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  SALT, Vol. 11, No. 3

  Salt Institute for Documentary Studies

  20th Anniversary Issue. Documenting a Region: Maine in Words and Photographs. Making Violins. A Tale of Two Workplaces. Old Things. Frontier Maine begins at the edge of Greenville, unless you are a settler’s great grandson claiming the landscape of childhood.

  Content
  • 2 Nineteen Pine Street How this issue of Salt was made and who made it.
  • 4 Greenville: the Shifting Frontier As long as Ed Walden’s around, you can’t take the frontier out of Greenville. You can’t Ed out either — except on a slab. We look at Greenville through the eyes of some of its people.
  • 18 Radio and Night People You work the night shift while other people sleep. You like it. Not so many hassles, not so many people. Just you and your DJ.
  • 25 Violin Making in the Woods In the woods of Windham, Maine, Jonathan Cooper shapes violins “to have character,” a skill he went to Italy to learn.
  • 30 Old Things Recycling didn’t get born yesterday in Maine. People just didn’t call it that. Keeping things, fixing them, using their parts to make something else — that’s been going on for generations.
  • 42 A Tale of Two Workplaces Bates Fabrics and L.L. Bean Telemarketing are only a few hundred yards apart in Lewiston. They mark Lewiston’s change from industrialized textile town to a service-based city.
  • 59 Making the Looms Talk “Very few people can do this work and do it right. These people could almost make the looms talk. Fortunately, we still have a few of them around.” Fred Lebel of Bates Mill.
  • 63 Twenty Years Join us in celebrating Salt’s 20th anniversary. Twenty years of teaching students to document the distinctive region that is Maine. And twenty years of publishing Salt magazine.
  • 64 Fast Forward and Rewind Looking ahead at what’s to come. Readers comment on what’s behind.

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  SALT, Vol. 11, No. 4

  Salt Institute for Documentary Studies

  Published by the Salt Center for Documentary Field Studies. Viginia and her child find a place in Maine's broccoli harvest, where 350 migrants “try to make it a home.”

  Content
  • 3 Nineteen Pine Street Soon the Salt Center will expand to Seventeen Pine next door, doubling its size and expanding its educational programs.
  • 4 Contradancing: Rowdies and Revivalists Maine has its “rowdies” that dance and play their music like the old time country dances of 50 years ago. And it has its “revivalists” that practice English contradances learned from Boston.
  • 20 Broccoli Harvest Move over potatoes, here comes the broccoli challenge. The new crop of Aroostook County for gambling farmers like Lance Smith brings a new kind of worker, Filipino and Mexican-American migrants.
  • 29 “Making a Home in Maine” A photographic essay of how migrants in their camps “take whatever’s there for us. And we make the best of it and make it home.”
  • 46 Under One Roof: the YMCA Dormitory, health club, hangout, and home to the homeless, the Portland YMCA is a lot of things to a lot of people. It brings society under one roof, the rich, the not-so-rich and the poor.
  • 57 Lonely Transitions Living at the YMCA, for a month or for 20 years, can be lonely. At least it’s a place to hang your hat. A photographic essay.
  • 65 When a Guide Was a Storyteller Born in 1897, Chub Foster was a guide in the North Woods when everyone there was a woodsman. Storytelling for his “sports” was the extra skill a Maine guide needed, that and a dollar for a license.

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  SALT, Vol. 11, No. 2

  Salt Institute for Documentary Studies

  Documenting a Region: Maine in Words and Photographs. Pristine Castine. Harvesting Granite. Good Earth Farm. Tattoo Ernie, like many Mainers, marches to a different drummer. So do stone cutter Henry Bray and farmer Eric Brandt-Meyer.

  Content
  • 3 Nineteen Pine Street How this issue of Salt was made and who made it.
  • 4 Fast Forward and Rewind A new feature. We look ahead at what’s to come and readers comment on what’s behind.
  • 5 Salt Sense: Editorial In Salt’s 20 years of documenting Maine people, we have grown accustomed to remarkable lives — but unremarkable deaths. This changed with the life and violent death of Kathy Hegarty.
  • 6 Barbershops Barbershops are social places wih a crowd of regulars. We take you inside two in Portland and South Paris for some fun.
  • 15 Tattoo Parlor A photographic essay by Robyn Redman.
  • 20 Granite-Challenge of the Elements In the heyday of the granite industry, thousands of Maine quarrymen and stone cutters worked in a hundred quarries. Now a few determined artisans still harvest and shape this basic element born 325 million years ago.
  • 30 Aftermath: Hurricane Island A photographic essay by Maryanne Mott.
  • 38 Good Earth Farm Back-to-landers named this farm and tried to make a go of it. Then they faced a hard choice: switch crops and grow to a market economy or lose the land.
  • 50 Pristine Castine: Where Have the Mavens Gone? No village in New England is more picturesquely preserved than Castine. While the buildings still stand, the natives and the “mavens” are a dying breed. What happens when a place begins to lose its memory of itself?

