Table for Eight

There were eight of us hardy campers, just in from the wilds of Maine’s West Branch region, where we’d hung out with timber tigers (red squirrels), survived a bear alert (never saw one), and rafted the Class 5 rapids of the West Branch of the Penobscot. As all campers know, the rules of polite society are shucked as soon as the tent is pitched. Belching, scratching, and farting are all allowed (aloud!), even encouraged.

We did have one little lapse into etiquette while rafting. We’d just done the 10-foot drop down Nesowadnohunk Falls, and had pulled off to the edge of the stream to bail the raft. A snazzy white Crabapple Adventures raft bounced out of the foam at the bottom of the Falls and pulled over next to us. Robert, one of our party, glanced over and politely inquired, in the words of a popular mustard commercial of the time, “Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?”

His question was met with blank stares from the Crabapple raft. Amy, Robert’s sister-in-law, smacked Robert smartly with her paddle and barked, “You idiot – they’re Canadian!”

Back to the story: so after 5 glorious days in the wilderness, the eight of us – 4 men, 4 women – had moved camp to Seawall Campground on Mount Desert Island, home to some of Maine’s tonier Downeast communities. Seawall Campground is a lovely coastal campground run by the U. S. Park Service. It has fire rings and flush toilets, and features slide shows by the rangers on occasion.

That night’s slide show was an introduction to Seawall Campground and coastal Maine in general. Geared to the younger members of the audience, the show began with a series of contrast slides on animals and where you’d not expect to find them.

Ranger: “Would you expect to find this…”
Slide: a camel
Ranger: “...here?”
Slide: the frozen north
Kids: “Nooooo!”

Ranger: “Would you expect to find this…”
Slide: a red squirrel
Ranger: “...here?”
Slide: coral reef scene
Kids: “Nooooo!”

Ranger: “Would you expect to find this…”
Slide: a whale
Ranger: “...here?”
Slide: vast desert spaces
Kids: “Nooooo!”

Ranger: “Would you expect to find this…”
Slide: a big ol’ rhinoceros
Ranger: “...here?”
Slide: the sign at the entrance to Seawall Campground
Karen, into Shaun’s ear (having recently seen The Gods Must Be Crazy, with its campfire-stomping rhino fire warden): “Nooooo – we’d lose our fire!”

Shaun, in hysterics, fell off the log bench, disrupting the show until he managed to get a grip again.

Back to the story: so there we were, the eight of us, and we’d seen the slide show, slaked our thirst, and decided we were up for a meal that somebody else had cooked. So off we went to a colorful little lobster boil eatery called Duddy’s, in nearby Bass Harbor (pronounced HAH-bah).

Shaun and I had dined there on a previous trip, finding the food tasty and the waitress – well, she was cool. She sat down at our table and told us her life story. We had the impression that this wasn’t uncommon at Duddy’s. Some of the other wait staff looked like they might have been on work-release.

So Duddy’s was an appropriate choice for a bunch of hygienically challenged campers looking for a good feed. We were ushered into the Large Group room, which featured two long tables which neatly seated eight each. The other one was already occupied by another party of eight, but the head count was the only similarity. Male and female alike, they were attired in khakis, Topsiders without socks, and polo shirts. We guessed that they were slumming from Northeast Hahbah or Bah Hahbah.

We lost no time ordering mass quantities of mollusks, crustaceans, and beer, which we fell upon ravenously. It was in the relative silence created by the first wave of ingestion that the neighboring table began to make its presence known. Although there was a form of general conversation going on over there, the woman at the head of the table had something important to say, and by God, she was going to make sure everyone heard it. Her braying became louder and louder, occasioning some irked looks around our table as she began to dominate our conversation as well.

Our waitress arrived to clear away the first round of debris by the simple expedient of pulling up a trash can and sweeping the throwaways right off the table into it. She was handing around the next set of plates when a booming pronouncement from the dominatrix of the next table stopped us all cold.

“So there I was, trapped between the fourth and fifth astral plane, and couldn’t get back to my body!”

That’s when the madness took me. I leaned over to Polly, next to me at the end of the table, and said, “Campers’ Rules. No holds barred. Pass it on!” She did.

There ensued such a cacophony of belching, slurping, farting, and general rudeness that the waitress collapsed against the doorframe in hysterics. I should note that all this was from the women of our party. The men, who certainly had not been deficient in the noxious emissions department earlier in the trip, seemed unable to muster up as much as a mouse fart, and had to settle for singing extremely bawdy sea chanteys at the top of their lungs. Our table of eight had dispatched the khaki-wearers to their own astral plane, leaving us in clear possession of ours.