Built, broken, fixed and reimagined
The photos here were captured with a 30-year-old, pocket-sized, 35mm camera, an Olympus XA-2. They come from a single roll of film, and with any luck show a bit of life in the Midcoast between the larger stories of the day. Three of them are described in more detail below. Click on any image to see them all. (Photos by Ethan Andrews)
BELFAST – Among the rows of Balsam and White Pine at Fishers Christmas Tree Farm, stand several white pines with an eye-catching blue tint.
BROOKS – Home to a succession of grocery stores and closed since July 2011, this building recently got new windows and other repairs and may reopen before long, according to Jay Elwell, who with his wife Eloise bought the property last year.
THORNDIKE – A handmade campaign sign put up as a replacement to one that was apparently destroyed by a vehicle.
BELFAST - Dusk-colored things at dusk.
BELFAST – Recreational clothing and equipment dries in the sun on a Monday morning.
BELFAST – Waldo County Judge of Probate Susan Longley during her bicycle campaign for reelection.
UNITY – A worker repaints the metal roof of the railroad depot. The station is being redeveloped as a commercial property.
BELFAST – a ladder used to make adjustments to Bella, the life-sized elephant mascot of the Church Street Festival parade ,sits in the yard of longtime parade organizer Mary Weaver after the parade has ended.
BELFAST – Bella, the pink elephant and centerpiece of the eccentric Church Street Festival parade.
CAMDEN – Parking lot, late afternoon, seen from Knox Mill.
BELFAST – Halloween mask, thrift store.
BELFAST – Stephen Hopkins of Belmont fixes one of his wife's campaign signs next to a sign of her rival, incumbent House District 43 Rep. Erin Herbig.
BELFAST – Parking lot with dog.
BELFAST – Handprints visible on a window after a near-frost in early October.
BELFAST – Renee Lord delivers mail to the Belfast Cohousing Ecovillage, where nine families have moved in and construction continues. The planned 36-unit development is slated to include a Common House with a mailroom to replace the roadside boxes.
BELFAST – Quentin Henderson photographs a license plate stamped "Used Car Dealer" at an auto repair shop. The resident of St. Kitts and Nevis was in Belfast visiting a friend. His collection of 1,500 odd license plates back home, he said, qualifies him as a "very small-time plate collector."
BELFAST – New plantings outside a long-vacant downtown commercial building, now occupied.
WINTER HARBOR – A new gas station under construction a little bit Down East.
BELFAST - From the window of the chapel at Grove Cemetery at its reopening dedication. The 1917 building, unused since the 1960s, was restored by cemetery trustees. Trees planted by the Belfast Garden Club stand by mature trees from the original cemetery, many near the end of their lives.
BROOKS – Town office volunteer Jimmy Mulcahey looks at packaging provided by Veolia Environmental Services for collecting used fluorescent light bulbs. Officials hope the program will make disposal of the bulbs easier than bringing them to the transfer station in Thorndike.
BROOKS – Plant-colored planter.
The photos here were captured with a 30-year-old, pocket-sized, 35mm camera, an Olympus XA-2. They come from a single roll of film, and with any luck show a bit of life in the Midcoast between the larger stories of the day. Three of them are described in more detail below. Click on any image to see them all. (Photos by Ethan Andrews)
BELFAST – Among the rows of Balsam and White Pine at Fishers Christmas Tree Farm, stand several white pines with an eye-catching blue tint.
BROOKS – Home to a succession of grocery stores and closed since July 2011, this building recently got new windows and other repairs and may reopen before long, according to Jay Elwell, who with his wife Eloise bought the property last year.
THORNDIKE – A handmade campaign sign put up as a replacement to one that was apparently destroyed by a vehicle.
BELFAST - Dusk-colored things at dusk.
BELFAST – Recreational clothing and equipment dries in the sun on a Monday morning.
BELFAST – Waldo County Judge of Probate Susan Longley during her bicycle campaign for reelection.
UNITY – A worker repaints the metal roof of the railroad depot. The station is being redeveloped as a commercial property.
BELFAST – a ladder used to make adjustments to Bella, the life-sized elephant mascot of the Church Street Festival parade ,sits in the yard of longtime parade organizer Mary Weaver after the parade has ended.
BELFAST – Bella, the pink elephant and centerpiece of the eccentric Church Street Festival parade.
CAMDEN – Parking lot, late afternoon, seen from Knox Mill.
BELFAST – Halloween mask, thrift store.
