These archival articles are presented “as is.” Except for minor corrections or clarifications, most have not been updated since they appeared in print. Thus, some details may be out of date, and some hyperlinks may no longer work.
When Minutes Matter
The North Belgrade Fire Station, on Route 8 next to Tukey’s Lumber, is one of three operated by Belgrade Fire and Rescue. (Photo from the Belgrade Fire and Rescue Facebook page.)
by Esther J. Perne
Dial 9-1-1, and they appear. They assess the situation, stabilize injuries, reassure everyone at the scene and set up a perimeter. Best of all, they take charge. They are the first responders, the EMTs, the volunteers.
Report an emergency and they respond, lights flashing and sirens on. They move in with safety equipment, advanced communications, professional training and a familiarity with available resources. Best of all, they put in place a plan of action and implement it. They are the police and fire and medical personnel on call, on duty, on alert.
Have an emergency too critical, too large, too uncontained? No problem. Their buddies in the next community and the one beyond and the ones beyond that are ready to help. They are the communities and departments linked by mutual aid.
Present impending danger and they react. They jump into icy waters, approach burning buildings and cars, intervene when strangers threaten others and question why a young child is alone on a road or river. They act with guts and from the heart, often alone, sometimes beyond the range of telecommunications, sometimes with no training in what they are doing. They avert disasters; they save lives. They are the ordinary, everyday citizens of Maine who happen to be in the right place at the right time.
Ask them to leave warm shelters and ready meals and they agree without complaint. They patiently slog through bad weather and over rough terrain for hours doing what they were trained to do and doing it for the love of human partners. Often they are the key to mission success. They are the search and rescue dogs and horses who provide superior scent and sight advantages during vital operations.
Hands-on, stop and help, face the emergency, react quickly. Why? Because it is our local heritage to help, because it is human nature to be helpful, because success is so often the result and…. because, when it comes to heroics, minutes matter.
Some of this story may sound familiar to many, especially the guys who are old motor heads. What is a motor head you say? Let’s define it as a person, usually a guy, who is totally infatuated with fast, noisy machines such as cars, trucks, or boats. If one has this condition in their youth, it is often carried throughout life to one degree or another. As a motor head’s age increases and his testosterone decreases, the degree of craziness acted out with these machines usually tends to decline, though not always. Sorry, that was a mouthful but I think you get the point.
Like most towns in the 1950s and '60s, Belgrade had its share of youth, who upon getting their driver’s licenses, used their cars for much more than transportation. Most had been driving some on camp roads, which were considered by parents to be a good place to teach kids to drive. Often, kids had been driving old pickups, homemade, cut-down tractors, and other farm-type vehicles for years before they were old enough to get a license.
At that time a license could be obtained at the age of 16. Driving fast and spinning tires was commonplace, as well as occasionally going to either stock car or drag racing tracks to watch competition. If anything will stir a motor head’s innards, it’s a pack of stock cars coming into the final turn at oval race tracks like Unity, Wiscasset, Beech Ridge, Oxford Speedway and others.
The terminology of those times for motor heads included terms like: burn rubber, light 'em up, three on the tree, four on the floor (and a fifth in the seat), three deuces, four barrel carbs, three quarter cam, slush box, dynaflow, glass packs and many more. Engines were talked about by cubic inches such as 409, 396, 327, 312 T-Bird, 427’s, big blocks, small blocks, hemis — it goes on.
The marked, quarter-mile stretch that we drag-raced on was just south of Belgrade Lakes Village on Route 27. We called it Dalton’s Flats or just "The Flats." A white line was painted across the road about where the entrance driveway to the Community Center is now; a second line, one quarter mile south. On Friday and Saturday nights cars would intermittently appear and line up to see who could cover the quarter mile the fastest.
In my day Jimmy Sawyer and I would battle it out, he with a 1961 Corvette 283 with 3 deuces, me with a 1962 Austin Healy 3000 with 3 SU downdrafts. We would often each take a heat, but the winner always had to face the mother of all vehicles: Joe Tinker would mop us up with his '67 Corvette 427 cubes making 425 horsepower.
Often, guys with names like Hoss, Skip, Larry, and Birdbrain would show up from Rome with whatever buggy they had, lay down some rubber and smoke, then blast their way back through town and up over the hill towards home. Boys named Barry, Stretch and Kenny would show up from the Depot and North Bel. and show their stuff.
The quarter mile of road was black for several summers, and lots of bragging stories were forever circulated as to who could do what with their souped-up machines. Those were the days when Detroit was making some big powerful engines, gas consumption didn’t matter and the local kids were tinkering them to squeak out every ounce of power. As the Beach Boys sang, "C’mon and turn it on, wind it up, blow it out, G.T.O!"
