Ghosts and Biscuits

Mon, 07/14/2025 - 8:18am

Ed O’Brien

Yet another Strawberry Festival at the Lincolnville United Christian Church. This midyear gathering always highlights for me our community at its best. A pack of volunteers make it happen, meeting throughout the year, figuring out all the logistics, planning for one near-magic morning in July.

Early Saturday morning found me chopping up 10 pounds of onions for the hotdogs when I got a text from Ma, downstairs, who wanted me to take some pictures of her making biscuits for the hundreds of shortcakes which would be sold from the Community Building in a few hours.

Ma, Diane O’Brien, had an idea for a story, and once the biscuits were crispy, golden, and cooling, this is what she wrote:

Ghosts and Biscuits

Making biscuits for the Strawberry Festival and I’m surrounded by ghosts, reminding me not to forget them. Janet Richards and Isabel Maresh sit on my shoulders (pleased I hope that I remembered this biscuit-making tip), as I pull out the plastic bags full of mix I’d made yesterday, cutting the butter into the flour with my mother’s pastry blender. Add the milk and stir it all up. Dump it out on the shelf of the Hoover cabinet Sharon Pendleton sold to me at Grampa Hall’s so long ago.

Now with flour-covered hands I knead the mess of wet dough into a neat mound, just as many times as your age I was told. Common sense says 81 would be overkneading, so I go with my granddaughters’, say around 20. Lou Polan’s Russian mother’s rolling pin – the one her husband made for her as she settled into life on the Lower East Side in 1902 – turns the mound of dough into a disk, maybe a bit over a half inch thick.

Now it’s the handmade, tin biscuit cutter’s turn. Since I can’t remember how it ended up in my kitchen, I’ll think of Ruth Pottle standing over a huge sheet of dough in the Grange kitchen, stamping out biscuits – BAM, BAM, BAM – with an open-ended soup can. Why doesn’t the Grange reinstate biscuit-making in their own kitchen as a feature of their bean suppers?

Since I’m making four recipes of Bakewell Cream’s biscuits (four cups of flour, a stick of butter, and a cup and a half of milk plus Bakewell Cream – a Maine thing, btw, baking soda and salt — I bake them in stages, tucking each doughy biscuit snugly next to its neighbor, which makes them all rise together in the oven.

The oven that came to me is a fancy one, when it was discarded during renovations at the MBNA History Center on Union Street in Camden. More ghosts.

I wish I could tell you about the large harvest basket I made at Ruth Rothrock’s basket making class in Appleton many, many years ago. It’s carried Strawberry Festival biscuits out to the Center for as long I’ve been making them. But this morning the basket was nowhere to be found. Let me know if you see it.

Thanks to all the ghosts, the women who taught me, I happily sailed through this year’s biscuit-making, feeling like one of them. Then I wondered, “does this make me a trad wife?” Quickly corrected to “trad widow”.

Of course it does, because a woman who hasn’t held a job since 1971 must be. I confess. That’s me.

How about my ghosts? Some worked regular jobs, but many didn’t. Yet they were the hardest working women – wives keeping the men on track, mothers to the next generation, cook, nurse, and housekeeper to their family, fixer of broken appliances, chauffeur, you know the list.

The women I named, and so many that I didn’t, were the backbone of this community. You’ll see them today at the Strawberry Festival, this generation’s version.

I just wish that traditional tag didn’t have such a snarky implication of a woman coasting along on her bread-winning husband’s coattails.

Seems to me she was the one making the biscuits.

In my assessment, the 2025 Strawberry Festival was a rousing success. Music by the Lincolnville Band, as well as Rosey and Corinne, facepainting, kids activities, and miniature horses. A church-lady bake sale, white elephants, and an area for a mini-farmers market. And of course, hotdogs, popcorn, and so many bowls of strawberry shortcake- locally grown strawberries and whipped cream atop freshly baked biscuits.

All this hard work will support the upkeep of the 1820 meeting house and community building, and build up the Lincolnville UCC’s Good Neigbor fund, which supports those in need in the community. I fear it will be in more demand than ever in the coming months and years.

Library Happenings

The needlework group will meet from 3 to 5 p.m. on Tuesday, July 15. Also on Tuesday, from 5 to 6, the book group will discuss This is Happiness by Niall Williams.

On Saturday morning at 10, little ones are invited to learn the art of watercolor with artist Cassie Sano, featuring Baster the Moose and Vincent the Cat.

If you liked Ma’s tale above, at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Diane O’Brien will deliver a talk on “Telling Our Stories”.

Sympathy

I wanted to mention the lives of two people who were not from Lincolnville, but nevertheless impacted so many of us from this little corner of Midcoast Maine.

I didn’t know Sunny Stewart, but from the outpouring of grief and remembrances from so many of my friends, I clearly missed out on knowing an extraordinary human being. Beyond the loss of an amazing person, the manner in which she left us has shook the little villages around here. If you hear anything, let law enforcement know.

I did know Sergeant Travis Ford, of the Rockport Police Department. Many years ago, I served as the program clinician for Harbor Family Services, which ran a residential home for young men with significant mental health and substance abuse needs. Every once in awhile, we needed to call in the police for particularly challenging/dangerous situations. I was always pleased when Sergeant Ford responded. His calm and friendly demeanor defused most situations quickly, and he was never angry or escalated a youth in crisis. Just law enforcement at its very best. I will miss seeing him on the road on my morning commute.

Okay, Lincolnville, go face the week. Enjoy the bounty of your garden, or visit one of our many farmstands for fresh produce. Spend some time at one of our lakes or beaches. Read a book in the garden, hike a path in Camden Hills or one of the many properties of the Coastal Mountains Land Trust. Pick up a can of Bakewell Cream and try your hand at their biscuit recipe, and remember the biscuit makers who came before.

Reach out at ceobrien246@gmail.com.

Municipal Calendar

Monday, July 14

Historical Society Museum Open, 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., 33 Beach Road

Recreation Commission, 6 p.m. Town Office

Select Board, 6 p.m. Town Office

Tuesday, July 15

Library open 3-6 p.m. 208 Main Street

AA Meeting 12:15 p.m., Community Building, 18 Searsmont Road

School Committee, with Select Board and Budget Committee, 6 p.m., LCS

Wednesday, July 16

Financial Advisory Committee, 10 a.m. Town Office