Brenda Buchanan

We were in lovely Brooklin, Maine for ten consecutive, glorious days. There was writing, of course, but little work-work. More time was spent playing than anything.

The Goldfinch Girl and I went swimming almost every day, either in the cove in front of our rented cottage or at other little beaches on Allen Cove. In this part of the world, a beach is more often than not a little crescent of gravel carved out of the rock. The ocean is cold compared to many places, but certainly swimmable, especially if you dangle your hands in the water before you dive, to get your heart ready. The sensations after we swim to shore and collapse into our beach chairs – skin tingling until the sun warms it, salt on our lips and lashes – is sublime.
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Brooklin, Maine was not a good place to see fireworks on the Fourth of July, but it was a superb location to watch fireflies.

There were pyrotechnics in three nearby towns, but none were near enough to make it worth our while to climb into the car after dinner and drive to a crowded place in order to ooh and ahh with a lot of other people. Instead, we lingered over a dinner of grilled salmon, roasted potatoes and steamed peas (from our home garden, which were delicious, thank you very much). As darkness fell we dished up some frozen nirvana – Island Lady Toasted Coconut ice cream – onto which we sliced plenty of fresh, local strawberries. Then we turned out the lights and let ourselves be entertained by thousands of lampyridae.
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Many words have been written this week about the loss suffered this week by so many middle-aged kids who grew up in greater Boston.

Rex Trailer rode off into the sunset for the last time.

“Sad Day in Boomtown,” was the headline in my hometown newspaper, The Fitchburg Sentinel and Enterprise. It was a sad day at my house, too.

Those of you who didn’t grow up in Eastern Massachusetts in the 1950s and 1960s don’t know what you missed. Saturday and Sunday mornings, my sisters and I would run downstairs in our pjs, turn on the big black-and-white floor model TV and watch test patterns until Rex Trailer’s New England-style western extravaganza came on. Here’s the link to his obit, for those who never had the sublime pleasure of watching Boomtown while eating their Cornflakes: http://www.sentinelandenterprise.com/topstory/ci_22354594/sad-day-boomtown
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