Abandoned!! I felt utterly abandoned, stranded in front of the neighborhood ice cream stand, reading the ‘closed for the season’ sign. It was after Labor Day, the official end of summer, and 25,000 copies of the Farmer’s Almanac had just been handed out at the York toll booths inviting people to come back again to “Maine, the way life should be.” The summer people arrive in droves, significantly swelling the local population for one season each year. Indeed, my own childhood had meant weeks spent at York Beach on the south coast.
On the August day that Wheaton Van Lines unloaded my stuff into the second floor apartment above a garage, the weather was 95 degrees and equally humid. But if the days were brutally hot, the nights cooled down enough, if not for sleeping, then at least for walking to the main street for ice cream at the corner. But now the summer people had left, like rats deserting a sinking ship, and it was closed. And I wasn’t leaving for the winter. I had committed to an …
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Wayfarer Magazine to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.