Clifford Danforth couldn’t have cared less.
There’d been the rumors for a while now; the President would be coming and it was all the town talked about. “Honestly?” asked the headline of an editorial in The Boothbay Register, the town’s one and only paper, which went on to fret about traffic jams. It was August, griped the editor. The summer folk were overly abundant. Why here, he asked, when that Kennedy clan had the big place down on Cape Cod?
This part of Maine, this part of New England, was Yankee territory—Republicans back to the Civil War, ones Asa Saltonstall, age 103, claimed he could still remember. “263 men voted in the 1864 election,” he had told a dozen reporters every February 12 for the last 12 years. “Women didn’t vote in those days, you know. This township had 262 ballots for Lincoln and the 263rd had a rude word printed over McClellan’s face so they tossed it out but, ayuh, the voter’s intention was clear.” The paper always included an ‘ayuh’ even if Asa didn’t say it.
Ike came to Maine in ’55. He gone fishing all the Christly way up at Lake Parmachenee, which might just as well have been in Quebec for all it mattered to Mainers. And before him it was General Ulysses S. Grant. Both Republicans, at least.
But JFK was popular, even if he was a rich Masshole Democrat and a Catholic to boot, especially with the women of Boothbay Harbor. The young folk and the vacationer liked him, too, and the place was thick with vacationers in August. He was, after all, almost a local, certainly more than that Nixon fellow and a damn sight better looking if the ladies had anything to say about it. And just about everyone was readying a celebration, a parade, even. The fellows at the Legion Hall talked about an honorary plaque.
“He’s got more of those plaques than he knows what to do with,” Danforth told the boys at the hall. “Probably just throw the goddamn thing in the rubbish,” he’d said, ”where it rightly belongs.” He was a workingman, proud of it, and a lifelong Republican who didn’t like to see a fuss made over much of anything, ever. Strapped up high on the telephone pole, fixing the line after yesterday’s unseasonable nor’easter blew a tree across the wires, he only cared about getting the phones working.
“An ill wind blows nobody no good,” he told his wife that morning.
“Are you griping about that JFK visit?”
“Not particularly. Just griping.”
“Business as usual, Danforth,” she said. “Business as usual.”
“Hello? Pick up for Christ’s sake?” he yelled into the handset after tying in his wires to the main switch. “Can you hear me good? Hello? Hello?!? Goddamn it, Peter, what the hell are you doing?”
It was Peter Mather, Clifford’s boss, friend, and manager of this branch of the Down East Phone Company. “Hiya Clifford, how are you? I hear you loud and clear. Static’s gone.”
“What the hell are you doing there? I connected thirty minutes ago. Got four lines to fix up Damariscotta ways!”
“Been five minutes, at most, so keep your shirt on. Anyway, just got the news. Official. President’s coming. Got the Secret Service here already. Just talking to those boys.”
“Ayuh. Is that Jackie coming? I wouldn’t mind seeing her.”
“Heck, they don’t say and I don’t ask. Anyway, we have work to do. The President is staying at the Bishop’s, you know, down Spruce Point.”
“What a surprise, the Bishop’s down la dee dah Spruce Point. Didn’t think he’d stop by me for a ‘Gansett.”
“I mean, Mr. Personality, that you gotta get lines installed there pronto. ‘Parently, he needs to be in touch with everyone. Maybe they’ll want that red phone, you know, that goes to the Russians. We may even have a red phone somewhere in the back.”
“How many they want?”
“Six.”
“I’ll pick ‘em up after I’ve done Damariscotta.”
“Clifford! It’s the goddamned President. To hell with Damariscotta. You get over here now and pick up those phones.”
“Oh, trust me. I’ll walk as fast as I can.”
