Burt Dow: Deep Water Man

One of Sweet Potato’s favorite books has been Robert McCloskey’s Burt Dow: Deep Water Man.  Burt Dow is effectively two stories:  the first half is a folksy portrait of a spry old salt who putters around his Maine oceanside town; the second half is a crescendo of hallucinatory zaniness occasioned by an encounter with a whale. 

 “Burt Dow is an old deep water man, retired of course, but retired or not he still keeps two boats.  The first is a dory so old and leaky that it can no longer be launched….”

Small Potato had been listening to Blueberries for Sal since she was a baby-baby, so she was probably 18 months when I brought home Burt Dow in an armful of McCloskey books from the library.  McCloskey’s writing style tends toward being hokey and overdone, but there must be something about the cadence that gives kids just the right amount of time for looking at each page.  The morning after we first read Burt Dow, Sweet Potato and I were lounging in bed waking up Beeb the Mom, when I mentioned to Beeb that Burt was swallowed by a whale in our new book.  Sweet Potato got very serious-looking and said, Open mouth; Lotta teeth!  I mean, Burt Dow is too much narrative for a baby, and it doesn’t qualify as full sentence use, exactly, but it put me on notice that someone was paying real attention and retaining information that I thought was just noise to her.

 

Of the McCloskey books I’ve seen, this is one of the two illustrated in color (I think the other is Time of Wonder).  The earlier hardcover editions from the early 1960s reproduce the richness of the gouache.  The pictures are fluid and full of light, and although any American seascape painted in watercolor probably owes something to Winslow Homer, these are bright with unexpected color that reminds me most of Fairfield Porter.  Note, though, that the cheap Puffin edition currently in print has a harsh look, full of brackish blacks and sour greens. 

 

The “Puttering” half of the book has Burt in his routine of having breakfast with his mannish sister, tossing a bit of his breakfast to his seagull friend; caring for his flowers, and tending to his old double-ender called the Tidely-Idley, with its make-and-break engine.  He sets out on the water for a day of handlining cod, but the puttering ends when he snags a whale by the tail.  First Burt tries to make up for snagging the whale.  He clips off his cod hook and applies a super duty bandaid (so that the whale won’t leak any blubber).  Burt avoids crustiness and geezerdom by his genuine kindness, which comes across in his actions (tossing a popover to giggling gull every morning; accommodating his sister; the band-aid theme) and his softer mien in some illustrations.

 

The “Tripping” half of the book begins with the illustration of the Dubuffet-like black crackle-finish whale sitting on the surface of the water, giving Burt a sly backward glance.  McCloskey at this point gives up the characteristic naturalism of his settings and really trips out.  The sky goes dark, the wind whips up, and Burt, needing shelter from the gale, talks the whale into swallowing him and the Tidely-Idley.  Burt becomes more and more concerned that the whale did not understand that Burt’s occupancy was to be temporary, so he sets about giving the whale indigestion by spattering the hot pink interior with mud and oil, along with a bit of muttering that indicates that this is McCloskey’s commentary on Jackson Pollock’s classic style.  Burt and the gull succeed in getting the whale to belch them out, but once on the sea again Burt finds himself encircled by many whales of many strange colors, all splashing him with their tails.  Just as it seems that his boat will be destroyed by the commotion, Burt realizes that this is the whales’s way of requesting band-aids similar to the one Burt gave the first whale.  Burt obliges the whole pod, all of whom spume their thanks, still floating weirdly on top of the water, like bath toys. Burt then sets home on a clear evening sea.

 

Burt Dow was heavily requested for about four months, and is still the source of certain themes in our house:

 

• If she sees a squirrel or bird on top of a shed or house, Sweet Potato points out that it would be appropriate to throw it a popover!
• Sweet Potato likes to go through the first half of the book, through the application of the band-aid, at which point she usually expresses her need for a band-aid on her own finger.  (Would a children’s book today brave genericizing a trademark?)  Really, the band-aid thing has taken on a life of its own, and if we were to apply band-aids at Potato’s instruction, she, all of her stuffed animals, Beeb, and I would all be wholly encased in them.
• Lakewood Park, one of Sweet Potato’s favorite places, features a wooden playground structure incorporating a boat shape, which is why the park is known to us as the “Tidely-Idley Park.”

One of the main reasons for this posting is to be able to reference back to it later posts.