I once met Marilyn Monroe… well sort of
I bought her a bottle of very expensive champagne…

She was married to the playwright Arthur Miller at the time
They lived in Arthur’s eccentric house in Roxbury Connecticut
Marilyn would have her driver bring her across the bridge at Lake Zoar into Newtown
To visit her friend Nino at his restaurant “La Ronde” just off Route 25
She was always accompanied by her housekeeper who looked a lot like her
They were dressed in old jeans and bulky sweaters and both wore dark glasses
This big Caddie would drop them off a little before noon and she would settle in a booth
In a dark corner of the pub area while the maid would go off to the Grand Union
With the driver to do the shopping…

Nino would come in with two glasses and a bottle of champagne
He would sit and drink and talk with her for a while
And then go back to the kitchen to cook for his other customers
He was a great chef and people who used to dine at his place in New York
Would come up on the new Interstate for his special dishes and great wine cellar

“La Ronde” was the creation of Enric Madriguera and his wife Pat Gilmore
Enric had a great NYC latin band in the 30’s into the late 40’s and Pat was his vocalist
They got fed up with New York and bought an old farmstead in Newtown
They spent a lot to turn it into a country inn and Nino came along to cook
Because he was sweet on Pat although she never went for him at all
The bistro didn’t work out so they sold the place to Nino and went back to the city

My business was located only a few minutes from “La Ronde”
And I would take my clients there for lunch because it was convenient
And the food and service impressed them… It was very expensive
But it could be written off as the cost of doing business…

One fellow I used to deal with was a real character
He was the advertising manager of a substantial company in Bridgeport
And one afternoon when our waitress whispered to us the seedy-looking woman
In that dark corner booth drinking champagne alone was really Marilyn Monroe
He ordered another bottle of her favorite and when the girl brought it to her
He lifted his glass to her and she smiled and nodded and signed her linen napkin
And sent it over with “that was very sweet of you… Marilyn”…

Marilyn got a Mexican divorce from Arthur Miller the following year…
That bottle of ’53 Dom Perignon… Marilyn’s favorite cost me $89 dollars in 1960
I looked it up on Google the other day… $721 in today’s dollars!...
But there doesn’t seem to be any available… Poor Marilyn probably drank it all

She was the ultimate Hollywood victim…

“La Ronde” had one more brief glimpse of fame the following year…
Floyd Patterson used the place as his training camp in 1961 in the defense of his title
As the heavyweight boxing champion of the world against Ingemar Johanssen...

What a view he had from that huge window
He could see eleven islands if you counted a couple large rocks
He used to let me in to look
This is what you could do with lots of money I thought
Build this enormous room and hang it on a cliff
With the whole bay spread before you
Gulls and cormorants and seals lining the ledges and mackerel schooling
And a rich wife back at their cottage making lunch...

The man was a pretty good painter... He couldn't draw but he wasn't a bad colorist
His work was understated… Very subtle and labored
He worked mostly from postcards… Color shots that were sold to tourists
He'd steal a little from one and a little from another and come up with something clever
I thought it kind of strange when he had this great view to work from
But he spent hours alone in the studio
Noodling away at pictures of abandoned saltwater farms
And broken wharves and isolated harbors.,, There were never any people in his pictures
Because the postcards didn't have any either...

His wife was an elegant lady. I heard stories when I first arrived
That she was worth millions. The two of them though never put on airs
Pretty soon we got sort of stand-offish friendly
I would stop by in my skiff if I saw them lounging on their lawn
And I was invited in to tea and english biscuits
Their house was supposed to be the oldest house on the island
It looked it. All low ceilings and lintels. I guess when it was built two centuries ago
All the islanders were smaller. I never saw any of his pictures hanging on their walls
Only a portrait of her father...Mean looking old man…

Sometimes I walked along the shore to their place and climbed the cliff to the studio
They couldn't see me because it wasn't close to their cottage
There was this copse of cat-spruce and birch and alders that hid one from the other
And I would look through that great mass of glass at his meticulous layout
Paint tubes set in spectrum order… Brushes arranged by tip and width
Canvasses stacked by size… This expensive easel in the center of the room
Without a stray dollop of paint on it… And the postcards of the week
Tacked to it above the work-in-progress…

They had no kids. Only a cat named Cora
Every spring they had someone drive them up from New York in a rented limo
A fisherman would load their baggage in his boat and ferry them over to the island
They were both good-looking people
He was tall and sharp-featured and smoked a pipe
She was small and wiry and wore almost no make-up

They used a double-ended dory for mainland trips
She would row the mile or so to keep her figure she said… He never rowed.
They seem more like brother and sister than husband and wife
And their days and nights would run together without change…

Then early one summer when I stopped by he wasn't there
She was alone with her cat… She told me he passed away that winter
I didn't know it but he had a bad heart
I guess that's why he never rowed that double-ended dory
She didn't last long either - Died that fall in New York.
Then I read in the paper that she'd left these millions to the local museum
To build a wing for her husband's paintings...