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  SALT, Vol. 11, No. 1

  Salt Institute for Documentary Studies

  Documenting a Region: Maine in Words and Photographs. Making Minyan. Family Dairy Farm. Digging for Gems. Tradition dies hard when it’s part of your life and nine more people need you on Congress Street at five o'clock or sooner.

  Content
  • 3 Nineteen Pine Street Contributors and notes about this issue.
  • 5 The Photographer’s Voice Five Maine photographers talk about their work in an open forum with Salt’s photographic students. Here are the voices that inform the images of Tom Donaldson, Arthur Fink, Tony King, Jack McConnell, and Marta Morse.
  • 8 Digging For Gems Oxford County’s mineral-rich veins keep rockhounds like Tony and Dennis Gross pounding on unforgiving rock ledges and battling with 3,000 pound boulders. The lure of digging for treasure is as old as mankind.
  • 22 Making Minyan Ten men are needed for group prayer at the Etz Chaim Synagogue in Portland. So each day they come and count — Ben and Maurice and Buddy and Dean and David and Eli and Herbie — waiting to make ten as the congregation ages and dwindles away.
  • 34 Congress Street Shabbat Passersby would not notice this place. People in this part of the neighborhood are on their way somewhere else. Inside, Shabbat service renews the traditions of 5,751 years.
  • 42 Family Dairy Farm It’s a pretty humbling life, not glamorous, and the pay-off sometimes doesn’t make ends meet, but the Russell family still fights to keep their farm going.
  • 49 Doing Barn Chores Forty milking cows help warm the barn for the working family, who move through the frosty air with the comfort that comes from being in a place twice a day) every day.

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  SALT, Vol. 10, No. 2

  Salt Institute for Documentary Studies

  Documenting a Region: Maine in Words and Photographs. Maine’s Ethnic Groups: Part 2 — Franco-Irish-Swedish-Americans. Shanty Irish to lace curtain Irish. That’s what Skip Matson has seen. Still the Greenhorns come, from Galway and the troubled north.

  Content
  • 3 Nineteen Pine Street Contributors and notes about this issue.
  • 5 Maine Journal A Great Northern milltown gets rich quick, but the future looks threatening. More on illiteracy and Emily Kinney.
  • 7 Ethnic Groups of Maine Want to know how many Russians live in Maine? And here’s one for you. Blacks outnumbered Maine’s Native Americans two centuries ago. Facts about Maine’s ethnic groups.
  • 8 Sons and Daughters of Ireland From “shanty Irish” to “lace curtain Irish,” the sons and daughters of Ireland have made a place for themselves in Maine’s largest city. “Greenhorns” continue to flee from the crofts of western Ireland and the civil war of northern Ireland.
  • 22 Swedes of Aroostook In rural Aroostook County, a colony of Swedish farmers has raised potatoes and children for three generations. They are close knit and hard working. Much that is Swedish remains.
  • 35 A Russian Church Slavic immigrants to Richmond, Maine, observe the rituals of the Orthhodox church they established 35 years ago. A photographic essay by Kate Jeremiah.
  • 42 Lewiston: Off the Tourist Track to a Pretty Nice, Pretty French City Lewiston has been maligned as the “armpit of Maine.” But it’s not, says a loyal native. She takes you inside mills and homes and churches to show you Lewiston’s strength and its beauty.
  • 58 Guide to Maine Eating If you want to eat where the locals eat, this is where you’ll find them — where prices are right and the talk is familiar.

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  SALT, Vol. 10, No. 3

  Salt Institute for Documentary Studies

  Documenting a Region: Maine in Words and Photographs. Selling The Folk — A Special Issue on Folk and Pop Culture. Maine: The way life should be. That’s how Downeast folks and the landscape are romanticized to attract city dwellers.

