Journals of a soggy Maine vacation -- Saturday Extra

The tent, wind curtains and ground cloth are drying in the back yard; it took ten minutes of hosing at full blast to remove the stinky residue of rotting vegetation that was all that remained under our tent when we packed up last week. It didn't smell any better when I unpacked it today than it did when we left a week ago... but it's much better now. I imagine the site still looks a lot like this:

I seldom post on Saturdays, preferring to use my lunch breaks at work as a diversion from whatever I happen to be enmeshed in at the time. But a month ago I alluded to Ralph in Freeport, and now is as good a time as any to explain.

"I don't feel too good," was how it started. We were in the L. L. Bean factory store on Depot Street in Portland, a block away from the flagship store; Laurie was somewhere in the back, Hannah and I near the front, when we heard the young boy's announcement to his father. Just as we turned to look, the boy turned gray, bent forward slightly and deposited his lunch right dead center in the aisle between men's outerwear and discounted pullover shirts. The two of us didn't need to see any more and made our way — through an alternate route — out the front door where we waited for Laurie and remarked at our mutual revulsion.

Laurie didn't come out for a while, but the boy and his father did... followed by the mother, who stomped across the gravel parking lot berating the two, loudly demanding, "Why did you have to let him do it there? You should have made him wait!" The boy, for his part, looked considerably better; his dad just looked resigned. Apparently such was his life.

These kinds of events are made to be told, and we decided on the spot that the boy ought to be named Ralph. Hannah was not enthusiastic about returning to the store later that night, fearing another encounter with Ralph, but she reluctantly gave in, enticed by the prospect of visiting Ben and Jerry's afterwards. It turned out that the folks at Bean had done a very good job cleaning up the mess, to our relief, leaving no evidence behind. So for the past few years, that part of our traditional outlet shopping has been identified with Ralph — initially to Hannah's discomfort, now more at her instigation.

This year we parked in the gravel lot and walked down the hill to the factory store, past a hot dog vendor's cart and her picnic table...

And what do we find painted on the table, facing us as we go by?

Some things just cannot be made up.