It’s karma. I always say that when someone commiserates with my lot – picking up cigarette butts at Lincolnville Beach every morning. I was a clueless smoker myself for 11 years – three packs of unfiltered Camels a day by the end of it – and heedlessly tossed those butts wherever I was. Out car windows, on the street, wherever there wasn’t a handy ashtray. In those days – the 60s – you could smoke everywhere but in church and at the movies.

And that was the reason my dad (a five pack a day Lucky Strike man) gave for staying out of churches and movie theatres. He was 60 when he finally quit. Why? They’d raised the taxes on cigarettes that year.

Didn’t he feel better, I asked? Never felt bad, he replied.

I was 26 when I quit, New Year’s Day 1971. Why? I wanted to have a baby and heard smoking led to low birth weight. By sometime in February I was pregnant and in November gave birth to a nearly 11 pound baby, our first. Egad, maybe I should have kept smoking!

I did it cold turkey; there may have been some nicotine gum around in those days, but I never tried it. Quitting was hard. And lonely. My fellow teachers at the Junior High in Rockland (now the Lincoln Center) made a beeline for the basement teachers’ room every recess and lunch period, those that weren’t on duty that is, and happily lit up.

I wonder how the non-smokers stood it. Maybe they stayed in their classrooms.

For twenty blissful minutes we could laugh and talk and let down our guard; someone else was tending to our charges. But then came January 1971 and I found myself isolated and alone. There was no way I could have gone near that basement room with its delicious, welcoming haze of cigarette smoke. Evenings were just as bad. What did people do after dinner if they didn’t smoke? I just went to bed.

Although some ex-smokers will tell you how they loved every puff (I did), before long that claim gets old. The truth dawns – you’re hooked. Can’t quit. Cough all the time. Can't afford it either. Though, that wasn’t the case in my day as a carton of those Camels (do they still sell them by the carton?) cost $3 or $.30 a pack.

Now, with every butt I pick up I’m thankful to be free ­– and concerned for the poor soul who smoked it. I find them everywhere: around the benches, in the parking lot, by the portapotties. The worst is the row of three, five, as many as a dozen butts, all the same brand, carefully stubbed out in the sand in front of a log, bearing witness to somebody’s really bad night. I always picture a man whose life has come undone, sitting here, looking out over the water, trying to come to grips with his new reality.

When there were two of us, when Wally and I were one, “doing the Beach” was our summer job. For over twenty years the town hired us to empty the trash barrels and pick up the litter at Lincolnville Beach. We had our routine. He did the barrels and I did the litter. Generally we finished at the same time, maybe stopped for a breakfast sandwich at the Beach store, then drove slowly home the long way, up Ducktrap Road so he could check out Maplewood, the cemetery he mowed every summer for many years.

If he’d just finished the day before, I dutifully admired his work, the neat edging around every stone, the uniform rows of green grass. If it had been rainy for a while he fretted that the place was looking raggedy; he needed to get at it soon. Sometimes there was a new grave opened up, a green cover on the telltale mound of dirt. Whose lot was that? Wonder who died?

You know, the kind of easy patter long married couples carry on.

But now that he’s gone I’ve made the job my own, figured out a new routine. First, check the five barrels and pull out the returnables. That, of course was his job.

I used to mock my husband for his thorough search of every bag; you look like a raccoon, upside down in that barrel, I used to tell him. He’d say he’d buy me a hot fudge sundae at the end of the season if he made a hundred bucks on those bottles.

He kept track, writing down each day’s take in a little notebook he had in the truck.

The first day, last year that I tackled the job alone I found myself pulling out the returnables, though I never dig as deep as he did. I have some pride after all. But sure enough, I got a little notebook and started keeping track.

This year I decided to count cigarette butts as well. Why not? It passes the time.

So what do people throw away? Specifically, what do they throw away while on vacation, or having a day away, at a Maine beach?

Food containers, pizza boxes, mostly from local businesses, though some from Belfast or beyond. McDonald’s, Dunkin Donuts, KFC, that kind of thing.

Diapers. Yes, lots of diapers, usually neatly folded into themselves, but used diapers nonetheless.

Bottles and cans, mostly those flimsy plastic bottles that held plain old water. A few fancy, designer waters. Overall, a depressing number of water bottles.

An astonishing variety of soft drink/juice type cans and bottles, brands I’ve never heard of, some brands I see only once all summer. How can there be so many different brands?

