Route 153

One of the best classes I ever took in my life I took in the ninth grade: typing. Cheryl and I signed up together, sat together, pounded those loud keys side by side, exercise after exercise. I can’t remember if there was homework involved in that course. Surely not everyone had a typewriter at home.

We had one at home. A manual. I think it was an old Smith-Corona. Very old-fashioned. I used to love to play with it, and I imagine I loved it even more once I learned to type. (Do you remember manual typewriters? The sound of the strike, the feel of the keys, the bell as you neared the right margin, the whack of the carriage return, the ink on your fingers when you changed the ribbon?)

I can’t remember when I got my electric typewriter. I don’t think we were required to type our papers in high school, but maybe by the end, we were. It was certainly in my possession by the time I set off for college. Now, I’m amazed that anyone could get through college without a computer.

After college, when I started working in offices, I was introduced to the IBM Selectric III, and it was practically love at first sight. I could never afford one—they cost as much as a good computer does today. In the long run, of course, it was lucky I couldn’t, as things were About to Change Quickly.

I had to take typing tests for the office jobs, and in those days, I was fairly fast. After subtracting for typos, I could still often test around 90 wpm. On a typewriter. I doubt I could do that today on a computer. The fact that correction has become so easy has had its effect on my—and I’m guessing many’s—initial accuracy.

The point is, I’m basically a touch typist. Once my fingers are on the keys, I don’t have to look at the keyboard to know where I am. Given that everyone uses keyboards today, I figure everyone is a touch typist—but no. Do people take typing courses anymore? Do they teach it in school? I have no idea. Nulliparous, I have no off-payroll, offspringy spy in the school system.

Here I am, back in Portland, on my laptop. My laptop is at least 5 years old. The letters on many of the keys have worn off; specifically E, S, D, L, C, N, and M. As well as a bit of the >. This doesn’t bother me. I know where I am.

It does bother just about anyone else who uses my laptop (usually a houseguest wanting to check e-mail, or maybe a friend in a coffee shop). I have finally ceased being surprised by this and have learned to issue a warning—not that the warning is remotely helpful to someone who needs a map at all times.

I’ve thought about marking the keys with letters, but I don’t like the idea of ink possibly transferring to the screen. Plus, what do I care? Didn’t you people take typing in ninth grade? What’s wrong with you?

Last year Tim got one of those pretty, pretty MacBook Pros with the keyboard that lights up. Those letters will never disappear. I have to admit, I have keyboard envy.

But I don’t need it. It’s icing.

I recently received this e-mail from a friend relating a dinner conversation with his wife and son (names have been changed [obviously]):

Oh, the looks I got from Zelda tonight at dinner. Scott said, “Dad, the garlic bread is really good, but the crust is a little too crunchy.” Zelda said, “Scott, you should never use but in a compliment.” Of course I added, “Unless the compliment is, ‘Hey, nice butt!’” Scott thought this hilarious. Needless to say, Zelda did not.

My parents are coming to visit me and my sister for a long weekend, and yesterday I was out running some preparatory errands. I wanted a pie—an apple pie, maybe, if I could find one that looked good. Apple (in my humble opinion) can be trickier than other pies.

On a whim, on my way to the gym, I stopped at T’s. T is a most excellent piemaker. In fact, T makes the best coconut cream pie I have ever had. Her business has moved several times and taken on several incarnations over the years for a variety of reasons. You used to be able to go and pick a pie out of the refrigerator or order one made, but now (I was pretty sure) if you wanted a pie, you had to order it. As the gym is practically across from T’s, it was worth checking out to be sure.

I asked if she had any pies. No, pies must be ordered. But, she said hesitatingly, I do have one pie that I baked by mistake.

Baked by mistake? I, who have never even attempted a crust on my own, could not imagine circumstances under which something like this could possibly occur.

When the woman called, I thought she wanted the pie today, T explained. But she was making an order for Thanksgiving.

What kind is it? I asked.

Strawberry rhubarb.

Hmmmm. I like strawberry rhubarb. I imagine T makes a good strawberry rhubarb. Is it for sale?

Sure.

So now I am the proud owner of a pie baked by mistake. It’s not the pie I was planning to have. But it’s found a home.

has left the ether
“definitively” and I’m
inconsolable

indefinitely
I rush to hope, but no—it’s
definitively

in her October 11 post: “It’s one of the reasons I read the blogs I do. They are all particularly good at appreciating the moment, about celebrating the simple things in life.”

Indeed. This may be why I am reading you, dear blog friends. This may be why I try to keep blogging—to remind myself of simplicities. To be aware of a moment.

This may be why I am writing nothing of late.

Mine is not actually a complicated life, but it seems to have decided to play one on TV. I feel inefficient. Day after day—with the exception of one recent deliciously productive morning—I can’t focus well enough to accomplish what I somehow believe could be accomplished. It’s frustrating, and in this frustration I am definitely not taking enough time to breathe in the simple. When I do, I exhale quickly, and it’s over.

It’s been a beautiful autumn, and I’ve noticed. Don’t think I haven’t. I’ve had a couple of wonderful weekends, too, but at their end, I’ve been too tasked to know what to say about them.

Perhaps the cat’s got my tongue. I hope that said cat is The Danforth’s Alfie, and that she will either scratch me awake or ghostwrite some Indigo Bunting posts.

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

—Edna St. Vincent Millay

These days, when I turn off Route 153 onto Lali’s long driveway, I see that her house and land look exactly like the drawing that graces her blog title (My Green Vermont). It’s almost as if I can see the landscape change to art and back again, like a special effect in a movie. (I wonder what my Subaru and I look like when this happens?)

