Monthly Archives: August 2015

Way back in January, just before the unrelenting snow started, I came to a realization: I was going to need a car. Amy and I had purchased a certified pre-owned Subaru Outback in December, and it’s the first car either of us has owned in several years. There’s really no need to own a car in Manhattan – the costs are prohibitive, there’s ample public transportation, and it’s only a block or two to the grocery store anyway, so why bother? I hadn’t owned a car since I moved back to New York from Atlanta in 1994.

But now we’re in Maine, and there’s not much public transportation here. Nor is it feasible to walk to the Hannaford grocery store, since it’s about four miles away. What’s more, this was back in January, and the snow was ready to pile up, so walking, or even riding a bike around, just wasn’t gonna happen. If Amy ever went anywhere with the Subaru, I’d be stuck wading through the ice and snow to get some cold cuts so I could make a sandwich and watch the Rockford Files at noon on MeTV. This was not going to happen. I was not going to miss the Rockford Files. We needed a second car.

It just so happened that around this time, I was researching the Kennebunk town website to see how the trash and recycling program worked. As many of you know, Amy drinks a lot of chilled white wine, so we were pretty deep into the empties, as well as empty cans of Goya black beans, Newman’s salsa jars, and old sour cream containers from our Taco Tuesdays. The recycling was piling up, so I trolled the town website trying to figure out how we put it out, and when they pick it up. And that’s when I saw it…

Down in the corner of the homepage was a little “news and announcements” section, and the top piece of news (or was it an “announcement”?) was about the town’s surplus equipment auction. Turns out the town was going to auction off all their old junk, like old lawnmowers and chainsaws and fax machines and filing cabinets. There was a whole list of about twenty items they were getting rid of. And at the bottom of that list was a 1994 GMC Pickup truck formerly used by the town’s Parks and Recreation department. My heartbeat slowly started to rise. This was exciting news.

You see, back when I was a teenager and my sister was in college, my father started a tradition of buying his children a used car on their twentieth birthday. Why he picked twenty, I don’t know, but when you’re getting a car for free, you don’t ask a lot of meddlesome questions. My sister, the oldest of us three, was obviously the first to get a car, and as the first, it came as a surprise to her when she woke up on her birthday and found a turd-brown 1979 Buick Skylark with a big red bow on it parked in the driveway. The next year, my brother, this time not at all surprised, became the proud owner of a ’78 Dodge Omni 024, a sporty little car that survived a great deal of abuse, including the day yours truly, having just gotten my driver’s license, backed my mom’s new Buick into my brother’s front quarter panel. My brother took it surprisingly well, and it wasn’t until later that I came to learn that my dent was a simple addition to a long line of damages, mostly done in and around the vicinity of his fraternity house, and once at the expense of a women’s dormitory.

When it was my turn to get a car, I petitioned my father strenuously to buy me a pickup truck. As a 20-year old college student, I saw great usefulness in its hauling my stuff back and forth to school, which I knew would be a major selling point. I also knew it would be useful in hauling sorority girls and kegs of Milwaukee’s Best to parties, and that with the right amount of plastic sheets, duct tape and water, you’ve got yourself a swimming pool, but I didn’t relay that specific information to my father. He saw through me anyway, and I eventually ended up with a 1983 Buick Regal, a modest family sedan he chose because of its massive trunk, big enough to load my TV, a dorm fridge, a microwave oven, all my stereo equipment, all my albums, about 100 Grateful Dead bootlegs, a case of liquor, and a beer tap stolen from the Delta Sig house, plus a few school books and a garbage bag full of clothes. If I ever wanted a pickup truck, I was going to have to buy one myself.

Now the Town of Kennebunk, Maine was giving me that opportunity. I immediately turned to Amy and told her about the surplus items auction, and the pickup truck. I started to explain why this would be a good idea: an extra car, inexpensive, likely maintained regularly by the town, useful for hauling stuff. I didn’t tell her about the swimming pool or the sorority girls, though I envision her response would have been something along the lines of “if you think you can seduce a sorority girl, fatso, by all means, good luck!” Regardless, she thought it was a good idea. With that, Operation 52 Pickup was underway.