Danforth took off his New York Yankees cap and wiped his salt and pepper flat top. His was the only such hat in Boothbay Harbor, maybe the only one on the coast of Maine, it was said. When he first met the man who would be his father-in-law, he looked at Clifford through an assessing squint and asked if he was Yankees fan. “Me? Not particularly.” “Then why in heck would you wear such a thing?” his aggravated future father-in-law demanded from beneath a worn blue baseball hat with bright red B emblazoned on it. Without a moment’s hesitation, Clifford replied, “Because it pisses people off.” “It would do,” said the man. “And I’ll trust you don’t wear it in this house.” And Danforth didn’t. He mostly stayed on the porch; summer, spring, fall, and winter.
He inched his way down, enjoying the sound of his spikes kicking into the wooden pole. He breathed in extra heavily, taking in the tar pitch smell of the pine pole that the summer heat brought out. The phones were his life, his responsibility, and he was committed to them. “Phones don’t talk back,” he would say and turn away with a smile when folks didn’t get the joke.
Peter Mather wasn’t surprised when Clifford came to the office three hours later.
“Where have you been?”
“Damariscotta. My goodness, Peter, are you wearing your Legion hat? Honestly. Going to rent a tuxedo for his and her majesty?”
Mather sighed deeply, shook his head, and lit a Camel. “Never you mind. Just get yourself over to Spruce Point, would you? Pretty please With sugar on top. I’ve got to get over to the Hall, you know, clean up the yard a bit with the fellows.”
“You’re not going to have time to make up one of those plaques. Waste of good money anyway.”
“No, too right there, but figured we’d paint the fence, mow the lawn. He’s gotta drive right by it, you know. From the airport. We’re going to arrange something. Stand and salute. Get the kids to wave flags.”
“Oh, jeez, why don’t you kiss him on the lips for goodness sake. Honestly, I’d kiss that Jackie though. You bet.”
“Just get the hell over to Spruce Point.”
“Won’t get six phones installed before five o’clock.”
“Overtime pay, Clifford. Union rules.”
“My rules, Peter. I’ll stop by after for a ‘Gansett. “
Danforth put a box of phones in the back of his truck, including a red one that no one wanted, and drove off to Spruce Point, to the Bishop’s cottage. They called it the Cottage, to the amusement of the locals, since objectively it was a massive turn-of-the-century mansion built on the rocky peninsula. The original Bishops were from Boston, of course, and had made their money off French Canadian immigrants sweating in one of their woolen mills until they moved them to Georgia.
Any remaining Bishops were rarely at the Cottage aside from a few weeks during the summer, but they kept it open, keeping the locals employed, which was good enough to make them local celebrities. James Bishop would come to the Whale’s Tale, loudly order ’Gansetts for the house and whisper for a Courvoisier VSOP: the Tale kept a bottle under the counter especially for him. He insisted everyone call him Jim, but no one did. If you were born in Lincoln County, it was Mister Bishop and always said with a slight sneer. Bishop was now ambassador to somewhere because he’d made a big contribution to JFK’s campaign.
“Probably Quebec,” Frank Pelletier would say at the Tale.
“She ain’t a country,” came from Ron Belliveau.
“Well, she should be,” Frank would counter, and they’d both lift a glass to that.
Danforth drove his truck up the long drive, circled the fountain with the ‘pissing angels,’ and parked at the front doors. He looked up at and, as he’d done since he was a child, wondered why they needed so many rooms if they didn’t plan to use it as a hotel, or asylum as he once suggested to James Bishop, who laughed too loudly even for the Tale and slapped him on the shoulder. “Droll, Cliff, very Droll.” No one called him Cliff.
The drive had a number of black Ford Galaxies wagging long radio antennas that he thought were rather much for the FBI agent who approached him, dressed immaculately in a dark blue/black suit with a gold tie clip that had a shield on it. “Sir, can I help you?” asked the agent. “Nice cars you have. My tax dollars at work, no doubt. You with the FBI?”
“Sir, do you have business here?”
“Phone company, like it says on the truck. You FBI guys asked for phones. I’m here to install them for, you know who.” He gave an in-your-face wink. “Where do you want them?”
