Passions draw like minded people together. Motorcycling certainly does. Some folks, for example, are mad for the game of Bridge. I have a Law Partner who took up Bridge about 10 years ago. He instantly adored it and was soon playing in Bridge Tournaments throughout New England. He got so good at it that he rather quickly became the President of the State Bridge Association, I suspect the youngest person to have held that august position. I have no doubt that he will someday be a Bridge Master (a title reserved for the truly great players). His closest friends play Bridge too. Like to like, passion to passion. (I’m now imagining that old calypso standard with the refrain, “Back to Back, Belly to Belly…..”)
I’m thinking back of friends and family with whom I’ve shared my most memorable times. Not surprisingly many are linked with road adventures here and abroad. Others are linked to grand adventures at sea. Each will undoubtedly afford me ample opportunity to write about when time permits.
I remember first meeting my first truly Bohemian friend, Peter Agrafiotis, in the summer of ’69. Peter seemed a “grownup” compared to me. I was a young and very naïve 17 year old. He was, I think, 24. (Forgive my poor memory Peter if I have your age wrong.) In any event, he had already graduated from college, and he had a real job. I was still “in school,” between my junior and senior years in high school.
Peter was unlike any of my contemporaries. He was eccentric. He was a painter of impressionist canvases with an eye for colors so vibrant one wanted to dive into the rivers and ponds his brush created. He was in the midst of a sad divorce from a woman he deeply loved.
He knew they were incompatible as husband and wife: She knew that they would remain lifelong friends. I believe that they have.
When I first met him, Peter lived in a huge army surplus tent in the woods of Cape Neddick, Maine. He was building a bizarre homemade house in which everything was hand-hewn from a patchwork of boards, doors, stones and posts purchased from the demolition sites of old churches, barns and country stores. No two angles were alike.
There were wooden ladders to lofts, stained glass windows that opened to other rooms, and a heavy wooden trap door in the kitchen that led below to a cozy sleeping room for guests. The largest room was his painting studio. Easels and paints were everywhere. This was definitely “Woodstock Nation meets Post-and-Beam meets Jack Kerouac,” I thought. Pete even looked a bit like Kerouac.
Peter was way cool. His paintings were hanging in the local galleries in York and Ogunquit. He also published a widely read Tourist Magazine that restaurants and hotels from York to Portland loved to advertise in. He was a talented writer with a knack for mixing fact, mirth and fiction, throwing in irony for spice, thereby creating a brew to bring smiles to those tourists lucky enough to read his pieces.
One evening, Peter and I dined at The Cape Neddick Lobster Pound. (Still one of the best seafood places to dine I might add). The restaurant had the standard Lobster Cracking Instruction Placemat that is common to such places. It was replete with drawings of each excruciating step in the lobster deconstruction process.
“Wouldn’t it be great,” I suggested, “if we took these drawings and put them into you magazine as instructions on ‘How to Make a Lobster Talk.?” Peter loved the idea, and we spent the rest of the night co-writing an article about the secrets known only to Maine Lobsters and how one could get them to tell their secrets through the use of lobster crackers, etc. In the end we changed it just before printing to become the lead article, entitled “How to Revive a Lobster.” It turned out to be an instant hit, and the magazines sold out. Over the years we co-wrote a number of his humor pieces. I’m not so sure today whether the pieces were as funny as we then thought, but back then the monthly meetings to work on the articles seem some of the happiest days of my youth.
We wrote a number of humor pieces together over the next few years. I recall that we caused quite a furor amongst the summer tourists when we started writing articles about a pseudo-fictitious place called “Tatnic Maine.”
Don’t get me wrong, there is in fact a location known as Tatnic Maine. But it isn’t an official Town or City. It’s just an area known as Tatnic, with perhaps 7 houses along the old Dump Road to the west of Cape Neddick. Peter and I thought we should aggrandize the funny sounding place; perhaps write articles about the “Tatnic International Airport,” and the “Greater Tatnic Opera House.”
Soon Peter started getting calls from the local hotels and restaurants complaining that guests couldn’t find an airline that would pick them up at the Tatnic International Airport, “and where the hell is that airport anyway?”
We had to stop writing about Tatnic when advertisers started threatening to pull their ads. It was a sad ending to a creative series: we had even written a birth announcement for “Johnnie Tarbell, who was born to Beulah and Fran Tarbell, of 1179 East Tatnic Highway, Suite 300, weighing in at 14 pounds, 7 ounces.” That announcement was printed right after the report of the Tatnic Regional Winter Moose Hunting statistics, where every Bull Moose and Cow was reported as “weighing in at pounds.”
What, you might ask, does this have to do with motorcycling? I’m getting there. My main transportation in 1969 was a Yamaha 175 Enduro. It was a beautiful thing. It was freedom from the humdrum of -- and a lot more affordable than -- an automobile. It was as close to being a Bohemian as I then dared.
