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Recognized Social Butterfly

FROM MINUS TO PLUS, TWICE

What’s in a Name

After my wife and I ate lunch at a decent seafood restaurant in BoothBay Harbour, Maine, some locals told my wife and me that for dinner we should try Kelly’s—we would not be disappointed. Serendipitously, we passed by the landmark restaurant as we walked to our car.

For the rest of the day, we self-toured the botanical gardens a few miles inland. When it was time for dinner, we plugged in Kelly’s on our GPS. From the outset, it seemed that we were going further away from the ocean. But we stubbornly continued, trusting that the GPS would eventually readjust: it got only more perverse. In fact, we ended up in a maze of forested back roads that led to a wooded street with the name Kelly attached to it, Kelly’s Broad Rd. What kind of legerdemain was pursuing us?

Obviously, we were at the wrong Kelly’s. Not to be spooked again, my wife put in the name of BoothBay Harbour itself into the GPS. Presto! After getting out of the car, we readily found where the restaurant was. But it wasn’t named Kelly’s after all; it was called Kelar’s. Oops! How could we have been so unobservant to begin with? We must have been wearing Kevlar vests to protect our senior moments.

We were so hungry that we didn’t have the stamina to berate ourselves. Salivating at the aromas wafting from Kelar’s, we rushed in to get a table facing the ocean, and ate royally, feasting on heaps of bellied fried clams (no scrawny necks for us) and casseroles of breaded broiled halibut.

In retrospect, I will always have fond memories of Kelly’s, the iconic restaurant in Revere, Mass., where I hung out as a teenager and can still savor its unrivalled juicy luscious rare roast beef.

It’s all Good

Occasionally, if I part from my spouse for a moment, I can’t find her where I left her. After I used a motel restroom late afternoon in coastal Ogunquit, Maine, Marie and I were to stroll along the 3-mile marginal way shorefront walk located about a half mile from the motel. But I couldn’t see my elusive wife anywhere. Figuring that she might have gone to a boutique just across the street, I scoured the store. No Marie. Perhaps she had already begun to head toward the boardwalk, so I trudged down the fairly steep main drag to the oceanfront. No Marie in sight.

I initially didn’t phone her because I thought that she would likely be taking pictures on her cell at the same time. But when I did call, I got through. Marie answered and said that she was at the bottom of the hill. Well, that’s exactly where I was. I looked in all directions. No Marie. Then she said that she had been all this time sitting on a bench on that hill, the one right next to the motel with the bathroom facilities. I was still puzzled. That so-called hill to me was no more than an incline, and I hadn’t noticed any nearby bench, let alone my wife sitting on one. In any case, I retraced my steps to the boutique, peered across the street and saw Marie waving to me from her perch on the bench.

Now that we were finally together, we immensely enjoyed the promenade, especially the promontories. One ridged stack of rocks resembled slices of shale, some huge, some almost miniaturized. Other rocks that jutted into the sea were flattened, conjoined without a visible seam. Another group of rocks were patterned like sound waves. The waves luxuriously swirled against the bottom ledges of the promontories. The double and triple decker wrap-around beach homes were stately, but they weren’t as stirring as the various craggy and chiseled cliffs.

The pre-twilight walk itself was equally romantic, but it was getting so chilly that we left just before sunset.

Of course, I wasn’t as uncomfortable as Marie was because I was well limbered up trying to locate her at her facsimile of a hill.

 

 

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