Bids for the surplus items had to be delivered to town hall in a sealed envelope by a certain date. That left me with a few days to figure out what my auction strategy would be, and how much I was going to bid. Potential bidders could also go to the town “Transfer Station” and take a look at the truck in-person before bidding. The wheels were starting to turn.

The next day, on the way to the Hannaford to buy white wine, black beans, sour cream, and Rockford Files lunchmeats, Amy and I stopped by the transfer station to check out the truck. The Transfer Station was closed that day, but among all the shiny new trucks, snowplows, and dump trucks sat an old GMC Sierra pickup truck. This had to be it. It was bright teal, with town municipal decals, and a yellow hazard light on the top. There was a big decal of the town logo, and it read “Kennebunk Parks and Recreation.” Amy and I gave it the once-over. We couldn’t get into the truck, but it everything appeared to be okay from the outside. It had the usual wear-and-tear of a ’94 truck, and there was a big dent in the tailgate and the right side of the bed, but it generally looked to be in pretty good condition. And then Amy literally kicked the tires. She walked right up to the front driver’s side tire and gave it a good whack, I thought she was gonna break a toe.

Me: “What are you doing?!”
Amy: “I’m kicking the tires.”
“What do you think’s gonna happen?”
“I dunno. But everyone does it.”
“It’s not like the wheel’s gonna fall off when you kick it.”
“Well, if it did, you wouldn’t buy it, right?”
“You’re damn right I wouldn’t buy it!”
“Then shut up, smart-mouth.”

She really had me on that one. I should’ve asked her to kick the whole car to make sure nothing fell off, but it was the cold of January and the Rockford Files was on in an hour. We had to get moving. But all-in-all, we were satisfied with the look of the vehicle. Operation 52 Pickup moved into its next phase: I had to start thinking about how much I was going to bid.

The town’s website gave an auction estimate of somewhere between five-hundred to a thousand dollars. That gave me a good starting point. I figured even at the high end, it was probably a pretty good price for the truck. I didn’t think it had a lot of highway miles, and it wasn’t a commuter vehicle, so it probably had low mileage for its age. And you had to figure the town kept it in pretty good shape, considering the maintenance was performed by a bunch of staff mechanics and paid for with tax dollars. So I was willing to bid on the higher side of that estimate. And hell, I needed a car pretty soon.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t fall asleep right away. My mind is always churning when I go to bed, and it takes me a while to go under. Amy, on the other hand, goes out like she’s got a light switch wired to her brain. She’ll hop into bed and next thing you know, she’s mumbling something incoherent in an alien language. But I’ll lie there for a while and start thinking about the most random things, like how much drywall it would take to finish the garage attic, or the names of the three girls who dressed like Pat Benatar in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” (Maryann Zlotnick was one of them, I can’t remember the others) or trying to remember the lyrics to the second verse of “Centerfold” (“slip me notes, under the desk, blah blah something about her dress, I was shy, I turned away before she caught my eye…”). Some nights I’ll lie awake for hours before I finally drift off. But I don’t begrudge it, because some of my best ideas come about during those hours. Hell, if I would have written half of them down, I might have been a millionaire by now. One time back in 1996, for some strange reason I sat there randomly thinking, “What ever happened to Gerald Ford?” and by the time I woke up, I’d formulated the idea for a Voting PSA campaign I later produced.

I was having one of those nights back in January as I plotted my bid. I went over everything in my head, and determined that if I wanted to beat the other bidders, I’d have to start high. Should I bid $800? But what if there was some other guy out there like me, who would also bid high? Okay, $900. But why take a chance of losing this truck for a measly hundred bucks, just bid a thousand. My mind wandered through the mist of sleep deprivation, I kept turning it all over in my head. The town website gave the $1000 number as the high end, and what if somebody else just said, “okay, I’m bidding a thousand.” I refused to be beat. I decided to go for broke, and figured $1100, over the high estimate, would be a safe bet. That would be my bid.