Peter loved motorcycles too. He had a Suzuki 400. We promised each other that we would one day go “On the Road.”
In the Fall of ’72, having dropped out of college to figure out what the heck I wanted to do with my life (trite, I know), I flew to England. I had not planned to take my European Tour solo, but that’s how it ended up when the friend that had planned to go with me changed his mind the night before our flight. I, however, felt the need for adventure too compelling. So I went alone.
This decision, second only to the decision to ask my wife to marry me, is one of the best decisions I have ever stumbled into.
In London I bought the motorcycle of my dreams, a Triumph 650. It was the bike of legends. It was driven by folks like Steve McQueen, Mick Jagger, and all sorts of pop-culture icons. How could I, a middle class, long-haired, Easy Rider wannabe kid from New Hampshire resist?
Leaving London after a week or so, I proceeded to tour Europe, the Mideast, and India for 7 months. I had a motorcycle, a sleeping bag and a harmonica. I could hum and sing hundreds of songs from my favorite bands, then The Byrds, Tom Rush, James Taylor, and of course, The Stones. I was set. I will tell tales of that adventure another time. For now, however, I want to get back to my story about Peter Agrafiotis.
I actually walked smack into Peter on the streets of New Delhi, India, in March 1973. I had returned to New Delhi, India, from a month spent living on a beach in a palm thatched hut in Goa. (Goa is in southern India, a magical and beautiful State lying on the fabled Malabar Coast.). [NB: If you’ve never listened to Van Morrison and the Chieftains perform “The Coast of Malabar,” do so immediately, as it is a hauntingly lovely song.]
I had dropped by the New Delhi American Express Office to see if I had any telegrams from back home. The clerk handed me a telegram that was dated 5 weeks earlier. It was from Peter. It said: “Heard you are in India. Wait for me. I’m coming over.” Five weeks too late, I thought. Too bad, it would have been fun to see Pete.
I walked out the door and turned south to walk toward the rooming house where I had a bunk. “Mrs. Dunklee’s Place” it was called. Mrs. Dunklee was a widow with a nice large house in a clean part of town. She had filled each room with bunk beds, which she rented out to similar wanderers at $1 a night. She served all of us a nice bowl of Rice Pudding every evening at 5:30 sharp. If you showed up at 5:40 it was gone.
I hadn’t walked more than a block when I was approached by a fellow in a long black coat, a broad brimmed hat pulled low so it was hard to see his face. Soemthing was odd. Here was this fellow wearing clearly Western garb, yet with palm outstretched begging: “Baksheesh,” he intoned. The man then giggled and lifted his head, allowing me to see his face for the first time. There, on the streets on New Delhi with literally millions of people everywhere was Peter. “I knew I’d find you, “ he exclaimed. “I can’t believe you did,” I laughed.
We spent the next 3 weeks traveling about India together. We visited Agra, the Taj Mahal, and the ancient Forbidden City at Fatipur Sikri. That’s where Akbar the Great enjoyed playing courtyard Chess with human participants and then watching the elephants crush the heads of the humans who were knocked off the board. That stuff really did happen back then.
Years later Peter and I again were motorcycling. In 1978, after I had taken the Bar Exam, we went on a wonderful cycling tour of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. I then owned an even better motorcycle, a now iconic BMW "Toaster," the 1973 1/2 R 75/5. It was a King of the Highway. By then Peter had sold his magazine and had become a full-time painter. His works were now shown in Boston and New York. He was getting quite serious in the art world, and I was getting fairly serious about becoming a serious attorney. The end of our extended childhood was fast at hand.
The ride around the Cabot Trail and about PEI was incredible. We camped out each night under the stars. No tent, just sleeping bags on the soft ground and, sometimes, on the soft sand of a beach. I recall the absolutely amazing early August night when we lay on our backs on a PEI beach watching the Perseid Meteor Showers flash across the blackened night sky.
We felt we could reach out and touch the stars if our arms were just a bit longer. That sense of infinite possibility and oneness in the chaos of the universe is quite overwhelming.
Today Peter is still a sought-after artist. His paintings hang in galleries throughout America, but all of his best stuff hangs in his studio in Cape Neddick. He still lives in his Cape Neddick artist’s mansion. He has added a waterfall, a Stonehenge array, and new rooms each year. The place is now five times the size of its original plot. You can check it at http://peteragrafiotis.com/background.html
One day, I know not when, I won’t be surprised if I look up and see a fellow in a long black coat, with a cycling helmet pulled down low, driving up my driveway. It’ll be Peter. We’ll go for a ride.
I’m thinking back of friends and family with whom I’ve shared my most memorable times. Not surprisingly many are linked with road adventures here and abroad. Others are linked to grand adventures at sea. Each will undoubtedly afford me ample opportunity to write about when time permits.
