I went to Portland

I went to Portland, Maine this weekend.  I took the Greyhound bus there and back.  Outgoing trip was marred only by this batshit crazy freakin’ fascist bus driver.  Blond and ambling in baggy Greyhound uniform, he made the standard announcement about being quiet and orderly and not using cell phones and iPods to drive your seatmates to distraction.

We have been rolling on the highway for about ten minutes when my seatmate, an older woman that me, even, asks where I am going and we exchange pleasantries.  No sooner do I explain that I was last in Portland canvassing for Howard Dean, what, nine years ago when all of a sudden the bus driver erupts: “I just made the announcement and in one ear and out the other!  I don’t want to hear your conversation.  No more yappity, yappity.”  So I blush vermillion and being a woman of a certain age admit to myself that my voice carries.  I do not get up, yank him out of his seat and punch him in the nose.

When we get to Portland and we are disembarking from the bus, he inquired where the 30-student group is from.  Iceland I say.  “Well, I don’t want to ever go there.  Yappity, yappity, yap.  They never freakin shut up.”  Ah, Greyhound, how proud you must be to have someone like this on your staff.

My kind lady host is there to pick me up and after being greeted by her cocker, Henry, we do a little sightseeing.  The first stop is Portland Head Light.  For me, it is most well-known as famously painted by Edward Hopper.  We have roiling storm seas and the sky is scudding grey and the water-dense, iron-like in color and one imagines storm-tossed galleons of old being caught in this confusion of spray, waves, and undulating water.

For supper, we have the most delicious lobster stew with lightly steamed baby asparagus and focaccia stuffed with mozzarella and prosciutto grilled to melting point with cannolis for dessert.  All this served on TV tables while we watched the History channel documentary on JFK’s assassination.  They used footage never seen before - not the usual Zapruder/Kronkite stuff.  I cannot get over the lynching of Lee Harvey Oswald.  He never stood a chance.  Whether he did it or not, due process was not going to be his.