WINTER IN MAINE

YEARS AGO I LOVED WINTER IN MAINE. I remember when my family moved back to Maine from Illinois. WE moved in the summer from DeKalb, where I was working on my PhD, to Five Islands, a small fishing village in the town of Georgetown, and on an island of the same name. My parents lived there, and we bought one of their two houses. Eliot and his family moved there too, and Rolfe and his family came and spent summers there, and Rolfe enrolled in the Master's program at Colby College and commuted. So the whole family was there. I had gone through a period of deep depression in Illinois, and the move revived me entirely. Nan loved Five Islands so much we decided to winterize the house, and we hired Eliot to design and build an addition onto the existing house. When fall came, I had to return to DeKalb briefly. All I had left to do for my PhD was to write my dissertation, and pass oral exams. I dd not have to be there full time to do that, so I soon returned to Five Islands to spend the winter, and presumably to write my dissertaion.

Well, I loved that winter. Eliot and I got new snowshoes and we cleaned off the snow on the little pond in the back yard and made a skating rink. I had always loved winters when a youth. Eliot and I had a "gang" of kindred souls,of both sexes, and we would go sledding and tobogganing. I remember snow shoeing across a frozen East Pond to the Ready's cabin on the other side. Mrs Ready would have arrived there by car and foot ahead of us and had hot chocolate and lunch ready for us. We would ride back to town in her car. Sometimes she would tow our bobsled to the top of a country hill. We would go down fast as a bullet, often ending in a snow bank. Whoever was siting on the end of the bobsled might end up further into the bank than the rest. The last shall be first? Mrs Ready would tow the sled back to the top of the hill for the next run down. She was my best friend's mother. Joe Ready was the son of General Ready, who was off in Japan as head of the occupation force on Okinowa. I believe he was the commander who was the model for the colonel in the musical Tea House In The August Moon. General Ready returned to Oakland before I graduated from High School. That put an end to the good times at the Ready's as he was a strict disciplinarian and seemed to object to anyone having fun.

After we bought our house here in Thomaston, Maine in 1995, I still loved the winters here. They were not so different than winters in Boston. I had lived in Presque Isle, far north of here in Maine, when I taught at the University there one year, and that was the coldest I have ever been. And that includes the winter I spent in Baffin Island in teh Canadian Arctic, North of Hudson Bay. I spent a few winters in Toronto, Ontario, and the winters there were not very snowy, but almost always sunless. Long gray winters. Icy sidewalks. No one there seemed to own a snow shovel, and the light snow would be packed to ice from walking. Maine has winterss -- sometimes ice storms and nor'easters, but when it isn't snowing, we have a lot of sunshine here in Maine in the winter.

However, now that I am about to turn seventy seven, I have had enogh winter and enough snow shoveling. We had our house on the market for 6 months. Our Sotheby's contract expired today and we took it off the market, at least for the winter. So we are in for another long winter. It is early December and already we have had two major snow storms. Last winter we had two thirds of the house re-roofed with with a great clatter, it all slides off at once, a veritable avalanche. You would not want to going out the back door when it happens! Last winter, it blocked the exhaust vent of the monitor in Albie's ofice. I smelled the problem right away, and we had to turn off her heater. It took two days to shovel out the vent after it stopped snowing. Our new pellet stove in the living room saves a lot of money for fuel oil, but it has an intake air vent which also get pluged up when the snow slides of the roof onto the side deck. Then the stove also had to be shut down until we can get out there and shovel out.

I thought this year I ought to buy a snow blower, but since we were hoping to sell the house, Albie thought that was a bad idea, as did my daughter Lauren. In fact, Lauren sent a check for $300 to use to hire a youth to shovel our walks and driveway this winter. Trouble is, there are no more teenagers in Thomaston it seems. So Albie and I shoveled out the first snow storm, and I actually enjoyed it. Then today we got another huge storm, so we called Herb Jones, who has done a lot of yard work and odd jobs for us before, and he came to clear the drive so I could go to work tomorrow. I have to leave for work at 6:30 AM, and if I have to shovel the drive and clear the car before I leave, I would have to get up at 4:OO AM, in stead of the usual 5 am waking hour.