Fitchburg and the Listless Bucket

Spent some time on a cold, clear winter day looking around Fitchburg. An intriguing town. Just got the barest glimpse of it, must go back for more. The Nashua River runs through and powered the 19th century mills.  Like Worcester, Fitchburg was more an engineering/metal manufacturing town (guns, tools, machinery) than a textile town like, say, Lowell was. Or Biddeford, Maine. Fitchburg would have had a significant French Canadian population, since Quebec from the 1860s through the 1950s tended to export its surplus farm population south to the industrial centers of New England. While I was at the Macdowell Colony in the 1990s,, another colonist,  the architectural photographer Cervin Robinson  Cervin was driving south from New Hampshire every day in his Porsche (was it a Speedster?) to shoot Fitchburg. I plan to return. Meanwhile, here are some other towns AL has explored. They are mostly on no one's bucket list, but we never much related to the bucket list. Anyway it seems that the best places to go are most often the places you never heard of until you got there.

Brunswick Maine. Ottawa, Kansas.  Ottawa, Kansas (again)  Clayton New Mexico and and the Hi-Lo Country.  Montreal.  Winnipeg, Manitoba   Frankfurt, Germany.  Toronto.  Colorado Springs

Las Vegas, New Mexico. Bath, Maine   Moncton New Brunswick.  Paris.  Cimarron, New Mexico

Mora, New Mexico.  Eastern Townships, Quebec.

 

Triumph of the Brattle Book Shop (Cervin Robinson photograph)

Cervin Robinson photograph. Boston, 1963. The Brattle Book Shop is still there. More Cervin Robinson here.
 

Oförstörbar

 Ye olde indestructible. 1992 Volvo 240 5-speed,  on the block today at BaT

1955 Plymouth Savoy; 1977 Mercedes 450SL

 

further treats of Dupont St., Toronto from Eva H.D.

Big Mack, Fitchburg, Mass.

Beauty is in the eye....AL will be posting some more on Fitchburg MA which we have been exploring. Very interesting New England ex-mill town. The kind of town where everyone looks at you 2 or 3 times-long hard stares--when you're running around with a camera. Because maybe the last tourist spotted in Fitchburg was before the Civil War. Though my friend the architectural photographer Cervin Robinson was doing some work there while we were at MacDowell, way back when. More on all that in another post...Anyway, truck's a beauty, eh?

Colombian Van, Fitchburg MA

"Color, Flavor and Aroma of my land"                                                                   Fitchburg MA

Cadillac Fitchburg

Fitchburg, MA. Cold bright windy January.
 

Once and always Cutlass.

 

from the poet Eva H.D., in Toronto. 1970 Oldsmobile Cutlass. Dupont Ave. T.O. 

1963 Pontiac Catalina clean machine

Alex Emond caught the Catalina on Hemmings. It's for sale. In Germany. This was the basic plain Jane four door model,  a post sedan. You know, here at AL we have always had a thing for Catalinas. They touch something primal. We've posted several '63 Pontiacs, including a rough and ready Bonneville convertible and a Catalina stationwagon, both here in Maine. Alex saw this Parisienne in a Canada Day parade in Saskatchewan, and we know a couple  Catalina convertibles in West Texas.

Rob Hann and The West

 Some Rob Hann images from the road, way out West.

 

Ye olde hotrods

 From the LowTech guy, Marc Woltinger.

The Boatyard, Sedgwick.

1969 Chevrolet Brookwood missing

You know we like plainjanes, and plainjane wagons especially. I'd rather own the car above than that Maserati that cut you off on the 10 this morning. We've all let great cars go. When I was moving from California back to Maine, for some dumb reason I talked myself out of bringing along my '69 Brookwood (below). Which has turned up a couple time since, the last time for sale, in Ventura, a few years back. Please give AL a heads-up if you ever do spot the Brookwood. It needs to come home.

 

Karen Solie, "Boyfriend's Car" from SHORT HAUL ENGINE

                                                                                                               AL caught the Nova (not black) in Moncton NB

Black Nova. Jacked up. Fast.

Rhetorical question. Naturally,
a girl would choose
the adult conspiracy
of smoked glass, darkened interiors.
Privacy. Its language
of moving parts, belts,
and unfamiliar fluids.

Michael Hofmann reviewed the astounding Karen Solie's The Living Option: Selected Poems in the London Review of Books a couple yearss back. Solie writes long poems, usually. In his review, Hofmann pulled these Solie lines (above) from "Boyfriend's Car", which is actually from an earlier collection, Short Haul Engine.

Red Lobsterboat: calm down.

Yeah she had a rough ride--check our last post--but today was fine. Holding on her mooring with wind blowing E maybe 5-10 knots. What a difference a day makes.
 

Red Lobsterboat, Blue Hill Bay

 

Blowing maybe E37k at a mooring off Dodges Wharf Road in Blue Hill Bay. Some days it's tough being a lobsterboat. Here she is in calmer weather.

Low Tech's '49 Chevrolet Fleetline

Low Tech Marc's '49 Chevy Fleetline looking a bit more fleet than it did, rolling out of the factory. A custom, not a restomod, and not a massacre, either. The car lives in France. We have posted a bunch more Fleetlines of different vintages.

 

1941 Wurlitzer Chevrolet

 1941-46 known as Wurlitzers because...

Dodge Power Wagon, Maine & Philip Booth

When old cars get retired, they go to Maine.

Thick as crows in backlots off the blacktop,

East of Bucksport, down the washboard

from Penobscot to Castine,

they graze behind frame barns: a Ford

turned tractor, Hudsons chopped to half-ton

trucks, and Chevy panels, jacked up,

tireless, geared to saw a cord of wood...

---from "Maine" by Philip Booth

Thanks to Matt Dallett for the Philip Booth lines. We caught the Power Wagon--probably ex-military or ex- Maine Forestry Service-- on a day the pond was frozen and good for skating. We've posted plenty of Power Wagons, like this beauty in Claremont NH. And a '73 Power Wagon is maybe our favorite truck in Cambridge MA.