“We’re Secret Service, not FBI. We protect the President. They, the FBI, also do investigations. Just a moment.” The agent waved over two of his colleagues, dressed identically, down to the gold tie clips, instructed them to stay with ‘this phone man,’ and knocked on the front door. Another agent, looking like one of those new Ken dolls his daughter wanted, answered, looked over at Clifford, and motioned him forward.
“I’m Agent Woodcock. You were to be here three, no four, hours ago.”
“Had some lines down up Damariscotta, don’t you know. Regular customers, taxpayers and all.”
“Anyway, take the truck around back, and I’ll meet you at the servant’s entrance.”
Danforth looked at the agent, leaned forward with his head cocked to one side, and said, “Come again? I got an ear infucktion and cunt hear you. Bad ear. From a Jap plane. Exploded right in front of me.” He added, “During the war.”
Woodcock bent his head forward, his eyes rising in their sockets, and pointed to nothing in particular. “Go around the back and I’ll meet you at the servant’s entrance in the back.”
“Servant’s entrance, huh? Do I look like a servant? No chiefy, I’m with the phone company.”
“That’s right, Mac, you’re with the phone company. I’m with the Secret Service. You must have missed that. Now go around back to the servant’s entrance. I’ll meet you there and escort you to your work. Get it?”
“If I wanted to be a servant, I’d put on a monkey suit like you and look at you just like this.” Cliff leaned his head back as far as he could and looked down his nose. “I’m no servant. I walk in the front or I don’t walk in at all.”
“Look, Mac, if you want to install those phones, you’ll go around back!”
“If you want ‘em installed you can do it yourself…Mac!”And with that, Clifford Danforth turned around, threw the box in his truck, and peeled off. First, he went to Legion Hall, had two ‘Gansetts, relayed his story, and told the guys there painting the rocks that bordered the walkway they were wasting their time.
“What’s a matter Clifford, …he’s a Sox fan?” said Wen Barker, Commandant of the Post. “Or just a Democrat?”
“One’s as bad as the next,” offered Clifford. “And both worse than two times each the other.”
The guys painting the rocks looked at each other in confusion, but didn’t comment on Danforth’s math, not when he was in a mood. “But that Jackie’s a looker,” said Will Harris, who’d had his license lifted for the season for selling undersized lobsters, not that that stopped him from throwing out his pots.
“I didn’t say he has bad taste, now did I?” countered Clifford.
“No, that you didn’t,” said Will.
Danforth parked the phone truck in front of his newly painted Cape, which he painted himself on his week break earlier that summer. He went into the breezeway from the backdoor, removed his dirty clothes, and tossed them into the hamper. “Anyone here? I could eat a whale.”
“Why, you’re home early,” came the voice of his wife Kate, who greeted him wearing a frilly apron she’d won in a Betty Crocker contest and handed him another Narragansett. “Jenn Mather stopped over, said you were up at Bishop’s installing all the phones for Jack Kennedy. I figured you’d be there all night.”
“Christ, does every busybody on this coast know my business?”
“Peter told her when he heard that Jack Kennedy was coming. I think that’s the berries. Jack Kennedy here and you getting him his phones and all. Did you see him?”
“Not here yet, and I don’t care if I see him or not. See if he can install a goddamn phone line though. Bet they didn’t teach him that at Harvard!”
Kate’s smile evaporated as she grabbed the bottle of beer from Clifford’s hand.
“What on God’s green earth did you do now, Danforth?”
“I didn’t do a thing.”
“I don’t believe that for a moment. Not one minute. No sir. What do you mean Jack Kennedy can install those phones?” She took a long sip of the beer glaring down her nose at her husband.
“Well, it’s just that….”
“Just what?”
“Well, who do they think they are those FBI agents telling me to go round back to the servant’s entrance. Goddamn arrogant bunch of SOBs, I tell you. I’ve never walked in the servant’s entrance of anybody’s home, mansion or no. I was in the Navy too, you know. And my boat also got sunk too after that…”
|
“Yes, after that Jap kamikaze crashed into it…I know, heard it before once or twice every day since I’ve known you.”
