The title here is a line from one of my favorite Jefferson Airplane albums, "After Bathing at Baxters." When cooking dinner and listening to it tonight I realized that the first time I thought about green skies was one evening while standing on the hill next to Charlie Philbrick's house looking at the early sun set when Charlie came out and spoke to me about the color green in skies. I don't know exactly what age I was at the time, maybe 11. I must have been doing some painting around that time. That moment I spent listening to him always stuck in my mind. I was impressed by what I remember hearing when he told stories about flying P51's in England, and knew he was some kind of a writer, and taught writing or English at Brown University. I didn't know much about anything, but for what I was searching out around Blackfish Creek and in little golden books about nature. Those moments touched me as a boy, to have an adult come out and talk to me about color in the sky, how most people wouldn't think there was green in the sky at sunset he said, but there it was. Now I am reminded of all those DeChirico's with green skies.
It was like the time he brought me some Johnny Cakes. I felt he was being a friend in a special way, he being an adult, the way Gill Franklin made me feel, sitting with me drawing flintlocks and powder horns one day, and when Gill took me fishing in his little motor boat, like a brother, different from some adults, and we caught bluefish.
Charlie had boats, too. He and the boys would spend the first days of summer getting the skiff ready for the water with caulk and rope, painting the bottom, painting the hull. They didn't seem to like it, but I found it interesting. Maybe my interest in things opened a door for those men to connect. Maybe it was the painting, there was always some painting to do, trim, windows, screen doors, floors and decks, all that oil paint, not so bad, the scraping and clean up not so good. One summer he took to making a kayak from a kit, he and Ben. I found it interesting. I spent a lot of time hanging around with them, as they lived next door, in the big house on the spot we had opposite Pleasant Point on Blackfish Creek, South Wellfleet, Mass.
There was a kind of grand circle of friends my parents had. Always getting together for cocktails or dinner cook outs, beach fires, fishing, talking, well talking at parties, fishing was a different ambiance. Often there would be the kids hanging around playing in the sand, or sometimes just I, when the grownups all would cram into our small cottage for Portuguese stew, drinks, clams on the half shell and cocktail sauce, oysters, bass, usually somebody had caught or dug some sea food. The Portuguese stew was something my sister brought home from Oscar's mother, and it was a hit. Kidney beans, cabbage, hot sausage, potatoes, broth. Clam chowder was a dish my mom made from the quahogs we'd dig in the creek at low tide which she couldn't eat as she was allergic to bivalves, but often did anyway, she liked them so much. The little necks, many officially to be thrown back, were eaten on the half shell. Yes, I ate my share of sea food growing up under the green skies of Old Cape Cod in the summertime. Not much anymore.
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