"...Gordon took us fishing."

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.

Henry David Thoreau



Nora and Gordon are throughly enjoying their 1920 Maine honeymoon with family and their 'crowd'. They've eaten plentiful lobsters brought up from the creek by the 'boys' So many that Nora complains of feeling sick from eating oodles of claws. Get to-gethers, 4th of July celebrations, and the circus is at the Fairgrounds in Machias. The movies are popular night time entertainment, finished off with an ice cream from the Machias Drug. They savour rhubarb and custard pies along with Nora's sponge cake. Washing it all down with lemonade as they relax on the cottage piazza. Their only complaint is a smokey kitchen wood stove fed with driftwood collected daily by the shore. It's pleasant, it's foggy and blowy, it's the rocky coast of Maine during the glorious summer.

Aunt Lill comes from Lubec by train and they finish up their wedding fruit cake, brought from home. Aunt Lill was "great on it". Nora and Gordon stay sometimes at the family home(our summer place now) but more often at Birch Knoll Cottage. They reach the cottage by rowboat. Setting out across, along the tidal Machias River, Gordon rows out into Machias Bay. Gliding past the Picture Rocks at Clark's Point they see where nine year old Gordon posed in 1898. Sometimes, Gordon's youngest brother Sam drives them over to the Point Road in his Paige motorcar. They visit Gram Clark on the Point, and at low tide, scramble over rocks and beach, up the wooded embankment to their hideaway. They entertain, set off firecrackers from the piazza, crank up the gramophone, and listen long into the night by the light of the fireplace. Nora washes their clothes by hand and dries them on the sun heated rocks by the water's edge. She seems naturally domestic and comfortable with her new life. They get letters, one from Freda, it announces her arrival soon by train. They pick her up at Machiasport Station and she falls right into the rhythm of days dictated by forecast and tides.

The Nora Diary, Day 29

Beautiful morning. Up at
5:30 to get Sam's breakfast
to get him off. The car
wouldn't go so his father
had to wait until the P.M. before going
to the Harbor. Down
at the beach for a while. In the
P.M. Gordon took us fishing
Freda caught the first fish
a sculpin . She and Gordon
beat me by one fish. Nothing
very startling in the
evening. Sat in the house
by the open fire and out
on the piazza waiting
for Sam and some of the
crowd but they didn't
show up. To bed about
ten. Very calm. Could
hear all the way to M. P and
the cheers of the movie crowd.

For the Record,
This day came in sunny and cooler with more normal temperatures, but it's extremely dry with an elevated fire danger. T arrives home from New Orleans tonight,thankfully! G is at the Gardner Museum with an old HS friend today. We accomplished so much on our joint venture yesterday..a title and all!