Adventures in Coastal Living – Thrift

I’m from New York City. But I’ve lived in New England for so long that lots of it’s habits and ways rubbed off on me. Much came from Coastal Maine. there I learned a style of English, cooking, and life that was very different from life in the City. The incidents described here happened in the early 1970’s – life has mooved on!

The Cap’n and his wife Cora were not children of the Great Depression. They preceded it but lived through it. The Cap’n happily reminded me of this whenever I indulged in something he considered a frivolous expense. whenever he thought the economy was iffy, he’d quote to me this bit of wisdom: ” In Maine, when the rest of the country got a cold, Maine got pneumonia.” It was his way of trying to teach me the frugal habits that had made him successful. 

His spendthrift son-in-law ( me) had not grown up impoverished. But he hadn’t had a silver spoon shoved into his mouth either. The frivolity he expressed dismay over was taking his daughter and wife out to a local restaurant. It was the second time in a month, and that was foolish.

Many of the Cap’ns ways made sense, to him. We always painted one side of the house each year. He would go to the hardware store and buy just enough of the cheapest exterior white paint he could find. We had a rotation, one side a year with some touch-up on the northeastern side where the worst of the winter weather piles up. The slight variations in the different whites weathered out, and you could not tell the difference after a few weks. It was cheap to do it this way, and the labor was divided into reasonable annual amounts. Most importantly, it allowed more time to prep Psyche for summer sailing and meant more time to be sailing. The Cap’n had his priorities; in that case, they aligned with mine.

I argued sometimes. When asked to put a second long splice into a mooring line, I rebelled. Making splices is a necessary part of a sailor’s skill set. But, multiple splices in a short line weaken the whole. In a mooring line, the single time it parts is when you lose the boat. I won that argument, and off we went to get a new coil of rope ( it’s only rope when it’s in the original coil – unwind it, and it’s “line” – fussy sailor stuff).

People not from New England tell jokes about strings too short for saving. I’ve been here for my entire adult life. Lots of that frugality wound up getting spliced into me.

When I emerged from a career as a government anthropologist, I walked back into boat shops where old paint, varnish, line, and wood got saved. Damn it that cost money. My shop and storage shed has lots of wood and supplies leftover from earlier projects. OK, I’ll admit it, I have wood in my store that’s been there since 1974. Every time I’ve moved, I moved it as well.

The Cap’n called it inculcation. I guess it worked regarding my shop habits. But I still do things that would make the old itch furious; I love those new planes I bought last winter.