Walking around my four rooms these days is comforting, familiar. After a year of sorting, building “stays” and “goes” piles, then carting the “goes” to the dump, to Goodwill, to the roadside free table, much of what’s left is attached in some way to a person, like the Hoosier cabinet that reminds me of Sharon Pendleton.

Sharon Moody Pendleton passed away two weeks ago. Maybe you knew her. Perhaps you grew up together in the Center where she did along with her several siblings. Or maybe you got to know her, as I did, at Grampa Hall’s, the antique shop she opened in her husband’s grandfather’s garage.

Grampa Hall – Virgil was his name – who raised three young daughters alone after his wife died, lived in the house that once stood in front of the garage. Read about him in Staying Put (available at the Library, the General Store, or from me at Sleepy Hollow Rag Rugs).

Sharon had a great eye for interesting old things, and that was a reason for stopping by every so often just to see what she’d found. She crosses my mind nearly every day since the heart of my kitchen, my Hoosier cabinet came from Sharon’s Grampa Hall’s. Hoosiers were popular 100 years ago before kitchens had all kinds of built-in cupboards and drawers and counters. Mine holds 25 pounds of flour in its pull-down bin complete with sifter, has a pull out counter for rolling out dough, multiple drawers and shelves, a small cabinet perfect for spices, a rack for cookie sheets.

I roll out pie crust and biscuits and Christmas cookies with the homemade rolling pin Lou Polan’s Russian immigrant father made for his wife when she joined him in New York City in 1902. Lou’s widow, Myra, (they were New Yorkers transplanted to North Chester Dean Road) who gave it to me saying, “You reminded him of his mother.”

The soap dish in my shower, pale green enameled metal screwed into the wall, came from the house John Trowbridge and Duncan Wass moved into when they bought the Beach Store sometime in the early 80s. Duncan and John. Funny, irreverent, threw great parties. I think of them at Halloween, for their house was always Wally’s favorite as he trekked around trick-or-treating with our little boys; he saved it for last and the nice, stiff drink waiting for him there.

“What exactly are they to each other?” one of our sons, maybe 11 at the time, asked us. “Kind of like being married,” Wally told him, an answer that seemed to make sense to that boy. Many years later, after college, he surprised us with the news that a high school friend (from a staunchly Republican family) had come out as a Democrat. He didn’t seem to think it newsworthy to tell us that he also had come out as gay.

Wally kept our two woodboxes filled throughout the winter, a fact I’m well aware of as the mornings get colder and the stoves greedier. One of those boxes has been in the kitchen since our first winter here, 1970-71. We found it at the Lobster Lane Bookstore in Spruce Head. Yes, it was a bookstore, and I still treasure The Water World, “a popular treatise on the broad, broad ocean…..profusely illustrated” published 1885; it cost us three dollars.

But there were some antiques for sale at Lobster Lane as well, and one day we brought home that woodbox. It used to have a hinged top, but that’s long gone, battered by countless loads of firewood hastily dumped inside on frigid mornings while the car was warming up for his long drive to Castine’s Adams School, and I was stirring the oatmeal. I’ve rebuilt the thing several times, and now treat it gingerly, laying each chunk inside carefully as if I have all the time in the world.

Her name was Helen, the owner with her husband, of that bookstore. One time we stopped by (pre-children when a couple could spend week-end hours roaming the back roads, exploring the countryside and each other) and her husband told us she’d gone up to Rockland. “She heard on the radio it was Christmas City, and she just had to go see that for herself.” A few years later, with two little boys who were growing up under the stars on dark, winter nights, we saw for ourselves; a trip to Christmas City with its lights and tall buildings was the perfect preview to the season.

Things can have another kind of attachment, that is to the hands of the makers, the mind’s eye of a real person whom we knew. The braided rug at the bottom of the stairs is one of Bernice Calderwood’s, Bernice who lived with her family on the last dairy farm in Lincolnville. She tended thousands of laying hens during the 40s and 50s in a barn that’s now a tumbled-down pile of lumber; she oversaw acres of strawberries and the crew of locals who picked them for two cents a quart. She grew up in Oxford, Massachusetts, and the summer she was 18 she came to Lincolnville on vacation with her parents to visit a sister who’d married a local guy. She met farmer Kenneth Calderwood and married him at Thanksgiving. (They brought Town Clerk Horace Miller a turkey in exchange for the license.) “Some vacation,” was all she said about that.

Bernice turned to braided rugs after the hens were gone, the cows were gone, after Ken was gone. She made them until her hands no longer had the strength to handle the heavy wool braids, when she could no longer make the tight coils of a well-made braided rug. I think of her now when my own hands are weakening with arthritis and age. But it wasn’t the end. Bernice turned to sewing intricate cathedral window potholders on the sewing machine she kept set up in her living room. And of course, I have several of those hanging on my kitchen cupboard doors.

One of Siem van der Venn’s complex pierced vases sits on my living room mantle, and I think of how he drilled all those holes in the leather-dry clay. We bartered pots for beaded jewelry at the short-lived Lincolnville’s Farmers Market a few months ago; I’m still thrilled to have one of his wonderful pieces.

It was at the same market (held in Grampa Hall’s, you may remember) that Wally and I got to know Karl Gerstenberger and his bird photos. Thanks to that friendship a startlingly real pileated woodpecker presides over the mantle that holds Siem’s work.

Every time I sit down at our old barn loom, the lobsterman who, for a few years not long before he died, turned into a weaver, passes through my mind. I see Tom Flagg’s strong hands tying knots at crucial places, knots that are just as tight today, some twenty years after he tied them.