Oh yeah, it really happened, and being an old motor head, I, for one, get the willies just thinking about it.
Devon, Ben, Jason, Sue, and Sean Greenan atop French Mountain.
by Pete Kallin
The third Saturday in July was the annual loon count in Maine, coordinated by Maine Audubon. Every year over 1000 volunteers, of which I am one, attempt to count all the loons on a couple hundred Maine lakes at the same time. It’s organized like a military operation, and I am the coordinator for the dozen or so volunteers on Long Pond. Early in the morning all counters head for their assigned section of the lake to be in position to count all the adult loons and loon chicks in their area between 7:00 and 7:30 a.m. I don’t have all the numbers back from my counters yet, but overall it looks like a good year for Long Pond, with over 40 adults and at least 7 chicks.
There were lots of kids and grandkids on the lake this week, although none of them mine. I did get to see my grandson play his saxophone in a jazz concert in Farmington, where he attended a jazz camp last week. I saw lots of other young faces around, though. My friends, the Greenans, had both their Maine grandkids and their South Carolina grandkids for the week and had an intensive week that involved a lot hiking, boating, lobsters, ice cream at Days, and a little fishing. Lots of memories being made.
Kate, Garrison, and Heather Hartley, with Ben and Grandma Sue, eat ice cream at a picnic table behind Day’s Store in Belgrade Lakes Village. Long Pond, looking north, is in the background.
The BRCA Stewardship committee worked with a team of volunteers from Pine Island Camp at Mount Phillip early in the week. I led a small crew that cut Japanese knotweed down with machetes — an activity teen age boys always seem to enjoy! — while another group went with Toni Pied to clear brush along the trail and open up some viewsheds near the top. Mount Phillip is the legendary home of Indian King Kababah according to camp lore and the campers have a special relationship with the mountain, which conserved by the BRCA and Pine Island Camp alumni a dozen years ago. Pine Island alumni develop a special relationship with the Belgrade Lakes watershed and many have become permanent residents in their "golden years."
On the way down the hill, I met the Brennans from Chicago, who were hiking up. They had friends who moved to Chicago from Livermore Falls who kept telling them how beautiful Maine was and encouraged them to visit. They did a few years ago and have been coming back every summer since. This was their first time in our region, but it won’t be the last.
The Brennan family from Chicago.
I also managed to get a bit of fishing in. As the water has warmed, the bigger fish have moved out to the deep water to chase schools of alewives. I caught several, 4-pound bass on my trusty white zonker weighted streamer fished about 20 feet down, where I saw schools of fish on my fish finder. In the middle of the week, I met up with my friend Mel Croft, who lives on East Pond. We went out on his boat, grilled hot dogs for lunch, and started fishing.
At one point, I asked Mel how deep the water was and whether he saw any fish on the fish finder. He told me his dog, Jasper, was his fish finder. We started casting where Jasper pointed and we soon had what Florida native, Mel, calls, "a mess of fish." I kept enough white perch to give some fresh fillets to my neighbors and still had plenty for an awesome fish fry that night.
Take advantage of the rest of the summer and get out on the lakes or hike or bike in the hills. And take a kid along. You will be creating memories that will last.
It’s now the middle of the summer season, i.e. it is after the 4th of July. As part of our focus on non-point source pollution, I’ll discuss gravel roads. Here in Maine, and particularly in and around our lakes and ponds, we frequently need to travel on and frequently are responsible for a gravel camp road or our own gravel driveway. Those road surfaces often collect and direct runoff into our lakes, ponds, streams, and wetlands.
Much of our conservation work and the work of various youth conservation corps, road associations, and watershed groups will focus on gravel road work. Gravel road erosion is a major source of sediment into our lakes and that sediment carries phosphorus in addition to other toxins: road salt, oil, and the like. Improving the way those gravel roads function is an excellent way to help protect water quality. Given all the use those roads get during the summer, an improved road both costs less money over time and makes for a much better "mud season."
Since it is now about mid-season, many roads that did not receive a "spring upgrade" are showing problems. Potholes have appeared; ruts have developed in the tire lanes; ditches may not be directing runoff into the woods and other vegetated areas. Instead, the roadway, culverts, and ditches are all working together in order to direct stormwater and the sediment into the lake.
The Kennebec SWCD focuses on Gravel Road Management/Maintenance Plans as a means to provide landowners a better understanding of how their road impacts water quality and how to manage its maintenance to minimize that impact. A good road plan also provides the landowners with information to better budget the resources they devote to their shared roadway. Those resources not only include the dues paid by landowners, but the volunteer work to maintain it.
