A Living Magazine - Grounded in Maine - Prologue 3 - Visiting Yarmouth Friday

It rained all night but I stayed dry with my old rain set up for the tent. The morning was bright and the sun divided and conquered the clouds. I packed up and headed downtown via Portland Street...

This was a surprise and very rare sight. Opium poppies (Papaver somniferum).

I didn't have much planned for the daylight hours besides exploring the festival and checking out my old neighborhood on the Bayview Street peninsula...

First Parish Congregational Church booths. This was the church I grew up attending.

And, once upon a time my family helped man the strawberry shortcake booth.

A band setting up on the stage at the North Yarmouth Academy lawn.

I once played there during the festival with my high school rock band, "Illegal Jam," seen here...

Illegal Jam (L to R): Alex Wall (Guitar), Jeff Goddard (Bass), Bernard Willimann (Drums),

Daniel Connor (Lead Vocals), and Jimmy Landry (Guitar).

It would also be a day of recognizing old buildings and the houses my friends grew up in...

This was once my friend Amy Horstmann's house.

The American Legion Log Cabin, a true staple on Main Street.

Ah, the Merrill Memorial Library lawn.

I have some great memories about this place. An even older band called "The Wizzards" played here way back when we were freshman in high school as seen here...

The Wizzards (L to R): Todd Coffin (Drums), Jeff Goddard (Bass), Alex Wall (Guitar and Vocals), and Thomas Snow (Keyboards, Guitar and Vocals).

The Town Hall Lawn tent, with with the Pat's Pizza stage set up for musicians to play later.

A shot of the many booths lining the Town Hall Lawn.

I made my way across the street to the ball field near the Rowe School to see the carnival...

Smokey's Greater Shows.

From there it was an easy walk to the Royal River Park and the Beth Condon Pathway...

I exited out onto Route 1 near Hannaford Shopping Center and strolled along Route 1 toward Bayview Street, passing the iconic Pat's Pizza along the way...

It was a strange feeling indeed to be walking down the street I grew up on, used to buy penny candy at the end of (at Frosty's), rode my bike all over and had so many good times with so many great friends. It had changed but was still very familiar to me. I will use the original names of the people I knew--listing only the person I knew best there, though their brothers and sisters may have also grown up in these houses, when captioning...

Jenna McEvoy's old house.

Emily McCleod's old house.

Kate Brown's old house.

This is the small field behind Kate's house, where a group of we neighborhood kids gathered

in a circle to talk out our feelings after one of our friends and his parents was brutally murdered

the night before. I'll never forget that camaraderie as long as I live. It sealed our hearts together

and I believe the other people involved feel the same way.

I took the left onto Sisquisic Trail...

Jennifer Vollmer's old house.

Bill Hodgkins' old house.

Eric Gosselin's old house.

On this street is where Eric Johnson grew up.

Patrick Sellick's old house.

Troy Hunt's old house.

Chuck Pierce's old house.

I turned left back onto Bayview...

Ellie Dugas' (my first babysitter) old house.

Stacie Vining's old house.

Missy Owen's old house.

David Allard's old house (much changed).

Then I saw it, right there at the corner of Bayview and Woodland Drive, Deb's and my old house, now with a third story added. Wow...

My bedroom was behind the second story windows shown here.

The little woodsy backyard was our playground and surprisingly is very much as it was then.

The small path in the foreground was how we brought our bikes into the yard.

I walked down Woodland...

Mark Gould's old house.

Dean Sabatinelli's old house. 

This is the spot we kids named "Blueberry Mountain," home of the tallest tree on Bayview Street, still there (set back in the middle of this shot). We used to climb to the very top of that tree and

were able to see all the way to Freeport and out into Yarmouth Harbor.

I turned around and walked back down Woodland...

Ed Manganello's old house.

Then I took a right back onto Bayview Street...

Elizabeth Palmer's old house.

Where my high school band teacher, Gil Donatelli lived for a little while.

The road that Gretchen Kelly lived on.

At this point I reached the red barn and small field which once housed an old horse and an old bull. When we were just little folks, we used to walk down and talk to this old odd couple. Many decades now after those days, the owner's donated this land to the Town of Yarmouth. It is 55 acres of beautiful woods and a large pond, now called, Spear Farm Estuary Preserve. It had once been a dream of my sister and I that we would buy that land and have our families down there.

