MAINLY COLD

 

Over a half-century ago, I lived in a place unsuited to my Louisiana warm blood. Although the temps here are closer to 48 degrees above zero, I was reminded of the 48 below zero temps I endured in Maine one winter. The place: a small town called Limestone; the reason I’d been displaced there: the US Army. No, I wasn’t a GI at the time, but my former spouse had been assigned as an Army radar specialist attached to a SAC base in Limestone. The big joke was that we had endured the heat of El Paso, Texas because of some perverse military reason and were then sent to Limestone, Maine, where winters were harshest in the northeastern US. 

 

Maine was a place where native Abenaki tribes called themselves “People of the Sunrise.” The irony is that the sun was seldom seen, especially that winter in 1954. However, like the Abenaki, we reached out for the rising sun daily.

The average Maine temps in January that year I resided in Limestone dipped to about 15 degrees Farenheit and summer came late. L. L. Bean of present-day fame hadn’t become a popular outdoor outlet, so I didn’t have access to bulky sweaters or sturdy shoes, and my first walk in downtown Limestone in southern loafers resulted in a fall on ice. However, the air seemed clean, and the town boasted of the Robert Frost Memorial library.

 

Due to Scots-Irish immigrants' efforts, the potato had become a leading crop in Maine, and Aroostook County (Limestone) remains the primary producer of this crop. Potatoes were the major daily fare on our table. When we mustered out of the Army after trying to live on non-commissioned officer’s pay, we’d gained weight. The leading causes of our change to "rotundity": potatoes and Texas pinto beans!

This present state of isolation due to Covid reminds me of that winter isolation in Limestone when I spent hours reading and listening to Tchaikovsky (his 5th symphony, for some melancholy reason), and trying to escape a neighbor who wanted to play Canasta from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m. while chain-smoking Herbert Tareyton cigarettes.

We were discharged in May, so I never saw the Annual Crown of Maine Balloon Festival that occurs in Caribou, a few miles away from Limestone. Nor did I get to visit the Acadian Historic Village near Van Buren although most people who live in and around Van Buren are of French Canadian descent, and I would’ve been at home among these Acadians.

While visiting the Frost Memorial Library, I discovered the writings of Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909) who spent most of her life in South Berwick, Maine and whose writing featured the speech and character of ordinary Mainers. I’ve read and re-read The Country of the Pointed Firs, perhaps because a teacher of English Literature once told me my writing style reminded her of Jewett’s writing. I’d have preferred a comparison to Maine born Edna St. Vincent Millay who became famous for “Renascence,” but Jewett’s A Country Doctor is a notable classic, and I still appreciate the comparison.

Snow fell constantly that winter and reached the height of telephone poles, but French fries and pinto beans…and, oh, occasionally a bowl of blueberries…sustained us. And bravo the earmuff, invented by Chester Greenwood, a fifteen year old boy who saved us from frostbite.

 

Image on cover by Paul E. Marquart, my brother.