(cheerful music) - [Lewis] So just as totally irresponsible and rebellious and just a pain in the ass to all the teachers.

I was suspended I don't know how many times and expelled three times, three times they said, "Lewis, that's it, out, you're gone, you're history and you ain't never gonna come back."

But then, the school board or the teachers or the administration say, "Oh we can't do that, it'd break poor old Winnie's heart, let the little jerk back in."

Back in I'd come and then I'd do something awful and out I'd go again.

[Narrator] Production, of A Good Read on Maine PBS is made possible in part by the Davis Family Foundation.

- [Lewis] I always liked to go in and poke around.

As a matter of fact, I think I couldn't go by them without stopping and same with any old camp.

It seems to me that a deserted camp is the saddest most nostalgic thing in the world.

- Hi, I'm Sandy Phippen, your host for A Good Read, Writers on Writing.

We're going to be meeting a lot of writers all kinds of writers from all over Maine at their homes, at places where they grew up, and places that continue to provide inspiration.

When you first meet Gerald E. Lewis you'll see why we chose him to be our first author in this series.

For Jerry Lewis's voice is the authentic voice of the Maine storyteller.

In his wonderful book, How to talk Yankee which has sold over a hundred thousand copies.

Jerry defines successfully and amusingly, a lot of Maine words spoken by the natives.

For instance, in the A section, Abel, ah, adge on, ain't got nothing, and of course ayah.

But I want to read to you his definition of balmy from the B section, "balmy, adjective, use this for irony, set of fiercely cold temperatures.

It was cold up there on Spider Lake, balmy, 35 below on the last day of February, never did get much fishing done.

Well, weren't no black flies to bother ya."

I first met Jerry and learned about him from his column up here in Maine which was popular in the Bangor Daily News.

Jerry grew up in Boothbay Harbor.

Spent most of his adult life in the Dexter Garland area running a sheep farm and teaching school and doing hunting and fishing in Aroostook County in a hunting camp that he owns with his brother.

- [Lewis] The camp was tight then with a good groove.

We loved it and never before or since had felt more at home.

Our staying in camp for the next several weeks proved to be immensely gratifying.

One of those interludes that is a reference point, a period of fulfillment and enjoyment against which all others are to be measured.

I make this declaration not entirely dripping with the forgiveness of nostalgia, since fortunately enough, I kept a journal while we were there.

It's not a good record, not complete in any way.

Yet it does reflect the excitement and contentment felt by two young men in what seemed even then to be glowing times.

- [Phippen] I want to thank you, Jerry, for welcoming us to your camp.

- Mighty glad to have you here Sandy.

- Now, this is the setting of many of your best stories.

- Well, yes.

Hal wrought figures in many, many of my stories.

I used to have an, an outdoor column and a number of weekly newspapers, hunting and fishing tips and stories.

And Hal Brooke was part of all that.

- The setting, that's right.

- But when you talk of Maine speech, of course we have to acknowledge our mentor, John Gould.

- That's right - He was the man, How to Talk Yankees was quite a success and a lot of fun to do, but he, his main lingo is the book.

But Maine speech has changed as you and I have noted the, it used to be a difference in a few miles you could tell where somebody's from.

Still there is the Aroostook accent, thanks heavens.

There's still a down East accent.

There's still a um, a Portland accent.

There's a Lewiston accent but it is, it's, it's combining, melding, and pretty soon we'll all talk like Tom Brokaw.

It won't be any fun anymore.

- Oh, I'm afraid.

And I'm ah, I hope, I hope not.

- But in dialogue, I'm never conscious of of trying to achieve an effect in dialogue.

I was greatly complemented one time by a reviewer who said that Lewis is a master of dialogue.

I think that was, that was a fine compliment.

I liked it.

I think dialogue should carry itself without any fancy verbs in the middle.

He ex postulated.

He said, that's good enough.

Or maybe nothing.

- Right - [Lewis] It's more natural that way.

- Sarah Orne Jewit I'm sure that the language of her time was very different from ours.

And still you'll read it today and it sounds just as natural as if she was speaking today.

And the same with Mark Twain and that, of course is genius, to work, to carry that quality along.

- That's right.

Now, I want to talk also about being here in the middle of Aroostook County at your old campsite.

