Epilogue

My last night in Eastport was a warm one, with a few sprinkles of rain making a relaxing tin-roof sound. In the morning, Walt whipped up a sumptuous breakfast of ham, fried eggs, English muffins drenched in butter, and orange juice—probably the highest-fat meal I've eaten in years, but I loved it! After saying final goodbyes, I pulled out in a dense fog and headed south across the Passamaquoddy reservation to Coastal Rt. 1 and thence to I-95 south. After the first hour, it began to drizzle.The road was almost deserted until I crossed into Massachusetts. At about the same time, I pulled away from the rain into a cool, overcast afternoon.

As I drove south I mused on Walt's vision problems, which we hadn't discussed in depth. Living alone in a big old house in a tiny town with few social services, he's vulnerable. His neighbors help out when they can, but Eastport doesn't exactly have Meals on Wheels.

As it turned out, the various surgeries and treatments Walt underwent in the next few months didn't arrest his loss of sight, and he is now almost blind. He's still living alone in the big Victorian house on Key Street, but I don't know how long he'll be able to stay there. It's a peculiarly excruciating tragedy for a man of his skills and talents to be denied the use of his eyes...like Beethoven going deaf. I don't know what will happen to Walt, but I'm glad I got to spend this week with him. I only wish he still lived in my neighborhood, as he did twenty years ago.

I made it to Gen and Pat's on Cape Cod—a 457-mile drive—and arrived around 8:30 p.m., fairly exhausted. The next day's drive was easier: only about six hours, according to Street Atlas USA. But before I got there, I had one last adventure: at a rest stop on the Garden State Parkway in northern New Jersey—less than an hour from home—Gertie's truck battery died and I could not get her started. Gary had warned me that the battery was about ready for replacement, and in fact I had been planning to put in a new one as soon as I got back.

A kindly Hispanic fellow offered me a jump start, but his battery didn't have quite enough juice to turn over Gertie's engine. So I called my RV road service, and after an hour or so they showed up and got me going. By this time I just wanted to get home and relax with Marie.

It was only after I got home that I realized I could have jump-started myself: in addition to the truck battery, I have four heavy-duty 12V house batteries wired in parallel! Jeez, what a dummy. And indeed, the next day when I tried to start up Gertie to take her to Sears for a new battery, she wouldn't go. I hauled out my homemade jumper cables (heavy duty, extra long, with a safety disconnect in the middle of the positive cable) and connected the truck battery to the house batteries. VROOM! Boy, did that ever do the job! Those four gel batteries really pack a wallop. Gertie now has a new Sears Diehard under the hood, so I won't likely run into this situation again anytime soon...but if I do, I'll know how to handle it!

My trip had gone very well on the whole. And I couldn't help feeling smug about one thing: I had traveled for almost two weeks without plugging in or hooking up anywhere. Oh, my gray tank was pretty full, but I had managed without any hookups for the whole trip. In particular, I had had all the electric power I could want—enough to run the microwave oven, the hair dryer, a high-powered electric drill Walt lent me when I needed to cut a 2" hole in a cabinet wall to install the video camera, my interior lights...and of course my stereo system. Once again I blessed Gary and Judie for installing four solar panels, four large house batteries and a 2,000W DC-to-AC inverter. Gertie probably packs more electrical power than nine out of ten RVs on the road, regardless of type or size—and this in a compact 22' package. I was very lucky to find her.

I amassed quite a collection of odd-sounding Down East names on this trip: Meddybemps, Mooselookmeguntic, Kokajo, Quoddy Head, Purgatory, Bald Head, Cobboseecontee, Androscoggin, and of course Passamaquoddy. This is the part of the country that Garrison Keillor gently spoofs with his references to "Piscacodaquoddymoggin." Of course there's Wickaboxet, Connecticut...and Peapack, Pluckemin and Cheesequake State Park in New Jersey. The names of the Northeast are certainly distinctive! After I got home, I found a wonderful book, Names on the Land by George R. Stewart, that explains in fascinating detail how the place names in the US were given. It's out of print, but available used from Amazon, and I recommend it highly. It's not only informative but very nearly poetic—a fascinating series of stories.