When I was 10 my father took me out for a sail on his friend Lou Peretti's Friendship sloop, which he moored in Hempstead Harbor. I remember two things about it - the wide teak decks and the graceful, reassuring movement of the boat as the wind built. The beamy gaffer, a stable platform conceived for fishermen in much tougher seas reassured the nervous boy. In June 1994 when we were compelled to change our summer plans I saw a little mid-week classified ad in the Times for a house in Friendship, Maine. The memory of Lou Peretti reassured me and an afternoon sail on Gladiator, a Friendship carrying passengers, did the same for Taisy, if not quite for Marilyn.
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Yesterday, Halloween 2008, Marilyn and I closed on a friendship - a cottage on "the Back River, so-called" says the warranty deed. The post office says it's the Cushing Road in East Friendship 04547. We'll take posession from the tenants, Gabriel and Misty, earnest Nicholas and sweet Corinne, in May. But we started shopping today - a new stove and icebox at Lowe's in Thomaston. Maine in late fall is beautiful. Here are some shots of the Back River, the cottage, James J. Muldoon's splashdown, Marilyn at our lawyer Jim Strong's in Thomaston (the Halloween capital of the Mid-Coast), the Friendship United Methodist Church, and Wallace's store.
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