  Content
  • 3 Nineteen Pine Street Contributors and notes about this issue.
  • 5 Maine Journal A new twist and some old potholes in the Maine turnpike widening controversy.
  • 6 From Folk to Pop and Back Again Salt invited scholars to a conference to talk about how folk culture and pop culture interact. Folk culture as in us authentic Downeast folk and pop culture as in us television watching, country music singing masses. We report that conference.
  • 20 Evolution of the Maine License Plate Folk influence on the Maine license plate-or it it pop? We take the plate from 1935 to our predictions for the 1995 look.
  • 26 Diner Revival Salt conducts a tour through Maine diners. The diner revival is a nostalgic pop movement — but the “folks” eat there, too.
  • 35 Diner People A photographic esssay by Tonee Harbert of traditional working class diners like the Deluxe in Rumford and recreated diners like Al’s in Portland’s trendy Old Port.
  • 44 Selling the Folk: Marketing Maine Culture Time was when Maine was marketed as a landscape for escape, vacationland. Now the whole culture is pitched. Come to Maine and discover “The Way Life Should Be.” Mingle with the folk who are simpler, if not better. Like in Grandpa’s times.
  • 58 Guide to Maine Eating If you want to eat where the locals eat, this is where you’ll find them — where prices are right and the talk is familiar.

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  SALT, Vol. 10, No. 4

  Salt Institute for Documentary Studies

  Documenting a Region: Maine in Words and Photographs. Artists in Belfast. Aroostook Potato Farm. City Street Scenes. Streets like Tyng and Tate in the West End of Portland have seen it all — longshore families, slums, urban renewal, and boom times.

  Content
  • 3 Nineteen Pine Street Contributors and notes about this issue.
  • 5 Maine Journal The passing of Emmy McLean, Harvey Bixby, and other tales of the region, with a nod to Ronald Blythe.
  • 7 A Sense of Place: Having It, Losing It What happens to the people of Maine communities undergoing change? Like the gentrification of old Belfast. Or the breakup of close working class neighborhoods in Portland. Or the failing potato farms of Aroostook County.
  • 8 First Come the Artists When artists come to town — as they are doing in Belfast — they may act as “point men” for change. Next come boutiques, galleries, and gentrification. Many in Belfast say, “Not here!”
  • 26 Two City Streets House by house, the two blocks of Tyng and Tate in Portland have a story to tell. The story of 70 years of change, told through the voices of the neighborhood people.
  • 33 Street Scene Hang out on Tyng and Tate Streets in Portland, as photographer Tonee Harbert did, and these are street scenes you’ll see.
  • 50 Death of an American Potato Farm Mike Brown of Aroostook County was the best of farmers. Never sold a potato that he wouldn’t put on his own table. But one day, with his seed bought and his loan approved, he quit.

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  SALT, Vol. 10, No. 1

  Salt Institute for Documentary Studies

  The magazine about the really important people of Maine. Maine’s New and Old Ethnic Groups — First of Two Parts. Kansath Pon is now a Mainer. She takes her place in the ethnic mix begun when Yankees first settled on Wabanaki land.

  Content
  • 3 Nineteen Pine Street Contributors and notes about this issue.
  • 5 Maine Journal A new feature this issue. Who commutes? Most Mainers. Plus a barbershop view of the economy. And BIW expansion.
  • 7 Yankees and Other Ethnics Ethnic gounps in Maine-including Yankees-are not part of a homogenious “melting pot,” argues sociologist Peter Rose. They are distinct contributors to an identifiable American stew.
  • 8 Finnish and Yankee Doodles Where do you find the Finnish in Maine but in the sauna? Salt goes to a South Paris sauna, then to the homes of Finns, who are as stubborn as their neighbors, the Yankee Doodles.
  • 26 The First Days: Starting New in Maine Two Cambodian families land at Portland airport for their first days in Maine. The contrasts between their lives as refugees and their new lives in a land of plenty are extraordinary.
  • 33 A Family Initiation “It is like a dream. Is it real?” First experiences of Cambodian refugees as interpreted by Tonee Harbert’s camera.
  • 47 Bridge Generation Coming from Ireland, Afghanistan, Rumania, Austria, Italy, they are the bridge generation. Their lives connect to two coutries and home may always be two places.
  • 60 Guide to Maine Eating If you want to eat where the locals eat, this is where you’ll find them — where prices are right and the talk is familiar.
  • 62 Guide to Maine Inns Innkeeping is an art and good inkeepers are a special breed. Here is Salt’s guide to Maine’s historic inns.