“Well, I’ve never gone in through some servant’s door, and I am not about to start now.”|
“Jesus H. Christ, Danforth, that’s because no one here has a goddamn servant’s entrance.”
“Apparently, Mr. James I’m-too-good-for-beer-Bishop does.”
“Danforth, this is the President of the United States. He needs phones. What if the Reds attacked? Oh, I can see the headlines now….Russkies Win, JFK Phone Not Hooked Up. Maine moron gets the blame.”
“You’d think I’d get into the papers, do you?!”
“Don’t get smart with me. What about your job? You can’t refuse. I mean….Danforth….John Fitzgerald Kennedy!”
Clifford took a long pull from his beer, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and his wife took another apron that read, “Don’t argue with an idiot” and hit him with it. “Don’t use your sleeve for crying out loud, Danforth! Let people think you’re low class; don’t prove it!”
Clifford put his beer down, took the apron, and wiped his mouth, then wiped the wet circle left by the beer.
“Danforth! The President!”
“Well, they can stuff those phones up their back entrance as far as I’m concerned. The Russians aren’t going to bomb Boothbay Harbor anyway.”
“If you lose your job over your stubborn pride, you’d better hope they don’t!”
“It’s not pride, Kate, it’s principal.”
“It’s your job. That’s the principal part. Now get in that truck, get to Bishop’s and say something…” Kate sat down hard in the metal chair at their kitchen table, tears forming in her eyes. “You can’t get fired, Clifford. Who cares how you get into someone’s house? You came in the backdoor just now…”
“That’s because we got that new rug in the hall and my boots are all dirty and I don’t want you yelling at me for mucking up the floor.”
“Well, imagine that brilliant degree of insight. Maybe Mister James Bishop wouldn’t want you to muck up those Chinese rugs he’s got in his foyer either!”
Clifford finished the beer, and said, “Ayuh” turning to leave.
“I’ll drop off dinner. Maybe I’ll bring something for the FBI.”
“Secret Service. They protect the President while treating real Americans like second-class citizens, so don’t bother. I’ll be at the Legion Hall…painting rocks.”
Danforth turned fast into the Legion’s parking lot, spraying pebbles over the guys painting there. “Jeezus H. Clifford this ain’t the Indy 500,” said Simon Wilcox, also called Swill by his friends. “Say, Cliff, did you change parties?” Will Harris asked.
Danforth took a spare brush and started swiping the round stones surrounding the driveway. Kate drove by in the Rambler, leaned over to roll down the window, and yelled “You boys hungry? I’ve got aplenty.”
“Katherine,” shouted Peter Mather. “Why didn’t you marry me?”
“Because you were married to my second cousin and you stink to high heaven! If you want these goodies, get me a beer, and shove my husband into his truck and get him off to the blasted goddamn Bishop’s before he loses his job.”
The paintbrushes were put down and all eyes turned to Clifford Danforth, who paid no attention. “Clifford, what’s Kate on about?”
“Servant’s entrance.”
“How’s that?”
“They told me I’m only good enough for the servant’s entrance.”
“Well, I’ll be goddamned. Servant’s entrance.”
“Who the hell has a servants’ entrance?”
“Bishops do.”
“You mean where Jackie’s gonna be?”
“Her hubby anyway.”
“He’s the President, Clifford”
“You don’t say? So Harold Stassen lost. I’ll be.”
“You gotta put in the phones, Clifford. What if Jackie wants to speak to those kids of hers?”
“Then Jackie Kennedy can ask me in the front door like everyone else.”
“Goddamn, was she there?”
“No, just the FB….I mean Secret Service.”
“Why not the FBI?
“They don’t, never mind. If they want phones all they need to do is ask and open the goddamn Christly front door.”
“Well, I’ll be damned, Clifford. You refused to install the goddamn phone for the goddamn President of the entire goddamn United States?!?!”
“I did no such thing and stop spreading rumors. I’ll install every phone in Lincoln County so long as I go in the front door like everyone else!”
