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Fun with Trucks and Planes

by Eva Murray

I count about 20 people on the island mid-winter these days, maybe two dozen in mid-February now that the young fellers are back from their trip to the Super Bowl in Arizona (by which excursion, should you do the arithmetic, you might make an estimate of the success of our lobster fishery this fall).

Through so many island winters past, as we splashed over slush and plodded through deep mud, miserable under the tedium of gray skies and brown fields, I envied the citizens of inland Maine where the winters were white and twinkling. Why, I’d wonder as we’d labor in the freezing rain, are we saddled with an endless mud-season while the rest of the state gets Currier and Ives? Well, we are having our Greenville winter this year, and things are getting interesting. In short, yes, it seems we have roughly 200 feet of snow, which would be delightful except that we’re having a hell of a time keeping any sort of snowplow going.

With four, five, maybe six major snowstorms in rapid succession and no actual maintenance garage, the guys who woke up to find themselves this year’s Public Works Conscripts will get only thanks from me. This town isn’t adequately equipped to deal with the snow this year (not that Boston or anywhere else feels entirely on top of things). With no real municipal public works department on Matinicus, each year is different, with different folks here and able to help, and often different machinery. This year there’s a half-ton pickup with a plow, which might seem a bit light, but remember—so many winters are fairly underwhelming on this rock.

There is a two-wheel-drive backhoe of a size you’d use to dig up a septic system, nothing too huge, and a ton truck with a plow that won’t swivel. There is a John Deere tractor with the advantage of four-wheel-drive and the disadvantage of a mighty small bucket. There is a second tractor, unusable, as the keys are not here. There was no scheduled vehicle ferry between Jan. 8 and Feb. 24.

Especially in the winter, this community depends upon an airstrip. Without a snowplow there is no airstrip. Without an airstrip, offshore-island isolation, independence, and self-sufficiency go from newsprint cliché or proud hobby to purple gorilla in the living room. There aren’t a lot of boats going back and forth these days either, despite the general assumptions of people who don’t live here. As I write, the majority of lobstermen still here will be heading to the mainland fairly immediately for various reasons, not least of which is that one of them will be getting married right in the middle of the next anticipated snowstorm.

I thought I was kidding when I made some crack about calling in the National Guard with the Black Hawk helicopters to bring us a snowplow, imagining a truck dangling unceremoniously under the aircraft as it crossed the bay, perhaps with a few ‘Keag Store pizzas, a bottle of rum and a half a dozen fresh 12-volt batteries smuggled in under the seat. My supposed levity was met with a remarkably deadpan, straight-faced response from County Emergency Management. “They can carry 6,600 pounds under that bird.” I was assured that if we want the National Guard, we can request the National Guard. Thanks, no, I guess we’re not to that point quite yet (although hard to say what might happen between the time I submit these comments and the day you read this paper). It could be that if we can’t keep the airstrip plowed, eventually we’ll be calling in the helicopter for everything from frostbite cases to a shortage of dog chow.

Back on Super Bowl Sunday, in a brief calm between the first two snow hurricanes, when the airstrip was open because the north wind had blown it bare, one of the intrepid pilots from Penobscot Island Air landed a Cessna 206 on this hockey rink of a runway with a much-needed new starter for one of the plow trucks. He got the little plane slowed just as much as is aerodynamically possible and gently landed almost straight down like a small bird, something you can only do when there is no crosswind and you’ve got things figured just right. I half-jokingly asked the pilot, “Can you really make an airplane go 25 miles an hour?” “I was doing 30,” he winked.

In mid-February, after a wheel fell clean off one of the trucks, we were again faced with the need for parts to be somehow delivered despite the painfully obvious chicken-and-egg situation. Nobody with a lobster boat could be found handy by to make the run, but rumor circulated that once, years ago, when important medication was needed out here, a sort of air-drop was organized. Sure enough, once the skies turned blue and the gale subsided, a couple of small parcels from the NAPA store fell out of the sky, one of the trucks was reassembled, the airstrip was plowed, and before dark that day a small plane containing mail, passengers, and truck batteries landed on Matinicus.

Our neighbor George, who among a mighty list of other jobs happens to be the municipal treasurer, was stuck on the mainland waiting for the airstrip to be opened up that day. As most of us do on our way home to the island, he called up and asked if we needed anything from the grocery store. I suggested we could use a gallon of milk and a snowplow. Next thing I knew he was calling back from Hammond Tractor and was riding around the Rockland area looking at equipment.

That evening, as if just to be funny and for reasons still unknown, a large helicopter flew directly over this island at about 6 p.m. I presume it was the Coast Guard, busying themselves at The Rock. It was not, as I understand it, delivering our snowplow.