Ike’s best idea, Interstate 95, is the flowing black ribbon that secures the pine needle follicles of Ms. Maine’s center part. The heat from the summer sun made the air pungent, and I partook, pleased, while piloting the private music box that I call Pearl. I headed north.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My vehicles are all painted some shade of blue, so Pearl is always the name\u2014sort of like Air Force One, which is only designated with that moniker when a current president is on board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My destination didn’t <\/a>matter, but the black coffee did, and it was hot enough so that sipping was impossible until three miles north of Old Town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Truth revealed, without so much as you asking, I’d rather have driven east. Still, for reasons that are too many to reveal, I went to a friend’s cabin for a quick visit, followed by a trip to the Lincoln Walmart to buy six point six quarts of oil for Pearl’s next petroleum purge, set for tomorrow at Sammy’s house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I purchased seven for the sake of cleanliness and to save the three clerks who oversee the four self-checkout registers from calling in management and a mop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s not a big story, but it’s my story. I got some sun, took a boat ride where the captain wore a funny hat, and watched some kids fish for nothing in particular and dive from the deck on one of the most perfect boating days of the year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I take photos of the road so I can display for those from away that it is possible to drive around Maine and see no one else, sometimes for a very long time. That’s why it’s hard for so many of us to leave, to go somewhere warm in the winter, and to deal with what you deal with\u2014traffic in spades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can get used to this, and I have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the record, I have discovered the easiest way to avoid hearing about how the country is divided is to avoid ruminations and excessive lip-flapping about politics at the breakfast counter. We get overheated because we always try to bring people to our way of thinking. Free advice\u2014you will be unsuccessful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Talk about the heatwave and the hopes for a good raspberry crop for those pies you’ve been dreaming about since last August.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like the rest of you, I relish being informed but turn off the news once I am. What comes after is pontification by pundits posing opinions; by now, you should have your own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And you can ignore my advice if you like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Follow me north or east, for that matter; I can take you somewhere where you’ll forget how bad it is because you’ll see how good it can be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s all. We got this, we always have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the Jagged Edge of America, I remain,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TC<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Yeah, my two clocks don’t agree; they’re kind of like Americans\u2014close… but far enough apart for pleasant disagreements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Follow me north or east, for that matter; I can take you somewhere where you’ll forget how bad it is because you’ll see how good it can be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pgc_meta":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17,19,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-posts","category-home-posts","category-uncategorized"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timcottonwrites.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timcottonwrites.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timcottonwrites.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timcottonwrites.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timcottonwrites.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.timcottonwrites.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.timcottonwrites.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timcottonwrites.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.timcottonwrites.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}