A Placemat Moment

I just had a placemat moment. You know those perfect images of perfect boats--the ones that adorn the paper placemats of touristy seafood restaurants and hang on the walls of the Route 95 rest area in southern Maine?  Those pictures sometimes seem too perfect—the soft light a little too doctored, the scene a little too staged, the boat itself too right.
    It's a drizzly day here on Eggemoggin Reach. I just looked out my window over to Babson Island. The green grass of the back field is glowing in fog-filtered light, buds on apple trees are beginning to steal the thunder of the spruces, and the water beyond is a steely gray melting into a same-colored sky. Into this scene motors a perfect white lobsterboat with a red steadying sail. It spins a few circles in the cove and then motors off, bone in teeth, to the west. Kinda perfect. Is somebody setting me up here?

Comments

[Dave Tew]

Matt- Your mention of the Rte. 95 rest area restaurant placemats with 'perfect boats' reminded me of an alarming thing I saw at the McDonald's when it first opened in Bath ("Cradle of Ships") Maine. McD's agreed to at least give a nod to local history in the interior decor: they put up some crude half-models on the walls. One of them looked strange, however, and upon crossing the room to look at it more closely, I realized they'd mounted it with the deck to the wall!