I remember first meeting my first truly Bohemian friend, Peter Agrafiotis, in the summer of ’69. Peter seemed a “grownup” compared to me. I was a young and very naïve 17 year old. He was, I think, 24. (Forgive my poor memory Peter if I have your age wrong.) In any event, he had already graduated from college, and he had a real job. I was still “in school,” between my junior and senior years in high school.
Peter was unlike any of my contemporaries. He was eccentric. He was a painter of impressionist canvases with an eye for colors so vibrant one wanted to dive into the rivers and ponds his brush created. He was in the midst of a sad divorce from a woman he deeply loved.
He knew they were incompatible as husband and wife: She knew that they would remain lifelong friends. I believe that they have.
When I first met him, Peter lived in a huge army surplus tent in the woods of Cape Neddick, Maine. He was building a bizarre homemade house in which everything was hand-hewn from a patchwork of boards, doors, stones and posts purchased from the demolition sites of old churches, barns and country stores. No two angles were alike.
There were wooden ladders to lofts, stained glass windows that opened to other rooms, and a heavy wooden trap door in the kitchen that led below to a cozy sleeping room for guests. The largest room was his painting studio. Easels and paints were everywhere. This was definitely “Woodstock Nation meets Post-and-Beam meets Jack Kerouac,” I thought. Pete even looked a bit like Kerouac.
Peter was way cool. His paintings were hanging in the local galleries in York and Ogunquit. He also published a widely read Tourist Magazine that restaurants and hotels from York to Portland loved to advertise in. He was a talented writer with a knack for mixing fact, mirth and fiction, throwing in irony for spice, thereby creating a brew to bring smiles to those tourists lucky enough to read his pieces.
One evening, Peter and I dined at The Cape Neddick Lobster Pound. (Still one of the best seafood places to dine I might add). The restaurant had the standard Lobster Cracking Instruction Placemat that is common to such places. It was replete with drawings of each excruciating step in the lobster deconstruction process.
“Wouldn’t it be great,” I suggested, “if we took these drawings and put them into you magazine as instructions on ‘How to Make a Lobster Talk.?” Peter loved the idea, and we spent the rest of the night co-writing an article about the secrets known only to Maine Lobsters and how one could get them to tell their secrets through the use of lobster crackers, etc. In the end we changed it just before printing to become the lead article, entitled “How to Revive a Lobster.” It turned out to be an instant hit, and the magazines sold out. Over the years we co-wrote a number of his humor pieces. I’m not so sure today whether the pieces were as funny as we then thought, but back then the monthly meetings to work on the articles seem some of the happiest days of my youth.
We wrote a number of humor pieces together over the next few years. I recall that we caused quite a furor amongst the summer tourists when we started writing articles about a pseudo-fictitious place called “Tatnic Maine.”
Don’t get me wrong, there is in fact a location known as Tatnic Maine. But it isn’t an official Town or City. It’s just an area known as Tatnic, with perhaps 7 houses along the old Dump Road to the west of Cape Neddick. Peter and I thought we should aggrandize the funny sounding place; perhaps write articles about the “Tatnic International Airport,” and the “Greater Tatnic Opera House.”
Soon Peter started getting calls from the local hotels and restaurants complaining that guests couldn’t find an airline that would pick them up at the Tatnic International Airport, “and where the hell is that airport anyway?”
We had to stop writing about Tatnic when advertisers started threatening to pull their ads. It was a sad ending to a creative series: we had even written a birth announcement for “Johnnie Tarbell, who was born to Beulah and Fran Tarbell, of 1179 East Tatnic Highway, Suite 300, weighing in at 14 pounds, 7 ounces.” That announcement was printed right after the report of the Tatnic Regional Winter Moose Hunting statistics, where every Bull Moose and Cow was reported as “weighing in at pounds.”
What, you might ask, does this have to do with motorcycling? I’m getting there. My main transportation in 1969 was a Yamaha 175 Enduro. It was a beautiful thing. It was freedom from the humdrum of -- and a lot more affordable than -- an automobile. It was as close to being a Bohemian as I then dared.
Peter loved motorcycles too. He had a Suzuki 400. We promised each other that we would one day go “On the Road.”
In the Fall of ’72, having dropped out of college to figure out what the heck I wanted to do with my life (trite, I know), I flew to England. I had not planned to take my European Tour solo, but that’s how it ended up when the friend that had planned to go with me changed his mind the night before our flight. I, however, felt the need for adventure too compelling. So I went alone.
This decision, second only to the decision to ask my wife to marry me, is one of the best decisions I have ever stumbled into.
In London I bought the motorcycle of my dreams, a Triumph 650. It was the bike of legends. It was driven by folks like Steve McQueen, Mick Jagger, and all sorts of pop-culture icons. How could I, a middle class, long-haired, Easy Rider wannabe kid from New Hampshire resist?
