loosie: words: Clanton's Rant

Clanton's Rant

Saving your life: Rural Maine and 36,000 pounds of flaming fish.

by Clanton McNeese | 2004.06.21

The low-slung dusty restaurant is closed, despite the sign boasting “lousy food and warm beer.” Now you know you’re nearing Stonington, where so many businesses are closed for the day or the season or forever. You’ve already passed the fields pocked with boulders the size of bisons, and you’ve gaped at the stunning view from Caterpillar Hill. You’ve traversed the skinny suspension bridge linking Little Deer Isle to the mainland, and the scary twisted track lined with granite shards that ties Little Deer to all the rest.

One last curve, one final plunge in the road, and you’re cruising through Stonington, an isolated Maine monument to salt water, rock, and hard work. For decades the townspeople have trapped lobsters, netted fish, and cut stone to earn a tough living. Even though this is June you can feel January in the brisk wind that blows from the harbor.

At the ocean end of the commercial pier, bass beats thump from a cluster of trucks. It’s a night on the town for the young workers of Stonington, gathering to suck down Budweisers before the sun sets. To an outsider, it seems sort of sad.

But Bob, a Brooklyn native who runs The Island Cow, an ice cream stand, sees it otherwise. “These are open, honest kids,” he says, “with great friendships and real loyalty to each other.” I murmur something about the lack of activities, and again Bob has a different take: ‘They have all these riches, all this beauty around them. They know every cove on every island around here. They’ve got so much that other places can’t provide.”

Bob spent twenty years teaching in Harlem, so he’d seen other places before he moved to Maine five years ago. Now he spends summers at the Cow. If he’s got a beef, it’s not with the young crowd. ‘The town keeps trying to crack down on the kids,” he says. “Some property owners are hoping to make big money out of tourists, so there’s a new law making it a crime to squeal your tires in town.”

Stomping on the accelerator and laying a righteous patch of rubber is a traditional young guy maneuver in Stonington. I watch one driver pause his pickup about one third of the way up Opera House Hill, pound the gas pedal, and leave black tracks for maybe thirty yards. Stripped of the sounds of a city, the screech of the tires is strangely exhilarating, like the howl of a Wyoming wolf. If the wind were right, the smell of burning rubber would fill the air. A fast truck is almost as cool as a fast car. I’m with Bob on this issue. The new law is a loser. Besides, it’s not like the racket is waking anyone. It’s only 8:30.

If you want to raise a little hell in Stonington, you start early. That’s because many of these young guys are lobsterman, who get up way before sunrise. On a good day, a lobsterman might make six or seven hundred bucks. If he wants to blow it on a new set of tires every few thousand miles, it’s a boost for the world’s rubber workers.

So Stonington, in its end of the world way, is a good place to be this week. Radio and television reception are just about zip where I’m saying, but that’s okay. Even without the airwaves, I can be confident that somewhere in the dry Middle East, some pathetic fool is exploding himself and some unfortunate others. I prefer being alive, listening to the steady slap of waves on rocks and the occasional wail of tires on asphalt.

Along those lines, I’ve discovered a new hero. His name is Richard Hiltz.

The Bangor Daily News reports that Hiltz, driving through the dark with a tractor-trailer loaded with 35,000 pounds of fresh fish, struck a moose. Within seconds, Hiltz’s entire truck was in flames. The brakes were gone, but Hiltz managed to keep his burning truck on the road for nearly a mile. When the heat became too much, he leaped into the shadows, hoping the rest of his rig wouldn’t run him down.

Richard Hiltz made it, suffering only bruises and singed hair. Way to stay alive, Richard.