Randy

Salvatore D’Amico might be an unusual name for a fishing guide in Maine’s Rangeley Lakes region, but that’s the least of Sal’s worries.  In fact, nothing about him smacks of native or local.

It is what it is though, and Sal makes no apologies to anyone.  Yes, he has a past, and it had nothing to do with western Maine.  Yes, it was on the American “left coast,” and for a short time it included being side-swiped by fame as an upstart novelist.  It also included a wife who died of a drug overdose.  Like a stonefly in spring, Sal shed the outer shuck of those years and began listening to his inner fishermen, which ultimately led him to a cabin in western Maine and a new life as a fishing guide.

Bailey, Sal’s girlfriend who owns the local bookstore, accepts the package as is, game leg and all.  With his sport for the day and his Black Lab, Buck, the middle-aged Sal shuffles off with his clicking knee and sore hip to trout pools off the radar of fair weather fishermen.  Sal and Bailey convene, romantically, after hours at his beloved base of guiding operations on Otter Pond.

Robert J. Romano, Jr.’s West of Rangeley, the second novel in his Western Maine Series follows his well-received, North of Easie.  In West, a drama is about to unfold, but before it does, Romano takes a long time to give you the landscape.  You’ll look over Sal’s shoulder at his fly-tying vise as he wraps and finishes the head and hackle of a favorite trout fly.  You’ll watch the surface of Otter Pond dimpling with native squaretail.  Bailey drops by after work and you eavesdrop to learn how these two, rebounding from train wreck marriages, found each other.  Their once-tumultuous pasts are quieter now.

You have the feeling this tranquility can’t last, and you’re right.  There are architectural drawings already at the Town Hall awaiting rubber-stamp approval from the Planning Board.  A local entrepreneur, wealthy from the tourist trade, has found partners to help back a project that will transform Otter Pond into a puddle flanked by faux-rustic condos owned by “summer people” wearing golf shirts and visors.  Sal opens a letter to find a purchase offer for twice the value of his place, the last holdout property.

If that weren’t enough to ruin any day’s good fishing, Sal, while guiding one day, discovers a clandestine, midnight gold-dredging operation which threatens to destroy the integrity and stream bed of one of the best local native brook trout fisheries.  Just to thicken this suspensful soup, a dazed, wounded vet and local hero, recently returned from Afghanistan, goes missing, and what’s more, somebody’s firing automatic weapons at cardboard human targets just outside of town.  Sal’s friend, the district game warden, who also happens to be conducting a long distance relationship with Sal’s daughter gets involved, and so does a newcomer to town––a former Special Forces-turned free spirit who loves eastern philosophy as much as he loves Long Trail Ale.

Romano weaves a tangled web, and you’re about as convinced as his main character is that this has to end poorly.  Really poorly.  Surely the bad guys, who pass for good guys since they’re homegrown natives and he’s from away, will prevail.  And what about the prospector/fishery destroyers, and the missing hero, and the M16’s being fired in the middle of the night?

The thing is, Buck’s Black Lab nose sniffs out something illegal going on across Otter Pond, and this is when it pays to have Buddhist, beer-drinking, Green Beret friends.  All Sal wanted was a quiet life with Bailey and Buck, his tying vise, and as many more trips to the region’s storied trout waters as his aging legs would allow.  Was that too much to ask?

West of Rangeley uses a fictitious Maine town as the setting for Romano’s novel, but you end up thinking the author might’ve chosen any number of real ones with no loss of credibility.  He populates his tale with true-to-life characters of the kind you run across constantly in Maine––the sheriff whose belly protrudes so far over his belt, you think all his buttons must be reinforced, salt-of-the-earth, hard-working folks, interlopers who’ve found a place to be weird, left alone, and they like it that way.

No stranger to the region could’ve written West of Rangeley, and Romano isn’t. If Billy Joel coined and characterized a “New York State of Mind,” in music, Romano has depicted a Maine State of Mind with precision in West of Rangeley.   Apart from the intrigue of his new novel which is fun to follow, West of Rangeley is a mood-enhancing read which can, with discipline, be taken in small doses (short chapters) so as to make it last longer.

West of Rangeley by Robert J. Romano, Jr.; 224 pages, $22.00 Birch Brook Press (2012)

These came up from the depths on Saturday morning to liven things up out on the ice.  It was a brilliant, high pressure, “bluebird day.”  The whitefish is 17 1/2 inches, the lake trout (togue) 20 inches.  Imagine them hours later in a skillet!   Outside, it was zero degrees and blowing as the woodstove danced a jig and a toddy brought a blush to our cheeks.

This trail was first brushed out by Sonny Sprague, the legendary Grand Lake Stream figure I wrote about in my book, “Where Cool Waters Flow.”  The trail was too “boney” for a snowmobile, because the skis would bash into rocks just beneath the snow.  Another half a foot to a foot of snow would be needed for good snowmobiling.  It was about 9 miles roundtrip to access the “bait pond” where we had previously put traps.

