Every place I walk I imagine layers beneath my feet, each one a different era, peopled with individuals whose lives were as filled with the stuff of life as my own. On lovely Pond Bridge at the Norton Pond inlet, now a bland state highway culvert, lovers kissed in the moonlight. Down the walls of a now lost and forgotten well a frantic mother clumsily slid to rescue the toddler who’d fallen in. Living rooms saw paper flower-bedecked weddings as well as somber funerals. Sometimes an aged parent’s life had ended with a satisfyingly peaceful death, but just as often a younger person — mother, beloved child, or sturdy breadwinner — was knocked down suddenly by accident or disease, leaving numbed relatives to carry on.

Bedrooms saw birth under every possible condition, rooms that can be stifling in summer with their low eaves and only one window to let in a little breeze. In winter they were frigid; how did the laboring woman and her attendants stand it? Babies were delivered by husbands, grandmothers, sisters, aunts or perhaps the neighbor woman everyone called the midwife. Husbands made long, desperate rides through snow or mud or rain, usually at night it seems, to get the doctor. If he didn’t get back in time, or if there was no doctor, the wife delivered alone. Sometimes the baby died, and too often, the mother did. Mostly both thrived.

Do you live in a brand-new house? No layers there, you say. But think again; you live on top of somebody’s hayfield, potato patch or woodlot. Imagine how haying season stressed already-beleaguered marriages. Thunderclouds piling up when the hay was almost dry, but still in the field every family member working to the limits of their strength to pitch the hay onto the wagon and load it into the loft of the barn. The man worried about feeding the stock, caring for his family, while the woman worried about getting the next meal on the table.

Woodlots saw tragedy; a hung-up tree or limb is called a widow-maker for good reason. But sometimes a newly-married couple, before babies kept the wife home, ventured down to a camp in the woods behind Slab City, say, for the winter. She cooked while he ran a wood-cutting crew, or maybe he worked for a wealthy summer family, and they both stayed nearby in a seaside cottage, brief interludes before real life put an end to such intimacy.

The sites of old houses yield bucket after bucketful of broken crockery, metal buckles, nails, latches, hinges, even rotting leather shoes. Did a child drop the sugar bowl one morning. Did he get whipped for it? Or did the husband, frustrated at his inability to get a few dollars ahead, smash his wife’s favorite vase, or did she, worn out with too many kids, throw the plate at him? Or did things simply get broken, used up, and thrown away, just like ours do today?

Anywhere in town you can pick up a horseshoe, the one tangible sign of the legions of animals that made life here possible. All that’s left is some mildewy harness hanging in old barns, and thousands of iron shoes. How many hundreds and hundreds of docile cows grazed on our rough pastures, chewed their cud under this or that very oak, and fairly trotted to the barn, udders swinging, to be milked at dusk. What about the hundreds of thousands of chickens — hens and broilers — spending their brief lives in the now-ruined henhouses crumbling around town?

We no longer raise all our food, make our clothes, and marry someone just down the road. The animals in our lives are pampered pets, not the means to survival. Yet we’re raising children, loving (and irritating) one another in turn, striving to get ahead while, at the same time, trying to do the right thing.

This piece, the introduction to Staying Put in Lincolnville, Maine 1900-1950, (Available at Western Auto, Schoolhouse Museum  or Sleepy Hollow Rag Rugs) has been on my mind this past week as we worked to install the displays and signs in the Jackie Young Watts Open Air Museum (O.A.M.) The large map shows the patterns of early settlement in Lincolnville, the rows of bright red icons representing 100-plus year-old houses, the scattering of red outline houses is each a cellar hole, often deep in the woods. It makes me think that hardly a square foot of earth in all of Lincolnville hasn’t been touched by human activity sometime over the past 230 years of settlement.

The implements and tools on display each once belonged to a person known to have lived and worked here and are described on signs using some of the many old photos in a collection started by Jackie Watts in the 1970s. At last Saturday’s Open House, where more than 100 people moved between the Library and O.A.M., it was fun to hear descendents of some of these folks represented in the displays talk about their grandparents’ lives.

Those studying the map were often surprised at the historical features in their own neighborhood. If you haven’t seen it yet, stop by. The sheds are always open, or at least, until the weather turns really cold and snowy. Then we’ll lower tarps behind the screens to protect everything.

The Board of Selectmen meet tonight at 6 p.m. and can be seen on Channel 22; the agenda is posted on the town site. 

Adam Barker-Hoyt of Maine Alternative Comfort will give a free presentation on heat pumps and energy efficiency this Wednesday, October 29 at 7 p.m. at the Library. Last year Barker-Hoyt installed the air source heat pump that now warms the main room of the library in winter and provides comfortable cooling in the summer. He will demonstrate how the library’s heat pump works and explain how homeowners can use similar units that can provide heat at about half the cost of oil.

There’s a full-time, year round custodial job opening at Lincolnville Central School; contact Principal Paul Russo at 763-3367. Also, the school is looking for boys and girls basketball coaches; the season starts soon. These are paid positions. Call Mr. Russo if interested.

