It was late September and a swift, sharp rain hammered down upon northern Aroostook County. It was a day designed for a book, a fleece blanket, and a hot cup of my Grammy McIntyre’s Red Rose tea, with just a nip of cream. It was Saturday and despite my longing to succumb to the will of the rain, I found myself driving to Presque Isle, my eyes in sync with the movement of the car’s wipers.
“I’m bored. There’s nothing to do.” It is a sentiment young people in southern Aroostook County have bemoaned for decades, claiming there was a lack of activities.
It begs the question, “Is there really nothing to do?” or have today’s youth simply lost interest in activities that involve physical activity? I tend to think it is more of the latter.
The dining room was flooded with famished conference attendees, their plates overflowing with sweet potato salad, burly slices of roast beef stacked on fresh sandwich rolls, blocks of fresh fruit, and luscious Snickerdoodle cookies.
Although fall officially doesn’t arrive until Saturday, with the arrival of the Autumn Equinox, my eyes tell me something quite different. Trees in southern Aroostook have slowly been making their annual change from green to warming yellows and reds for a couple of weeks now.
In 1989, I fell madly and hopelessly in love with a 1984, steel blue, Dodge Daytona. A two-door beauty with black and white race checkered seats, sparse metal dashboard, and the word turbo-charge stenciled on the console. I believe I was the third owner of this stunning machine and I found myself filled with a mixture of pride and delight each time someone commented on its beauty.
When I was in the fifth grade, my parents and I moved to Presque Isle, renting a home we hoped to purchase. This dream did not come true for us but during that year, I attended Gouldville Elementary School. Looking back over my school years, I have to say that the fifth grade is one of the most memorable.
I never knew just how little I know about the town of Atkinson. But I don’t feel alone, the Dover library only had two books, a “History of Atkinson, (very brief) and Charlotte Edgerly Nicely’s “Vital and Cemetery Records.” Both books were interesting, but contained little of help in my quest.
Many people often dream about what it would be like to go back in time. To have an opportunity to relive a moment from an earlier point in one’s life, free of the “grown-up” worries and stresses of daily life, is something anyone would enjoy.
Such was the case for myself on Wednesday, Aug. 22, as my wife and I left the children with my parents and headed to Bangor to enjoy the Def Leppard, Poison and Lita Ford concert at the Bangor Waterfront. We joined up with Karter Kenney and his wife Michelle for an “adults-only” afternoon and evening of fun and music in the big city.
When I was a child, I read somewhere about treasured letters, tied with a red ribbon and kept forever. This romantic notion so entranced me that ever after, I kept every card, letter or childish note ever passed surreptitiously in class.
I would rise in the darkness, comforted by the sound of my parents whispering in the kitchen while my mother packed our lunches in rugged, gray dinner pails, their strong silver latches dancing in the dim light.
