Janie and I have been married for thirty years. We were, and still are high school sweet hearts. I'm fifty and Janie is forty-nine. Even so, to look at Janie and me together, you'd probably guess she was either my daughter, or that I had gone through the mid-life crisis and re-married a much younger woman, and that perhaps she was a gold-digger. Nothing could be further from the truth. Northern Maine has simply treated Janie that well.
My neighbor has also been treated well by his life in Perham. Roy Moody, is eighty-three. Roy is a great pal for me, for despite his age he can still eat almost as well as I do. For me, and for eighty-three year old Roy, "eating well" is something akin to shoveling snow well. The more you can eat, the more-well you're doing it. Fortunately, Janie is a good cook, and she'll even make homemade bread, whole wheat with raisin whole wheat bread, four loaves at a time. Roy and I in a single sitting can kill off a loaf and get into a second of Janie's homemade whole wheat raisin bread right along with dinner.
Roy has told me many stories since we first met in 1989. My sons were nine and eleven when we moved to Perham, the town where Roy was born, and the source of most all of Roy's good stories. During the eleven years I've known Roy, since my family moved into Perham, Janie the "great cook" and I have no doubt been the source of inspiration for a few of the stories Roy has told elsewhere in his travels.
To frame my story, "I Think I Saw a Bluebird", I should tell the reader, Janie likes less the winter. In spring when the sun comes out and it warms up, Janie comes to life again in her perennial gardens. On the other hand I like less the summer, and by the time Janie has warmed up enough to venture into her gardens I've already cursed the heat a dozen times. "Heat" for me begins at sixty degrees and it doesn't let up until there's snow in the air again and I can stop mowing the lawn for the season.
That Saturday, the day Janie said, "I think I saw a bluebird," began for me with an entire morning of trying to get the lawn mower to run for the first time that spring. I pulled on the mower's rope all morning, cleaned the air filter, primed the carburator with gas, and pulled on it some more until I got sore back and a blister on my hand from pulling. On towards noon I was getting pretty mad about the heat when I realized this mower had a safety shut-off lever on the handle bar. There was a safety shut-off lever on the handle bar on this mower the year before too, but I had taped it so it didn't get in the way. The tape, however, had let go over the winter. Taping it again, the mower started on the first pull, just as it had all the previous summer.
Before I could recuperate and actually start mowing the lawn, Roy stopped in, probably sensing my need to be relieved from my discomfort, a sore hand and a wrenched back from pulling on my lawn mower all morning. Roy asked me if I wanted to take a ride up the road to see a black bear and her cubs feeding in a field just off the road. "Sure I do." I replied and speaking so Janie could hear, I added, "And we can go to town and get some vanilla ice cream for the pie Janie is going to make us as a reward for all the work I put into mowing the lawn this morning."
Janie stepped in saying, "You didn't get the lawn mowed this morning."
"Nope I didn't, but I pulled on that stupid mower for three hours, and I did finally get it going." I retorted boasting of my male prowess. Janie is pretty good about mowing the lawn in her own right, but I knew she had no patience for getting the mower started. I was pretty sure that if Roy and I went to town for ice cream, we might get a couple of apple pies made, and I could mow the lawn tomorrow. It's never a good idea to mow on a full stomach.
Roy and I stopped and watched the mama bear and her two cubs for a while, and Roy pointed out to me the rather startling fact that when you look at a bear that is a hundred yards away with binoculars, "...they get a lot bigger." My son, Adam, twenty years old, was chased out of the brook behind the house last year by a mama bear who apparently thought Adam looked "chasable" standing bare foot in "her" brook. Poor Adam found out the hard way just how fast a man can run the hundred-and-fifty yards back to the house barefoot when he is startled by a charging bear. Apparently so did the bear.
When Roy and I returned from the store, there was Janie sitting on the rock just outside the house. As I should have anticipated on such a nice day, Janie had apparently forgotten about apple pies. Roy and I sat there in Roy's car with the vanilla ice cream and the windows rolled down. And then Janie said it, "I think I saw a Bluebird."
"Sure you did." I responded in my disappointment knowing at that moment by her words, all my work on the lawn mower surely was not going to yield an apple pie.
"No." Janie said. "I think I saw a Bluebird." Following my lead, Roy and I rolled with laughter. "Adam saw it too." Janie added.
"Sure he did." I said and Roy and I laughed some more as we got out of Roy's car. "Where is the Bluebird now?"
"He was over there in the grass just a little while ago." responded Janie roaming her eyes back and forth over the unmowed yard.
The rock outside the door is a big flat rock, a suitable seat, and Roy sat down next to Janie, the Great Cook, and looked out over the lawn. For all his years Roy has been quite a naturalist, and he has related stories to Janie and me about every creature known in Aroostook County, from panthers and great white snowy owls to Canada jays and even common voles. To Janie Roy said, "I've never seen a bluebird, and I've never even heard of one this far north. Are you sure it wasn't just a bluejay?"
"No." said Janie. "He was the most beautiful indigo blue, like the ocean off of a tropical island. It wasn't a bluejay." Janie and Roy sat idly on the rock looking out over the unmowed lawn as I took the rapidly melting vanilla ice cream to the freezer in the house.
When I came back out in an effort to salvage something of an otherwise wasted day I asserted, "The swallows are probably back. Are you sure it wasn't a swallow?" I built a dozen swallow boxes the year before under the tutelage of Roy's brother, Warren Moody. Swallows are a joy when they return, and they help keep the bugs down. I recalled for Janie and Roy, Warren telling me, "An inch and a quarter hole, any smaller and they can't get in... Any bigger and you'll get blackbirds."
Janie said, "It was about the same size as a swallow, but it didn't look like a swallow and it was a brilliant blue, a "blue" like I've never seen before. Nope, not a swallow."
As Janie spoke, down flew a Eastern Bluebird, brilliant indigo blue in color with a small reddish breast. Roy, Janie and I watched amazed as he landed in the lawn twenty feet from us. He gathered some grass browned from the winter, and flew off back up towards the apple orchard. After that, all three of us smiling and poking fun at each other repeated, "I think I saw a bluebird." several times. We followed the bluebird and saw he and his mate had taken up residence in one of my swallow boxes up in the apple orchard.
"Remind me when we get back to the house..." I told Roy catching his attention away from the bluebird for a moment, "Remind me to call Warren when we get back to the house. I want to tell him an inch and a quarter is no good either. Bluebirds have moved into the swallow boxes he told me how to build."
The bluebirds stayed just about five weeks, fledging a clutch. Roy and I got quite a few apple pies that year. I put off mowing the lawn until the following weekend. And, that Fall when snow was again in the air, I finally got to stop mowing the lawn.
****************About the author: "Don", DW Robertson lives in Perham on a retired fifty-acre farm. He is a veteran of the computer industry, and a writer.
"I Think I Saw a Bluebird" DW Robertson, Copyright 1999, All rights reserved.
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