Down the Road
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: A Fishing I Used to Go
I don't fish anymore. I became bored with it when we lived on the shore of Swan Lake in Swanville. I had a canoe and a lake and fished all the time. But one time it was boring, and I haven't fished since.
May 12, 2008 - 11:47:13 AM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: Crime With or Without Punishment
It was a bright sunny day, and I could have enjoyed the green of the grass, leaves on the trees, and the view across the field on the property of the former South Paris Poor Farm.
May 5, 2008 - 11:25:49 AM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: Too Many Cops
"We've got to stop meeting this way," an Oxford, Maine police officer commented to me around 2 a.m. as we stood on a rural road and contemplated the latest Chevy Camero rollover.
Apr 29, 2008 - 1:20:49 PM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: Miss Kitty
Every once in a while I read something so special I want to share it. My daughter and her husband, Bob, vacated Maine several years ago so she could accept a position and they could reside in the mountains of North Carolina about 20 miles from my favorite trail -- the Appalachian Trail, an extension of ours here in Maine. Lorraine recently e-mailed me the "obituary" of a kitty who lived a long, happy life in a North Carolina bookstore.
Apr 21, 2008 - 1:15:35 AM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: Restaurant
Dolores and I have been thinking about writing A Guide to Good Old Boys’ Restaurants in Maine. But I’ve been advised that to be politically okey dokey, it would need to be A Guide to Good Old Persons’ Restaurants in Maine.
Apr 14, 2008 - 12:43:37 AM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: Starting the Maine Appalachian Trail Season
My favorite day each spring is the second Saturday of April, when I go to an all-day meeting. Favorite day, an all-day meeting? Yup, this is the beginning of the Maine Appalachian Trail Club season, the annual meeting. It will be at the University of Maine in Farmington.
Apr 9, 2008 - 11:41:17 AM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: Chocolate and Clammin' Ain't Chummy
I went clammin' once. With Mrs. Paul's help, I'll never have to again.
Mar 31, 2008 - 9:07:57 AM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: I Don't Believe in Spring
I always like the idea of spring, although in Maine the real spring never seems to really arrive until three hours before summer. Easter, the pagan celebration of the new life following winter and adopted by the church as the celebration of the Savior's resurrection, seems usually a cold start to new life.
Mar 22, 2008 - 10:06:52 PM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: How to Whack Yourself Out on the Trail
When I was a little kid, my big brother used to call me Clumsy Boy. Now he doesn't call me, just sends those long articles he writes for a railroad magazine as an old retired railroad geezer.
Mar 20, 2008 - 11:27:02 AM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: The Trail Nobody Fixed
The hiker had been airlifted from the side of Champlain Mountain, where he had fallen from a cliff and broken a leg. When I interviewed him by phone in the hospital and asked him why he had fallen, he replied that he had become lost.
Mar 10, 2008 - 11:30:13 PM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: When Milty Met Dolores
This is a newspaper romance with its dramatic starting shot halfway up -- or down -- a set of curved stairs. (Without an actual shot.)
Feb 26, 2008 - 8:18:36 AM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: Car Dribble, Part 3
While Henrietta, our 1985 Ford LTD wagon was still ours, we were blessed with a VW Microbus, a 1979 automatic with seats rather than not camping furnishings.
Feb 20, 2008 - 9:21:25 AM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: Car Dribble, Part 2
The day I drove the 1965 Plymouth home, it pulled to the side when I stopped. I noticed that the odometer had been turned back to zero miles, although it had had about 100 on it when I had test driven it.
Feb 10, 2008 - 8:37:18 PM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: Car Dribble, Part 1
I have read that cowboys depended on their horses so treated them well. I have depended on my cars and have usually treated them well. Sometimes they treated me well.
Feb 4, 2008 - 10:51:34 AM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: That Wonderful Crying Baby
Every so often when my kids were present and I was glamorizing a tale of climbing one of Maine's many mountains, one of those sweet bread snappers would say, "Yeah, Dad's over the hill."