Glass beer bottles, mostly craft beers with fancy labels. At least once a week a large bag of beer cans, all the same brand, obviously all consumed at once on Lincolnville Beach, probably after dark. Sometimes I’ve pulled 30 (a suitcase?) of them out of one barrel.

Very few wine bottles, unlike years past when there were lots. At $.15 each these are the trash picker’s gold mine, along with the occasional vodka or rum or bourbon bottle.

Dog poop, almost always in the barrel in a little knotted plastic bag. I find surprisingly little dog poop on the ground, though I’ve been told that people bury it, then kick sand over it when their dog defecates on the Beach. That would be one reason the Healthy Beaches volunteers (Richard Glock, Corelyn Senn, and Bob Olson) sometimes turn in samples so high in coliform that the Beach is closed to swimming.

Household trash. Bulging plastic bags, tied tight and stuffed into one of the barrels, clearly somebody’s kitchen garbage.

Wally was convinced that sometimes people threw rocks into the barrels, the bags were that heavy. I think he was right. This summer I found a pile of hen clams in one barrel, those huge clams you can dig out on the sand bar at low tide. The animals were dead of course; someone had dug them up, then thrown them away, probably still alive.

What’s the matter with some people?

Once the five barrels are checked, their bags replaced if needed, and the full ones carried (or sometimes dragged) over to my truck, I enter the day’s returnable count into my notebook, take a sip from my coffee mug, and start walking along the benches with a little bucket.

As common as the cigarette butts are the bits of foil, all balled up or the cellophane strip or the water bottle top covertly dropped by someone who probably wouldn’t dream of tossing a whole Snickers wrapper. Small potatoes, yes, but imagine what the place would look like after a week or a summer of such tiny infractions.

Paper napkins turn up frequently. I like to think they blow away unnoticed from somebody’s picnic lunch.

After walking the benches I give a quick glance at the Lobster Pound’s picnic area, usually finding three or four butts, but figuring that’s not my territory, I go carefully down the steep granite steps that lead to the Beach. Stuff is often, well, stuffed into the cracks of the sea wall; there’s no other way it would get into those crannies, and I fish it out – restaurant receipts, cigarette packages, potato chip wrappers, you name it.

I limit myself to the high tide line and above, unless there’s some intolerable bit of flotsam that’s landed below it. Here’s where I’m careful to pick up every bit of plastic that I see, along with the colorful rubber bands that somehow find their way into the Bay and then onto our Beach. One year I filled a gallon bucket with them, dropping in each day’s catch. Were the restaurant cooks tossing them out as they prepared the lobsters? I never found out, and these days, for some reason, I find way fewer.

What else washes up? Shoes. Bits of rope all tangled and threaded with seaweed. Pieces of fiberglass, from palm size to the dimensions of a tabletop. Boards, part of an enormous piling (which my sister helped me haul up to the truck). Parts of bathing suits, tops, bottoms, tee shirts. Towels, lots of towels.

I take the towels home, wash them and then drop them off at P.A.W.S in Camden.

Plastic beach toys, often broken. We used to bring these home, the pails and shovels, sieves and sandcastle molds, Frisbees and swim goggles. For several years we kept a laundry basket full of them tied to a post on the Beach with a sign reading “Play with the toys, then return them here”. Some toys disappeared, but others were added; clearly they were being played with.

Then one day last summer the basket was completely empty. Somebody had taken them all. I didn’t replace them this year.

One time I found the metal tag from a crematorium. Think how that got there.

Walking towards the ferry, I scramble up a path to the sidewalk and walk along that parking area back to the kiosk and the main lot, all along that sidewalk to Frohock Bridge, then back along the curb (you have to walk both sides of the sidewalk to check out the stuff that’s blown against the curbs). Some mornings Dwight Wass and I greet each other, as he patrols his side of Atlantic Highway for butts in front of his gallery.

There are the early morning Beach regulars: Dwight; Di Lord opening up her Beach Store; the regular dog walker – we always exchange weather pleasantries; the guy who stops for five minutes on his way to work to take in the Bay, the sunrise, the boats and the birds; Erin or Don Shirley walking their handsome Samoyed; Wayne Heal’s driver who daily empties all the Beach dumpsters overflowing with smelly lobster and other fishy waste; the Cleanwoods guy who keeps the portapotties odor free; the woman truck driver who does the early morning postal run carrying mail to and from Rockland.

