Blog Without A Name

So I bought a book at the Harmon Museum — yes, yes:  you’re shocked.  The title is: The Great Steel Pier:  An Illustrated History of the Old Orchard Ocean Pier, by Peter Dow Bachelder (1998, Breakwater Press, Ellsworth, Maine).

Items of note so far:  the first carousel — the nameless “German made” carousel — that burned down in 1923, it says here — is claimed to have been “the oldest of its kind in existence,” having been at Old Orchard Beach since 1892.  I’m pretty sure there were other carousels around in 1892 (Just as a for instance, Gustav Dentzel’s dates of production (note:  Gustav Dentzel was a German native) proceed from 1870) so I’m not sure what this “of its kind” business is all about.  O, Good; more research…

The first carousel was, just to clear up my error, replaced by a Dentzel merry-go-round, which subsequently burned in 1969, due to that fuse-box problem we discussed.

Leaving carousels, it seems that Old Orchard has always had trouble pulling together for its own best interest.  The pier idea was first floated by prominent businessman Henry Staples in 1879, but the cost of building such a thing — the first of its kind — was more than the rest of the local business people wanted to commit to, and so the idea was put on hold until 1898.  This allowed other ocean resorts — notably Coney Island and Atlantic City — to construct their steel piers first.

There were also a couple of false starts.  One guy wanted to build a stone pier — get this — over Googins Rocks — but that got killed by the very business people who didn’t want to spend the money on a steel pier, because the stone pier would have been blocks away from their business interests at the core of downtown.

So, anyhow, squabbling and scheming and pearl-clutching aside, the pier did finally get built, and it was a monster — stretching 1800 feet out into the ocean.  The term at that time was “ocean-going pier.”

Cruise ships came down from Portland,  docked at the far end of the pier and unloaded 800 passengers at a go.  There was a little steam train that ran the whole length from the Velvet Hotel, at landside, to the Casino, just short of the cruise ship docking.

And then there’s the schooner Grecian Bend, out of Nova Scotia, bearing a load of plaster rocks (no, I don’t know why) and headed for Boston (maybe there was no plaster in Boston?)  Coming down coast, the schooner developed a leak and the skipper decided to lay over in Portland for repairs.  But the sight of the newly-constructed casino glimpsed through thick fog convinced him he was further south than he actually was, and – long story short, he came aground at Grand Beach, about three-quarters of a mile north of the pier.  Very near, in fact, Temp Headquarters.

Now, here’s the thing about the Grecian Bend:  Her crew had jettisoned cargo in order to try to float her, but she was grounded but good.  The rescue out of Biddeford Pool were able to deploy their surf boat and bring the crew out, but the schooner. . .just sat there.

She was purchased by a junk dealer out of Portland, who determined to refloat her, but that didn’t work out, so. . .

. . .he just left her there – a derelict schooner.  On the beach.  Three-quarters of a mile out from the newest Wonder of the Eastern Seaboard.

Grecian Bend grounded in mid-June.  Over the next few months, just, yanno, sitting there in the sand, with the tide coming in and going out every six hours or so, every day, the schooner “hogged badly” (that means that it bent convexly along its length), and, one would imagine, became buried even deeper in the sand.

Along about Thanksgiving, though, there was a storm.  A very, very bad storm.  A killer storm.  Shipwreck buffs will know it as “The Portland Gale,” which not only killed the steamer Portland, and all of its 191 passengers and crew, but 200 other ships.

The Grecian Bend broke to bits during this storm.  Pieces of it were flung by the furious waves into the yards of the ocean-facing cottages; and a large section of the hull lodged directly alongside the brand new pretty pier, right at the high tide line.

Before the town could do anything about it, on December 4, there was another storm — not as bad; “just” a nor’easter.  The wreck rose on the storm tide and ripped the back (or front-most, depending on how you count) section of the pier, where the casino and the cruise ship dock was located.

The casino was smashed clean off the pier, plunged into the ocean and was delivered onto the beach in a state described by one eyewitness as  “…more completely demolished than if it had been blown up with dynamite.”

And this, children, is why we ought not to leave derelict ships sitting for months on our beach.

 

In yesterday’s blog post, I may have mentioned in passing the Dummy Railroad, which once served Old Orchard Beach, Ocean Park, and Camp Ellis during the summer months.