I lay awake thinking. The wind howled outside. The ocean lapped up on to the sea wall. Amy was breathing heavily, off in some far-away reverie. And I continued obsessing about the truck, and the lack of sleep wasn’t helping. $1100 was what I would bid, but what if some other poor slob was lying awake across town right now, obsessing just like me, and he’d come to the same conclusion that he was going bid eleven-hundred bucks as well?! My mind raced with imagined jealousy. No way was I going to let that happen. I was gonna Price-Is-Right his ass right out of the bidding! Now I was gonna bid $1101. But what if that poor slob across town was just as sneaky as me?! What if that poor slob, sensing what a shrewd bidder I was, decided he was gonna try to outsmart my $1100 bid with his own bid of $1101? Listen, slob, you can’t outwit a calculating genius like me! Especially a calculating genius who hasn’t slept for hours, and who’s starting to imagine a hallucinatory bidding war with someone he’s never met in a heated scenario that never existed. I was going to OUT-Price-Is-Right that sneaky slob, and bid $1102! Take that! Victory is mine! Operation 52 Pickup will not be scuttled!

I hope my father isn’t reading this.

Anyone who knows my father knows he’s a demon negotiator. My old man could do a number on an Arab rug trader, and have him throw in the camel at no additional cost. I once saw him work over a vendor in the Dominican Republic so much, they nearly came to blows, and of course it ended with both of them laughing and happy, like they were best friends. He’s a master of the old “walk away.” He’ll walk away four or five times before he even decides to start talking, he simply refuses to be ripped off. One time – oooooh boy! – case in point: one time, when we were kids, my father dressed down a pimply-faced teenager when he felt we had been grossly overcharged for a family tourist attraction in Monterey, California. The language he used was so salty, and so entirely unexpected, that it’s gone down in the annals of family legend. Just mention the words “lone cypress” around my siblings, and you’ll get the kind of clumsy snickering you’d expect when you hear the words “diarrhea” or “Monica Lewinsky.”

But his masterwork, his real magnum opus, was the time he wore down a car salesman to within an inch of his life, and then signed the paperwork to buy the car. But wait…then he went across town and told another car dealer how much he paid, and told him to beat the price. When he did, my father called the original salesman and told him the deal was off because my mother “didn’t like the car.” My father would have figured out a way to get the pickup truck for a jar full of pennies and some old Reader’s Digest magazines. He’s really gifted at this kind of thing, honest to God.

But not me. The next day I went down to Town Hall and delivered the formal written bid, sealed in an envelope, letting the good people of Kennebunk know that I’d be willing to pay $1102 for their 1994 GMC Sierra Pickup. Here’s where it got interesting: I told the guy at the front desk I was submitting a bid. He sent me down to some other office to drop off the envelope with another administrator. I got there and told her what I was there for, and she said, “Oh, okay, very good. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with this, let me see…(she yelled into another office) HEY MINDY!! (or whatever her name was) THERE’S A GUY HERE WHO’S BIDDING ON A SURPLUS ITEM, WHAT DO WE DO WITH THESE BIDS?!” Mindy yelled back that she didn’t know what the protocol was, but why not just date it on the outside so they knew it was submitted on-time. And that was that. I guess they’d never done this kind of thing before.

Never done this kind of thing before?! No protocol?! I could only surmise that mine was the first bid they got, on ANY of the stuff – no bids on the chainsaw, no bids on the file cabinet, nothing! And the deadline was the next day. I’ll be damned. I should’ve bid on everything – the chainsaw, the file cabinet, the lawn mowers and the fax machines – I should’ve offered them a jar full of pennies and driven off with the whole lot thrown in the back of the pickup, and kept the Reader’s Digest magazines for myself! But it didn’t work out that way, it was too late. My sealed offer had been submitted, and my fate sealed with it.

I wholly expected to get a call the next day, telling me I was the only one who bid on the truck, so come down with my checkbook and take it off their hands. I waited all day, but got no call. I figured maybe they had to do some paperwork first. But then I didn’t get a call the next day, or the day after that. Then I realized it’s probably the kind of thing where they have to send a letter of notification through the US Mail or something more official and bureaucratic. But nearly a week went by, and nothing. I was starting to get nervous.