Rick McLaughlin, who until this year could always be found on the Beach with Buttercup his ancient cocker spaniel, is busy these mornings in his kitchen at the Lobster Shack since his beloved dog passed away last winter. He and Wally would have long talks while I picked up litter – they had a history together, as Wally was his principal and teacher at LCS so many years ago.

After Wally was gone I found it comforting to have my own chat with Rick as he coaxed Buttercup to keep moving. We talked of many things, including cigarette butts and how he and his brother would be sent out every morning to pick up the parking lot of their parents’ Lobster Pound Restaurant.

Some things never change.

School

With the retirement of Robbie Lewis and Nancy Stevick, four new teachers greeted LCS students this fall: Caroline Moore, fifth grade math and Ed Tech; Sarah Michaud, seventh and eighth grade language arts; Jill Feeney, science; Brittany Black, special education. Read more about these staff changes in the LCS newsletter, Lynx News. PTO meets Wednesday, September 12 at 6 p.m. Babysitting will be provided.

The first cross country meet will be Thursday, Sept. 13 at CHRHS. The girls run first at 4 p.m.

The soccer team plays Wednesday, Sept. 12, 3:45 p.m. at South Bristol.

Breakfast after the Bell, a mid-morning snack served to all grades will include muffins, breakfast sandwiches, fruit bars, yogurt, fruit, cheese sticks, milk.

Oldtimers Luncheon

Lincolnville’s “oldtimers” will gather for their fall luncheon Tuesday, September 11 at the Lobster Pound; come at 11:30 a.m. to mingle; lunch is at noon. Who’s an oldtimer? If you live here, you’re welcome to come! Please contact Janet Plausse, 789-5811, to let her know as she needs a count for the Pound.

Library

Tuesday, 4-6 p.m. needleworkers bring a project and join the group for a couple of hours of camaraderie and encouragement.

Friday at 9 a.m. the Writing Group meets to review their individual writing projects and to discuss the craft of writing. Newcomers are welcome to join the group that Sheila Polson leads every second and fourth Friday.

LIA

A note from Jane Hardy: “This Thursday, September 13, at 5:30 p.m. the Lincolnville Improvement Association will be hosting Connie Parker from the Lincolnville Historical Society at our monthly meeting. She will speak on "WHAT"S UPstairs?". There have been some major changes at the School House Museum in the past year, including the new Smithsonian-quality timeline of Lincolnville's history from the last ice age to the present that Diane O'Brien created. Connie will talk about what the museum offers and then lead us upstairs to have a look around. Interested in local history, family genealogy, old photos or familiar household items you remember from your childhood? Do you want to try your luck at the scavenger hunt? Come see and hear what your local museum has for you. 

“The meeting begins with good conversation and a potluck supper. Please bring a dish to share; drinks will be provided. Friends and neighbors are always welcome. We look forward to seeing you there. If you can't make the meeting, come visit the museum on your own. It is open on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 1 to 4.”

Indoor Flea Market

A full house of vendors selling antiques, handcrafts, household goods, and oddities will be at the Lincolnville Center Indoor Flea Market, sponsored by the United Christian Church 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Community Building, 18 Searsmont Road. Refreshments for sale include home baked goods and breakfast casserole. Contact Mary at 785-3521 for more information.

Grange Supper

This Saturday, September 15 Tranquility Grange will be on their fall public supper featuring beans, casseroles, salads and homemade desserts. Serving starts at 5 p.m., but those in the know show up at 4:30 to get in line.

Check out Lincolnville’s Churches

Both Bayshore Baptist and United Christian Church have new pastors this fall: Draa Mackey at Bayshore and Elizabeth Barnum at UCC. With new leadership both congregations are seeing the revitalization of their respective churches. They invite the public to come to their services and special programs, including a gospel concert at Bayshore and Visitor Sunday at UCC.

Bayshore Baptist Church

Kindred Hearts, a well-known Southern gospel group, will present a free concert at Bayshore Baptist, Atlantic Highway north of the Beach, on Sunday September 16 at 6 p.m. All are welcome; refreshments will be served after the concert.

United Christian Church

Sunday, September 16 is Visitor Sunday at United Christian Church in the Center, 18 Searsmont Road. All are welcome to the 9:30 a.m. worship service which will be followed by an Ice Cream Social in the Community Building next door.