Being a Community

Mon, 05/06/2024 - 8:15am

Ed O’Brien

From left, Evie, Clara, Josie, Abbie. and Maggie managing the lemonade stand on a Saturday afternoon. (Photo by Ed O’Brien)

I took a drive up Slab City on a sunny Saturday afternoon to visit a local business I have not previously mentioned. Up on the Belfast Road end of Slab City, stands the Cinq Petit Soeurs lemonade stand- open by chance, and you will know if it is by the young ladies flagging you down when you drive by. Generally, if it is a sunny day, and school is not in session, you may be in luck.

Originally created by Addie and Maggie Harbaugh, back when it was Deux Petit Soeurs, the Harbaugh family has grown. On the day I visited, there were five girls, though not all were Harbaughs, attending the stand, peddling lemonade, with the promise of cookies baking in the oven. Unfortunately, I had places to be, and probably did not need a cookie, as tempting as that sounded.

A female-run lemonade stand on a backroad in a small town on the coast of Maine. Pretty gosh-darned wholesome.

I say it so often, but I love this town.

We have beaches on Penobscot Bay, lakes to fish and swim in. Miles and miles of pristine wilderness interspersed with hiking trails. You can grab a fancy pour-over coffee at Green Tree and a bag of fresh roasted beans to bring home. Just across the street, Dot’s provides wine and baked goods and meals to eat there or package up to go.

The Beach Store, Drake’s, and the Lincolnville General Store are there for your slice of pizza, sandwich, or the grocery item you forgot to pick up on your last trip out of town to Hannaford’s.

For a sit-down meal, the Whale’s Tooth or Astor and Rose at the Youngtown Inn will allow you to entertain your out-of-town guests in style, or provide a date night without driving too far.

The news is out that McLaughlin’s lobster shack will be opening soon in the former Chez Michel building at the beach. I have no doubt that Rick McLaughlin will maintain the recipes beloved by locals for nearly 45 years.

And there has been some buzz that the Lincolnville General, which has been up for sale, is under contract. Hopefully this means that this Center institution will continue to serve the people of Lincolnville and those who are passing through.

What does it mean to be a community? I have explored this topic before and will continue to do so. I talk about its history, starting with the Penobscot Natives who feasted on shellfish at our shores, and the first white settlers who tried to eke a living out of our rocky soil.

I mention old families, whose names go back centuries, and are immortalized in place names: Youngtown, the French Cemetery, Frohock Brook, Moody Mountain… But of course most of us don’t go back that far.

My own family’s Lincolnville roots only go back to 1970, when a young couple happened upon this old place at top of Sleepy Hollow, a slightly ramshackle farmhouse that they were able to afford, thank’s to my dad’s veteran benefits. While my dad is at least from Augusta, with old Maine roots, my mom is from the suburbs of Chicago, and showed up here in the mid-1960s as a college student. She is decidingly “from away”.

“From away”. A term used, often with some derision, about people who were not born here, or even who’s great-grandparents weren’t born here.

Ma recounted a story recently, which I have heard dozens of times, about how when she first moved to her little place in St. George, after accepting a job teaching at the Rockland Middle School, her next door neighbor, an elderly widow, didn’t acknowledge her for an entire year. Then one day, out of the blue, the woman invited her over for coffee. They became close friends. Apparently, the neighbor was just waiting to see if Ma was going to stick around before getting to know her.

For some Maine history, after it became clear that Maine was not going to be a breadbasket, thanks to the aforementioned terrible soil, and many of our young people headed west after the Civil War, we became a tourist destination. Wealthy families from the cities to our south began building “cottages”, where they would spend the summer months in the cool breezes of the North Atlantic shore.

Thus, Maine became a tourist economy, with many of the locals employed to some extent by the “summer people”. The people “from away”.

The locals cleaned the “cottages”, cooked the food, caretaked the estates in the winter. Vacation for the visitors was work for the locals- much needed work. Inevitably, though, there was some resentment, some suspicion directed at the “summer people”. I would attribute this to the surviving attitude sometimes directed at newcomers.

Well over a century later, some of these feelings persist, though even relatively new Lincolnville residents can probably understand the consternation of trying to pick up a prescription at CVS in Camden in July.

Add to this the general divisiveness in our politics, felt nationwide, but especially in small, politically diverse communities like our own. A serious lack of affordable housing is resulting in people who lived here for generations no longer being able to afford to live in the community they grew up in.

We are stronger together. I see the Lincolnville Heart and Soul project as an effort to reach out all residents, to determine collectively the best way forward, to preserve this place we love. We are reaching the end of budget season, when the Select Board and the School Community worked unbelievably hard to determine their recommendations on how the town’s taxes should be spent to support the municipal and school budgets.

In good New England fashion, these budgets are ultimately in the hands of us, the tax paying residents of this town, the Town Meeting on the school budget will be held May 16, with the municipal Town Meeting on June 13. Be there to make your vote count.

Lincolnville is not the town I grew up in. Lincolnville is the town I grew up in. Things change, and will continue to change. The shell mounds of the Penobscot people have been reclaimed by the rising seas. The log cabins of the original settlers have rotted away. Some of the names of the early settlers continue to show up in the student rolls at Lincolnville Central School, while some names exist only points on a map- a pond, a hill, or a fork in the road.

So when you order a croissant at Dot’s, a slice of pizza at The Beach Store, a six pack of something at Drake’s, smile and be kind. Get a cup of lemonade from joyful girls on Slab City Road. If you live here, you are from here. It is up to you to make this home.

Have a wonderful week Lincolnville. Don’t get too stuck in your own bubble, take the chance to meet your new neighbor. You don’t need to wait a year to invite them over for coffee. Be kind and reach out at ceobrien246@gmail.com.

CALENDAR

Monday, May 6

School Committee, 6 p.m., LCS

Tuesday, May 7

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

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

Wednesday, May 8

Library open 2-5 p.m.

Planning Board, 7 p.m., Town Office

Thursday May 9

Conservation Commission, 4 p.m., Town Office

Friday May 10