- Yup - This was not the first camp on this site.

- No, I first had a camp here in 1948, 49.

It was one of the old Aroostook camps with the logs over the ports like this, but all log construction.

And that burned in 1987.

And my brother, Dwayne and I, Dwayne's co-owner this place, built this in oh, 87, 88, 89.

And we're very happy with it.

- What'd you what'd you build it out of?

Odds and ends?

- [Lewis] Yeah.

These are leftover pieces from the Northern Products Log Homes in Bangor, and they were $5 a pickup truck load, and they let us put them together.

And we had a lots and lots of help.

- [Phippen] Did your friend Stanley whom you call Eben in your stories.. - Stanley was here a lot.

- [Phippen] He have something to do with it?

Okay.

- We haven't seen Stan, I'm looking forward to going down under the Hill and saying hello.

- Oh, I want to meet him.

He's a legend.

- Yup - And then you started well you start writing stories right away about it or just, you kept a journal, didn't you?

- Yes.

When Stan and Stan and I spent a part of a fall here in 1950 and I kept a journal in and, and it's to the writers eye it's a mess, but nostalgia wipes out all the clumsiness.

And we're just so glad that I have it.

- Cause it makes it easy when you're writing your stories.

- Right.

It makes it easier in this Back Trails.

Yes.

The new book.

- Well, what are you trying to get down in your stories, the book the books, we should mention My Big Buck and So Long Scout.

Those are your stories about this area.

- Yeah, those are fiction stories.

Well, I don't know there, some of them are, some of the accounts are true, some are fictionalized.

Some are wholly fiction, just made up.

- [Phippen] I guess this is the way back to the camp isn't it?

- [Lewis] This is it.

I'm always fascinated by old camps in the woods and here's a little piece I wrote about about them , or about one in My Big Buck.

"I always liked to go in and poke around.

As a matter of fact I think I couldn't go by them without stopping, and it's the same with any old camp.

It seems to me that a deserted camp is the saddest most nostalgic thing in the world.

You squeeze in through a door which seldom opens fully, only a foot or so.

Then the minute you're inside the emptiness and desertion strike you.

You think of all the good times the old camp has witnessed, the lies that were swapped, the cribbage that was played, the good natured joshing.

You think of the fine meals that have been eaten there.

Game and fish and bacon sizzling for breakfast.

You think of what a cheery sight it must have been to the returning hunter or hunters when it was a lived in place with lamplight in the windows and how good they must've felt when they stepped through the door and were in the woods homes with their buddies.

That's the most nostalgic thing of all thinking of those old times and old friendships, the empty old camps echo it all."

- [Phippen] Talk about male bonding too, the whole hunting scene.

You know, the whole business of coming into the woods getting away from the clearing as you call it.

- Yep.

Everything outside of here is the clearing.

Well, it's, it's great to be with a bunch of guys and play cribbage and swap lies and just have a good time in camp.

- Right?

- I don't care so much about, I don't care at all anymore about hunting and fishing, well, hunting at all.

I still like to fish, but the idea of going to camp just be in the camp.

And not necessarily this camp, just a camp - [Phippen] Right - I like Camps - And tell how camps have changed.

- [Lewis] Yeah - This is a real Maine camp, what you've got here.

- The one next door the Bancroft camp that's owned by Bob Raymond now, that's a good old camp and Stan's camp's a good old camp.

Some of them, some of the things that are built today don't have the aesthetic appeal that the older places do.

- They seem like suburban houses out in the middle of the Maine woods.

- Oh yes.

And they have the television and why bother to come up here?

- That's right.

That's right.

What's the point?

Exactly So what would happen in the, on a hunt on a typical day here during hunting season?

- On a typical day?

Well, if we had hunters in camp if my brother Dwayne was here my nephew, nephews Raymond, or Dwayne Jr.

They'd be up early and make themselves a breakfast.

Cause the old man, me, I wouldn't be up thinking about breakfast at the ungodly hour.

And they'd be out looking for, for deer, sign of a deer.

But this country is very poor in deer lately.

That's clear cutting, I think as well.

And the coyotes, and it used to be good deer country, but - [Phippen] Not anymore?

- No, it has by far the fewest doe permits, antlerless deer permits in the state, this area.