Jan 27, 2008 - 8:54:01 PM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: More Baxter Tales I'm Not Proud Of
Two years after my first Katahdin climb, as a 19-year-young Philadelphia suburbanite novice wearing leather-soled street shoes I invited a friend to join us on our Maine vacation and a climb of what by now was my favorite mountain.
Jan 22, 2008 - 7:53:45 AM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: Falling in Love With Maine on Katahdin
My father and I were sitting in my great aunt's Belgrade farmhouse, glancing at the state map in hopes of finding new adventures. We came across a green rectangle called Baxter State Park.
Jan 13, 2008 - 9:42:53 PM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: Cross-Country Skiing, My Downfall
By downfall, I mean fall down. Ah, those were the days, lying on my belly up to my armpits in that deep, deep snow that beckoned me to my first cross-country skiing misadventures.
Jan 8, 2008 - 10:05:06 PM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: Do We Have to Make New Year's Resolutions?
Probably it is a law. I never have made New Year's resolutions because I'm too non-academic to remember them later and to disinclined to bother keeping them. But Congress keeps eroding our natural, God-given freedoms without asking us, and I suppose that not too long ago a law requiring the making of New Year's resolutions was enacted.
Dec 31, 2007 - 8:51:55 PM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: Everybody Writes a Christmas Column
So I might as well join the gang and write one. It's kind of like when I was a minister, way back when ministers were first invented and before God found out I had joined the trade and complained to his DPD (Divine Personnel Department). Every year I preached about Christmas. Of course, it was the same old thing, you take a real-life series of events that took over two years -- the time it took for the Wise Men to actually follow the star to Bethlehem -- and condense it into 20 minutes.
Dec 23, 2007 - 5:21:49 PM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: Snow, Snow Snow - And All That Snowy Fun
Once again we find ourselves playing in the snow, digging out to get to work or the store, driving those long trips on winter nights, and sometimes actually having fun -- such as yesterday stepping carefully through knee-high snow in ten degree (above) weather to cut a Christmas tree in our woods.
Dec 18, 2007 - 7:37:19 AM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: Don't Just Stand There, Help a Little or Say Thanks
On a recent, mostly sunny Sunday -- until it clouded up in the afternoon in preparation for snowstorm, I went up to Birdsacre to clear a blowdown out of the way of a side trail. The blowdown was about nine inches in diameter, thicker than the distance between the bow saw blade* and frame. So I had to find another log nearby -- one I had cut two weeks ago -- and use it to pry the larger log off the ground a bit and make a second cut
Dec 10, 2007 - 8:28:39 PM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: Let's Hear What AT Hikers Have to Say
Lots and lots of hikers took time from their Appalachian Trail hike to write comments on cards in a register box at Little Wilson Falls. So many did this, I stretched last week's report of their entries into this second. Of course, Thanksgiving interfered so had to have its own comment, last week.
Dec 3, 2007 - 7:14:28 AM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: Let's Hear What AT Hikers Have to Say
My latest volunteer chore with the Maine Appalachian Trail Club is to type comments from a hikers' register box located at Little Wilson Falls -- which is located pretty much exactly in the middle of nowhere, actually in what is known along the Appalachian Trail (AT) in Maine as the 100-Mile Wilderness.
Dec 2, 2007 - 9:20:27 AM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: Thanksgiving at Nutville
Over the river and through the woods, and along the long, boring interstate, with almost no sleep we go. Wait, thankfully, that's not quite right. We "went" makes it a true Thanksgiving tale.
Nov 19, 2007 - 12:30:16 AM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: Fox, Those Cute, Clever, Crafty Critters -- Which Can Bite (part 2)
Way, way back, when I was a college student and camp counselor at a Maryland boys’ camp, I took the little critters -- campers, not fox -- on a real live camping trip once a week. All of us manly counselors did, as it was part of the camp’s regular program.
