The primary purpose of the vacation I took earlier this month was relaxation. However, there was also some responsibility involved, since I believe providing some unique token of esteem for family members and/or special friends is a must. But everyone I’m close to already has all the coffee mugs, T-shirts, refrigerator magnets, baseball hats and keychains they need, so this time around they all got postcards with $1.75 worth of Canadian postage on them.
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| Andy Young in his Portland Sea Dogs turtleneck in 1999. COURTESY PHOTO |
I also wanted to get myself something, but I don’t drink coffee, I don’t need new clothing, there’s no space left on the outside of my refrigerator, I’ve got more baseball hats than Sybil had personalities, and I have more keychains than baseball hats. For me a souvenir has to be useful. Fortunately, given where I was headed, I knew exactly what I wanted.
When I was employed by Portland’s professional baseball team, I represented them in public wearing some appropriate article of Sea Dog apparel. During the summer I’d sport a teal golf shirt; for winter speaking engagements I’d wear one of my two Sea Dogs turtlenecks, either the black one or the white one, each of which featured the face of Slugger, the team’s mascot, just above my left clavicle. I loved those two shirts nearly as much as I did my Wile E. Coyote turtleneck, which a good friend had given me some years previously.
Turtleneck shirts serve multiple purposes. They’re functional on social occasions or at work and are also handy for cold winter days when snow removal becomes a priority.
When I changed careers and moved into education, I took those still-sharp-looking Sea Dog turtlenecks with me, transitioning them into serviceable school shirts. Inevitably though, like the Wile E. Coyote model before them, they began fraying at the edges and ultimately just wore out.
None of the generic turtlenecks I currently own stands out, which is why I realized I needed a brand new one with “Newfoundland and Labrador” or “Nova Scotia” or “Magnetic Hill” embroidered on the collar. It’d be perfect: a new, useful shirt that’d simultaneously serve as a memento of a unique and memorable trip. And how tough could it be to find turtleneck shirts in places that are nominally even colder and darker during their lengthy winters than Maine is?
The answer: extremely tough.
There were no turtleneck shirts with unique logos on them in St. John’s, Newfoundland; Saint John, New Brunswick; or Digby, Nova Scotia. No professional hockey teams like the Newfoundland Growlers, the Moncton Wildcats, or the Cape Breton Screaming Eagles had any, either. I searched every tourist-driven establishment on Water Street in St. John’s, which looks exactly like every souvenir boutique in Portland’s Old Port, Kennebunkport, Bar Harbor, Newport, Cape Cod, or every other New England coastal tourist-friendly locale but came up empty.
Disappointed, I returned home and visited Hadlock Field’s souvenir store in Portland to buy myself a consolation turtleneck from the Sea Dogs. But they don’t carry them there anymore, either!
Did turtleneck shirts go out of style when I wasn’t looking? Were they always out of style, but no one told me?
If there’s a north-of-the-border edition of “Shark Tank,” someone ought to go on it and pitch the idea of selling turtleneck shirts with unique logos or names of places on them. They’d make millions of Canadian dollars, I tell you!
Or at least dozens of them, once I make my next trip up there. <
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