Crime spree

Thinking like a country crook

By Max Alexander

The town library posted a notice reporting several recent home robberies, an unusual and disappointing trend in my corner of Maine. Here, crime is like the Republican Convention -- scary but far away, in an alternate universe where people are forced to wear uncomfortable shoes. And yet if burglars must burgle, posting their deeds in the library is at least reassuringly rural.

Rural or not, the bad news prompted an assessment of my valuables for insurance purposes, so I've been thinking about all the stuff I have, and what might attract a thief.

If the line of boat trailers down at the pond landing on Saturday mornings is any indication, a burglar around here would probably head straight for my fishing gear. He could keep my $39 Abu Garcia Accu Balance rod-and-reel from Sam's Club, so long as he doesn't mess with my Lazy Ike, which is irreplaceable. The Lazy Ike, of which I've never seen another, is a curved wooden lure about three inches long with two sets of treble hooks. It's spray-painted in a black-and-white mottled motif and wiggles through the water in a funny sidewinder way. It's interesting as a piece of wood, but it doesn't look like or act like anything in nature; when my father-in-law first saw it, he didn't say, "If I was a bass, I'd eat that," like he does with the more realistic lures costing $10 down at Hussey's General Store.

But Lazy Ike has two main advantages. First, he was free: I pulled him out of a tree along a river in Michigan with a pair of pliers on my dad's boat. Second, he catches lots of bass, more than any lure I've ever had -- except for the Rattlin' Chug Bug, which I also found but lost. I've lost Lazy Ike several times while fishing in my canoe, but I always manage to paddle over and extract him from the lily pads or the tree stump. I love Ike, and he's with me long-term. Thieves will be prosecuted to the fullest extent.

I should probably put my wife's butter churn in a safe place too. It's a nice old glass "Dazey" model, the kind that turns half a gallon of cream into a big glob of fresh butter (we've never measured how much) after about 20 minutes of cranking. The Lehman's catalog sells reproductions for $129, but this is the real thing. Some people would say it's a lot of work for butter, and in fact there isn't much point if you're using grocery-store cream. But if you've got fresh farm cream, as people here do, you can make the best butter you've ever tasted, dark yellow and smelling like clover as it melts and sizzles in a frypan.

Pet theft is a growing problem in America, and I suppose we in rural Maine need to face the possibility. In our house that could mean loss of my kids' beloved pet cocoon, Mark McGwire. Captured and jarred as a caterpillar a few weeks ago, Mark is scheduled to become a Monarch butterfly soon. He lived in apparent comfort on a diet of milkweed leaves until one day when he suddenly became a bright green pod, dangling from the perforated lid of the Mason jar. I don't know why my Red Sox-addicted kids would name a caterpillar after a National League player. Nor do I know why our butterfly will travel from our dining room table to the Amazon jungle in the next few months, assuming no thief finds him first.

A fashion-conscious crook wouldn't find much in the wardrobe department around here, but we do have some valuable raw material. My wife, who spins wool, recently acquired an entire sheep's fleece. Matted and stained with dung, it's nothing you'd snuggle up to on a winter night just yet. First you have to sort it, discarding the short fibers and the parts that won't come clean. Then you have to hand wash and rinse it. If the rinse water isn't exactly the same temperature as the wash water, the fleece will felt and be useless for spinning. Then you card it, which involves pulling the wool through a pair of fine wire brushes to align all the fibers. That gives you rolags, which are ready to be spun into yarn -- a process that takes both time and skill. Only then, assuming you know how to knit or weave, can you make something warm to wear out of a sheep fleece.

I can't believe we don't bring our tire swing in every night. A good tire swing is hard to find, although location is part of the appeal. You want a nice supple old tire that bends when you sit on it. Then you want to drill a hole through the bottom to drain water. I don't know how long a tire of some sort has been hanging from the 200-year-old red oak in our front yard, but a foot-thick branch has grown completely around the rope, and I'm sure grass hasn't grown under that spot since the Truman Administration. When our tree finally dies, the tire will no doubt go to a museum, which will sell reproduction earrings in the gift shop. I heard Firestone is recalling 20 million tires this week; could there be a safety problem with our swing?

Publicizing these prized possessions in an article is risky, I realize. In these parts, everybody knows where everybody lives. (Our mail service goes by names, not addresses.) But what the hell: living in the country has given me new appreciation for things like fishing lures and butter churns, but it's also made me love stuff less -- even good stuff like this. If I was a bass, I'd eat Lazy Ike -- and sooner or later some lunker will do just that, right before he wraps the line around a stump and snaps it off. Crime is truly everywhere.

Max Alexander lives in Washington, Maine. He can be reached at malex@midcoast.com.