Jean, the Harmon Museum curator, said that it was called the Dummy Railroad for two reasons, but usually she only told people the first — which was that the local joke was the train was “too dumb” to turn around, and had to back from Camp Ellis to the Old Orchard station on its return trip.  In reality, there wasn’t any room at Camp Ellis to build either a turntable, or lay a loop track so the engine could be “correctly” at the front of the train on the return trip.

The second reason for this particular nickname, the Dummy Railroad, is that the engine was steam-powered and ran so quietly that people couldn’t hear it; that it was, in essence, and compared to, say, the big, noisy engines of the Boston and Maine Railroad, a “dumb” engine.

She then went on to explain that, back in the day, people had used to say of those who had no hearing and who could not vocalize, that they were “deaf and dumb.”  And she added something to the effect that this had been a terrible thing to say.

But…”deaf and dumb” or simply “dumb” had been, back in the day, a technical term — a diagnosis.  Yes, it’s fallen out of favor, and no, we don’t hear it much anymore, except, maybe from grandparents.  But “dumb” means, “can’t talk.”  That’s why we say “dumb animals” — not because animals are stupid.

It gets a little tricky, when technical words from the past collide with our present-day sensibilities, and Jean’s discussion reminded me of the folks in upstate New York who want to abolish all the things called “Kills” in their area, because kill is horrible and bloody and What Are We Teaching Our Children?  It hasn’t seemed to occur to any of those horrified that We Could Be Teaching Our Children that the area was settled by the Dutch and that the Dutch word for “river” or “stream” is “kill.”

So, anyway.

It’s raining, and I have words to write.  I love it when a plan comes together.

 

Yesterday, it was raining, so I thought, “Perfect day to visit the History House!” and up the hill I went to that place.

I walked in, and immediately bumped into Jean, the curator, who was waiting for a couple who had called ahead to make an appointment, because!  The Harmon Museum and Historical Society closes on Labor Day.  Mind you, the sign doesn’t say this, but I am very grateful to the couple who did call ahead for the tour, and graciously allowed me to ride on their coattails.

The Harmon House Museum was given to the Town of Old Orchard Beach by the Harmons, for the use of the Historical Society, so —  it’s a 1920’s cottage.  The front parlor is where the changing exhibits are housed, and the 2012 exhibit was about Ocean Park.  This is where the interest of my benefactors lay, and Jean started the tour in that room.

Now, a word about the tour.  I didn’t want a tour, dernit.  I wanted to look around and ask questions.

By the time we were done, two hours later, I was so very happy to have had the tour.  Not only is the museum a gem of itself, but Jean the curator knows everything.  She came to Old Orchard Beach when she was seven years old; the couple who had made the appointment had summered and then lived in Ocean Park since the early 60s.  Talking to them was like having footnotes to the tour.  It was amazing.

Anyhow, I learned a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff.  I learned that the first carousel to burn down in Old Orchard Beach had been hand-carved by  “a German company” — one of three at that time in the US (not useful not to have the name, but knowing the names of carousel manufacturers is probably a level of geekitude more focused than the broad knowledge base demanded of the curator of the town museum.)

In any case, the second carousel to burn down was the Herschell-Spillman, and that fire, Jean said, sounding just as corked off as if it had happened last week — that fire was “completely avoidable.”  Those of us who are older’n spit remember the fuse boxes with the glass fuses.  And if a fuse blew, you could kind of hold its place by sticking a penny over the contact?  Well, the carousel keeper had just kept adding pennies, and never remembered, or cared to, replace the actual fuses.  So the fire started in the fuse box, nobody noticed and by the time they did, and the fire department was called, the ride was fully engaged.

Let’s see…

I learned that Old Orchard Beach had been favored as a place for planes attempting the transatlantic crossing to take off from because of the nature of the beach, which at that time had been very broad and packed hard with very fine white sand.

I said that I had read of the powdery white sand of the beach, but had considered that PR, because the sand isn’t particularly white on Old Orchard Beach, and is noticeably coarse.

“That’s because of Camp Ellis,” said the woman from Ocean Park. (Camp Ellis is pronounced locally camPELis, just by the way)  Jean agreed.

“Before the Army Corps of Engineers put in the jetty to protect the point, the Saco River and the ocean just sort of. . .met there, and the water action. . .but with the jetty, we get too much sand, and it’s like gravel.  the beach isn’t even as wide as it was when I was growing up here.”