BELFAST – Stephen Hopkins of Belmont fixes one of his wife's campaign signs next to a sign of her rival, incumbent House District 43 Rep. Erin Herbig.
BELFAST – Parking lot with dog.
BELFAST – Handprints visible on a window after a near-frost in early October.
BELFAST – Renee Lord delivers mail to the Belfast Cohousing Ecovillage, where nine families have moved in and construction continues. The planned 36-unit development is slated to include a Common House with a mailroom to replace the roadside boxes.
BELFAST – Quentin Henderson photographs a license plate stamped "Used Car Dealer" at an auto repair shop. The resident of St. Kitts and Nevis was in Belfast visiting a friend. His collection of 1,500 odd license plates back home, he said, qualifies him as a "very small-time plate collector."
BELFAST – New plantings outside a long-vacant downtown commercial building, now occupied.
WINTER HARBOR – A new gas station under construction a little bit Down East.
BELFAST - From the window of the chapel at Grove Cemetery at its reopening dedication. The 1917 building, unused since the 1960s, was restored by cemetery trustees. Trees planted by the Belfast Garden Club stand by mature trees from the original cemetery, many near the end of their lives.
BROOKS – Town office volunteer Jimmy Mulcahey looks at packaging provided by Veolia Environmental Services for collecting used fluorescent light bulbs. Officials hope the program will make disposal of the bulbs easier than bringing them to the transfer station in Thorndike.
BROOKS – Plant-colored planter.
BELFAST — White Pines are some of the fluffiest conifers you'll find. But as Christmas trees, they're less than ideal. The needles shed easily, and in contrast to the Balsam's ornament-ready limbs, the dense tufts of the White Pine resist pretty much anything that isn't a garland.
Though you can apparently paint them blue.
Interspersed amid the regular stock at Fishers Christmas Tree Farm on Route 3 are a handful of White Pines with a noticeably blue tint. According to owner Gary Fisher, a buyer from Boston comes to the farm in August and sprays the trees with a floral paint. Closer to Christmas, he collects them and takes them to the city to resell.
Fisher said the man likes the color and has apparently found a market for the altered trees. The needles of the white pine have a tendency to fade after the tree is cut and Fisher speculated that the paint keeps them looking brilliant longer.
"Anybody from Maine knows that's not a natural color," he said.
The comment wasn't judgmental. In fact, Fisher said he might try spraying a few himself next year.
BROOKS — Since the mid-1980s, Brooks has had at least two grocery stores running simultaneously. Depending upon how you count, the number of stores selling some combination of groceries and convenience items has climbed to as many as five at times, according to Jay Elwell, who recently bought one of them.
The building at the corner of routes 7 and 139 was a First National (Finast) until 1968, when Elwell's father Richard bought it. Richard's Market operated until 1986, when its namesake owner retired.
The grocery went through several owners and name changes until July 2011 when it went out of business. Jay, along with his wife, Eloise, bought the building last October, but with other properties to care for, he only recently began fixing up the store.
"It's just like being back when I was a little kid," he said. "You go upstairs, down to the cellar."
Later additions nearly doubled the size of the store since it was Richard's Market.
"It's kind of the same but different," he said. "It brings back memories."
Elwell is planning to renovate the building and rent it. He has two potential tenants, he said, both of whom hope to open, what else? A grocery store.
THORNDIKE — Homemade campaign signs for local and state candidates are a common sight, but leaving aside the occasional full-sheet plywood billboard, one-off signs for presidential candidates are much more rare.
Judy Palmer hadn't planned to buck the trend when she posted a campaign-issue, plastic and metal Romney/Ryan sign within view of Route 220. What she wanted was a new president.
"I have never been so afraid in my life for my country," she said about her support for the Republican candidates. "What we have in Washington needs to go."
Two days after she put out the display, she found it mangled. A telltale set of tire tracks led through the field. Given that the sign was some 50 feet from the road, it's destruction was clearly not accidental.
"It didn't surprise me that it happened," she said. "But my thoughts are: we're a civilized society, we're supposed to be considerate toward each other."
Not content to let the election season terrorists win, Palmer bought posterboard and markers, consulted the Internet on the Romney campaign's graphics and made a replacement.
"My husband and I laughed about it," she said. "We thought maybe we should put spikes out there in case someone tries to do it again."
Penobscot Bay Pilot reporter Ethan Andrews can be reached at ethanandrews@penbaypilot.com.
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