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  Salt, Vol. 7, No. 3

  Salt Institute for Documentary Studies

  Mussel Wars. One Room Schoolhouses. No to Nuclear Waste. Lobstermen are losing their turf to aquaculture, say three generations of Carlsons in Tenants Harbor. A million more pounds of mussel meat than lobster meat were landed in 1985 as the sea is “fenced” for farming.

  Content

  • 3 The View from Pier Road A new feature starting this issue in Salt.
  • 6 Deacon’s Bench Tom Bradbury’s column reflects the native Mainer’s attitude about party going.
  • 7 “Crazy Avery” Avery Kelley, Beal’s Island storyteller, is a direct descendant of the giant Barney Beal. His yarns are as funny as Barney was strong.
  • 10 The Fencing of the Sea Sea farmers are staking off sections of coastal bottom and fishermen are outraged. The battle for turf is much like the fencing of the range.
  • 12 The Controversy Lobstermen are threatened by mussel growers who lease their traditional waters.
  • 23 The Practitioner Traveling with a mussel harvester, Jack Hamblen, out of Stonington.
  • 28 NO! Maine’s response to selection as a possible nuclear dump site. A photographic study by Lynn Kippax, Jr.
  • 37 Editorial: Galling to Mainers
  • 38 One Room School of Today Do one room schools serve a need in today’s world? Salt goes to the Cliff Island school in Casco Bay to find the answer.
  • 50 Ruth Pinkham’s One Room Schools What went on in one room schools when Ruth Pinkham taught in them 50 years ago and was a pupil in them 70 years ago.
  • 56 The Farmer-Philosopher Ed Myers grows mussels on the Damariscotta River, coexisting peacefully-and philosophically-with lobstermen.
  • 62 Salt’s Regional Studies Programs A description of educational programs and courses offered at the Salt Center for Field Studies.

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  SALT, Vol. 9, No. 3

  Salt Institute for Documentary Studies

  The magazine about the really important people of Maine. Folk Culture. Popular Culture. Bingo. Junkyards. Folk Music. Big Paul Bunyan, Maine “folk hero,” is an ad salesman’s product. His nemesis stands in the heart of the great North Woods.

  Content

  • 3 Eating in Maine If you want to eat where the locals eat, this is where you’ll find them-where prices are right and the talk is familiar.
  • 9 View from Pier Road
  • 10 We Are What We Buy L.L. Bean and the Beans of Egypt) Maine have some things in common) says George Lewis) a sociologist and Maine native. We are creatures of the culture we create and consume.
  • 12 Will the Real Statue Please Stand Up Two monuments celebrate the feats of Maine woodsmen. One is Bangor’s Paul Bunyan) dreamed up by an ad salesman. The other was put up by woodsmen themselves.
  • 25 Inner Maine A photographic essay by Dave Read. Small town Maine. Its people, its places, its habits, as seen by one who grew up there.
  • 33 Folk That’s Show Biz Schooner fare is a folk group that gives a new beat to old songs that were almost forgotten. Their mission: to give the songs back to the people in a contemporary setting.
  • 44 Bingo Fever On a hot July day, almost 700 people converged on Indian Island to play Bingo for twelve solid hours. They brought good luck charms and Bingo Fever!
  • 54 The Junkyards of Manicured Maine New middle class Maine wants old rural Maine to clean up its act. Get rid of the junk in their yards. It’s a battle between social classes, and between city and country values.

• 

  SALT, Vol. 9, No. 4

  Salt Institute for Documentary Studies

  The magazine about the really important people of Maine. Flea Markets. Jamaican Apple Pickers. Peaks Island. Flea Markets are as Maine as pine trees and lobsters. What’s a flea? “Anything that’s been used, abused, and ready for resale.”