- Oh for heaven's sake - Yeah - But you have, you have moose here.

- Oh, there's moose and moose and moose here.

- [Phippen] Bear?

- It's strange we didn't see one coming in.

Yes, lots of bear.

This is heavily hunted for bear during bear season for different lodges - Bird hunting?

Do you come in for bird hunting too?

- Yep.

What partridge hunting there used to be though We, I remember killing partridge with a stick.

They were just, so, they were so tame.

and you tweeted at the partridge, and would sit there and sit there and either shoot hit the branch it was on, it wobbled back and forth.

But they were tame.

And here's the section from The Major and his Merry Band, a story that's in So Long Scout.

"I had just arrived in camp for an extended hunting trip.

The late October day was perfect and Eben sat on the sunny porch, cleaning his old Wingmaster shotgun.

He'd written that there were plenty of partridge around and a good deal of deer sign too.

I'd gotten most everything squared away back on the farm and was looking forward to a fine vacation.

But as I was walking up the trail I'd been shocked to see a new structure in the clearing not far from Eben's and my camp.

The brilliant leaves obscured most of it, but what I could see was certainly as out of place as I don't know what, a burger franchise in St Peter's square perhaps.

I never got to know those people well, but one of them felt that everything should be in order.

He was nasty neat.

Everything should be almost military.

And the guys should have the shoes lined up under the bunks and the bunks should be made up with hospital corners.

And they put up with this stuff for quite a while.

And then they drove him out of camp and he built another place.

He called his chalet next to this, but he was, he was ex-communicated from that.

But just, that was an idea for that story.

- That story.

That's one of your best stories.

- Well, thank you - It's an excellent story.

Also, the language you just said, nasty neat.

And that's an old expression.

- Yup - People who are like that.

- Right.

- And words like pleg, but you don't hear that word anymore because it's based on plague.

You know, they say don't pleg him, that down, down home that's what they would say.

Stop plegging her.

- As we all know the plague was nothing funny.

The plague was pretty serious business.

- No speaking of that, while we're on that topic How to Talk Yankee, how do you classify that book as a reference, as, as literature?

- [Lewis] I call it my comic book - [Phippen] Your comic book?

Why?

- Well, because it's illustrated in a comic book fashion by Tim Sample and because of it's size and the format of it, I guess.

- But it's accurate - Well, it has been quite accurate.

- Yeah.

It's very accurate.

You did a good job on it.

- I've always been quite sensitive.

I know when I hear myself I know when I see this, I'll say that, What a voice isn't that awful?

Oh, I do sound like an awful hick, but I've always been interested in that Maine language.

And when I was in the army, of course, flown in, at first when I went up to Denver, I was in a hospital and I was thrown in with a bunch of yahoo southerners.

And they all talked alike, I didn't and nobody talked like me anymore.

- No, that's right.

You are the Mainiac.

- Right.

And I was very conscious of that, but but not ashamed of it kind of proud of it I guess.

I liked the Maine, I love to hear a Maine accent.

- I love the Maine accent too, but I didn't, as a kid growing up I did feel like a hick.

And when you went to college, people made fun of you and they called you a New Englander, and they tried to change your speech patterns and so on and so forth.

But now I love it.

I mean, you don't hear it enough.

You want to hear it.

It's great.

- I have an anecdotal though.

I was in Holland for a year teaching over there.

And there was a meeting of all the Fullbright people who had been in the United States and American Fullbrighters over there in Holland.

And it was in a big, big room.

I couldn't, some kind of a banquet or something.

And a girl, a young lady, came from all the way across the room.

She had heard me over the babble of hundreds of people in there and came over and said, you're from Maine.

And I said, well, yes I am.

How'd you know that?

She was Dutch and she had spent a year in Maine and she recognized that - She heard it.

- Maine accent.

- Yeah.

The distinguishing the accent that we have.

(old-time music) - Up there is where you did all your reading?

- Oh, everything, hundreds of books, sit there and read and dream and eat raisins.

- Eat raisins?

(chuckles) And that, and that gets me to ask, a man who grows up on the coast in Boothbay Harbor, how come you write so many hunting and fishing and inland stories?

- Well, for the last 30 years, of course I've lived inland.

And even when I was living here I was very much interested in hunting and fishing.

- Right.