In all of my years in Yarmouth I had never been off the road on that part of Bayview Street. Now it was time to explore it...

Old barn of "the horse and the bull."

At the end of one of the trails was this idyllic bench, facing the pond in the light of an early Yarmouth summer afternoon. I was rapt in its beauty, and felt a twinge of sadness that none of this was available to see when I was a child. I think I would have spent many a day here, playing, exploring and enjoying this place.

At the same time that circles were being completed for me, things were now slipping into a permanent past, only accessible by focusing my memory. All that was potential so very many years ago, will now never be actualized. Partially, this is because of my own decisions. But for the most part, it is due to the simple movement of time and progress itself, passing by like the waters of the tea-brown Royal River. Somehow, simultaneously, for that moment, I stood there with the despair of things that will never be on my left shoulder and the gratitude for what now is on my right shoulder.

The bench where the past and the present merged.

Even with all of this exploring down so many memory lanes, I still had quite a bit of the day left. It was time to pull out of my childhood and get back into town. 

I walked back up Bayview Street, then took a left onto East Main Street (Route 88), heading southwest. I passed the place at the end of Yankee Drive where the majestic American elm, Herbie once stood; a tree that made national news when it had to be taken down. Probably the only Maine tree ever to be added to Wikipedia, with its very own page. 

I'd walked by Cynthia Morrill's old house, near Spring Street Market, then down the hill toward the falls, passing Will Honan's old house. At the bottom of the hill, I turned right onto Main Street proper and climbed that hill back up...  

An old building at the falls, now the home of Maine Environmental Laboratory.

On the other side of the street Yarmouth Harbor can be seen.

In no time I was back at the First Parish Congregational Church, and had reentered the festivities...

There was a lot of time to kill before going over to the party being given by a couple of my friends on West Elm Street. They lived right on the parade route, and there were likely to be many other friends there that I hadn't seen in years. 

I tried to get online by using the library's Wi-Fi. And it worked for a little while until my battery died. I would not have another charge for the rest of the weekend. I'd wanted to take pictures at the party. Some other folks did and posted them on Facebook, some of which may be seen on my profile page. Please friend me if you want to see these and more.

When evening came I went to the party, almost passing it by, because I don't have glasses and couldn't see my friends already there. My old buddy, Ed Walsh saw my pathetic passing and came out to guide me in. 

It was truly a wonderful time. I saw quite a few of my old peeps and met some new ones I'd only known online. Surprisingly, some of them had been following this blog, which was very encouraging. 

We were all just a bunch of kids again though. And, it didn't take long to revert to all of our old crazy habits. Only we knew how crazy these things were and drank up every moment of repeating them again. What great opportunity. 

My friend Debra Friedrich had come up from Boston, and we finally had the chance to hang out together. Readers may or may not recall that she was the very first person I saw on that terrible rainy day after leaving Maine nearly two years ago, at South Station in Boston. Another circle was completed.

When the hour grew late, and after we had gone downtown to hang out near the Town Hall, everyone split up. Debra and I walked each other back up Portland Street, talking. She went to her sleep spot at her parents' house, and I continued on back to my spot near the railroad tracks. 

In one day I had absorbed the lingering vestiges of my childhood and then nearly four more decades of my history since leaving this little town. 

Somehow I knew that the light poles of the busy highway were superimposed upon the ship masts of 300 years ago. The horse drawn carriages still weaved down the rutted old dirt roads, while the SUV's drove straight through their apparitions. Horses ate grass in cleared fields where now tall pine, maple and oak trees also stand. Mills turned water power into rope, where now tourists buy trinkets, and paved paths allow joggers to enjoy the misty woods...

In this magical place where time streams flowed around the polished stones of the personalities who will stand here forevermore, reinforcing the strength of the histories they wielded like plows, blacksmith hammers, and the hemp lines that hoisted a thousand sails, I lay down in the waxing moonlight. 

Ghosts and spirits rode glowing clouds, trying to become angels, trying to be remembered. And, I knew that it wouldn't be all that long before I joined them. For now though, there was a lot more road to wallk, and a lot more of Maine to see. Sleep slipped into me and dreams arrived without the slightest unconscious moment.