And “passing through” is just what happens when you know the people who made, touched, or gave you the things that make up your stuff. A certain beam, fir I think it is, stretches across the divide between living room and kitchen. Leroy Underhill did that particular renovation for us, not long after we moved in, taking down the wall dividing the two and pounding this heavy beam into place – I can still see him doing it. This must have been one of the first changes we made to the place, and I remember being interested in how it all was done.

A couple of years ago Zack Thomas, descendent of one of Lincolnville’s earliest families, worked on my wonky kitchen drawers, the ones built some hundred years ago by a builder who will never be known to me. Zack passes through my mind every single time I pull on one of those drawers and it glides out effortlessly.

I put my shoes on every morning with the help of the shoehorn Frank Slegona made for me one day to demonstrate how his homemade metal rolling machine worked. Actually, everywhere I look in my kitchen I see him and the workshop in his Youngtown Road barn: the stainless steel cookie sheet imprinted with his name, the metal tray beneath the gas burners on the antique stove I cook on, the metal shield between stove pipe and wooden shelves, the long spoon he carved out of a piece of applewood.

The upstairs grandchildren want to build a tree house out in our woods next spring, in the same tree where their father and his brothers built theirs. Their Dresden, Maine grandpa is already sawing some boards for it on his portable sawmill, Dresden trees into boards for a Lincolnville treehouse, a memory in the making for those children.

I loved wandering around Grampa Hall’s, but a chance to visit with Sharon was the real reason I dropped in. She liked to talk history, the history of her town, and so did I. She had a matter-of-fact, no nonsense way about her that I liked. She was, above all, practical, in just like that old Hoosier. I’m so sorry she’s gone.

Town

David Kinney sent out the following: “Voters will receive a ballot concerning amendments to the Town Charter. 

The proposed charter amendments address two issues. 

The first seeks to correct a conflict within the Town Charter regarding bidding.  In 2002 when the Town Charter was substantially revised a change was made to Section 7.14 regarding the Bid Procedure.  The amount triggering a formal bid was set at $8,000 or more.  Unfortunately (and not having been here at the time I can only assume in error) Section 4.02 left the bid amount at “more than two thousand dollars ($2,000).”  The amendment seeks to make the Charter provisions consistent at $8,000 (the amount recommended in 2002 by the Charter Commission).

The second change was requested by the Budget Committee and seeks to amend when the Committee elects its officers.  Currently the Charter requires the Budget Committee to meet in the month of August to elect officers.  The amendment will allow the Budget Committee to elect officers at eh first Budget Committee meeting following the annual town meeting.  The Budget Committee sought to change this provision as at times gathering a quorum In August proved difficult particularly for a “five minute” meeting.  The thought was that it seemed more appropriate to have the committee select its officers the first time they get together after town meeting whether it be before, during or after August.  Whenever the committee had other work to accomplish they could first select officers and then move to other business.

See a sample local ballot on the town’s website or see it at the town Office.

The polls open, in the Lynx gym at the school, at 8 a.m. on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 6 and close at 8 p.m.

School

Kids will be carving pumpkins after school on Tuesday for the Center’s Halloween celebration the next day. The K-2 Halloween parade will be at 1:45 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 31.

Thanks to the local non-profit Partners for Enrichment students in grades 6 and 7 will travel to the Challenger Learning Center in Bangor and the Jordan Planetarium at UMO on Nov. 13 for some hands on space experience. These Partners for Enrichment experiences are funded outside of the school budget, using money raised by that organization privately. It’s a great way to donate locally to bring extra educational programs to our school. You can send a tax-deductible donation to Partners for Enrichment, 721 Camden Road, Hope, ME 04847.

Halloween in the Center

As has been the custom for the past several years the Lincolnville Center General Store will be organizing Halloween festivities in the Center. Ladleah Dunn writes: “You guys! We are having a Halloween party across the street from the Lincolnville General Store (in Grampa Halls)! We will have Michael O'Neil doing his photography booth, costume contest (for prizes), and snacks (bring something to share!), and other fun to be had. It's gonna be a good time. Promise.” And trick or treaters can wander up and down Main Street. Even if you’re past the age of trick or treating drive by after dark to see the display of Jack o lanterns in front of the store.

Red Cross Blood Drive

The Red Cross will be at the Community Building, 18 Searsmont Road, on Monday, Nov. 5, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. for a blood drive. Make an appointment here redcrossblood.org (keyword Lincolnville CB) or call 1-800-733-2767. Walk-ins welcome too.

Library

This is a Five Tuesday October meaning an extra night for the needleworkers and knitters, gathering 4-6 p.m. on October 30.

Librarian Elizabeth Eudy says, “Come relax in the warmth and charm of our lovely library with this group of fun, fiber-lovers. Bring your needlecraft project - knitting, crochet, needlepoint, felting, cross stitch or quilting – and enjoy the camaraderie.  All are welcome.

Lincolnville Linux User’s Group ­– “Dedicated to Quality Computing on the Cheap” ­– meets Tuesday, October 30 at 7 p.m. Bill Norfleet will present “How to Manage a Linux System for an Arthritic Octogenarian on the Other Side of the Continent”; he also will be demonstrating a Raspberry Pi.  Bring your gadgets and ideas.  A computer projector will be available for your use. This will be fun and informative.  

Family Music Time with Jessica Day is Friday November 2 at 11 a.m.  Children (toddlers to 5 years old) and their families are invited to this free program of singing and dancing and playing simple instruments.  The event is free and offered every first Friday and is always well attended. 

A True Cat Story

From a friend this week: “We knew [our cat Natasha] was close to having a litter.  One night, in the middle of the night, I hear a noise right at my ear, turn on the light, and there is Natasha giving birth to her first baby right in the middle of our two pillows on the double bed.  It was a little messy but I was so honored to have her feel safe enough to do that.” That beats my kittens-born-on-Wally’s-favorite-vest story.