The Raine Principle

October 5, 2006

The Raine Principle

The Raine Principle is part of Journey Travel. In the late 80’s we took a bunch of kids to England. We met a bobby (policeman) in London named David Raine. Raine had lived in London all his life. He knew the story behind every old pub in London and all the back streets between them. He loved London and loved to talk about his London. Wherever one wanders, there is a David Raine and the wandering experience will be much richer if the wanderer can find him.

Just before I left for Denton, Hal Morgan knocked on the back door. He wanted to know how to get in touch with the lady who owns our house. Hal is eighty-three years old and has lived in a little house with his wife near the end of Basin Point Road for the last fifty-seven years. Mrs. Morgan doesn’t get around too well any more; botched hip replacement surgery. Hal doesn’t have any front teeth, or at least he wasn’t wearing them when he knocked on the door. He was wearing patched overalls and a faded blue shirt. Hal is a lobsterman. He used to have a forty-seven foot boat and ran over a hundred and fifty traps. Now he has a twenty foot boat and runs twenty traps when the weather is good.

The tide was out and mud was shimmering in the cove about half way down to Hal’s house. I asked if anyone ever went clamming in Basin Cove.

“Oh yeah, this is the best clamming area in Harpswell. Even the commercial clammers use this cove. They will be right out there in front of your house.”

He was right. By the time we got back from Denton, the clammers were coming every day. They come when the tide is going out and stay until the water gets too deep for them to bend over and dig with their short handled clamming rake. To be a good clammer you must be able to cut your toe nails while standing and be able to hold that position while digging mud for at least six hours. They pull rafts that look like toy coal barges. They drag it across the soft mud and it floats behind them on water. They wear hip boots, say the F word more frequently than the grunts did in Viet Nam, and leave with bushels of clams in net bags thrown in the back of pickup trucks.

Before I met Bill (another David Raine), who lives in Cundy’s Harbor and who is the brother of Cathy who lives in Denton (small world), I thought that Harpswell was a peninsula. I was wrong. Harpswell is a town which consists of a neck and a mess of islands. We live on the neck, Harpswell Neck, which incidentally looks a lot like a skinny peninsula. Bathtub Cove is close to the ocean end of Harpswell Neck. The biggest islands are Great Island, Bailey Island and Orr’s Island. Cundy’s Harbor is on Great Island. The neck and all the big islands are hooked together by bridges. There are hundreds of other smaller islands in Harpswell. They have names and most have cottages, but you have to have a boat to get there.

Bill has lived in Harpswell since he retired from the Marine Corps twelve years ago. He told me that Harpswell has more shoreline than any city or town in the US. I believe him. We have driven down about a tenth of the side roads on both the Neck and the roaded islands. Each side road runs down a sub-peninsula off of which drive ways run down sub-sub-peninsulas. Every road ends at a bay or a cove or a salt marsh.

Bill also suggested that I not go clamming in front of the cabin without getting a permit from the city office on Mountain Road Which connects Harpswell Neck and Great Island. “I’m not even sure you can get a permit,” he said. “You have to live in the city where you are going to clam. Temporary residence may not count.” Bill laughed. “The commercial boys might not like you out there getting their clams.”

He told me about the Harpswell-Brunswick clammers border war. One time some clammers from Brunswick were clamming in a Harpswell bay. The Harpswell boys tried to run them off and the sheriff had to break up the fight. There was apparently some dispute about the location of the bay in relation to the border between Brunswick and Harpswell. The Harpswell city council called a special meeting to discuss the issue and both the Harpswell clammers and the Brunswick Clammers showed up. Before the end of the meeting there was a full scale riot. The sheriff and his deputies couldn’t break it up so they called in reinforcements from all over the area.

“The city game warden checks those bays all the time,” bill said. “He might get you before the clammers.”

One of the clammers in our cove is a woman. I was thinking about seeing if Annie wanted to do some clamming.