The only words I can remember my maternal grandfather uttering were spoken on a visit to Higgins Beach in Scarborough on a hot summer’s day in the early 1960s. By then he was in his 80s, and he dressed like the Aroostook potato farmer he had been all his life: long underwear, wool pants and […]

Hometown: The town or city of one’s birth, rearing, or main residence; the place where you grew up or have lived for a long time; where you are currently living. So, where do I call my hometown? I see Maine as my home state, having lived here for the past 33 years. When I go […]

My “hometown” is the midcoast fishing village of Round Pond. I grew up there. It is a big part of my deepest self because of what it has given me. And that is much. Growing up in Round Pond taught me how to work, both how to work hard and also how to love the […]

Life was slow in my hometown of Glen Ridge, a sliver of a North Jersey suburban community. Just 3 miles long and three blocks wide, it was tucked between brawny Bloomfield to the south and moneyed Montclair, its neighbor to the north. I grew up there in the 1950s, a time when dads worked, moms […]

I was born and raised in a town in western Pennsylvania where the factory meets the farm. My father sold paint and glass to both retail and industrial customers. My mother was a registered nurse who worked part-time overnight shifts, both at the hospital and for private older clients. I grew up as an outside […]

I was eager to go to the grand opening of a new grocery store at Cook’s Corner in Brunswick. I was expecting free food samples or free helium balloons. I didn’t get either one, but I did receive a $2 coupon for cheddar cheese from a cheerful greeter as I pushed my cart into the […]

The Lincoln County News started a discourse with the Damariscotta Historical Society story about old houses in my hometown. One, long ago torn down for a new highway, belonged to the Alexander Yates family: merchants, shippers and one missionary. Reportedly, they exported rum to western Africa “in exchange for profitable and valuable cargo.” That set […]

Can a hometown be not the town you grew up in, but the town you feel the most at home in? If so, Rumford is that town for me. I grew up in South Portland and moved back for almost 10 years, but I don’t feel the attachment to it that I do to Rumford. Rumford […]

On weekend mornings Jon and I sometimes walk down the hill to the Bayou Kitchen. Enjoying a Huey P. Long and blueberry cornbread at the counter, we chat with the dishwasher as the owner warms our coffee. Paintings of bougainvillea dripping off the balconies of Creole homes, images of gators and swamp scenes fill the […]

HO-scale trains have been Randy’s hobby since he was a child growing up in the Bronx. His father used to walk with him to the New York Central Railroad tracks, where they’d sit and watch the trains whiz by. Kind of reminds me of a Norman Rockwell print hanging on our wall. When we lived […]