I left a message for the Public Works manager, and never got a return call. Maybe I had been sunk! Maybe that mystery slob from across town had actually put in a last-minute bid for $1103, and I got out-Price-is-Righted! Somewhere in West Kennebunk, someone was driving a 1994 GMC Sierra full of chainsaws, lawn mowers and fax machines, and there I would be, walking four miles through the snow to get lunchmeat and taco shells. I felt dejected, like a spurned lover. I started looking at pickup trucks on Craigslist, late-night, while Amy was asleep. “Hot 20-year old truck looking for older man for good times and long rides. Non-smoker preferred. No weirdos.” I hit rock-bottom, and finally admitted to Amy that Operation 52 Pickup may have been a bust.

Amy, however, wasn’t as easily defeated. She did a little digging around on the town website, and found another phone number for the Public Works manager. Within three minutes, she was speaking to the man himself, who told her, “Oh yeah, I owe you guys a call…” Turns out Operation 52 Pickup had been a success all along.

I was thrilled. We were instructed to go to Town Hall and pay for the pickup, then take the bill of sale and proof of insurance to the DMV to switch the registration and get plates, and then go get the truck at the Transfer Station. As we drove through town from place to place, Amy asked me a very important question: “So, what are you going to name your new truck?”

Huh. What was I going to name my new truck? Every car’s gotta have a name, or at least every car I’ve owned has had a name. The ’83 Buick I had back in college was “Maybellene,” after the Chuck Berry song, though my friend John called it “the Buick Loadmaster” because of its enormous trunk. And my last car, the one in Atlanta, I called “Dresden,” because it was repeatedly bombed by pigeons. But what was I going to call this pickup truck? I gave it some thought, and then gave Amy my answer: “I’m going to let it come organically. Something will let me know the name.”

We finally got to the Transfer Station, and there she was, proudly awaiting her new owner. Amy was pretty excited about all the decals on the side; I could see her imagining herself being driven through town in this official-looking vehicle, waving at all passers-by as if she were some municipal starlet, on her way to the grand opening of a new dog run or composting pile. But it wasn’t to be. Before they affixed the new plates to the pickup, they took off the yellow hazard light, and removed all the decals for insurance purposes. The shadows of the decals still remain, and you can still read “Kennebunk Parks and Recreation” in a slightly darker teal, if you look hard enough. But the only remaining vestige of its life as a town truck was when they handed me the keys, and there on the keychain, in bold letters, was written “#5.” And that’s become the name of the truck.

(A quick side note: as we went through the hand-over process, one of the guys at the Transfer Station related that #5 had recently been left idling in a strip-mall parking lot by a co-worker who ran in to get a sandwich. When the co-worker came out, the truck was halfway through the front window of the local Chinese restaurant, because he’d mistakenly left the truck in neutral. “You may not want to get Chinese food with the truck” he warned me.)

So now I’m the owner of a bright teal 1994 GMC Sierra Pickup named “Number Five,” which is oddly symmetrical, because the last time I owned a car was in 1994. I guess in the intervening years, we’ve both gotten a little older and a little rustier, but we both still move along pretty well, except for the occasional back-fire. I took the truck in for some minor maintenance work to make sure it passed inspection, but otherwise there haven’t been any problems, I love it. The best part is when I take some garbarge or recycling to the transfer station, and some guy in a uniform will say, “Hey, it that…?” And I say “Yes, it is!” Or the time I was driving to the Hannaford for taco supplies, and I drove past some guys doing roadwork, and one of them looked up and waved, yelling, “HEEEEYYY!!!!!” I’ve avoided getting Chinese food.

The closest I’ll get to a sorority girl riding in the truck.

When my parents came out to visit us, I took my dad out for a spin. I think he liked the pickup. He said it ran pretty well (though I should get the transmission looked at), he asked about the mileage (114,000), and told me the torn headliner could get fixed pretty easily with spray glue from an automotive supply store. And then he asked me the big question.

“How much did you pay for it?”
“Uh, what’s that?”
“How much did you pay for it?”
“A little over eleven-hundred.”
He paused for a moment, and looked out the window.
“I can see this truck going for another five years with proper maintenance. That’s a pretty good deal.”

