I woke on what would be the opposite of two days earlier. This would be one of the couple days each year where everything felt good, despite my desperate need for new shoes and a new sleeping bag...
Giving my shoe the finger.
A ripped sleeping bag with a broken zipper.
Morning at the oasis.
The sun shone brightly through a deep blue sky. The humidity was utterly absent. I felt incredibly good. I'd seen that the hours of the Maine Roasters café were 7:00 am to 3:00 pm, and headed there after an easy pack up.
Going in, I saw that it was much like a Starbucks, though relatively empty of people and with better seating including couches and easy chairs. Nice place.
The girl who took my order for a small dark roast, could have used a slight personality adjustment, being bland and unsmiling. Later in the morning I heard her argue about giving a new coffee to a guy who poured skim milk into his drink from a mislabeled container (it said "half and half"). If I owned that place and heard an employee argue about giving what costs the café about $0.25 to an unsatisfied customer, she'd be fired. At Starbucks they are trained to immediately make the situation right. But, hell, who am I to judge?
Just after getting established and beginning to write, who showed up but Ed Walsh, my very long time and great friend. He seemed a bit bummed for having to work on that coming night, but who could blame him? It was a Sunday after all, and having once had to work Sundays and Sunday nights myself, I could genuinely empathize.
He was on his way to pick up his kids and had to run, but we talked outside for a little while, planning to meet somehow in this next week to hang out before I left for Freeport, or maybe meet sometime after that up the coast. I'm a turtle by walking and in his car he is a hare, able to get to wherever I'd be in the next month relatively quickly.
He also very generously slipped me some funds for meals that day. This would turn out to be quite fortuitous, as I was also out of money. Truly a brother. Truly.
I was going to work all day writing, having been two posts behind, but after about an hour or so, the weather outside was so alluring that I simply had to enjoy it.
A photofest was in order, and I set off to see some things I hadn't seen the week before, nor in many years. So, let's cut the crap and get to it, shall we?
I walked down Route 1 then cut over onto the Beth Condon Pathway that led by Romeo's Pizza and Rite Aid to the parking lot behind the town hall, then down to the area in front of the town hall...
A cross section of Herbie, remembering how it used to look towering over East Maine Street.
"Crabapples" on the town hall lawn.
Next, I crossed Main Street and walked by the Rowe School to the path that led northwest to Royal River Park proper...
You.
A large mill owned by Forest Paper Company used to reside there...
This is what the area looks like now...
Salmon ladder.
Someone's sunfish had a bad day.
Talk about location, location, location...
I emerged on East Elm Street, by the railroad trestle...
This was a good opportunity to get some shots of places along Main Street...
The iconic store we used to calle, "Handy Andy's."
First Baptist Church.
Sacred Heart Catholic Church.
My good friend, David Allard's father used to run this place when it was called "Yarmouth Fuel" and David used to clean it. Sometimes I'd go in with him and we'd hang out when
he was done, drinking the company coffee.
Just next to Downeast Energy is The Bickford Collection of classic trucks and heavy equipment...
I remember this truck well, when it was in service.
The old train station.
A fountain donated by the Yarmouth Improvement Society...even a spout for doggies.
Unfortunately, it didn't work.
The bank where I have my business account.
This is the actual branch where I opened it 20 years ago, when it was Maine Bank and Trust.
Long before, the building served as Yarmouth's post office.
The Merrill Memorial Library, where I sit at this very moment writing this post.
And, I was right back to where I started. For the heck of it, I went over and took a picture of the Rowe School, where I went to first and second grade. It looked a lot different over 40 years ago. But kids who grew up with me will remember that the greatest aspect of the school was a feature in the playground called, "The Bubble," a strange psychedelic fiberglass object that was the centerpiece of our morning recesses. I still recall how it looked, and what it was like to be inside that weird thing. The sun would make the edges glow and it had a couple bulging opaque blue "windows." There was a ladder I think on one side, so you could climb up onto it.
As I recall the playground also had a large roundabout-like thing that could really get moving. Nearly every day some kid would go flying off of it and get scraped up on the asphalt surface of the playground. Ah! Fun times! Today schools have such safe equipment. Back in our day you took your life in your hands...or you didn't play! Ayuh!
