Total recall
As I was driving up Portland’s Prospect Street from Deering Avenue, I started naming my friends who lived in that neighborhood, starting as I crossed Beacon Street. None of those houses are occupied by the same families today.
This was about 60 or 70 years later, but it was fun to reminisce. The surnames were: Day, Roche, Cleveland, DeRoy, Everett, Sears, Martin (toy shop owners), Loomey, Baker, Moseley, Chapman, Shaw and McFarland. I then drove down Glenwood Avenue from Prospect Street, and continued: Cowan, Burke, Haley, Prince, Wright, Soule, Allen, and then on Woodford Street, McCarthy’s Store and Highland Market, Whitcomb’s big house on the left, and St. Barnabas Hospital (torn down, and now an apartment complex).
I then turned down Norwood Street to our home on Concord Street. I am still thinking of the many families I once knew.
Total recall 2
A clipping I had saved from a 1996 Bridgton News had an article with a brief description of the climb up Jockey Cap on Route 302, just outside of the village of Fryeburg. It was written by Marita Wiser.
I enjoyed that short climb a few years ago. It is an easy and rewarding climb, taking about 40 minutes, round-trip, and has views down to Lovewell Pond and across to the mountains of Maine and New Hampshire.
Wiser describes the bronze and granite monument on the mountain, in honor of Arctic explorer Robert Edwin Peary. It shows the names of the mountains seen in the panoramic view. The monument was erected in 1938 at the suggestion of Peary’s boyhood friend, Albert Burton. The mountains were drawn from a survey Peary did when he lived in Fryeburg from 1878-79.
This is a good outing for small children, too, and rock climbers scale and rappel the faces and overhangs of the giant boulder, as Wiser wrote.
Limericks I’ve enjoyed
I came across a book my library friend, Mary Jones, gave me in 1961. It was fun to read them again, “Lots of Limericks, light, lusty and lasting,” said the title page. It was edited by Louis Untermeyer.
Here are a few limericks:
There once was a bonnie Scotch laddie,
Who said as he put on his plaidie;
“I’ve just had a dish
O’ unco’ guid fish.”
What had he had? Had he had haddie?
A tutor who tooted the flute
Tried to tutor two tooters to toot,
Said the two to the tutor,
“Is it harder to toot, or
To tutor two tooters to toot?”
I was surprised that they included this limerick by the British poet and author, Robert Louis Stevenson:
There was an old man of the Cape
Who made himself garments of crepe.
When asked, “Do they tear?”
He replied, “Here and there:
But they’re perfectly splendid for shape.”
The text said, “Stevenson supplied this childishly convincing stanza, which is not to be found in his book, ‘A Child’s Garden of Verses.’ (I still enjoy his poetry book.)
The last limerick is one which Ed Stafford, grandson of Adm. Robert E. Peary, recited to us at a summer party at John and D. Lee Rich’s’ cottage after seeing a picture of birds, including a pelican, that John had received as a gift:
A rare old bird is the pelican,
His beak holds more than his belican,
He can take in his beak
Enough food for a week.
I’m damned if I know how the helican!
And tasty, too
I wrote when I used this recipe, in 1972, that it’s easy to assemble, and you can frost it or not. I call it the recipe with an intriguing name.
YUM-YUM CAKE
Boil together for 4 minutes:
1 cup sugar
1-1/2 cups cold water
1 cup small raisins
1/2 cup shortening
2 squares chocolate
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
Cool first mixture slightly, and add:
1 teaspoon baking soda mixed with 1 tablespoon water
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
Add 1/2 cup of cut up nuts, if desired.
Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes, or until dry when tested with a cake tester.
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