Diane O’Brien prepared a piece for this week:

The tradition of the gold-headed Boston Post Cane and its presentation to the oldest resident of a New England town was conceived by a publisher of the Boston Postdaily with an eye toward increasing circulation in 1909. On Aug. 2, 1909, Edwin A. Grozier, publisher of the Boston Post, forwarded to the selectmen in 700 New England towns a gold-headed ebony cane with the request that it be presented with the compliments of the Boston Post to the oldest male citizen of the town, to be used by him as long as he lived, or moved from the town. The custom was expanded to include a community's oldest woman in 1930.

Last week it was Peg Miller’s turn to hold the town’s Boston Post Cane. At 98 years old she’s earned it. With her family gathered around, Town Administrator Dave Kinney and Select Board members Ladleah Dunn and Josh Gerritsen presented Peg with the Boston Post Cane and a certificate. She was clearly delighted, recounting memories of her childhood growing up in Lincolnville. And living there all her life.

For my part, I saw the Queen Bee of Lincolnville, the last living member of the cadre of women I encountered when I first arrived here as a 25-year-old newlywed. Ruth Pottle was my introduction to them when she called me, barely two weeks after we moved in, to ask if I’d make a pie for the upcoming public supper.

It was only the beginning. Pies, beans, biscuits. Bake sales, Hunters’ Breakfasts, Bean Suppers, funeral receptions, meal chains. Lincolnville does do food. It took a lot of organizing and the women were up to it.

Ruth Pottle, Janet Richards, Nancy Hardy, Ruth Felton, Barbara Tarantino, Bessie Dean, Cyrene Slegona – and Peg – were the strong women of my era, the organizers, the ones who arrived with full pie baskets, huge crocks of beans. They set the tables at the Grange, served the food, cleaned up after (or got their husbands to do it).

They were the strong threads, the warp, making up the fabric of our community. A blink in time, they’d been preceded by their mothers and succeeded by their daughters, whether by blood or community kin. My own generation, some 30 years younger, has had their share of community-minded, hard–working women, and I watch the next through their good works today.

Peg actually has spent the last few years, not in the old farmhouse overlooking Pitcher Pond, the house she and her late husband, Ray Miller, inherited from his mother, Belle, but in Belfast’s Tall Pines. Two days after the town presented her with the Boston Post Cane, Peg was moved to a nursing home in Machias as the Tall Pines facility is closing.

I leave it to all of us to ponder what this means – for Peg, for her family, and ultimately, for us.

Flea Market in The Center

The Lincolnville Center Flea Market kicks off its Tenth Season this Saturday, May 20, at the Community Building, at 18 Searsmont Road, next to the UCC Church. Markets will be held on the third Saturday of the month through October. Mary Schulien writes:

“The flea market started after an extensive restoration of the community building by the United Christian Church.  The ownership of the building reverted to the church according to the deed when the town no longer had use for it when the new school was built.  Since then it has been used for a soup café, concerts, private parties, and meetings as well as a successful marketplace.

“This flea market is a real sellers' and finders' emporium offering an abundance of items from the useful and practical to unusual treasures including antiques, hand crafts, value-added farm products, and a myriad of marvelous miscellanea.  UCC members will be selling coffee and baked goods, breakfast casseroles, quiche, and muffin all packed for takeout.

“The Lincolnville Center Indoor Flea Market is not an ordinary market. It's a community gathering for a treasure hunt.  All welcome.”

The spring “greening” of Lincolnville is in full force, sympathy to those with pollen allergies, but what a beautiful time on the coast of Maine. The tourists will be here in force soon, so get out and enjoy what is on offer in these last couple weeks before Memorial Day. Reach out at ceobrien246@gmail.com.