Tag: Maine

Where the local beer’s listed as ‘Imported,’ not ‘Domestic’

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment
Welcome to the Hansom House in Dennysville, which is sometimes open on weekends. The stained glass is by the owner.

 

This is some of what’s over your head.

 

And this is some more. The shark’s not on the menu.

 

The red shoes belong to the stool, not the patron sitting on it.

 

Well, they do promote themselves as the World’s Most Absurd Bar.

And we’ve concluded the reference isn’t just to the décor.

In case you’d rather have your drink and nibbles by the fireplace.

Scalloping in the dead of winter

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment
There’s not a lot of meat in one of these, but what there is will be treasured by many seafood lovers.

This time of year, I hear the puttering motors in the chill air before the sun’s even up as the fishing boats head out to drag the depths for scallops. No matter how low the thermometer reading or how bad the weather, the vessels venture by, or attempt to, intent on catching their daily limit of ten or 15 gallons a day in a season that runs no more than 50 or 70 days but may close earlier, depending on the sustainable harvest in each of the regulated zones.

Rigged with a boom for the heavy chain net that drags the seafloor for scallops, this vessel returns to port with its harvest.

A day not out on the water of the bays around Eastport is a day’s income that’s lost for the season. The economics of fishing are precarious enough.

These intrepid fishermen shuck their catch onboard, tossing the shells overboard, which provides grounding for the breeding of more, and then return to port with their precious harvest, often well before noon.

A shell flies toward the water as these fishermen quickly shuck the precious bivalves onboard.

The licenses are coveted and even the size of crews is limited by state law.

Come summer, many of the boats, with their rigging reconfigured, and their crews will have turned their attention to lobster.

Other important harvests here are urchins and clams.

What workers impress you the most when they’re out in bad weather?

 

A half gallon of fresh scallops

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

Or about 4½ pounds, purchased from a dragger docked at the Breakwater pier, where the crew of three was busy shucking the morsels from their shells. After dining on these two days straight last Christmas, we agreed we have a new holiday tradition. Unlike ones you would purchase at a market, these have no water added, and that means you can get a lovely sear when sauteing them in a bit of olive oil and butter. Do I need to add they taste heavenly?

Once again, we’ll catch up

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Those (real, postal carrier delivered) cards and letters are a fading tradition, but some of us cling on. Hearing on paper from old friends and some special family members each year is quite different, and warmer, than anything we’d receive online.

Even if it is from the governor or our U.S. senator. In a small state, we’ve usually met them face-to-face.

How different today’s downtown Eastport looks from even the 1950s

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Stroll through Eastport’s downtown – rebuilt within a year or two of the disastrous 1886 fire and now in the National Register of Historic Places – and you’d think it was always like this, only with all of the storefronts bustling.

Not so, as I’ve been hearing, and that’s confirmed by a closer look at the undated aerial photograph on the cover of Joe Clabby’s two history books.

So as an idea of how things have changed.

  1. The waterfront is still full of sardine canneries set out on wharfs just behind the storefronts downtown, but many of the operations are now abandoned. There had been 21 at the prime around the turn of the century, but only one is still operating after 1975 and that ceases in the early ‘80s. As one local told me, you could watch the town fall into the water. Only the shell of the American Can factory still stands today.
  2. In fact, you would have a hard time seeing the water. The Waterfront Redevelopment Project, launched in 1978 and completed in 1983, cleaned up much of the scene and installed the popular walkway.
  3. The railway station, successor to the steamboat pier sits, beside the American Can factory. There’s a large apron in front of it, possibly for parking.
  4. A big movie theater occupies the space where the parking lot and the fisherman statue are now. And another big building fills the now-open space of the amphitheater. Today both are big gaps in the row of storefronts but allow more sunlight into the district.
  5. No Breakwater pier. That won’t come until 1961, with extensions later. It’s the focal point today.
  6. And no Fish Pier, which further defines the harbor.
  7. A rail line still runs into town. Service will end in 1978 and the tracks, removed.
  8. The Hotel East sits where the Motel East now is – at a 90-degree angle to the original.
  9. A row of houses is perched at the water’s edge of Shackford Cove. Long gone.
  10. There’s no Coast Guard station.

Here’s how the waterfront looked even earlier, from two photographs taken by Lewis Wickes Hine in August 1911, now in the Library of Congress collection.

There’s nothing “quaint” about the place in these, is there?