There also used to be a section of the school yard where Japanese knotweed grew profusely. The kids had made a series of trails through it. It was an intricate maze. During the year (1974) I was in first grade, the original TV series, Planet of the Apes (based on the 1968 movie) was super popular. And, the game at school was that you had to run through the maze and at the entrance and exit stood a sentry. You never knew if he was an ape or a human, and you had to identify as one or the other. If he was a different species you got captured and held in the little jail until your "kind" came and rescued you. It was enormous fun!
The Six Million Dollar Man was another hit TV show that our family watched each week, and of course that turned into a recess game. I was particularly fond of science fiction and everything about space and the future was a big deal... Space: 1999, UFO, Star Trek, etc... all were great themes for which kids could make up their own outdoor game versions...
The most recent version of the William H. Rowe School.
I remember so much from those years! My music teacher was Ms. Freeman--kind of a closet hippy. What a nice lady. We learned "This Land is Your Land" (Woody Guthrie), "Blowin in the Wind" (Bob Dylan), and "Matilda" (Harry Belafonte), among many other tunes.
The line from Dylan, "How many times must the cannonballs fly, before they're forever banned?" stuck in my head from those early years. The Vietnam War was just ending and the country was a mess. We children were being gently guided through the reality that war existed, and just how terrible it was.
Of course we were taught about the Revolutionary War, where men fought in columns and there were certain rules. I remember seeing a film strip about the Civil War, and the image of two brothers meeting in battle, one gray and one blue, and the expression of fear on their faces. It is an image I'd never forgotten and partly inspired my story, Ghosts in Gray and Blue, written after sleeping at the edge of a battlefield in Fredericksburg, Virginia, on my last Journey during the spring of this year; walking up from Georgia to Washington DC.
But at home Walter Cronkite delivered the sober news about Southeast Asia into our living rooms each night, and the pictures of helicopters flying injured men out of dank swamps, the images of US bombers carpet bombing entire country sides was teaching us what modern warfare really was...
The baseball field where many a game was played.
I needed to try to get something to eat and I had Ed's donation burning a hole in my pocket. There really was no other choice but to walk east through the park, up to Route 1 to get a Pat's Pizza. It would be fairly inexpensive and completely delicious. So, I was headed out on a pizza mission...
The walker's bridge that used to be a trolley trestle, when trolleys
transported people between Yarmouth and Freeport.
Ha, ha! The good ole Down-East Village Restaurant and Motel.
Gawd! I once worked there for a summer washing dishes for $4.50 an hour.
I got free lobster dinner each week though!
Here's an interesting building. It was once a Deering Ice Cream (my favorite of all the Maine ice creams) until they went out of business. Then it was bought by McDonald's--a big controversial thing in Yarmouth at the time. People were afraid a McDonald's would ruin our small town appeal; kind of like when the town got its first traffic light. It recently got sold, because it couldn't compete without a drive through (which wasn't allowed, per zoning). Now it stands empty and lonely, waiting for some kind of business. I think it looks like a great opportunity for some kind of restaurant...
I made it to Pat's and ordered my small pepperoni. And, while I waited outside under their little shade tent, I talked to two older ladies from Missouri. I had been there two years ago and told them the story of finding the injured dog, how that lead to meeting Glenn and Rita Romines, seeing their incredible animal shelter--TASTC, touring the New Life Compound for drug recovering Russian and Eastern European young people.
Eventually, I got my pizza and headed over to Hannaford to buy a drink and eat there at a bench outside...
Even looking at it now is making me drool.
That was it for the day's exploring. When I finished the pizza, I returned to the library where I worked outside at a picnic table, using their Wi-Fi (it was Sunday and they were closed)...
Ice crystals in the clouds made a rainbow far above.
When it got dark, I headed back to the sleep spot, set up the tent and then paced around on the railroad tracks until I got sleepy and went to bed. What a great day! I was liking this Yarmouth stay very much. I could get used to just living this way in this place of my childhood.
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