Letter From The Editor

PORTLAND

MONTHLY

Publisher Nancy D. Sargent Senior Editor Colin Sargent Production Manager Margarete C. Schnauck Advertising Director Bobbi L. Goodman Director of Marketing Linda E. Leavitt Art Director John Bidwell Advertising Valerie Tucker Cindi Baxter Hilda Taylor Circulation John Bidwell Composition L&L Kern Typesetting Copy Editor Shelby Cooper Pictures Rhonda Farnham M. C. Schnauck Bookkeeping Johanna Hannaburgh

Contributing Editors Michael Hughes Marcia Feller Richard Bennett Juris Ubans M. Reed Bergstein Kendall Merriam Fritzi Cohen Henry Paper David Swartzentruber Dan Domench Anthony Pearson Dennis Gilbert George Hughes

"Sis" appears from CHROMA by Frederick Barthelme. Copyright @ 1987 by Frederick Barthelme. Reprinted by permission of Simon and Schuster.

Advertising Office: 154 Middle Street, Portland, ME 04101 (207) 775-4339.

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June 1987, Vol. 2, No.5, copyright 1987 by Portland Monthly, Inc. All rights reserved. Application to mail at second-class rates pending at Portland, ME 04101. (ISSN: 0887-5340). Opinions expressed in articles are those of authors and do not represent editorial positions of Portland Monthly. Letters to the editor are welcome and willbe treated as unconditionally assigned for publication and copyright purposes and as subject to Portland Monthly's unrestricted right to edit and comment editorially. Nothing in this issue may be reprinted in whole or in part without written permission from the publishers. Postmaster: Send address changes to: 154 Middle Street, Portland, Maine 04101. Return postage must accompany all manuscripts and photographs submitted if they are to be returned, and no responsibility can be assumed for unsolicited materials. Portland Monthly is published 10 times annually by Portland Monthly, Inc., 154 Middle Street, Portland, ME 04101, in February, March, April, May, June, July, September, October, November, and December.

Out Of Africa

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In the sparkling waters of Portland Harbor rests a huge blue rectangle. And cradled like a monster baby inside the blue rectangle is a Spruanceclass destroyer. With sleek lines, bristles of guided missiles, a snappy young complement of officers and sailors, and Bath Iron Works officials climbing all over her, the warship has a funny lungfish of a name, the U.S.S. MOOSBRUGGER.

Seven years later, that name still cracks me up!

Now it is enough of a wonderful surprise that Portland has been able to complicate its skyline recently with a beautiful hunk of technology like the MOOSBRUGGER. To tell the truth, I swell with pride when I think of Bath Iron Works coming here. Real, perspiring industry like BIW could actually rescue Portland from its dependence on a chocolate-chip economy!

But the MOOSBRUGGER knocks me out with a sort of yo-yo moonglow triple-take: In the Indian Ocean (summer, 1980, during the Iran crisis), in unearthly turquoise waters below the equator, 26-year-old Lieutenant Junior Grade Colin Sargent, USN, flew hundreds of helicopter sorties to this very same MOOSBRUGGER. My helicopcopter was an 84-foot, II-inch Boeing CH-46D - a great gray Navy grasshopper with jet engines - and my home ship the KALAMAZOO, in waters off the shores of Mozambique.

We carried letters and ice cream and sailors and pressed ham to the MOOS-' BRUGGER. Keep your eyes on the horizon, and let the ship come up to you. That dancing champagne cork? It sounded like instructions for boxing Sugar Ray Leonard.

At 2 a.m. her wake looked like phosphorus below the stars. I was another person then, in a lurid, beautiful, lost world between flightquarters and nightly readings of William Blake.

I felt as if I'd fallen off the flat surface of the globe. What possible use could the MOOSBRUGGER be to me in the future? I wondered,' feeling sorry for myself and hovering absently beside the ship's hypnotically swinging superstructure. We've been out here for seven months! But I took notes anyway, just in case I ever ran into the ineluctable MOOSBRUGGER again. By some incredible coincidence, you understand.

The U.S. Moosbrugger, DDG 980, in Portland's Bath Iron Works drydock.