answering machine

[note #14]

The first couple summers I lived on a boat I didn’t have a phone. The boat was on a mooring, I’d row back and forth to shore. This was before cell phones—I’m unsure now how I stayed in touch with people. Maybe I only stayed in touch if I worked with you. If I didn’t work with you maybe I had to drive to your house and knock on your door, hope you were home. Maybe I didn’t stay in touch. It seems almost impossible now.

Then the boat was tied to a dock in downtown Boston for a couple years. I had a phone then, a landline, we called it. But winters were long, you had to worry about the channel freezing—we hung tires off the sides to keep the ice from crushing the hull. It became clear that a boat is more suited to warmer weather, so I dragged it to Provincetown and lived on anchor for the next many summers, where the only phone I have is the payphone bolted to the side of the West End Sailing Club.

I call it my office.

But then the question becomes: Where to be each winter?

My friend Ivan and I get a lease on an abandoned building in the Combat Zone. It needs a lot of work before we can live in it, but the first thing I do is to get a phone installed. A worker runs a new line up the side of the building and in through a little hole he drills through the brick. I hook an answering machine up to the phone so I can call in from anywhere and get my messages. The answering machine will blink a tiny red light if I have a message, or if I call in I can hit a number (nine?) and it will tell me how many messages I have. I’ll write your message down and call you back. This is high tech for the time. Now, when I’m on the boat, I can check my messages from any payphone. I’ll keep this machine for the next many years, calling in from wherever I am, to try to stay connected.