I’ll be damned.

Me and another delinquent chilling with #5.

Hey hey!! Hello there, loyal readers! After a nearly nine-month hiatus, look who’s back?! That’s right, we figured it was about time to post something on here and catch you all up on what’s been happening in the world of Amy and John. And what a different world it’s become!

Let’s recap a bit. The last time we spoke (or whatever you call this), it was December of 2014. Gosh, remember then? That was back before 2015, before all the snow, and the summer, and American Ninja Warrior repeats. It was way back in the days when Donald Trump was just a loudmouth television personality, and gas only cost $2.50 a gallon. Gosh, I wish those days were back!! Am I right, people?!

Back then we spent the holidays with our families, and, if you recall, in early January we loaded up the truck and moved to Kennebunk…Maine, that is. Swimming pools, movie stars… As we mentioned in our last post – the one from nine months ago (gosh Donald Trump, what have you been up to since then?) – we rented a big ole’ house on the ocean in Kennebunk. If it was the summer, there would have been no way we could have afforded a house like that, but we were lucky. We got it for a song, because honestly, who the hell moves to Maine in the frigid dead of winter? Amy and John, that’s who.

That’s right – we’re Mainers now. That’s what they call people from Maine. I’ve been a New Yorker, an Ohioan, a Georgian, and now, I’m a Mainer. Here’s what I want to know: what do you call someone from New Hampshire, our neighboring state? A “New Hampshian?” “New Hampshier?” “New Hampshirian?” (Standby for Google…) New Hampshirite! Okay, I guess it makes sense. Sounds better than “Utahan” or “Delawarean,” which are apparently real things.

But a note about being a “Mainer”: we’re not really Mainers. We’re a couple of soft New York City types who live in Maine. Unless your great-great-grandfather was born in Maine, and fought in the Civil War with Joshua Chamberlain, and caught lobster with his bare hands from a dinghy that he hand-crafted from a pine-tree felled with an axe purchased from Leon Leonwood Bean himself, you are NOT a Mainer. You’re just a person “from away.” And Amy and John are most certainly “from away.” That said, Mainers are some of the nicest people we’ve met, and that’s a refreshing change from living in Manhattan, where the people at Walgreens are trained in apathy, and every subway ride is Thunderdome.

So we moved into the rental house, which was great. It was this big Victorian house, with an open plan, and a fireplace, and three bedrooms for us and our modest belongings.  We had a tremendous view of the ocean. It was really stunning at times, and the sunsets were amazing.

When we first moved into the house, there was still grass on the ground, and the air was crisp, but not too bad. But two weeks later, things changed dramatically. It started to snow. And it kept snowing. It kept snowing for three straight months. And the temperature dropped drastically. That fireplace got a workout. And I got my first taste of oil heat, and the bills that come with oil heat. As many of you experienced, this past winter seemed to drag on forever, and the snow didn’t melt here until April.

But that didn’t stop us from exploring our new town, making new friends, and learning what it means to be a Mainer. To wit: here I am back in January with my new (well, new-to-me) pickup truck:

That’s a genuine 1994 GMC Pickup. That’s how I haul stuff up here in the Pine Tree State, I’m a Mainer now. A man’s gotta have a pickup truck. And I’m a man. I’m the kind of man who sits at a desk all day typing on a computer, wears J. Crew button-downs and salmon slacks, and eats food with chopsticks, but I’m a man nonetheless, damnit!

But that’s not the only purchase we made. Back in March, we became honest-to-God tax-paying citizens of the town of Kennebunk, Maine when we signed the paperwork on a new house. Yep, we’re homeowners again, and officially Mainers.

We love this house, and the location, a mile from town and less than two miles to the beach. It’s great being surrounded by woods, and birds, and chipmunks, and everything else including turkey and deer. It’s like a little cabin in the woods, but close enough to all the action in the resort area of town.