- And in reading about hunting and fishing, the McDougal stories.

And, and I was always a great reader of, of everything, but outdoor magazines still - When you, you, Dexter was where you taught most of the time.

And that's when you had your farm.

You write about that too.

- Yes.

- Raising sheep.

- Raising, we raised everything there but we thought it'd be good for the kids, the three children to have exposure to pigs.

We always had pigs and we had a horse which had a colt.

That was nice.

We always had a, an annual steer.

That was a handful for me.

Of course we had sheep.

We had at one point, I think we may have had 60 sheep.

And that was good for the kids to take care of them and groom them and show them at fairs.

- Jerry, right where we're sitting here with the setting of the burned out hulks of the boats.

This is the setting of one of your most famous stories.

One of your best stories, I think.

- Well, thank you.

It's nice to have a compliment.

I guess maybe I thought that if I wrote that piece for the national fishermen it would expunge the incident from my mind.

But as I told my students and others you have to get the setting of VJ night.

No, it was just delirious.

Anything went.

- This was August, 1945 - August, 1945, - End of World War II.

- And I was a senior in high school and we will never know a moment of such release and relief as that night because the boys were coming home and it was, all the misery was over.

So we in town here, we rang our own church bells and we rang other people's church bells, and danced, snake danced through the streets and kissed any girl that we wanted.

I remember seeing one man who will not be identified and a woman being very intimate standing up in the doorway of Cedar's drugstore.

And that, that was just something that was accepted.

And then somebody had the idea that it would be appropriate to, to burn the vessels.

There were five of them here, I think and they were wonderful playgrounds for kids.

And it was a terrible thing to do.

- Were they still working vessels?

- Well, the one that we burned was in good shape and in fact had good furniture stored aboard it.

So it wasn't a wreck.

It was alright.

It wasn't a working ship.

Well, we got up there and then got down in the cabin of it.

And somebody found an old mattress full of straw and piled it up against the bulkhead and lit it.

And we were immediately in trouble because the fumes were very acrid from that thing.

And there was no light.

We hadn't had brains enough to bring flashlights but then there was light from the fire and we were suffocating really.

And by then people were out gazing at it and they had flashlights and they were pointing them.

That Jerry Lewis, that poor Lewis's boy, I know him, I'm going to tell his father, blah, blah, blah.

It was horrible.

Yeah.

After that, I hid out in the woods, up at Mount Pisgah, for three days, I slept at home but I was sure I was going to the Wyndham reformatory.

- [Phippen] What other stories have you written about Boothbay?

You haven't written that many about Boothbay have you?.

- No, no.

There was one in The Up Here in Maine book called Nine Little Lobsters, a misadventure of my old pal Stanley and I, we borrowed, translate that to stole, a boat, went off Indiantown Island which is a lovely place, great place to look for Indian relics when I was a kid and hauled other people's traps and took only short lobsters.

We thought that was, you know, quite ethical.

We didn't, we wasn't robbing if we took only short lobs.

- There were nine little lobsters.

- We took, well, we had 36 and we ate uh, 17.

And for once I ate more than Stanley did.

I had nine lobsters, he had eight.

Cooked over the outdoor fire there.

Then one of mother's canners and with a case of Budweiser and a pound of Oleo.

"It was a true glop, Stanley poked in his eighth and barely managed to get it down before he fell back within a stupor, I chuckled, had my ninth and I too conked out, end of a glorious feed.

It was another story when the cold dawn broke upon two shivering, young poachers besmeared by lobster juice and tormelly, with a borrowed so-called boat and the 20 remaining shorts in the light of day for all to see.

Well, we got out of it somehow, and back on the mainland, we divvied up the 20.

From which our mothers made stews, from which they made delicious stews of which they were not proud, but they must've figured boys will be boys for I don't remember getting hassled very badly, but maybe that too, has slipped my mind."

- Oh, that's great.

[Phippen] How were you as a student?

- I was a very close to the bottom of my class, very close.

So I just was totally irresponsible and rebellious.

And just a pain in the ass to all the teachers.

I was suspended I don't know how many times and the expelled three times three times they said, Louis, that's it, out, you're gone, you're history.

and you ain't never gonna come back.

But then the school board or the teachers or the administration say we can't do that, break poor little Winnie's heart.

