Travel Diary: On Ship's Whistles and Foghorns
I finally have something exciting and adventurous to report! According to the ship's itinerary, we were supposed to stop in Portland, Maine. According to the display, however, we are in Portland, OREGON!!
Having been to Portland OR many times, I confirmed our location with a simple glance out the window:
Somehow, in the middle of the night, we got transported across the continent to the Pacific coast! And I slept through it! I feel like a rube. We didn't bother going ashore, however, since we'd been to Portland OR many times and, despite its reputation for a lefty heaven, I think it is kinda sucky.
An 1879 Fog Horn
We have been in heavy fog for about three days now. The views are just a teensy bit monotonous. The captain tells us every day that because of the fog, they need to sound the "ship's whistle" every two minutes to warn other vessels that we are here. Hence all through the day and night the horn sounds its basso profondo warning to anyone within earshot. I like it. It brings back happy memories for me. To understand those happy memories, we need a little Jackson family history.
My father had two sisters, Sarah and Althea. Sarah was as prim and proper and ladylike a person as you could ever hope to meet. Al was a wild, free spirit who, in my memory, wouldn't have known "proper" if it had been served to her on a silver salver.
Among other things, Al was a self-taught painter. Everyone in the family has at least one picture she painted it seems. Some years ago, long after she passed, we had a painting of hers reframed. When we went to pick it up, the framers handed us a letter: "We found this hidden behind the painting." The letter dated from the 1940s and was a very flirtatious letter to a young gentleman who was definitely not Al's husband, Sherm. So, that was Auntie Al.
In the early 1970s, my uncle Sherm was a park ranger at the Grand Portage National Monument.
Hooked rug made by an Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) artist in the Grand Portage area.
Sherm and Al lived in Grand Marais, Minnesota, on the North Shore of Lake Superior. The north, North Shore. Far north of Duluth. Some of my fondest memories are of our visits to Auntie Al. For the first time in my life, I looked out on a body of water and could not see the other side. The water was terrifyingly cold, even in summer (this was years before the Edmund Fitzgerald was lost). I spent hours and hours throwing rocks into Lake Superior, maybe hoping to fill it up. Uncle Sherm was a sailor and I went sailing for the first time on one of the other 10,000 lakes in Minnesota. And, of course, there was Auntie Al who could make me laugh and laugh.
It was during these trips that I first went into Canada. In those simpler times, we simply drove up the border crossing and the guard said, "Hi Al, heading up to Thunder Bay for lunch?" and off we went. In my adult life, it always puzzled Canadian friends that my only visit to Canada was to Thunder Bay which apparently is not a traditional tourist destination in Canada.
Grand Marias Lighthouse
I have very distinct memories of falling asleep in Grand Marais while the foghorn on the lighthouse sounded. It probably does not suprise you that foghorns are not often found in Iowa. Now, more than fifty years after those trips, when the boat whistle sounds, it transports me back to Auntie Al's house and the adventures on Lake Superior.
jpj stories by John Jackson is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