Leaving London after a week or so, I proceeded to tour Europe, the Mideast, and India for 7 months. I had a motorcycle, a sleeping bag and a harmonica. I could hum and sing hundreds of songs from my favorite bands, then The Byrds, Tom Rush, James Taylor, and of course, The Stones. I was set. I will tell tales of that adventure another time. For now, however, I want to get back to my story about Peter Agrafiotis.
I actually walked smack into Peter on the streets of New Delhi, India, in March 1973. I had returned to New Delhi, India, from a month spent living on a beach in a palm thatched hut in Goa. (Goa is in southern India, a magical and beautiful State lying on the fabled Malabar Coast.). [NB: If you’ve never listened to Van Morrison and the Chieftains perform “The Coast of Malabar,” do so immediately, as it is a hauntingly lovely song.]
I had dropped by the New Delhi American Express Office to see if I had any telegrams from back home. The clerk handed me a telegram that was dated 5 weeks earlier. It was from Peter. It said: “Heard you are in India. Wait for me. I’m coming over.” Five weeks too late, I thought. Too bad, it would have been fun to see Pete.
I walked out the door and turned south to walk toward the rooming house where I had a bunk. “Mrs. Dunklee’s Place” it was called. Mrs. Dunklee was a widow with a nice large house in a clean part of town. She had filled each room with bunk beds, which she rented out to similar wanderers at $1 a night. She served all of us a nice bowl of Rice Pudding every evening at 5:30 sharp. If you showed up at 5:40 it was gone.
I hadn’t walked more than a block when I was approached by a fellow in a long black coat, a broad brimmed hat pulled low so it was hard to see his face. Soemthing was odd. Here was this fellow wearing clearly Western garb, yet with palm outstretched begging: “Baksheesh,” he intoned. The man then giggled and lifted his head, allowing me to see his face for the first time. There, on the streets on New Delhi with literally millions of people everywhere was Peter. “I knew I’d find you, “ he exclaimed. “I can’t believe you did,” I laughed.
We spent the next 3 weeks traveling about India together. We visited Agra, the Taj Mahal, and the ancient Forbidden City at Fatipur Sikri. That’s where Akbar the Great enjoyed playing courtyard Chess with human participants and then watching the elephants crush the heads of the humans who were knocked off the board. That stuff really did happen back then.
Years later Peter and I again were motorcycling. In 1978, after I had taken the Bar Exam, we went on a wonderful cycling tour of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. I then owned an even better motorcycle, a now iconic BMW "Toaster," the 1973 1/2 R 75/5. It was a King of the Highway. By then Peter had sold his magazine and had become a full-time painter. His works were now shown in Boston and New York. He was getting quite serious in the art world, and I was getting fairly serious about becoming a serious attorney. The end of our extended childhood was fast at hand.
The ride around the Cabot Trail and about PEI was incredible. We camped out each night under the stars. No tent, just sleeping bags on the soft ground and, sometimes, on the soft sand of a beach. I recall the absolutely amazing early August night when we lay on our backs on a PEI beach watching the Perseid Meteor Showers flash across the blackened night sky.
We felt we could reach out and touch the stars if our arms were just a bit longer. That sense of infinite possibility and oneness in the chaos of the universe is quite overwhelming.
Today Peter is still a sought-after artist. His paintings hang in galleries throughout America, but all of his best stuff hangs in his studio in Cape Neddick. He still lives in his Cape Neddick artist’s mansion. He has added a waterfall, a Stonehenge array, and new rooms each year. The place is now five times the size of its original plot. You can check it at http://peteragrafiotis.com/background.html
One day, I know not when, I won’t be surprised if I look up and see a fellow in a long black coat, with a cycling helmet pulled down low, driving up my driveway. It’ll be Peter. We’ll go for a ride.
Posts
Wow--I thought Dilbert's Ultimate House was cool...but Dilbert doesn't have a Stonehenge array...
ReplyDeleteAh yes, Peter's house is much the same, only bigger. He has a fencing room now off of his studio, and he has a spiral staircase to the loft now, replacing the ladder.
ReplyDeleteThe author is offensively ignorant about Tatnic. Tatnic is from the Abenaki language and means "the earth that moves", attributed to ancient earthquakes tendancies in this region. Tatnic is not some forgotten, run-down area of 7 houses on the dump road. It is in fact a rather sprawling, pristine rural area that overlaps the town of Wells, York and South Berwick, Maine comprised of perhaps 500 inhabitants. And, if the author was any kind of motorcycle buff, he would know about the Tatnic Motorcycle Club. But I won't tell you exactly where it is. We like our mysterious elusion here in tatnic; it keeps arrogant interlopers out.
ReplyDelete