Matinicus Island Garbage Truck

by Eva Murray

At 6:20 a.m. I woke up, a few minutes before the alarm went off. From my warm bed in a mainland hotel I could hear it raining hard. I put on work boots and the same clothing as the day before. No sense in going to any trouble over clean clothes for a day spent on the Matinicus ferry. It’s my job to run a truck out there and back ten or twelve times a year, winter and summer, to bring the trash and recycling to the mainland. Once in a while it’s a very pleasant trip. Once in a while it isn’t.

I pulled on three or four layers, ready to ride this slow boat for half a day with the lumberyard truck and a few overloaded pickups. Nobody commutes to the office on this ferry ride; it’s all about truck freight. I’m thinking it’ll be fairly rough today from the sound of the wind. No doubt the deck and the seven vehicles that they can usually fit on board will take a saltwater bath. Besides intending to load a truckload of trash and busted junk I was ready to be cold, ready to get wet, maybe ready to get sick if it couldn’t be helped. No sense putting on clean clothes.

The 11:00 p.m. TV weather the night before had promised 2-4 foot seas for the next day, but I didn’t believe a word of it. The marine forecast for “Stonington to Port Clyde out to 25 nautical miles,” which is where it counts, gave 5-8 foot seas. Even better, it was to be westerly. This trip is pretty much north-south. Oh, goody.

I wasn’t very hungry for breakfast. Last night’s supper was a container of chicken fried rice and a bowl of Honeycomb. I never eat Honeycomb at home. I never buy sugar cereal when I’m doing normal grocery shopping. On dump runs, all good sense and adult attitudes about healthy meal-making go out the window. I am living “on the road,” alone, free to eat like a damned fool. I think I earn the privilege.

I was on my way to pick up the rental box truck from the agent. It’s important to rent the truck from the same place every time, so they understand the drill. No, I can’t take it the next day instead because you got behind; Matinicus only gets a vehicle ferry a couple of times a month. No, it won’t work to give me a longer truck “for the same price” because they don’t happen to have the size truck I reserved. On the ferry, trucks have to go on the center line and there is no flexibility. Every foot of deck space is counted, paid for, and jealously guarded. Sometimes there is no extra room. If a driver shows up with a bigger truck than they reserved space for (maybe several months previous) they may get turned away, and the next trip might not be for several weeks, and it’s probably full anyway. You have to get it right.

The truck rental desk would open at 8:00 a.m. Feeling obligated to some sort of very benign breakfast, at a quarter to eight I was at the Willow Bake Shoppe getting around a very nice maple doughnut. The cell phone rang.

“They’ve canceled today’s trip, or rather, postponed until tomorrow.” I was not surprised.

So instead of going to Herrick’s Garage, the truck rental place, I drove to the ferry terminal, where Larry the Ferry Terminal Guy smiled behind his little safety glass window and apologized and called the port captain to double-check on the plan. “Tomorrow for sure,” he said. I’d seen the marine forecast for tomorrow and I was not convinced it would be any better. Not much to be done about it. I called Herrick’s and asked if I could have the truck a day later. I called businesses where I had island-bound freight to pick up and explained that I’d be coming with the truck a day later. I reserved my hotel room for an extra night. I called home.

The next morning dawned chilly with brilliant sunshine, blue skies, and small craft warnings.

Well, at least it wasn’t raining, and there would be no need to rush around too fast, because the ferry wouldn’t be leaving Rockland for Matinicus until 11:30 a.m. Yesterday, had they made the trip, it would have left at 10:30. Unlike on other islands, the wharf at Matinicus can only be approached during the higher part of the tide cycle, so ferry schedules are based on the tide calendar, not the clock. This confounds people who are used to ferries that run at the same time every day and causes all sorts of confusion for deliverymen not used to it. Our harbor is just barely big enough for a vehicle ferry anyway, and then only the smallest boats in the fleet can squeeze in between Dexter’s Ledge and the lobstermen’s wharves. The large vessels that serve Vinalhaven and North Haven could no sooner go to Matinicus than they could go to the moon.

At the Rockland ferry terminal I looked at the bigger trucks, the “real trucks” in the line headed for Vinalhaven. All I have is this lightweight box van from Budget rent-a-truck. I am envious.

I won’t go into the details of the sea conditions that day. I sat in the truck eating popcorn and listening to music, and by time we got to Matinicus the windows were so salted I could hardly see out. Music helps. At least they didn’t play “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” like they did last time it was that rough.

Eva Murray lives year-round on Matinicus Island, where she is a freelance writer, a former one-room school teacher, an EMT, and the island’s “garbage czar.”