  Content

  • 3 Eating in Maine If you want to eat where the locals eat) this is where you’ll find them-where prices are right and the talk is familiar.
  • 7 Letters to the Editor
  • 9 View from Pier Road The end of an era for Salt and the beginning of a new one, as we move north to Portland.
  • 10 Flea Market What is more Maine than a flea market, where someone’s trash is another person’s treasure. Montsweag is one of Maine’s biggest.
  • 24 To Maine for Apples Jamaican apple pickers in Maine live a life between two worlds. Salt follows 13 pickers at Tom Gyger’s orchard near Bridgton through the harvest and through their daily lives, including a Jamaican feast of goat.
  • 33 “Just Comin’ and Goin’” A photographic essay by Tonee Harbert focuses on Jamaican harvesters who spend “more time in American and Jamaica, just goin’ and comin’.
  • 48 Peaks Island In the wake of suburban Portland) Peaks has experienced repeated waves of change. It has a hodgepodge of people with little in common except the ferry commute and their liking for Peaks.
  • 63 Guide to Maine Inns Innkeeping is an art and good inkeepers are a special breed. Here is Salt’s guide to Maine’s historic inns.

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  SALT, Vol. 8, No. 4

  Salt Institute for Documentary Studies

  The magazine about the really important people of Maine. Summer Hotel. Acadians. Airline Road Tour. Lost Hunter. The big, old summer hotels are a dwindling breed. They cater to a lost elegance. But some people go without jacket and tie!

  Content

  • 3 Eating in Maine
  • 5 View From Pier Road
  • 8 Salt at Fifteen
  • 10 Outsiders in Friendship Bill and Debbie Michaud learn some lessons about being outsiders in Maine as they start a bed and breakfast inn in Friendship.
  • 12 Fifty Years a Bellman John Foster tells of a time when trained bellmen came from the South to work the summer season in Kennebunkport.
  • 16 The Grand Dame: Life at the Summer Hotel The big old summer hotels are a dwindling breed. We look at one: the Colony of Kennebunkport.
  • 28 On the Road with Jeff Herbst Jeff Herbst shows us the Airline Road, its people, tales, and landscape.
  • 29 The Airline A special photographic center section.
  • 46 Les Acadiens du Madawaska Three generations of the Hebert family reveal the continuity and change among the Acadiens of the St. John River Valley in Aroostook County.
  • 58 Lost Hunter! Part Two A lost hunter is found and now stories can be told about the Great North Woods.

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  SALT, Vol. 9, No. 1

  Salt Institute for Documentary Studies

  The magazine about the really important people of Maine. Life at the Mall. Vassal of the Farm. The Farming Edge. Malls may not be the village square, but people meet in the neon light of the concrete beast to forge the same old links of belonging.

  Content

  • 5 View from Pier Road
  • 8 Vassals of the Farm Hired hands and owners of the Rancourt dairy farm in Vassalboro are bound to the farm in relentless work days. For some it beats the mill. For others it is peonage, long hours, poor pay and little to call your own.
  • 22 Community and the Concrete Beast A childhood friend challenges sociologist and Maine native George Lewis. Why do people go to malls?
  • 24 The Mall: By Salt Mass Observation Malls are the last word in consumerism, great airless, sunless temples for the exchange of money and goods. As far from Maine values of independence and “make do” as you can get. Yet Salt interviewers found a distinct mall culture of young and old who hang out there to get a sense of belonging: from mall “rats and bunnies” to “mall milers.”
  • 29 Mall People A photographic center section by Jim Daniels.
  • 46 The Farming Edge The dairy farmers of Turner are known for their competitiveness. That’s a primary reason that Turner is so successful in the business when other towns aren’t. Salt looks closely at this.
  • 61 Eating in Maine Where can you eat in Maine without feeling overwhelmed by outsiders or worrying about the size of your wallet? Here’s where.

• 

  SALT, Vol. 9, No. 2

  Salt Institute for Documentary Studies

  The magazine about the really important people of Maine. Special Issue: Rural Poverty in Maine — What Does It Mean? One in every five rural Mainers is poor. Like Monica, struggling to get by. Christmas rubs in the difference between having plenty and little.