I was at her place Saturday to meet Bisou, the new Cavalier King Charles spaniel puppy, and to gawk at the very pregnant Blossom, a Nigerian dwarf goat. Blossom’s twins were born about as early on Monday as a goat can be born, and it took me til today—Wednesday!—to visit.

They are indeed the smallest goats I have ever seen (photo/birth description available here and  here). Lali plopped the younger right into my arms, a nuzzly, affectionate little thing the size of small cat. The elder wasn’t interested in having anything to do with me. I did not take it personally.

Blossom was busy with being a mom. Alsiki, Blossom’s nulliparous sister, seemed especially in need of affection, which I was happy to give. Virginia Slim, the milker, perhaps being distracted by all the company, was not being mean to Alsiki. Alsiki and Virginia Slim were both interested in chewing on parts of my jacket. It was a lovely visit.

Baby goats: Is there anything softer or cuter? I think not.

(The story continues.)

A dozen summers ago, my sister and I took a trip to Scotland. We were there about 2½ weeks, usually spending three nights per location. Alison had arranged for us to stay on working farms most of the time. Scottish farm holidays.

Of course, even in that amount of time, we couldn’t hit all the hot spots. We had to give up the Outer Hebrides altogether in order to visit the Shetlands. We went back and forth trying to choose between them, but something kept calling us north. The Shetlands turned out to be a major highlight of our trip. The day we hiked to Scotland’s northernmost tip, spent hours with puffins (who had not, after all, “moved on”), and returned to our car, where a late-afternoon tea packed lovingly by our hostess awaited us . . . well, that day was one of the best days of my life.

But our three nights in the Highlands—by scheduling default, really—were not well timed. Scotch wasn’t the priority for us on that trip, and we hadn’t thought through the fact that weekend arrival would turn distillery tours into quiet affairs, what with workers off having weekends themselves. By 10 a.m., after a brief tour, we were sipping Oban—toasting our parents’ 39th wedding anniversary—in a nearly empty room, and I was plotting a trip to The Macallan.

At the time, there were no public tours at The Macallan. One had to make an appointment. On a weekday.

Years before, when we lived in DC, a coworker of Tim’s, aware of Tim’s passion for fly fishing, offered him tickets to a snooty event sponsored by a well-known fly-fishing retailer, an event that featured a couple of famous anglers, a lot of smoked salmon, and a Macallan tasting. It was a wonderful evening, but we were clearly the least-moneyed people in the room. I shudder now to think about what I might have worn, as even my good stuff couldn’t have been good enough. I sat between Tim and a lovely gentleman who ran “a little art gallery downtown.” His name was Phillips.

Tim eventually went to work for that fly-fishing retailer, and the company still had a bit of a relationship with The Macallan at the time that I was in Scotland. I really like their scotch. I wanted to see that pretty mansion on the box. Maybe, I said to Alison, we could just drive onto the grounds, walk around a little, drive away.

But when we got there, there was tour bus parked outside the pretty mansion.

In we went.

The room was crowded with German tourists. We were immediately offered some scotch, which we accepted. We walked around the room a bit, taking the place in, checking out the selection of spirits available for purchase.

But some German ratted us out.

A staff member approached us. It had been reported that we were not part of the group. We had to leave.

I mentioned my husband’s business connection. She didn’t care.

I mentioned that I had really, really wanted to buy my husband a bottle of their scotch as a souvenir. She briefly relented.

Although it was a blend (unthinkable!), I bought a limited-edition bottle commemorating the 35th anniversary of the magazine Private Eye. The lure was that this blend included one cask (number 1580) from 1961, the year the magazine was launched and the year my husband was born. (Doing a Google search now, I’m finding that one of those 5,000 bottles sold at a 2006 auction for £240. I did not pay that. Plus, we opened ours.)

She let me pay, and then she kicked us out.

Which gives me bragging rights to having been kicked out of a distillery in Scotland.

So there.

I poured the last of The Macallan 12-year-old scotch into my treasured brandy snifter last night.

Some years ago, I became part of the Aplodontia Society, a secret society brought together by mutual interests in scotch and fly fishing. I would tell you more, but I would have to kill you.

We would most often meet (secretly, of course) at the 1811 House. The room was perfection: a bar, a fireplace, some tables. The place specialized in single malt scotches, although one could get a draft of Newcastle Brown to warm up, if one so desired.

Eventually the owners retired and sold the inn to the big resort hotel across the street. The 1811 House was promptly closed to the public. That was a dark, dark day.

One brilliant and thoughtful member of the Aplodontia Society was inspired to stop by as the place was being dismantled to see if she could, for her husband’s birthday, buy some of the glassware. They sold some to her. She presented the glasses to him at his birthday dinner, and she gave one to each member of the society.

The heavy crystal brandy snifters sport a thistle pattern. I love them, and not even so much for what they are—which is beautiful—but for what they represent: warm evenings with good friends in a room that felt like home.

The snifter makes me think about and appreciate my friends (and aplodontia). The Macallan makes me think about that time I was politely but firmly asked to leave their Speyside grounds.

But that’s another story.

Saturday morning, about 11:30, I walked down to the general store to pick up some lunch. I walk in the door, and Will and Eric, between the two of them, say to me right off, “Two turkey and cheddar on Rupert Rising bread?”

Yup. With lettuce and mustard.

Thing is, Tim and I don’t go there that often. Not nearly enough, in fact. These guys pay attention.

While Eric was making the sandwiches, another guy walks in and heads to the cooler. Will says to Eric, “Is there any St. Pauli Girl in there? Mike’s here.”

“Probably not. But there’s some in the basement.” By that time, Mike had already headed downstairs for it himself, clearly familiar with its likely whereabouts.

It’s a small town.