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03/18/2005 Entry: "MI-5, Maggie Blue Style"

1. What about Maine keeps you here? If you aren’t from here, what brought you here? If you aren’t from here, how does Maine compare to where you are from?
I'm a native. I can't think of living anywhere else. Although I'm no sailor, I need to be around the salt air. I remember coming back from a trip to DC, and I remember hitting the tidal flat in Yarmouth at low tide at like 11pm. Oh, that smell. I knew I was home then. I've never lived anywhere else, and no other place really appeals to me as much. As a freshman in college, I decided that I wanted to stay in Maine.

2. What is your favorite scenic setting in Maine and why? Is there a story you have that draws you to that place?
I prefer the shore to the woods. Growing up in Spruce Head, I have many memories of playing along the shore. For me, it's the little 1/4 mile stretch between the causeway at York's beach (near Lobster Lane Bookshop and Jeremy Alley's old house) and the bridge over to Spruce Head island proper (where Jason Butman and I played during the summers).

3. What is your all time favorite thing to do in the summer?
I like to take Julia to the beach near King's Island and search for little green crabs. (Ah, reliving my youth!) I like to canoe as well, and the week Susan and I canoed the Allaghash is a favorite memory.

4. Your favorite summer cocktail? Alcoholic or not. Favorite summer dish?
Cocktail proper? Probably gin and tonic. A couple of icy Rolling Rocks while washing the car is nice too. Frank Butler taught me the joy of a cold bottle of beer in a cool shower on a hot day. I break that out a couple of times every summer. Grant's Rocket Ade served from a shopping cart full of ice at the 4th of July parade in Thomaston is nice, too. And good old Coca Cola. (Man, if only they had those big glass bottles like when I was a kid, and Johnny Elwell would drive me and Jason Wilcox over to the Island Store for one from the chest cooler. There is nothing so refreshing as a cold Coke from a glass bottle. And not those little 10oz reissue jobs, either. The real pint size ones are the best.

(On a side note, some marketing guy my Dad knows says there are three perfect packages in the world: the womb, the egg, and the Coke bottle.)

5. If you could live anywhere (money is no object) where would it be and why?
Spruce Head. If not on the water, then near it. Not like the Saint George part of Spruce Head, not in the woods part. I need to be close enough to smell the clam flats. I'd like to hear the clang of the hardware against a metal sailing mast. The smell of a lobsterman's traps drying in the sunlight.

(On another side note, it's interesting how many smells I've brought up. And it's also interesting that many of the smells would probably be somewhat offensive to most people. Must be that same familiarity thing whereby farmers love the smell of hay and cow manure. That doesn't do it for me. But traps in the sun baking off the kelp and barnacles and urchins and slime. Hmm, hmm, good!)

Replies: 2 people have rocked the mic!

They say that the smell memory is the strongest and gives you the most vivid memories.

On the coke bottle thing. I also saw a thing on TV where they talked about how the coke bottle is the most recoginzed packaging in the world and even surpasses Mickey Mouse as the most recognized symbol. Pretty cool. Coke should get their act together and start doing real old fashoned big coke bottles again. The kind like in your post and the kind that Mean Joe Green drank on that TV commercial. C'mon coke get with it!

Posted by Jim @ 03/18/2005 05:47 PM EST

Wow! It sounds so beautiful there! smile

Posted by Maria @ 03/18/2005 10:16 PM EST

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