  Content
  • 5 View from Pier Road
  • 8 Being Poor in Rural Maine One in every five Mainers is poor. The numbers are growing even in today’s job market. Salt tells the story of the rural poor in Maine through their words and lives.
  • 10 Portraits Lauretta Elie and Emily Kinney have two things in common. They were labeled “dumb” as children and never learned to read. Now as adults they know they are not dumb.
  • 16 Piecing Together a Year: the Bubiers The Bubier family of Perry in Washington County piece together a year of income from seasonal work. They are among the fastest growing group of poor in Maine, adults between the ages of 18 and 44 who can’t get by on what they make.
  • 33 Monica A photographic esaay by Pam Berry. Monica lives in a schoolbus with her daughter while she builds a house for the future. And a baby is born.
  • 42 Making the Rounds Salt follows a social worker, Maurice Geoffroy on his rounds to the elderly, to welfare mothers, to families with handicapped children, to people laid off from work and to an AID’s victim.
  • 56 Kristin’s Schools Kristin Myers is at risk of dropping out from school systems that started flunking her in kindergarten. Will she stay or will she get too discouraged?
  • 62 Eating in Maine Where can you eat in Maine without feeling overwhelmed by outsiders or worrying about the size of your wallet? Here's where.

• 

  SALT, Vol. 8, No. 1

  Salt Institute for Documentary Studies

  The magazine about the really important people of Maine. This is Walter. The bear is Cuddles. Walter’s struggling to overcome child abuse. He’s also trying to find a home. The two may be the same.

  Content

  • 3 View From Pier Road
  • 2 Eating In Maine A new feature, Salt’s guide to the really important places to eat in Maine.
  • 6 Maine: Myth and Reality A special issue on what is the “real” Maine. Salt staff and students worked to find out. What they found is presented in three sections.
  • 7 Being Young in Maine What is it like to be young in Maine today? Three short articles suggest answers.
  • 8 Hitchhiker
  • 10 Joe of the North Woods
  • 12 Saturday Night at the Condo
  • 13 King Spruce Maine’s Great North Woods are its largest myth and its largest reality. But that’s changing. What of the myth will survive? What of reality? A lengthy article explores the North Woods of today and tomorrow.
  • 14 Fall of the Great North Woods
  • 21 In Pursuit of a Fantasy Is life in Maine getting better? Portland has been touted as “The city that’s too good to be true.” But is that really the case? A Salt student spent months documenting another side of Portland, that of people struggling to get off the streets.
  • 22 Getting Off the Streets
  • 29 Walter A special photographic center section on Walter who battles child abuse and finding a home.
  • 46 To Sacopee Valley Via U.P.S. Follow Lee Hutchins, a U.P.S. delivery man, on his route in the Sacopee Valley. From recluse to the granola crowd, he knows them all.
  • 62 Deacon’s Bench Firefighting to rival Mark Twain.
  • 64 Spend a Semester with the Really Important People of Maine

• 

  SALT, Vol. 8, No. 2

  Salt Institute for Documentary Studies

  The magazine about the really important people of Maine. Special Issue: Tourism. Seaside & Lakeside. Colonists & Coneheads. Six million people come to Maine on vacation each year. Do they make life better or worse for Mainers? How are they changing the state?
  
  Content

  • 2 Eating in Maine
  • 3 View From Pier Road
  • 6 Colonists and Coneheads Sociologist Peter I. Rose sees a caste system in tourism. Colonists are brahmins and coneheads (bus tourers) near the bottom of the heap.
  • 8 Tourism: A Double Edged Sword What is tourism doing to “Vacationland” in the 1980s?
  • 10 Tour Bus! A whimsical look at the world of touring by tour bus.
  • 14 Seaside Tourism How much tourism can one “tourist town” take before its appeal for tourists is no longer there? A look at Kennebunkport.
  • 23 What Would You Like, Sir? How young Mainers feel about working in the tourist trade. Profiles of a bartender, a waitress and a boy who tends a vegetable stand.
  • 24 Earl
  • 26 First Season
  • 28 Of Tourists and Cows
  • 29 Tourists Salt’s photographic essay looks at tourists.
  • 38 Soda Fountain Philosophy The Boynton McKay Drugstore in the downtown coastal tourist town of Camden serves as a mixing pot for tourists and natives of all stripes.
  • 52 Tourists on the Lake People have been coming to the Lakeside Pines campground in Bridgton for generations.
  • 58 Rusticator The last thing a rusticator wants to be called is a tourist.
  • 62 Spend a Semester with the Really Important People of Maine

• 

  SALT, Vol. 8, No. 3

  Salt Institute for Documentary Studies

  The magazine about the really important people of Maine. On Custom House Wharf, life stays much the same. That’s the way Fonnie like it. Grime, fish, and sweat. Not a place for Yuppies.