“Well, not the servants Clifford. They don’t go in the front door, it appears,” said Will. A chorus ensued.
“Ayuh, goddamn”
“Sonuvabitch, goddamn.”
Danforth downed his beer and tossed the bottle at the garbage bin just as Katherine threw hers. They collided and shattered. “For the love of Pete, Kate,” said Danforth.
“You get yourself over to the Bishop’s, get the phones in, and I’ll clean up.”
“I won’t.”
“Then you clean up. I’m going home.”
She sprayed pebbles over the lawn of the Legion Hall when she drove out, did a wide U-turn, and wound down the window. “Danforth, you’re a stubborn moron of an idiot and if you lose this job you can sleep up at that rat-infested deer camp for all I care.”
“She angry, Clifford?”asked Swill.
“No. That’s her way of saying how much she loves me.”
Clifford spent the next couple of hours painting the rocks but stopped when he cut himself on a piece of a beer bottle.
“That’ll be a nickel, Danforth,” said Wen Barker.
“How’s that?”
“Deposit on those bottles. For the hall.”
“For cryin’ out loud.” Clifford reached into his trousers and pulled out a dime and put in the jar marked “Tipping ain’t a city in China.”
Back home, he sat in the very worn Barcalounger he picked up at the town dump, slurped another beer, and read a Life with Janet Leigh on the cover. “Jeez Marie,” he said out loud.
“What’s that?” said Kate, knitting on the couch. “Thalidomide. The medicine that gives kids those short arms.”
“Horrible, just horrible,” she said. “Those poor kids.”
“Oh no, for the love of…”
“What now?”
“Your boyfriend’s writing about Naval Art that Roosevelt owned. I bet the guy didn’t write a word of it. Paid a real writer, I bet.”
“Who are you talking about?”
Clifford folded the magazine and shoved it towards Kate, poking with his finger at the page. There it was on page 83, right after the Canadian Club ad showing a guy doing the limbo under a flaming stick. “The Strength and Style of our Navy Tradition,” by John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
“Oooh, let me see that when you’re done,” she said.
“Oh, I’m done alright.” He put the magazine on the glass top covering the old lobster pot that served as their coffee table and turned on the TV to CBS to watch The Twilight Zone. Rod Serling’s rich voice came on: “Respectfully submitted for your perusal—a Kanamit. Height: a little over nine feet. Weight: in the neighborhood of three hundred and fifty pounds. Origin: unknown. Motives: Therein hangs the tale, for in just a moment, we’re going to ask you to shake hands, figuratively, with a Christopher Columbus from another galaxy and another time. This is the Twilight Zone.”
“Goddamn.”
“What now?”
“It’s a rerun. I know what happens. Christ.”
“What happens?”
“Outer space guys eat people. They got a cookbook.”
He rose, turned it off, and said he was going to bed early. “Leave it on, Danforth. I want to watch.”
“But I just told you what happened.”
“I didn’t listen. Nighty night.”
“Goddamn.”
Clifford elbowed Kate several times that night.
“I can’t sleep,” she said.
He said, “I’m sleeping like a baby Why can’t you sleep?”
“Because you keep hitting me! How can you sleep?”
“Easy peasy. Put head on pillow. Close my eyes and walla, I’m sleeping.”
“I mean about your job. What if they fire you?”
“For what?”
“For refusing to install those phones up at Bishop’s.”
“I’ll install them right after I walk in that goddamn front door. They got double front doors. I only need the one of them.”
“I just think you should swallow your pride, go in where they ask, and keep your job.”
“I’ll go in where they ask alright, as long as it’s in the front door. Or they can get someone else to put in those almighty phones. And you know what, I’m tired, and I’m going back to sleep.”
“Well, I can’t, so I’m getting up and I can’t sleep because of you!”
“Well, then we have something in common because I can’t sleep either. You know why?”
“Let me guess. Hmmm. Because of me.”
“Bingo. Now good night.”