Nov 4, 2007 - 11:01:57 PM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: Fox, Those Cute, Clever, Crafty Critters - Which Can Bite (part 1)
We share our planet with some of the cutest critters.
Oct 28, 2007 - 8:56:09 PM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: Though the Woods Were Dark and Deep
That was one part of my three-day venture into the woods during the wettest October week I"ve seen for many years -- except for the time being caught afoot in a fall snowstorm and another time driving up that same haul road with snow in the woods alongside it, but, thankfully, not on the road itself.
Oct 22, 2007 - 12:20:04 AM
Down the Road
Down the Road A Piece: The Longest National Park
The Appalachian Trail is the longest national park at 2,175 miles, of which 281 miles crosses Maine and ends atop mile-high Katahdin. Next question, how many national park rangers care for the AT, the entire AT, not just Maine's 281 miles? Answer, one.
Oct 10, 2007 - 12:22:11 AM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: Island Explorer Concludes Ninth Season
This year's Columbus Day ending day climaxed with a picnic for the drivers, which also served as a baby shower for Island Explorer Operations Manager Cori Howie, who is expecting her second baby later in October.
Oct 9, 2007 - 6:38:09 AM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: Hitting the Open Road to Maine by Pullman Train
It was obvious to my father I loved animals, because whenever I could I was across our back yard at a neighbor's house. This neighbor was great, well not exactly the neighbor himself, Mike Connor, but their family horse, Little Guy.
Oct 8, 2007 - 12:30:15 AM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: Brad, a True 'Man's Best Friend' (Part 2)
After Brad, an Irish Setter-Labrador Retriever mix, was given to us, I trained him to hunt birds. He also became our angel, preventing our one-year-old from wandering into a lake by blocking his path to the water, leading me home when the woods had gotten turned around during a bird-hunting venture, and helping me land a teaching job by being in the back seat of a convertible where the school superintendent talked to me about dogs and hunting before offering me the position.
Sep 11, 2007 - 10:01:44 PM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: Brad, a True 'Man's Best Friend'
Some critters you've known stick with you your whole life. Brad is one of them.
Sep 4, 2007 - 6:47:58 AM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: A Little Dam History
The following is an editorial written by Dick Fecteau of Farmington, which ran recently in other newspapers but which I think is important enough to also be read here at the Magic City Morning News.
Aug 26, 2007 - 9:01:09 PM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: Daytime Owls -- And the Porch Lamp Sitter
Suddenly glimpsing an owl swoop through the woods in late afternoon as daylight fades is one of the most mysterious woods scenes I know. Since owls are creatures of the night, an owl flying in daylight never fails to startle me.
Aug 19, 2007 - 1:59:35 PM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: The Editor’s Tales -- Of His Critters
I thought I have had lots and lots of experiences with animals, and I have. But the editor has at least kept pace with me regarding critter tales. So I want to share with you some of his, about dogs, cats, fox, skunk, opossum, raccoons, and -- let’s see did I miss some?
Aug 14, 2007 - 9:58:13 AM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: Those Cute Little Masked Critters -- That Can Bite Pretty Hard Except When You Whack Them
Our raccoons came to us by accident, our accident, not theirs.
Aug 5, 2007 - 8:05:05 PM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: Road Moose -- Stomping the Maine Macadam
Turn off your headlights when you come onto a moose at night.
Jul 29, 2007 - 9:15:12 PM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: How to writ rite
I mean, how to write right, which is part of what I share in a writing course I sometimes offer the desperate to put pen to paper or keyboard to computer screen. The course, From Idea to Publisher, may not have helped a lot of would-be writers, but I've had fun teaching it, and I know it helped some. One was published and began writing for a newspaper.
Jul 23, 2007 - 12:36:25 PM
Down the Road
Down the Road a Piece: Politics and Maine Weather
Until last Friday, the weather was pretty tough, although our tomatoes loved it.
Jul 16, 2007 - 7:50:56 PM
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