Industrial arts

Thu, 03/15/2018 - 15:19

Eva Murray

Driving off the ferry. (Photo courtesy Eva Murray

The customer service folks at the Big Box Store were nothing if not eager to please. In fact, they were determined to deliver the customer’s appliances, and earnestly promised the same. Said appliances, four items plus the requisite hoses and fittings, had been researched, chosen, and paid for online. The customer did not expect or request delivery but the exceedingly friendly, if occasionally befuddled, staff at Big Box insisted that delivery to the home could and would be accomplished.

The customer, however, lived in one of those damnably confusing places for delivery drivers, that being this offshore island.

Our intrepid customer, having been through this scenario before in the matter of a refrigerator, knew better than to listen to the chipper and well-intentioned store clerks on the telephone. She had already contacted me, the dispatch office for the garbage department, several weeks prior and asked about the date of the next island recycling truck.

“March the 8,” I advised, that being the first of the two, count ‘em, two vehicle ferries the Nation of Matinicus was to see this month.

The second trip, scheduled for the 20th, would be busy with a delivery of 100-pound propane tanks (exchange cylinders) from Maine Energy. We try to avoid scheduling a propane trip and a “dump run” (recycling trip) for the same ferry, as most of the year the same few people are needed to unload and re-load both trucks, and there isn’t time for our little gang to work on both.

The ferry spends one hour on the island, during which time all trucks must be unloaded of their island-bound freight (such as appliances or full propane tanks) and then filled with anything mainland-bound (such as a ton and a half of recycling, or 70-some-odd empty propane tanks). We’d best not dawdle.

Our island customer in need of appliances requested store pick-up on or about March 7.

“Just please make sure they are all ready, in one place, for my friend who has a U-Haul.”

Well, no, she was told; they wouldn’t all be in one place. They need to be kept in three different parts of the Big Box Store until pickup, but she needn’t worry about that, “because we’ll deliver them.”

I told the customer not to worry, that I had danced with this partner before. I would make sure to leave extra time for that particular freight pickup.

The attentive customer called the Big Box Store a couple of days before “ferry day” just to make sure everything was in order, and was told that her appliances had, in fact, been delivered. Knowing that this was physically impossible unless the happy retailer had engaged the Island Transporter (sort of a landing craft freight boat well-suited to dump trucks, well drillers, etc., and going for a mere several thousand a trip, and which would cause some level of public remark) or some moonlighting lobsterman or several Cessnas — which would not arrive unnoticed either — she simply asked for confirmation of the delivery address. A few quiet moments later she heard, “Oh wait; I see what’s going on.”

Of course, to make things more complicated, a foot of snow was forecast for the appointed day. The snow, in and of itself, wasn’t the problem but such weather as a rule slams the marine environment hard, and a full gale with heavy seas were almost a certainty. March 8 would see the arrival on our coast of winter storm Quinn, so-called by the Weather Channel (which is not, by the way, a government agency, just so as you remember. The National Weather Service is, but they only name the hurricanes.)

The week before, winter storm Riley turned out to act more or less like a hurricane after all, but Riley wasn’t, after all, born in the tropics. Quinn came after Riley in the alphabet, just to mess with those of us who’d notice such a thing, because Quinn had been recognized as a Force to Be Reckoned With, and given a name, way back on the West Coast. Quinn was an old dog before it ever got here.

At any rate, it became clear to all involved — several days prior to the scheduled ferry departure — that no captain would take his vessel to sea with such a forecast if it could be avoided, and no Maine State Ferry Service passenger in their right mind would make the crossing way out past Two Bush and civilization anyway, and no truckload of corrugated cardboard and beach-cleanup plastic would be delivered to the mainland, and no appliances would be trucked to Matinicus Island on March the 8th.

The Captain of the Port, who also happens to be the usual captain for those infrequent Matinicus trips, was checking around with his part-time and on-call Able-Bodied Seamen and Engineers, trying to put a crew together who would be available for a “make-up trip” on March 9. Everybody knew that March 8 would be canceled before it officially was. As Matinicus does not have a daily ferry, we also do not have a standing crew, and each trip is a bit of an organizational flurry for our Captain Dan who runs that side of things. We are nothing if not appreciative.

So, early the morning of March 9, I showed up at the Big Box Store with the U-Haul, and collected the appliances with the help of at least five pleasant and agreeable store associates. I picked up another order — an armload of PVC conduit — at Gilman Electric and headed for the ferry terminal to put the truck in line and say hi to my buddy Eric the lumberyard truck driver who was headed with a big load for North Haven. I nursed a coffee from the Rock City Café and Occasional Truckstop, and I made some ferry reservations for recycling trips later in the spring. We try to be ahead of things. It doesn’t necessarily do any good, but we try.

Also in line for “my” ferry was a box truck from Viking Lumber with a load of kitchen cabinets. The driver told me the story of his first delivery to Matinicus, with a flatbed truck heavy laden with most of a house in its various parts, when he was advised about the one-hour turn-around time allowed on the island due to the tides.

“No way,” he thought to himself. “Once we get the breakables, like the windows, carefully lowered down off this truck we’ll barely have time to move a shingle or a board.”

I guess he envisioned himself getting stuck out to sea for a few weeks. There are stories of such deliveryman strandings, generally more folkloric than historic. “But before I was even out of the cab the load was swarmed with people like ants on a picnic, and they all knew what to do, and that truck was unloaded in time, no problem!”

Two hours after departing Rockland the ferry vessel Everett Libby arrived at Matinicus. It was much as the Viking driver had described, with helpers well-versed in the unloading routine and everybody moving quickly. We had everything unloaded from both trucks in a matter of minutes. Loading the beach trash, metal junk, dead televisions, rusty bicycles, recyclable plastic and glass and paper, and then a serious pile of corrugated cardboard — likely half a ton of it, no joke — into the U-Haul took eight volunteers about 30 minutes. That — believe me — is fast.

The two-hour ride back to Rockland was not unpleasant. There is always some multi-axis sloshing about five miles out of the harbor, but that’s normal. My mp3 player for some reason decided of its own accord to play all of the movements of Handel’s Water Music. I do not know why, but at least it wasn’t The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which is what the thing usually likes to play on the ferry. By time I got to Rockland the recycling facility was closed, so I’d be staying overnight and unloading in the morning. That is often how this works. I tell people it takes 36 hours to take the garbage out.

As I write, we are in the middle of winter storm Skylar, so-called, and it’s gusting well into the 40s here at my house in the middle of the island. The house is creaking, and it is blowing a good deal more than that over the water. I know one thing: I am quite content to be at home beside the wood stove and not worrying about any canceled ferries, or cold, rough rides, or confused appliance purveyors. But, when the time comes for the next trip, we’ll make it work.

Many thanks are due the patient folks at Viking Lumber and Maine Energy who ride the boats when called upon, whether they like it or not, and the guys at Camden Irving who roll with my sometimes incomprehensible U-Haul rental needs, and Captain Dan who finds us a ferry boat crew when the weather sabotages the schedule, and all the people (some of whom don’t even live here, like air service pilots and visiting friends) who turn out to unload other people’s lumber and appliances and propane and all sorts of other freight, just because it needs to be done.

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