We traveled overland on 8-10 inches of snow to a remote pond teaming with baitfish.  This is one night’s haul, to be used on ice fishing outings in the coming weeks.  They’ll be stored in a holding box under the ice in 8 feet of water.

Found:  This Perrine, aluminum fly box containing approximately 125 home-tied flies was picked up in the parking lot of a convenience store somewhere in Maine.  Apart from many creative patterns, perhaps invented at the vise of this fly tier, there are classic imitations too:  Black Ghosts, Hornbergs, Royal Coachman, and there appear to be some weighted nymphs as well as some flies tied with white marabou. If you can tell us where it may have been lost, we’d be happy to return it to you.  To the fisherman who discovers this tremendous loss to his tackle cache, we sure hope we find you!

I’ve recently stepped, shyly, into the new truck market, after logging a solid 170,000 miles on my 1995 F150, soon headed down the road of diminishing returns.  It still runs, as my father used to say, “like a Swiss watch,” but I do have clients to consider.

Out where I guide on the Canadian border waters, much of the work I ask of a truck is off-road.  Off-road in the Maine willywacks is not the off-road of most TV truck commercials.  “To hell and gone” in fact, is the exact map location of some of the best fishing.  You need a good truck, preferrably with 10-ply tires, good ground clearance, and of course, four wheel drive.

I decided after some soul searching that I had no heartfelt allegiance to any make or model.  Ford-lovers love to tell you that C-H-E-V-R-O-L-E-T stands for “can hear every valve rattle on long extended trips.”  GM-lovers retort that, “found on roadside dead,” is what F-O-R-D stands for.  I’ve owned both and neither were completely immune to issues.

So, in this spirit of impartiality, I looked at the dealership map of Maine, found online.  It’s very handy–you hold the mouse over the location and a window pops up with the contact info.  I called 7 dealerships in one morning.  My mission was to find out who had the best promotions going on, the best interest rates and so on.  I know what you’re thinking–in this depressed car and truck-buying economy, they probably couldn’t get into my wallet fast enough.

Well, you would think so.  Here are my findings from this incomplete, unscientific  survey of 7 Maine dealerships ranging from greater Portland to greater Bangor:

1. The first order of business is not to answer your questions, but to get you “into their system.”  This means phone number, email, and home address.

2. After finally taking down information on the vehicle I’m in the market to buy, all except one salespeson said they would do the research and call back.

3. Two of the seven dealerships actually called back.  Two out of Seven.

I know, this is beginning to sound like another, “Sorry, we’re open” story, and it probably is.  I mean, from the dealership’s point of view, here is a prospective buyer calling!

Two of the sales people I talked to–well, that’s already a misrepresentation–these two guys did all the talking, talking over me, talking around me, talking down to me, and generally giving me the lecture they’d  learned to recite in showroom training school.

One salesman, wanting my home address even before I got to say what I was after, was baffled when I asked why.  It turned out that he could then check to see if I was on GM’s “list” which could mean a lower price and a better deal.  “List?” I said.  “I’m sorry,” I continued, “but before we go on, you’re going to have to tell me how my address, that is, where I live, is a factor in determining the deal I get?”  This was too much for him.  He reacted as if I’d said something about a family member, saying, “No one has ever asked me questions like these before.”  Really?

I don’t know about you, but as soon as I find out I’m on a list, I want to know how I got there. Lists help someone to compartmentalize you, categorize you, classify you.  Will my neighborhood show up as one deserving of a lower interest rate because there are more people who still have their jobs where I live?  In short, “lists” can be not-so-subtle tools for discrimination.

I do understand wanting to classify buyers.  But keep it to yourself for heaven’s sake.  I’m just a working guy wanting a truck.  I didn’t call to be interrogated.  Instead of giving me a straightforward answer to my straightforward question, you’re trying to fit me into one of your buyer compartments so that you’ll know how best to deal with me.

So, kudos to the two of you who did actually call back on a prospective sale.  But to all of you who persist in forcing your willing buyer to do business with you on your terms, expressing little interest in what theirs might be, please see my, “Sorry, we’re open” blog.

Epilogue:  Buying a used truck from the guy down the road is beginning to look pretty good.

The story hit all the major news outlets yesterday morning that Verizon was planning to charge their customers a two dollar fee for paying their bill directly to Verizon on their website.  They were going to bill us for billing us.

I’ve plied this theme in other writings, calling it the “Sorry, we’re open,” syndrome.  We all know the “Sorry, we’re open” businesses.  They punish you for bringing your business to them.  We do business with them on their terms, not ours.  With these companies, it isn’t, “the customer is always right.”  It’s, the customer is an imposition that we unfortunately have to put up with.

Well, the days of being able to get away with that may be running out.  By the end of the day yesterday, in response to a national outcry against the punitive customer fee, Verizon rescinded the policy before it took effect on January 15th.