Let the little jerk back in.

Back in, I'd come.

and then I do something awful and out I'd go again.

And it was all, but maybe it's part of the grand design because I became a teacher myself.

And I know that I was much more patient with - [Phippen] The same kind of kids - The same kind of kids.

- [Phippen] Do you feel disappointed or angry about your literary career?

- Guilty, I guess.

- Guilty (chuckles) - Yeah, that I haven't done more.

I see people, you know, getting along my age and I have friends who were passing on and then I think well I at least have a chance to do something why the hell don't I do it?

- [Phippen] So what were your habits when you went back to teaching?

Did you write every day?

On the weekend?

- [Lewis] When I was most productive, I did write every day.

I'd get up at six in the morning and, and work for an hour and a half.

And that little bit of time you're going to get an amazing amount.

- A lot of teachers write that way.

I know.

- Yeah.

Now I don't.

And why on the subject?

Why, undisciplined, lazy used to be, has been, maybe never was writer, is the subject of this, I'm not sure, but I lost the fire in the belly there for a while, but maybe I'll.. - Regain it, I hope so.

You better.

Teaching didn't inspire you to write?

- No, that was a job, and this was something else.

- You kept them separate - Yeah, I guess so - But you did them at the same time.

- Yup.

- You really did, all along.

Now, I want to talk about I guess the, the teaching career, you haven't written much about your teaching career, have you?

- No, not much - Not at all, that I know of not any stories or any essays of your teaching career.

- I guess one thing comes to mind when I first started teaching in Deer Isle I didn't know any more about grammar the the goose knows about God.

I was terrible, of course in school I'd never paid any attention to it whatsoever.

I want to acknowledge here.

Although I have, there was a girl in this class by the name Athelda Powers, and she was a sweetheart and much, much ahead of her teacher.

And she would ask me, somebody, some kid in class would ask me, what's the difference between a predicate noun and the direct object Mr.

Lewis?

They both come after the verb.

What indeed is the difference?

So I'd say, well, what do you think Athelda?

And she'd always give me the right answer.

She said, well, Mr.

Lewis the predicate noun comes after the verb but it means the same thing as subject, doesn't it.

So she bailed me out.

She never said, you dope, you're getting paid for this, why don't you answer it?

- Well, how would you I guess what I want to ask is how would you classify yourself as a writer?

Do you want to be called a humorist, essayist, a journalist or just a plain old storyteller?

- Essayist I think - An Essayist basically.

You see your short stories as even essays too?

- No, not really, but essay now literally it means to try - To try right, it's French, but that's right - So that's appropriate I guess.

- Right.

And if you're really good at essays and you are, it's almost like writing poetry.

Wouldn't you say?

- When it comes out well.

- Had you fooled around with poetry, and you like poetry?

- Oh yes.

Very, very much.

Well people who see they're poets you know I see this, damnedest tripe and garbage published by people who say they're poets.

Really good poetry is understandable and moving.

- You don't need to be explained.

- It's like a good cartoon.

It's immediate, you know, you don't need to figure it out.

- That's right.

- But no, I'm not a poet, once in a while there'll be a poetic image, I suppose, but - You ever try writing a novel?

- I've got a great idea for a novel is called falling - [Phippen] Fallen?

- [Lewis] Falling - [Phippen] Falling.

- [Lewis] Yeah.

I have a fear of heights and it's about a guy who witnesses an indiscretion on his wife's part while he's climbing a tree.

I used to be a tree surgeon and you see that stuff when you look down, and he falls out of this tree and then he's, then well if I ever get it down, it's an idea anyway.

- Have you started writing it?, - No, saw it in my head.

That's a good place for it ain't it?

(chuckles) - [Phippen] Yes - [Narrator] Visit our website for more information about A Good Read and the writers featured in this series, including a transcript of the interviews, biographies of each of the authors, a complete list of their published works.

Some tips on how to find those books, what's on their own must read book lists and more.

- Production of A Good Read on Maine PBS is made possible in part by the Davis Family Foundation.

(soothing music) - That's a good hand right there.

- [Lewis] And here, I've got 15 2, 15 4 - [Phippen] Whoops, is that it?

(laughs) I think so - You ain't much competition (laughs) - [Phippen] No, I'm not.