  Content

  • 2 Eating in Maine
  • 3 Spend a Semester with the Really Important People of Maine
  • 5 View From Pier Road
  • 7 Munjoy Hill’s Inside Scoop Renee’s Variety Store in Portland is the place to find out what’s going on around Mun joy Hill.
  • 9 Jack of All Trades Al Buzzell’s grandfather told him, “Don’t learn one trade. Learn a dozen.” He took the advice.
  • 12 Lost Hunter A trip to the wilderness at Chesuncook Lake becomes high adventure as Salt joins Bert McBurnie in his search for a lost hunter.
  • 24 Wharf at Work One wharf on Portland’s embattled waterfront still does business as it has for 35 years. Custom House Wharf reeks of fish, diesel, mudflats, sweat and frying burgers. Its people have their own unwritten rules and their own ways of doing things, as well as strong views about· the change going on around them.
  • 29 A Wharf and Its People A special photographic center section about Custom House Wharf.
  • 48 Out of Sight of the Sea Ken Doane of Kennebunk might well be a lobsterman today if he hadn’t lost his sight as a young man. Now he works on the edge of the sea repairing small engines.
  • 56 When Doctoring Is Woman’s Work The young sons of Dr. Marion Moulton of West Newfield watched her practice medicine in rural Maine as they grew up They decided doctoring is woman’s work.

• 

  Salt, Vol. 7, No. 4

  Salt Institute for Documentary Studies

  Bangor Truckstop. Portland’s Philosopher-Bookman. McCurdy’s Smoke House. “The movies make trucking so glamorous. It ain’t though. I want my boy to see what it’s really like.” Dysart’s Truckstop in Bangor, a Maine institution for truckers and locals. “From Kittery to Canada it’s the only one.”

  Content

  • 4 Crazy Avery Goes to New York A very Kelley tells about the time he hauled his traps on Beal’s Island, Maine, and “struck a dust for New York.”
  • 12 Bangor Truckstop Ken Kobre, photojournalist, turns his lens on Dysart’s Truckstop south of Bangor, a Maine tradition for 18 years.
  • 19 Around the Clock at Dysart’s Truckers at Dysart’s talk about their experiences on the road over coffee and platters of food at Dysart’s Truckstop, which never closes its doors.
  • 24 McCurdy’s Smokehouse, Last of a Breed McCurdy’s Smokehouse in Lubec, Maine, is the last commercial smokehouse in the country, producing smoked herring by hand labor. Salt documents the smokehouse at work.
  • 29 Smoking Herring Special photographic center section on the smoking of herring.
  • 50 Francis O’Brien — Portland’s Philosopher-Bookman Books, life and history are interconnected like a honeycomb, says Francis O’Brien, Portland’s erudite, self educated philosopher and dean of antiquarian bookmen.
  • 61 Remembering Tad A tribute to “Tad” (Sterling) Dow by Salt columnist Tom Bradbury, who served with him on Salt’s Board of Trustees and the Kennebunkport Conservation Trust.
  • 64 Salt’s Regional Studies Programs Educational programs and courses offered at the Salt Center for Field Studies.

• 

  Salt, Vol. 7, No. 1

  Salt Institute for Documentary Studies

  “When Saint Peter says to me, ‘You ready?’ I’ll say, ‘Wait ’til I git my tray.’ ...Seems to me I grew right up in that hotel racket. I don’t hardly know what ’tis to be tired. One day a fellow at Shawmut said, ‘Gladys, you don’t look like yourself. Are you well?’ I said, ‘What the hell are you talkin’ about? I can outwork any three people you have.’” — Gladys Hutchins McLean

  Content

  • 2 Locals in a Resort Town Living in a resort town wears down your sense of humor. Locals concoct pranks and jokes to restore it.
  • 4 Captain and the Parking Lot George Harriman (the Captain) presides over the first pay parking lot in Kennebunkport, the town’s most controversial “hot spot.”
  • 10 Born in “That Hotel Racket” When Saint Peter calls Gladys McLean, she has her answer ready: “Wait ’til I git my tray!”
  • 20 Jenny, Island Shepherdess Jenny Cirone raises 250 sheep on three islands off the coast of Maine. She also lobsterfishes.
  • 29 Island Sheep Salt’s new photographic center section is a study of island sheep raising by Lynn Kippax, Jr.
  • 37 The Sweep Driving sheep on Maine’s islands dates back to the 1600s and continues today. Jenny Cirone and her crew show how it is done.
  • 54 Casey at the Wheel Fishing with Casey Stender is far from dull. “Mother Ocean,” he roars, “I heard you call...”
  • 61 My Yard Sale Television Set Thomas Bradbury’s column, “Deacon’s Bench,” deals with a summer tradition in Maine.
  • 63 Short Takes

