and telling ghost stories.

I never really paid too much attention to Three-Fingered Willy’s background. I knew he was a ghost or undead. I knew he was angry and tormented. I knew he had only three fingers on each hand because his thumbs and pinkies were lost in some kind of accident (in one story he is a mill worker, in another an iron works employee). Most importantly, I knew that when he came around he would scritch…scritch…scritch…on the walls outside to announce his presence.

One summer, when schedules permitted, my three siblings along with seven other cousins arrived at my grandmother’s house all at once. My oldest brother, Erik, was the oldest. And I think in this case the instigator. He, my other brother and my cousin Mike locked my sister and I along with four other female cousins in the bunkhouse.

I was little at the time and some of the details are fuzzy…did we know we were locked in at first? I’m not sure. But I remember that first long scritch down the back of the bunkhouse, the side that faced the woods. We tried the door. Scritch. My heart was pounding. So many stories about Three-Fingered Willy had primed me for panic.

More scratches and then pounding on the walls.

Minutes seem like hours when you are little and scared. I don’t know how long the boys kept up the torment. My sister tried to get a window open all the while the boys scratched and scritched at the walls and windows. I can’t recall how long we were in the bunkhouse before the boys let us out. Clearly I survived. I hope that the boys got in trouble but I have no recollection of any consequence.

C is for Crabbing

I lived in Maine for a few years when I was a baby and toddler. Once we moved, I would visit every summer. The rocky shore of Maine is a perfect place to explore when you’re a little kid and I would spend all day along the edge of the ocean turning over rocks, scooping up hermit crabs and searching for sea glass. One of my favorite activities to do, however, was crabbing.

Crabbing involves wading into knee deep water and pushing aside thick ropes of seaweed to find mussel beds wedged into deep crevices in the rocks. I would rip these innocent mollusks from their home and carry them up to a seaweed covered rock that jutted into the water. Crabbing is done best at mid-tide – either coming in or going out – but deep enough that the large crabs that hide in the deep water at low tide would be crawling about searching for food.

I would smash the mussel with a large rack I carried from the upper shore. The shells would crack and split just enough to thread a bent-open paper clip through the flesh. A long string attached to the paper clip and a stick served as a crabbing pole, so to speak. Once done, a quick flick of the wrist sent the line into the water. It was easier to spot a crab taking the bait if I dropped the line out from the rock a bit, but the best crabs were caught closer to the rocks where the seaweed flowed and swirled with the tide obscuring the line and mussel.

Pulling up the line as slowly as possible was the trick to keeping potential captives on the line. Once the crabs were out of the water they tended to jump from the bait and make a quick panicked run into the seaweed. If you were quick enough, you’d drop them into the waiting bucket before they tried to escape. If you were me, you’d squeal with delight and then drop the crab and line and then kick over the bucket in your excitement to try to recatch the one that got away.

After a successful day of crabbing or when the tide was getting too low or high, the crabs would be counted and unceremoniously dumped back into the ocean. These weren’t eating crabs, just your average everyday rock crabs and most weren’t much bigger than a few inches across.

I took great pride and joy in introducing my girls to crabbing. Every time we go to Maine whole afternoons are spent on the rocks catching crabs. Then we let them go only to come back the next day to catch them all over again.

One of the rare photos of the girls that I will post here. They are both quite young in this shot and not doing anything remotely embarrassing so I figure it is "safe." The rock they are standing on will be completely submerged at high tide. This is the very same rock that I stood on with my siblings doing the exact same thing.

Note: I haven't actually come out and said it yet but my theme for the Blogging A to Z Challenge is "My Favorite Memories."

March Photo A Day - Where You Relax

I'm am truly sad that today is the last photo a day for me right now. Tomorrow starts the April Blogging A to Z challenge that as much as I am looking forward to, I am a little nervous about. I haven't a fully fleshed out theme not do I have more than five posts completed. I meant to work on them during March, but...meaning to and actually doing are to entirely different things.

Anyway, for today's photo I wanted to showcase a few places where I relax. I hope you enjoy!

This is my Adirondack chair that sits on my car port. We don't really use the carport for cars so it has turned into a patio of sorts. From this chair I survey my container garden, the girls playing in the yard and the squirrels scampering around looking for nuts. I like sitting out here in drinking tea in my jammies in the morning just as much as I like sitting here waiting for the girls to get home from school.

Our tent at a nearby campground. Not only is camping relaxing for me, but the girls too tell me how much better they feel camping. No stress, no phone, not internet, no T.V. Just us, a deck of cards and dead cow cooked over fire.

I've posted photos of Maine before. This one happens to be my favorite. One that I thought for the longest time had been lost when a certain husband (who shall not be named) crashed my computer. During a recent cleaning frenzy I happened upon a few CDs labeled "photos" and lo and behold, I actually had made a few back ups.

Going to Maine is like going home. Although things have changed since I lived there and spent my summers there, there is a feeling of peace, of relaxation, of love that I strongly associate with this small island cove. This is where my siblings and I played, where cousins met annually, where my family gathered, reminisced and loved, where my very best childhood memories took place.