Verizon hadn’t discovered that the policy actually was unfair, nor did it determine that it wasn’t in their economic interests–until–they saw the tidal wave.  It was nothing less than an internet uprising via social media that turned the tide against Verizon, the same social media that sparked the Arab Spring that has overthrown dictators in the Middle East this past year.

The social media is now changing the course of history every day.  In the past, public opinion could be put on hold until election days, slowed down by bureaucratic red tape, or muffled by the snail’s pace of communications.  No more.  A national referendum can happen overnight, forcing change when the weight of public opinion is able to turn on a dime.

Where will it focus next? Will it be on another so-called “fleecing of America” that takes place every day in our living rooms and in our bedrooms?  It is called, “Paid Programming,” and it has so far escaped the scrutiny of social media.

No one receives Dish, Dircect TV or cable television for free.  It’s a cost we’ve co-opted because we’ve elevated its importance to the level of household necessity.  The trouble is, in “off-peak” hours, the air time we’ve purchased has been sold again to advertisers who want to reach us where we live. The service provider has now sold its air time twice, once to its subscribers, and once to those who want advertising dibs on those subscribers.

It would be something like hearing from your car dealer after you bought your car, that they’ve also sold it to somebody else, but not to worry–they’ll only be using it overnight and early in the morning. This might be just the sort of thing that we decide, en masse, not to put up with any more.

Who could’ve seen this coming?  As a means of marshalling the strength of numbers to right essential wrongs, the social media has yet to realize its own strength.  When “Power to the People” was shouted by throngs of protesters in the 1960’s, no one thought it could happen this way.

Happy New Year everyone, and Power to the People!

The evidence was obvious and appalling–a gruesome crime aftermath.  Scraps of what had once been living flesh were strewn over the top of the Honda Accord, and just as many body parts were on the garage floor.  Bone–yes, even bone splinters were visible to anyone brave enough to walk through that spine-chilling, sobering scene the day after Christmas.

None of those first on the scene ever thought for a moment it was a job just one could have managed.  This was the grim handiwork of at least two.  A team.  A tandem orgy of ripping and tearing, each one perhaps trying to outdo the other.  It was the heat of that orgy and its sloppiness that led to the perpetrators.

DNA evidence abounded, but it was hardly needed for the bust.  Hair, saliva, teeth marks, even footprints covered the area as if the guilty had gone about their business with abandon.  Now, they stared back at their accusers as though weighing the excruciating joy of their foul deed against all the possible punishments.  Each agreed, without so much as a nod to the other, it was worth it.

Jake, the German Short-hair Pointer, and Kafka, the English Springer Spaniel had been let into the attached garage during the annual morning-after-Christmas breakfast of chipped beef over English muffins, scrapple (a bow to my wife, Shelley’s southern roots), homefries, ramblin’ scrambled eggs, and coffee cake.  The trouble was, sitting atop the one car in that garage was the turkey carcass from Christmas dinner, and the barely-dented spiral ham that would provide several more meals for the coming week.

Either hound could have easily mounted the low-profile Accord from the front and then made a go at the meat from the slick windshield.  It was the telltale pawprints that told the whole story for us:  The lead dog must have tried several times to get a purchase on the roast, each time sliding back down the windshield onto the hood. We all hoped it was difficult with at least a couple of serious setbacks.

Eventually, the meat made it to the floor, and then, the collective, canine unconcious reared the head of its wildness, baying “Yes!, Yes!” to this gift of ectsasy for as long as it lasted.

Both scored low marks for their high breeds that morning.  After being split up to do their time separately, each one lay bilously quiet for the balance of the day.  The sodium from a whole ham now coursed through their veins, raising their blood pressure and making them unquenchably thirsty.  Even through their clouded sensoriums following their gluttonous plunder, even though they were given wide births and were scowled at by their keepers, the two dull-eyed dogs remained clear-headed about one thing:  It was worth it.

Van Raymond Outfitters has for many years been a fixture on the outdoor sporting scene in Maine.  It is an old world business rather than a big box environment.  Van Raymond is where you go for personal service and depth of product knowledge.  Much of my own gear in my professional guiding work is outfitted by Van Raymond.

I’ve had several book signings in the store, the most recent being a shared event with crime fiction novelist, Paul Doiron.  Why are his books of interest in a store like Van Raymond Outfitters?  It’s because the plots and themes of The Poacher’s Son, and his newest, TRESSPASSER, are Maine outdoors through and through.

It so happened that Jim, who runs things on the first  level of the store, and I were both big fans of William G. Tapply, another crime fiction writer whose books involved a Maine guide by the name of Stoney Calhoun. When Tapply passed away two years ago, it left a gap in that specific ilk of fast-paced, highly entertaining reading.

Paul Doiron has filled that gap.  Though he’s just two books into the saga of Mike Bowditch, Maine game warden, there are more on the way.  In fact, Paul told me during our visit together that the next one is due out in August. Stay tuned to Minotaur Press and Paul Doiron for updates on this very successful series.