I also learned — I’m going to knock this off pretty soon, honest, and not make you listen to all the stuff I learned, fascinating as it was — I also learned about the Dummy Railroad.  And!  for those who were around for the Surfside*/Surf Avenue discussion, I learned — I love this. . .

There was no Surf Avenue in Old Orchard Beach, but there was, as a convention for the mailman, a “Surf” address.  This was to differentiate the houses that faced onto East/West Grand Avenue, and the houses that faced the beach, or, the surf.  Those houses had sea walls and steps that went down to the beach — no longer visible because the change in the sand distribution has built up the dunes so much.

*deep breath*

OK, I’m done boring y’all with this.  I had fun; I got so much information that I came back to Temp Headquarters and took a nap so my head wouldn’t explode with all the Cool Stuff.

If you’re ever in Old Orchard Beach, go to the Harmon Museum.  Really.  You will not regret it.

Here’s the webpage

Oh, no, wait!  I have to tell you about the grand pianos…

See, during the Big Fire in 1907, when it looked like the whole town was afire, all the tourists and a lot of the residents ran to their homes/hotels and filled steamer trunks with their valuables.  A couple of the hotels even dragged their grand pianos out — and everybody put their stuff on the nice wide beach, believing that this was the place that was safest from the fire.

Which it was.

What they had forgotten in their fright was that. . .the tide comes in.

And it did, and it swept all the loot on the beach out to sea.

And much of it — but not all of it — came back over a period of weeks, in what condition you may imagine, after having been kissed by the sea…

_____________

*Sadly, Jean couldn’t help me with the Surfisde question.  All she had in archives were copies of some old penny postcards advertising the Surfside Resort and Cabins, and a copy of the article from the Port Press that was written when the grounds were closed, and sold the the developer of the Sunspray condos.

River Marked, Patricia Briggs (e)
Althea, Madeleine Robins (e)
Heartless, Gail Carriger (e)
Powers, James A. Burton (e)
A Geisha’s Journey, Komomo, photographs by Naoyuki Ogino
Geisha, Liza Dalby
The Kimono of the Geisha-Diva Ichimaru, Barry Till, Michiko Warkentyne, Judith Patt
Partials, Dan Wells
Starters, Lissa Price
A Princess of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs (read aloud w/Steve)
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, Grace Lin
From Whence You Came, Laura Anne Gilman (e)
Frederica, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
No Dominion, C.E. Murphy (e)
The Prestige, Christopher Priest
Cuttlefish, Dave Freer
Intruder, C.J. Cherryh (read aloud w/Steve)
Blameless, Gail Carriger (e)
Changeless, Gail Carriger (e)
The Quiet Gentleman, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Unbroken, Rachel Caine
The Talisman Ring, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Sylvester / OR, The Wicked Uncle, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Death and Resurrection, R. A. MacAvoy
The Unknown Ajax, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Black Sheep, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Stealing the Elf-King’s Roses, Diane Duane (e)
The Reluctant Widow, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Friday’s Child, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Dragon Ship manuscript, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (e)
Kim, Rudyard Kipling (e)
Regency Buck, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Pollyanna, Eleanor H. Porter (e)
Chimera, Rob Thurman (e)

 

Trying to get this all in one place…

1.  September 30:  Start reading A Night in the Lonesome October.  Do you know where your hellhound is?

2. October 4:  Triumphant return from Temp Headquarters

3.  Sign 1500 sheets of paper; mail to Baen no later than October 18

4.  October 30:  Essay due at BenBella

5.  November 6:  VOTE

6. December 10:  Short story due at Baen

7.  February 15:  Carousel Sun due at Baen

8.   May 15:  Carousel Sea due at Baen

9.  July 15:  First of Five (oh, isn’t that fortuitous?) due at Baen

…and, yanno, Life and stuff.

Well.  That ought to keep me off the streets, if not precisely out of trouble…

 

I may have mentioned before that I’m trying to hit a firm 2,000 words/day on Carousel Sun while I’m here at Temp Headquarters.  The goal is to take home at least 60,000 darn near finished words on this project and the notes for the next.  That’s the goal.

So, anyhow, yesterday I saw that if I wrote a smidge more than 3,000 words, I would break 50K on the project, and have Half a Book!  So I pushed, a little, and I broke the Big 50, and this morning I read what I had written, over coffee and oatmeal.

