Sagadahoc Story #67: 11/19/98
Facing and Defacing
Dustings of snow and skim ice. The mice are moving in. Peggy says
it's OK so long as they obey the rules. No mouse tracks on the
counters. No running across her feet in the bathroom. No gnawing
by the head of the bed. HAH. She's bought a new set of traps.
We had a crew from Randolph come down and reline the main chimney.
The crumbly old thing was venting smut every time the furnace
kicked in. Pretty slick operation. They plug up the thimbles and
ash-out, lower a bell-shaped device with a vibrator in it, and
start pouring mortar mix to it. The mortar sets up and stands
firm as the bell rises. Three hours later the chimney is relined
and recapped, the crew packed up, and the furnace back on. |
Chimneymen
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The boys from Mason's Choice say they're run off their feet: between
clowns like me who didn't think about fixing the flue until the
heating season, and all the victims of new legislation. A law
went into effect this year that no new furnace can be installed
into an unlined chimney. Pity the handtomouths who live in old
ruins like this one. The furnacemen have to shrug and send customers
to the chimney boys. Electricians are getting windfalls from new
safety regs, too. Smoke detectors have to be hard-wired, etc.
Your government legislating a technical fix for any excess in
your bank account.
The government in this hamlet has been toying with your money,
too. We're beginning to figure out how the town has been able
to afford so much public works this year. Creative bookkeeping.
Apparently there are various rollover grants of federal largess
which enable us to spend the same money again and again. Something
about "matching funds." Money to burn, you might say.
The Town Uglification Committee has been at it again, and this
Monday the selectmen invited the town to examine their latest
plan for improving this place. Sent out a flyer describing the
wonderful addition Uncle is going to buy for the old town hall.
I've managed to avoid most public meetings since we got back from
our American Sabbatical, and I was going to give this latest provocation
a pass, but Peggy was so incensed by the proposal I felt duty-bound
to go be offensive.
Town Hall
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The town hall is our village landmark, and the only truly beautiful
building in town. It sits on the top of town hill and spires up
to a copperclad onion dome. The long south wall has four tall
windows to light the interior, and that expanse of clapboard and
glazing with the steeple behind it is as close as we get to heaven.
The plan calls for defacing the wall with a big new entry, blocking
the light, and diminishing us one more increment. It's another
case of a good idea getting bureaucratized into a monstrosity. |
The hall has high steps on the street out front and a steep ramp
onto the stage wings in the back, so handicap access requires
mutual aid. The only facilities are a noxious indoor privy in
a cold corner of the building. Despite such hazards the hall has
had constant usage since the 19th century. We used to rent it
twothree times a year for dances, art shows, and other events.
The seed-eaters have contra dances there two Saturdays a month.
But town meetings have moved to the school gym or the town offices,
and the only time the town uses the place is to vote. Sylvia makes
sure that all infirm residents get absentee ballots, and any that
show up at the door either get helped in, or a ballot is brought
to them and conveyed to the box. But the law says we have to have
handicap access to the polls. And there's all this easy money
to retrofit. We could add a bathroom to the bill.
| The town has spent a lot of time and money in recent years restoring
the hall interior, doing foundation work, putting up a new steeple
and dome. It would cap the job to add toilets and better access.
Then the town might go back to meeting there. So the current town
fathers have batted design ideas back and forth until they're
dizzy. The rest of us didn't know what they were up to until this
meeting, at which we're told it's do or die. The grant proposal
has to fly next week, and this is what we're going to do to you.
How do you like it? |
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When I arrived at the meet, late, everyone was smiling and sitting
on their hands. Fait accompli. I mouthed off about defacing, despoiling,
and creating an esthetic abomination. Always the charmer. Noises
were made about reconsidering an entrance in back, but the selectmen
were obviously tired of going round in circles. They'd rejected
that idea because it was less convenient, more expensive, and
meant that the public would enter across the stage wings. In short
they were frozen in their decision, and weren't willing to entertain
any alternate solutions to the access problem. Esthetics be damned.
 |
Frank, our first selectman and town historian, even had the gall
to say that the Maine Historical Society said the building has
no significant value. It's just the visual heart of the town.
And that's how it goes. Fiscal opportunism and perceived convenience
destroys another local amenity. We've done it repeatedly. The
Post Office is now out by the highway where you can't walk to
it, because there was federal money and the perceived convenience
(for the postal service) of roll-on roll-off. The town landing
got clearcut, so there's no shade and windbreak, because there
was easy money from the SeaBees to deepen the ramp and shore up
the banks. Good ideas get blown out of scale by eager enthusiasts
with too much money and no sense of proportion. Now we're demolishing
the old mill, because we can afford to. Just imagine what we could
do with some real affluence. |
Monday was all about defacings. I spent the day doing two watercolor
portraits on impulse. Shortorder Bob is quitting his stand by
the grill, after 51 years of delivering groceries with a grumble.
Angie and Allie were wondering what to give him for a send off,
and in the discussion it turned out that it was Angie's 28th birthday.
I'd taken a chipfull of candids in the restaurant a week ago,
looking to fill out my Rogues Gallery, and had likely shots of both of them. So I took puter prints
out to the Eagles and made faces at watercolor paper. Birthday
and going away gifts.
I've fought shy of painting portraits since I've been playing
with ink and watercolor. Maybe I'd done enough toy portraits in
the last dozen years, and wanted to look at the lay of the land
instead of the shape of eyelids. The hills sit stiller, too. I'd
caught a few faces, sure, but the last one I did, of Sarah Anne,
had spooked me a bit. I'd turned a 3-year-old into a wise-eyed
teen, and wondered what that augured.
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Sarah
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Angie
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Something about a hard-lined ink foundation doesn't quite work
with the fade of flesh, either. But the bled-line underdrawing
of my figure studies, which makes a nice body texture, muds the
shadows too deep on a face. The picture of Angie was hard jawed
and stiff, which probably fits. She's breaking in a new waitress,
and the pressures of running the Town Landing are giving her a
sore neck. But my take was a bit cruel, and I wondered how much
I could lay that to technique. |
So when it came to Bob I simply laid down a pencil frame and did
a more traditional watercolor. I'm never quite comfortable without
the tangible edge of ink, like a wooden outline. Like I have to
carve a drawing before I paint. But the pencil line was bold enough
to hold me, and the lighter touch seemed to fit the subject. Bob
isn't as hard-edge as Angie, or Sarah, even.
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Shortorder Bob
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These are quick takes, to be sure, but probably better watercolors
for not being labored. I suddenly realized I probably can paint
a likeness. But the sense of hidden story pushing through these
glimpses is a tad unsettling. I've come to accept the inevitable
emblematic quality of carved caricature. I expect symbolism to
show through. But any messages in the landscape have been too
obscure for me to see, and I'd become accustomed to simple literalism
in paint. I thought. Something is telling in these faces, though,
and that's enticing. Maybe it's time to do more faces.
Lucky thing I'd had a good day in the work, or the local politics
would have left me wrung out. I suppose a local artist has to
defend the ephemeral beauty in town, even while progress improves
it away. Or try to capture it in a medium, before it's gone.