We made it to Rockland, Maine, around 8:00 pm on Saturday. We had an uneventful drive, and had eaten at Moody’s diner in Waldoboro on the way to Rockland. Mer’s grandfather lives in Rockland, and her parents stay there in a small apartment in the back of the house during summers. Since my dad and stepmom also live in Maine, we get a lot of relative visiting done when we come to Maine.

New to us this time was that we had decided to actively act as tourists while in Maine. We did not want to ignore our families, but we wanted to see some of the cool and pretty things Maine has to offer. So, we decided that during the days we would play tourist, and in the evenings we would visit with family.

Sunday started with church, which happily started at 10:30, so Mer and I were able to sleep in some. Carleton, Mer’s grandfather, has gone to the First Baptist Church of Rockland for his whole life (and he is now eighty-nine), so I am happy we are able to go with him when we visit.

After church, Carleton hosted brunch at the Samoset Resort, which is something he tries to do when we come to town. Both of Carleton’s children (Mer’s mom and uncle) and two of his three grandchildren were able to make it, so it was a fairly good-sized gathering (I think it was eleven people). The restaurant at the Samoset looks out over the ocean, and the food is amazing and plentiful. We had a very good time and ate too much.

Sunday was Mer’s day – she was in charge of the first three days in Rockland. So, we jumped in the car and headed over to the nearby town of Owl’s Head, to the Owl’s Head lighthouse. We had been to the lighthouse before, but it is pretty and worth going back to, and as a newly available (just in the last year) opportunity, the lighthouse is open on weekends for visitors to go up into. We both wanted to take advantage of that. The lighthouse is only about one hundred feet above the water, and it was hot and cramped, but the views are pretty great, and we were able to see the lens and the light of the tower up close. It was pretty great. After we clambered around the lighthouse, we walked the short distance to the beach. The Owl’s Head beach is a good Maine beach – mostly rocks instead of sand. We dipped our feet in the water and enjoyed the afternoon.

Mer then took me over to the nearby Birch Point State Park, where they have a real sand beach, which was relatively crowded (but, being small-town Maine, it was not packed). This was a great beach for walking in the surf, and was framed on either end by granite rocks which you could climb on, which we did. We got out to a point of rock, and just sat and watched the ocean and the boats for awhile.

We headed back to Rockland, and went to evening church, although we came into the service a few minutes late. We joined Carleton and enjoyed singing several hymns (our home church does not do many hymns any more). Mer’s mom, Carlene, was not feeling good, so she and Dale stayed home.

After church, Mer still had another outing in mind – we went to the Rockland breakwater and walked out to the lighthouse on the end of it. The breakwater is massive, about a mile long and made of thousands of granite blocks; it took twelve years to build, finishing around 1900. The breakwater is one of our favorite places to visit, and frames the harbor with Owl’s Head Light directly across the bay, so our getting to both lighthouses made for a symmetrical day.

Back at the house, Mer visited with her parents, and Carleton and I chatted in the living room. We talked about a bunch of things, including how Carleton met his wife (who passed away two years ago), and we talked a long time about his service in the Pacific back in World War Two. Mer joined us for part of the talk, and we talked on until about midnight. It was a fascinating talk. A few highlights:

– Carleton met Leona at a church gathering at her church after he had been invited by a friend.
– On an early date, they went on a fair ride which went backwards, which made Carleton ill (including throwing up after the ride), but the relationship still panned out.
– Carleton was drafted with about five hundred other young men, but he and seven others (based on high IQ scores) were sent to a different school where he could have become an officer in the artillery. However, Carleton had not taken geometry in high school, and opted out of taking it through the army, so he became an enlisted man in the artillery.
– He ended up becoming a clerk in the headquarters battery (field HQ), taking care of records and payroll and the like.
– He spent two and a half years in the field without ever going home. He never saw his daughter (Mer’s mom) until she was about two.
– He slept in a hammock over a foxhole, so he could jump right into it during bombing raids.
– Most of his service was in New Guinea, with some in the Philippines.
– He was nicknamed “GI” because he followed the regulation book so closely on health matters, and he never got malaria or jungle rot.
– Late in the war, he identified a single Japanese plane coming in by the sound of its engine, and encouraged the men around him to jump in a trash pit with him. The plane bombed the ammunition depot about three hundred yards away, which exploded.
– Men were mustered out based on a point system, and Carleton missed the cut by one point (seventy-nine out of eighty), so he thought he was going to Japan with the occupational forces, but there was a second round before he went, so he was able to go home.

As I said, a really great conversation.