A better maintained road can save a property from damage caused by stormwater leaving the roadway and damaging the individual’s property. It is important for people to better understand how the road "works." Given the road plans written in the past few years, feedback is good. People appreciate the advantage of having a long-range plan to protect the investment they have already made in their gravel road access.
While the road plan is usually for the "shared" road which is the responsibility of the property owners, many of the recommendations and Best Management Practices can easily be modified to help the individual camp owner better manage their own driveway. We do not want to see these gravel roads simply become a means to transfer silt and phosphorus filled conduits to our waterways. Intercepting that stormwater is an excellent way to help protect water quality.
I found Melissa Sweet’s precious, scrapbook-style, colorful Some Writer!: The Story of E.B. White last fall at the Charleston Southern University library in South Carolina displayed for students to check out. Since I live next door in The Elms Retirement Community, my library privileges there are limited to two adult books and not juvenile literature.
It was exhilarating to peruse the art work meticulously done by Sweet, many collages, and clever drawings beyond photos. My favorite was E.B. White as a young boy sitting on the Mount Vernon, NY steps of his Victorian home. The artistic author extended the house photo by drawing pen and ink to show the largeness of his privileged-looking home.
My personal discovery in this very well-done biography of E.B. White was the black and white photo of White as an elderly man swinging on the rope in his barn. He and his wife Katharine lived on the coast of Maine near Blue Hill. This saltwater farm location is where Charlotte’s Web was inspired and Wilbur the pig learned to trust his friend Charlotte the spider. Templeton the rat, the cackling geese, Wilbur’s life being saved even though he was the runt of the litter, the Blue Hill County Fair competition, Charlotte’s children ballooning in the barn, all such strong memories of E.B. White’s Pulitzer Prize-winning writing.
At age six, E.B. White came to Maine on the train from New York with his entire family. They packed trunks full of clothes for their August on Great Pond, renting several camps beginning around 1906. Bear Springs and Snug Harbor were two of the many places they stayed every summer for many years. E.B. White returned to Great Pond with a new canoe on his car to celebrate one of his birthdays in his eighties, staying once again at Bear Springs.
The biographer/artist includes part of E.B. White’s pamphlet that he wrote, designed and had photos advertising Snug Harbor. There you see White in his favorite canoe. Also the birch trees along the shady shoreline of Great Pond.
It is very special to have an afterword by Martha White, granddaughter. She is the fortunate person to now own the "XTC" named canoe that White purchased for his last trip to Great Pond. Several vacations to the Belgrades included Katharine and E.B. White’s son who has run a boat works on the coast until quite recently.
Stuart Little was born in 1945 and later E.B. White changed it to Stuart Little "arrived". The notorious librarian at the New York City public library banned the book, but thanks to the many letters from children, the mouse became part of everyone’s reading life.
When E.B. White died in 1985, the family had a memorial in Blue Hill near his beloved farm. His son read aloud often to his dad during his illness. Portions of his fine writings were read to remember the time-immemorial words between Wilbur the pig and Charlotte the supportive, friendly spider. "Some Pig!" saved Wilbur’s life, a miraculous spider web message. Some Writer! memorializes a great writer’s life.
The Trumpet of the Swan arrived last in 1970, since White had many doctor’s bills for his wife Katharine. It is a story about a trumpeter swan paying back a store owner for the broken window and the stolen trumpet. The cover reveals a cygnet baby swan pulling the boy’s shoestring: both the original sketch by E.B. White’s neighbor Dorothy B. Hayes and the final cover art work by Edward Frascino are included.
The Elements of Style by Strunk and White was a basic tool for me while majoring in English in college in the 1960s. It is quite the accomplishment that E. B. White updated this fine original by William Strunk, Jr., his Cornell English professor from college days, 1917 – 1921. It is funny to me to read that fewer words are best, according to Strunk, and so many of E.B. White’s characters go on and on in their hilarious chatter. Think the old cob swan talking on and on as his wife patiently says to get to the point, dear. Think Templeton the rat and his piles and stacks of litter scraps as well as the slops delivered to Wilbur.
I keep opening this book designed for juveniles and marvel at the rich content Melissa Sweet provides. Her years of research are evident. The fact that she lives not far from Martha White, granddaughter of E.B., on the coast of Maine, certainly explains her depth of knowledge. While working on this project, Sweet’s husband built her the same flat-bottomed boat E.B. had, using the same scow plan, dimensions and all.
Of course, "Once more to the lake … " refers to our Great Pond in the Belgrades. His summers here started early on in 1904 at age six. An August photo of the entire family shows them on the steps of a Snug Harbor rental. The family was so large, eight in all, that they rented several lakeside cottages. He would return often on his birthday, July 11, to canoe and share time with his son Joel at Bear Springs Camps.