And of course, it’s the wrong 3,000 words.

Mind you, it’s a good 3,000 words and it delivers information that Kate will need, later.  But not here.  So, the chapter goes into the File of Holding and the manuscript meter gets set back to 47,000 words total.

The plan for as soon as I finish my coffee and find a sweatshirt, is to go for a walk, figure out what Really Happens Next, and sit down and Actually Write That.

Elsewhere on Teh Intertubes yesterday, I had a conversation with a young writer who felt that writers who walk away from their work when “it gets hard” are whiners and not taking their craft seriously.  Her point was that if you walked away every time a piece of dialogue wasn’t working out, you’d never get anything done.  Which — OK; I can see that.

However, taking a break, even walking away for hours, days, weeks does have its place in the process of writing.  Perhaps some writers can sit down at nine in the morning and hit the keys for six or eight hours straight, and produce sparkling copy.  Most writers I know. . .don’t do it that way.  As someone else in yesterday’s conversation commented, writers do most of their writing away from the keyboard.

So, my coffee’s done, and my sweatshirt’s right over there on the hook.

See y’all later; I’ll be out for a while, writing.

 

Althea, Madeleine Robins (e)
Heartless, Gail Carriger (e)
Powers, James A. Burton (e)
A Geisha’s Journey, Komomo, photographs by Naoyuki Ogino
Geisha, Liza Dalby
The Kimono of the Geisha-Diva Ichimaru, Barry Till, Michiko Warkentyne, Judith Patt
Partials, Dan Wells
Starters, Lissa Price
A Princess of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs (read aloud w/Steve)
Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, Grace Lin
From Whence You Came, Laura Anne Gilman (e)
Frederica, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
No Dominion, C.E. Murphy (e)
The Prestige, Christopher Priest
Cuttlefish, Dave Freer
Intruder, C.J. Cherryh (read aloud w/Steve)
Blameless, Gail Carriger (e)
Changeless, Gail Carriger (e)
The Quiet Gentleman, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Unbroken, Rachel Caine
The Talisman Ring, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Sylvester / OR, The Wicked Uncle, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Death and Resurrection, R. A. MacAvoy
The Unknown Ajax, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Black Sheep, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Stealing the Elf-King’s Roses, Diane Duane (e)
The Reluctant Widow, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Friday’s Child, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Dragon Ship manuscript, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (e)
Kim, Rudyard Kipling (e)
Regency Buck, Georgette Heyer (read aloud w/Steve)
Pollyanna, Eleanor H. Porter (e)
Chimera, Rob Thurman (e)

 

So, I’m still down here at Temp Headquarters.  One of my goals was to walk 5 miles a day — that comes down to those magic 10,000 steps fitness folk like to talk about.  I’ve made that much…some days.  Some days I’ve made more, some less — say, an average of 4 miles a day, since I’ve been living someplace with sidewalks and a downtown, and, yes, the Atlantic Ocean, all to hand.

I have noticed that, I do think better when I can walk; that walking helps me work out knotty problems in the work-in-progress in a way that just staring at the screen until the beads of blood form on my forehead just doesn’t.

I’ve also noticed that walking four or five miles a day. . .takes time.  At the pace I walk, about two hours.  Maybe two-and-a-half.  It’s not that I begrudge the time — after all, not only does it help me think, but walking’s good for me, physically — but it is time, there are a limited number of hours in the day, and adding in two hours of something means that two hours of something else needs to be eliminated.

Also, I worry, most sincerely, that I won’t be able to keep up my four mile/day habit, once I return to the Cat Farm,.  Log trucks, hunters, drivers texting while blaring down the road at 60+ mph, and similar perils of the natural world make walking perilous in the immediate vicinity, and getting in a car to drive someplace to walk seems like too much effort.

Well.

One of my other goals was to go home with most of a book and a good, solid idea for another in hand.  I’ve been writing 2,000 words/day, which is a pretty good rate. If I can keep it up through the end of my stay, I’ll have 3/5ths of Carousel Sun completed.  That’s nothing to sneeze at, certainly.

In the meantime, I miss Steve, and the cats,  at the same time I’m a little blue to realize that my working vacation will be over in only 12 more days.

…and that’s the news that’s fit to print, from Temp Headquarter.