We call the house “Oxymoron Acres.” Why? Well, back when we were travelling, we’d often discuss what we wanted our dream house to be like. And it would always be the same thing: “Just a nice little house with a nice little yard. A homey place for us, and maybe room for some guests. A nice little kitchen where we can make dinner. Nothing complicated or too big to clean. Something modest. A garage would be nice. Maybe a walk-in closet. And a room for a home office. And a master bath with his and hers sinks. How about a separate dining room, and a living room large enough to entertain? Gotta be an eat-in kitchen, right? And a decent sized TV room, with plenty of windows. Built-in bookshelves for all our books and travel souvenirs. And a basement where we can have a bar or man cave. And outdoor space, with a deck and a grill and room to chuck around a ball. Could we do a chicken coop? Maybe we’ll put in an Olympic-sized pool someday. But, you know…just a nice little house with a nice little yard, nothing too big.” So yeah, Oxymoron Acres.

I owned an apartment in New York City once. It was great. I never mowed the lawn, never shoveled, de-iced, or plowed; never had to worry about maintenance, never fixed the hot water or broken appliances. Not anymore. Now I’m installing dishwashers, hanging ceiling fans, doing light electrical work, clearing brush, bending over in crawl spaces, putting in attic insulation, and chasing squirrels from my bird feeder. I hear noises in the night, and I say to Amy, at 3am, “What’s that? What’s that humming?… What do you mean you don’t hear anything, don’t you hear that humming?!” I’m the guy who goes outside, surveys the property, and then returns back inside to report, “those goddamn deer are eating all my hostas!” The furry bastards…

The other day I was working, and it was suddenly raining cats and dogs outside, a real squall. I looked up and noticed that there was water pouring down from one of the gutters. Clearly something was going on up there, and it wasn’t good. So yours truly, at about 2pm, strips down and puts on his bathing suit. Not some kind of Speedo, like I know you’re all hoping for, but one of those surf shorts down to my knees, with my belly hanging over the drawstring. I walked out into the torrential rain, and grabbed my ladder from the garage…

(A side note, by the way: I’m a Mainer now, and as a Mainer, I own a lawn mower, a ladder, a cordless drill, a snow shovel, an axe, a pair of LL Bean boots, and a beer fridge.)

Anyway, I went outside into this God-awful mess of rain, and set the ladder up on the side of the house. I climbed up there, and discovered a wad of pine needles the size of a brick lodged in the gutter. When I got it all cleaned out, the water flowed like Victoria Falls, fiercely and freely. There I stood proudly, on top of the ladder, in my swim trunks, sopping wet, hair in my eyes, having conquered the sort of task that makes you feel like you have a purpose in life. And that purpose is to pull pine needles and half-decayed leaves out of your gutters, like a genuine homeowner. Thank goodness Amy wasn’t around, or I wouldn’t have had that moment of saturated glory. Instead I would have been told to wait out the storm, and wear galoshes or something equally as embarrassing. But we all know the most efficient (and sexiest) way to unclog a drainpipe is half-naked, barefoot, and shivering.

That’s just one of the many experiences we’ve had adjusting to our new way of life. And that leads us to the real purpose of this post, I guess: to let you know that we’re alive and well, and that we’re rebranding this blog. With the adventure of our globetrotting over, a new adventure has begun: the adventure of settling down, settling in, and becoming Mainers. And that’s what we’ll be talking about until further notice: We’re Fine Mom won’t be our travel blog, it will be our “New Mainer” blog. For example, here are just a few of the things I want to tell you about, in more detail, in upcoming posts:

How I bought my pickup truck.

The record coldest day of the year, and how we survived.

A day at the DMV.

Recreational Lobstering.

How I met Officer Carney of the Kennebunk Police Department.

Fun at the Town Dump.

So you’ll get these stories and more; those from the recent past, and those that develop. That’s the new We’re Fine Mom 2.0. Sure, it’s no “losing a tooth on the Great Wall of China” or “using a pit-toilet in Botswana,” but there’s still wild animals, nudity, and that looming sense of discomfort you feel when you realize you’re not in Kansas anymore. Because you’re in Maine. We hope you’ll join us on this new adventure, and most of all, we hope you’ll enjoy it. We’re fine, Mom!! More to come soon…