Tuesday, August 10, 2010

My God, It's Full of Zardoz!

So, I get back from Maine, and I find a Zardoz infestation. What does one spray? Bullets? After all, the gun is good...

Beaver Shores Club is close to the wildest, deepest, and least explored forest belt in Maine, and it took a whole day of feverish jolting through fantastic and forbidding scenery to get there in a car. In 1926, while a high school student in Framingham, Massachusetts, my grandfather bought a share in the place, a cabin which had originally been built as the field office for a logging company. It's a two-room structure right on the shore of a "great pond" (current restrictions prevent new construction within 250 feet of the shore). As other partners in the camp grew older, they sold their shares to my uncles, so the camp is now in the family's hands.

I traveled up with one of my uncles and an old friend of his (who, scandalously, had never been to the place), and we met up with a bunch of family members (another uncle has been building a gorgeous cabin across the pond, and was up with my aunt, my two awesome college-age cousins, his sister-in-law, and her two awesome adolescent kids, yet another aunt came up a couple of days later with my little cousin, an extremely bright and articulate seven-year-old).

One of the first acts I performed was a symbolic ridding myself of the trappings of urban modernity... the keys, the cell phone, and the wallet were put away- the hands would be occupied by the paddle, the splitting maul, and the scythe (I had to clear the "leaching field" for the grey water). For the next week, a bath was a jump in the pond with a bar of Ivory soap (it floats), and the only calls came from the loons. I had a couple of wonderful kayak trips (for one, I ported the boat over a small dam and paddled around the marsh formed by the pond overflow), and chaperoned a solo paddle for my little cousin (he did a great job turning around a float, and then had a straightaway paddle until his arms tired, and he needed a tow). We did some minor chores (we hung a smoke detector and a couple of fire extinguishers, and felled a couple of dead trees- my college-aged cousin could probably perform gall bladder surgery with a chainsaw). A couple of the teenaged neighbors from two camps over (Framingham boys, grandchildren of a family friend) stopped by for an impromptu chess tournament. We had a number of big family dinners (my aunt's sister stocked up on Arthur Avenue before driving up). I drank Moxie, and had Spam with breakfast. All-in-all, it was a delightful pastoral interlude, just the right thing to make one appreciate hot running water and 'lectricity.

15 comments:

Vonnie said...

and then you came home to a blog full o' zardoz.....
Welcome home! :)

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

Damn, I left the Zardoz ax up in the North Woods.

The job will take longer with Zardoz shears!

It's good to be back home!

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

B, can I just apologize for the excessive behavior of the other bloggers?

They took advantage of your absence. Fortunately, you left the word verf on, so it slowed 'em down somewhat.

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

B, can I just apologize for the excessive behavior of the other bloggers?

Absolutely not! I was due for a good Zardozing, and I was tickled pink by the number of comments.

Now, tonight, I'll have to take No Doz so I can catch up on the Zardoz.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

Oh, good. Wait until you get to the Zardoz -blogging of the Zardoz.

Another Kiwi said...

Good to see you back 4B. A friend would like to know where one gets the red diaper and hooker boots

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

A friend would like to know where one gets the red diaper and hooker boots

Boorman would be able to help with that request!

fish said...

I'll have to take No Doz so I can catch up on the Zardoz.

recommended

Smut Clyde said...

the excessive behavior of the other bloggers?

I didn't see any other bloggers.

Dragon-King Wangchuck said...

Geez, I dunno if I was jealous of not getting Zardoz-ed before, but I certainly ain't now.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

D-KW is Next!!

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

ZRM is making sense.

Stop that!
~

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

just hang around for a bit...

or maybe go look at the previous thread. was that not enough non-sense for you?

Smut Clyde is on the List.

M. Bouffant said...

Beaver Shores Club is close to the wildest, deepest, and least explored forest belt in Maine.

As other partners in the camp grew older, they sold their shares to my uncles.


I see a Lovecraft/King influenced Scooby-Doo episode, where the frightening giant flying head is revealed to be a plot by 4B's uncles to gain control of the time-share.

zombie rotten mcdonald said...

...and they would have been successful, too, if not for you meddling squids!!