Clifford woke to the smell of coffee noticing the alarm clock hadn’t rung yet. It read 4:23, and he said, “Goddamn.” He got up anyway, grumbled a good morning to Kate, who was at the kitchen table reading Life. She nodded in the direction of an egg sandwich on a plate. “Yours if you want it,” she said. Clifford nodded a thanks back, poured coffee into his thermos, and put it down as he grabbed the sandwich and put two cinnamon donuts in a paper bag.
“Where to?” she asked.
“Clear some lines up near Sharp’s cove. Staticky, supposedly. Probably just a branch on ‘em.”
“Pete Mather know?”
“I’ll call him later. He gets up at a reasonable hour.”
“Put in for overtime, then.”
Danforth was up on a pole thirty minutes later, calling Pete at home and waking him to say he was clearing a branch off the line and fixing some wires. Pete asked if he had to wake him to tell him that. Danforth said he was lonely and if he could get up early so could Pete, so could the entire county as far he was concerned.
Done fixing the line, he went to the truck to get himself a mug of coffee. The donuts were there. The thermos was not. “Goddamn,” he said, remembering he’d left it at home. He thought about calling Kate and telling her to bring it up but he was already in the doghouse over the lost night’s sleep and decided to pick it up on his way to the phone company. He’d get another few donuts for Pete, too, in case he was also in a mood.
Kate was still at the table when he walked in and without looking up pointed to the thermos on the counter. “You left it.”
“Don’t I know,” he said. He poured himself a cup and grabbed another donut. “Want one?” he asked.
“Don’t try to charm me, Clifford Danforth. I already ate anyway.”
He picked up Life and sat in his chair sipping his coffee when he heard a car, actually several cars, driving past. “Early,” he said to himself and then thought no more about it until they slowed and stopped at the bottom of his driveway. He looked out to see three ford Galaxies and a Lincoln Continental, black, shiny, and brand spanking new.
Four men in suits got out of the Galaxies, looked towards Clifford at the window, nodded, and then looked up and down the empty road. One opened the door to the Lincoln and gave a little bow, or so it looked, and held the door as a handsome man, about his age, emerged. The man straightened, looking like he was in some pain, holding a hand to his back. He was summer stock, clearly, in chinos, tortoiseshell Ray-Bans, blue boating sneakers, and wearing a remarkably snug light blue sweater with a dark tee shirt hem escaping beneath it. Clifford’s first thought was that the sweater must belong to the man’s wife. With the Secret Service suits surrounding him, including a sheepish looking Woodcock, the man walked up to the front door just as Clifford opened it.
“Kate, you’d better come out here, pronto.”
The man waved and gave that toothy smile and Kate, at Clifford’s shoulder, put her hand over her mouth and said, “My god, you are in trouble now. They’re going to arrest you! My god!”
JFK stopped at the bottom of the steps and reached up to shake Cliff’s hand. “Mr. Danforth, I presume. I hope we’re not bothering you too early, but it’s about my phones.”
Clifford just nodded as Kate put her shaking hands on his shoulder.
“As a favor to another navy man, could you get them in?”
“Yesss, sure, Yess, I mean…..”
“That’s wonderful. As soon as you can would be great. Jackie wants to call the kids. They’re with my parents in Hyannis. I’ll tell the boys to keep the front door open.”
Clifford nodded again as Kennedy eyed the Life Magazine in his hand. Pointing at it he said, “Good article.”
“Mr. President, would you mind signing it?” asked Kate.
“Of course,” Kennedy said, “but I’ve got to be honest. I didn’t write a word of it. I’ve got people who do that me.”
“You don’t say,” said Clifford Danforth. “Who would’ve thought.”
(Author’s note; JFK wrote an article for the Aug 10, 1962 edition of LIFE magazine on FDR’s Naval Art collection. The main article was entitled, The Full Story of the Drug Thalidomide. The front cover featured a photo of a very perky Janet Leigh with the caption, “Janet Leigh Breaks Up the Boys at the Lodge.”)