She'd also left word I was to be invited to the opening
When I went with my wife to see those pictures again they looked priceless
All lit up in magnificent frames with soft music by a string quartet from Boston
And these elegant people had come up from New York for the exhibit
We drank champagne and ate tiny lobster rolls
And kept admiring all those shimmering and expensive postcards…

Later I found out the studio had been there long before they'd bought their place
It was built by some fellow who designed depression skyscrapers in New York
He and his wife also had no kids and spent their summers sketching the island
On rainy days I was told they worked up these corny watercolors
And gave them away to friends who visited occasionally
Some of them were movie stars like the guy who played the French cop in Casablanca
And on the day after Labor Day
They closed everything up and went back to Park Avenue…

After the war I guess the skyscraper business changed
Art Deco was out and glass boxes were in and the architect got old
He sold the place to this rich arty couple I've been telling about
And he and his wife went to live in a retirement community in safe and sunny Florida
The place was run by a homicidal doctor and his nurse who conned old people
With no kids or relatives into signing over their money in return for perpetual care
And then disposed of them…

Of course all this was before my time
The story about the unfortunate architect and his wife made headlines years ago
The local paper ran it again as an aside
When it wrote about the museum's million-dollar windfall
That's how I found out about it
By and by as there were no heirs the rich widow's lawyers sold the property
To close out the estate…

It was bought by a couple of really rich old lawyers from Boston
There won't be any kids around the place this time either as they're both men
They only come up for a couple of weeks in late summer
This big seaplane drops them off right smack at their new wharf
Together with some of their men friends…

Except for one or two loud parties on starry summer nights
No one uses the studio anymore…

It’s strange – After wandering city streets half your life
To wake at four or so and hear the multiple throbbing of diesels
With an old straight eight thrown in
One or two of them with slightly perforated mufflers
Softly crackling in the stillness of dawn

They’re not eighteen-wheelers you hear but fishing boats
Running past the island
Running lights still visible in the brightening
Heading past the spindle that marks the beginning of Morse's ledge
Rousting the ospreys nestled there since early spring

It’s strange too when you can’t sleep and the wind comes west
You hear real eighteen-wheelers struggling up the old post hill
Jamming gears a dozen miles away
Out here though commerce doesn’t matter
Safe on this ledge waiting for the blue

You know he’s there somewhere – Stepping elegantly
Oblivious of murmuring engines passing
You can’t spot him yet in the roseate mist
But as the lacy tide recedes he’ll ghost up
Absolutely still ¬ Long-necked - Stick-legged - Listening

Strange – After wandering those South Bronx streets so long ago
In neighborhoods now wasted by the junkies
Would you have dreamed yourself into this expectant isolation?
Waiting for this noble bird
Its image carved by ancients on their tombs?

These island woods have given up the ghost
The only growth a mindless alder-shoot
As sickness from the south and west
Floats in on warmer rain and snow enroute
To northern lakes

The last great conifers are choked
By resurrected remnants of ancestral crush
Slurried into enormous furnaces and then up-smoked
Far from mid-western streets forloned by soot and slush
To fall as poisoned flakes

The matchless brilliance of long-past dawns
Once fresh with jewel-drops of uncorrupted fog
Is but a heart-rent memory now shorn
Of all its loveliness - a septic bog
A pestilence thought dead awakes

These mournful woods they creak and moan
Their cankerous malignancy now obvious for all to see
But no one comes and they are left alone
Exhausted in their ennui
Elegiac of man's mistakes

Looking out to sea one night I see him
His skiff a stone's throw from our island
Bent-over-old
Stops
Shines his light down into the shallows
Quick flash and then shuts off
Not to scare them

Tide's coming
Full moon's up too and very bright
Paints a shimmering slash across the sea
Glass-flat and windless
Moon-beam spots him - oars dip and stir
Trails of luminous plankton twinkle

He speaks softly into his walkie-talkie
Can't hear but must be they're running good
Nice size I guess
Not too many mackerel in with them
Disembodied voices crackle back
By-and-by other old men come quietly in skiffs
Towing double-enders piled high with net and float
They work quietly throughout the night
Set the half-mile long mesh-trap
Anchored to ancient engine blocks buried in mud
Beyond the old water-fence
Leave a small opening for little fish
To follow the shore to Bramhall's ledge
Can't go further
Trapped

Thin silver swarm swims endlessly inside the net
Presses against it bulging
Glimmering fish-ribbon fluorescing
A few inches from the surface
Bigger fish preying on them must swim deeper
Can't chase and swallow
Might flounder in the shallows

Propelled by rushing tide
The agitation deflects off Bramhall's ledge
Not wanting to - reverses course
Turns south trying to escape
Struggles against the tide
Feeds into the seine's huge circled purse
Set half-way center in the long net run

Dawn sees the seine complete
Burnt-orange floats
Weighted weave vertical in the sea

They sit in their skiffs and smoke
Old men exhausted not saying much

The wife makes coffee
I go out with the steaming crock
Styrocups and doughnuts
Ask permission to fish the seine for mackerel
"Finest kind" and "thank you for the java" they reply

Sun's up
He calls Port Clyde for the dragger Mary Ann
Busy with other seines
Be there tomorrow afternoon

Later that morning after they're gone
I sit with the kids in our skiff inside the purse
Hand-lining for the mackerel
No time at all we catch enough to jar two dozen quarts
Should last the winter
Like shooting fish in a barrel I say
What does that mean daddy the kids ask?

Lots of seals for company in with us
Up they come for air smiling
Mouths stuffed with herring and tinker
Overhead the shags croak at us
Want to drive us off so they can feast too

He comes back later with his skiff
Sits in the center of the purse
Shotgun in his lap
Keep the shags from eating the catch
Not like seals he says - eat their fill and leave
Black buggers will stuff themselves till they can't fly

We hear the blasts till it gets dark
Most all next day too until the Mary-Ann shows up
Beach and rocks littered with dead birds

The old men are back
Feed the fish-hose into the purse
She settles deeper as the catch fills her up
Takes up the purse slowly with her crane
Sea pumping out the other side

They reset the purse after the dragger leaves
The run continues for the next six days
The Mary-Ann returns each day
Until the wind shifts and the run ends

Do the math
The Mary-Ann hauls thirty thousand bushels
Price drops to eighty cents
Because they're also running up and down the coast
How many cans of sardines on supermarket shelves
Does that come to?