The LCS Boys and Girls Cross Country teams completed their 2014 season last Thursday at the Busline League Championship Meet held at Troy Howard Middle School in Belfast. Both teams were very competitive throughout the season, and at the final meet, where they each finished in third place behind Camden-Rockport and Boothbay.

    Five Town Communities that Care  is looking for math and literacy mentors to work with students in the five town area (Appleton, Camden, Hope, Lincolnville and Rockport). The mentor will model the importance of school and provide 2 one-hour mentor/tutoring sessions per week. These sessions are not “homework help,” but employ practices that are proven to be most effective for increasing commitment to school. Training, guidelines, and support are provided to mentors throughout the school year. Mentors receive a stipend for their services or they may elect to work as a volunteer. Contact Thom Ingraham by email or phone 236-9800.

Once again, as it was a couple of years ago, Halloween will be a community event at the Lincolnville Center Store. A Jack-O-Lantern Festival with hopefully hundreds of pumpkins lighting up Main Street is planned for Haloween night, Friday Oct. 31. There’ll be refreshments at the store, trick or treating at the Fire Station from 4-8 p.m., and Halloween stories at the Library; the Center sounds like the place to be!

As it does every year, Crossroads Community Baptist Church is sponsoring a free fun family time Friday evening at LCS with all kinds of games, a chili cook-off (bring your favorite recipe if you want), hotdogs for all, a bounce house, the climbing wall and more. Rain or shine! Call Pastor Dave at 763-3551 with questions.

Camden Hills Regional High School’s fall musical is Roger & Hammerstein’s Cinderella, with 7 p.m. performances Nov. 7, 8, 14, 15 and a 2 p.m. matinee Nov. 9. Advanced ticket sales are $12 for reserved seats, general admission seats $10 for adults, $6 for students and seniors; tickets at the door are $15/$12/$8. Get advanced sale tickets at HAV II, online stromtickets.com  or 236-7800, ext. 282. If you’ve attended other CHRHS musicals you know how professional these performances are. For parents and grandparents, here’s a great way to introduce the children in your life to theatre!

The Women’s Club is hosting a potluck Thanksgiving meal at noon on Tuesday, Nov. 18, at the L.I.A. building. Although the club doesn’t meet regularly throughout the winter, the women do get together periodically and go out to lunch, a great way to break up those long, cold days! Contact Marilyn Pendleton, 763-3371 if you’d like to be contacted about these events. All Lincolnville women are welcome to join them.

 Here is another section from Sandy Delano’s memories of childhood and youth in Rockland and in Lincolnville. Any one of us can do this, write down childhood memories. If you grew up in Lincolnville, give it a try this winter, then send it to me to share in this column.

 Blueberry Raking

 I raked blueberries each summer to earn money for school clothes. Bernard Young was in charge of one of the crews that I worked on. We gathered early each morning in the barn at what is now the Youngtown Inn in Lincolnville and waited for Bernard to finish milking his cow. He always had a radio playing for he cows and it was usually tuned to WBZ and Carl deSuze. Don Kent was the weatherman for the station. When Bernard was finished with his chores, a group of us would pile into his Hudson sedan, and he would deliver us to the fields. Bernard drove like crazy in the V8 powered Hudson. One never knew if we would make some of the curves on the road from Hope to Lincolnville but we always did.

The blueberry fields were normally on the side of a hill or mountain in Lincolnville or Hope where we arrived around 7:00 a.m. and left around 4:00 p.m. We were allowed a one-hour lunch break where we consumed the sandwiches, chips, tabletop pies and soda pop in our lunch boxes. A five gallon steel milk can filled with drinking water and a dipper for common use was provided the crew. Names I can recall from these crews were John and Peter Wentworth of Hope, cousins Norm and Jack Carver, my brother John Delano, Jerry, Bill and Jack Chalmers, Steve Hardy, several Pottles and a couple of Underhills.  Later I worked with my uncle James R. Carver Jr. for his cousin William R. Hardy of Hope. My mom also raked berries for several seasons with an all gals crew. I recall they did some work on Islesboro and had to take the ferry.

During this time we lived in what was called the little house at the farm on [504] Youngtown road. It was situated across the driveway from the main buildings next to the brook, which ran behind it and the new garage Uncle Jim and Grandpa had built. It had once been a blacksmith shop. The Masalin, Tibbetts, and Delano families all lived in it one summertime or another. It was not a cold weather domicile. It had a kitchen, a living room and an upstairs. I slept in the living room under the stairs with a window over my bed from which I could count the meteorites in the night sky before falling asleep. Once asleep I frequently counted blueberries. Mom, Dad, and brother John got the nice warm upstairs to sleep in. Several blankets strung across a line separated the sleeping quarters. The house had a hose running underground from the main house across the driveway to provide some running water. The kitchen held a cast iron sink, which drained out the side of the building onto the ground, and a cast iron wood burning stove. Electricity was also tapped off the main house. The toilet facilities were the old two and a half-hole privy in the woodshed of the main buildings.