• 

  Salt, Vol. 7, No. 2

  Salt Institute for Documentary Studies

  Hot clouds clamp a lid over the wild blueberry barrens of Maine. A bumper crop ripens too fast, 45 million pounds in a vast oven. Two tousand rakers race the heat. “Beat the sun. Ya gotta beat that sun, cause she’ll wear it right outta ya...”

  Content

  Hot clouds clamp a lid over the wild blueberry barrens of Maine. A bumper crop ripens too fast, 45 million pounds in a vast oven. Two tousand rakers race the heat. “Beat the sun. Ya gotta beat that sun, cause she’ll wear it right outta ya...”
  • 2 Short Takes From Alberta Redmond’s 100th birthday to letters to the editor in this issue’s “short takes.”
  • 3 Change on the Barrens Tradition and change vie on the wild blueberry barrens of Maine. The end of the old hand harvest is near.
  • 4 Quilting-Patchwork Art Quilters of Maine are reviving an old art form. Young and old quilters meet to work together.
  • 12 Salt Marsh Dikes Dikes in Maine like in Holland? Yes, says Professor David C. Smith. They were built to farm the salt marshes.
  • 16 Wild Blueberry Harvest Voices from the blueberry barrens speak in this major article about the 1985 bumper crop. Rakers, field bosses, truckers, migrant workers, locals, Indians, managers and owners tell what the harvest means to them and what they see for the future.
  • 29 Rakers A photographic essay about hand rakers on the wild blueberry barrens by Lynn Kippax, Jr.
  • 50 Toots Makes Music Toots Bouthot makes music for the French Canadian community of Biddeford.
  • 62 Indian Summer Columnist Thomas Bradbury spins his own theories about why Indian summer is called Indian summer.

• 

  Salt, Vol. 6, No. 3

  Salt Institute for Documentary Studies

  I could never call myself a Yankee. Five Immigrant Experiences. Italians in Portland’s “Little Italy.” French Canadians of Epping. Japanese in Livermore Falls. Russian Colony in Richmond. The Greeks of Biddeford/Saco.

  Contents

  • 2 Letters to Salt
  • 4 Pinch a Penny, Spend a Dime A new column, “The Deacon’s Bench,” by Thomas Bradbury starts in this issue.
  • 6 Guest Article: A Boy’s Dream Come True John Chaisson of Lewiston writes SALT’s first guest article about his childhood days in the “big woods.”
  • 9 Salt Center for Field Studies This issue of SALT is the first to be published from SALT’s new Center for Field Studies, with student work produced as part of SALT’s Semester-in-Maine program.
  • 10 “I Could Never Call Myself a Yankee” Pericles Economos struck the theme for this issue when the Greek immigrant used these words about his 69 years in Biddeford, Maine.
  • 12 From Japan’s Snow Country to Maine Suzuko Hiraoka Laplante is the only Oriental immigrant in Livermore Falls, Maine. She tells of her 30 years in a Maine milltown.
  • 26 Antoinette’s Patience: A Canadian Family In Epping Antoinette Cote Bernier of Epping, New Hampshire, says it takes patience to make bread and “when you have twelve children, you got to have patience, too.”
  • 34 Little Italy of Portland An Italy came to flourish in Yankee Portland on the lower western slopes of Munjoy Hill. “Little Italy was in our back yards.”
  • 38 Italian “Soldier of Fortune” Ottaviano Massimo Segismonto Antonio Breggia describes life on Munjoy Hill in Portland’s “Little Italy.”
  • 46 Richmond’s Russian Colony To an inland river town in Maine came a colony of Slavic immigrants in the 1950s.
  • 49 One Russian Who Kept Her Heart Ilsa Rudin Pasechnik, from the Russian colony in Richmond, Maine, tells of the music she loves and her losses in her mother country. “They could take everything, but they could not take my heart or my brain!”
  • 58 A Greek Father Shapes His Son The story of how Sam Anagnostis of Saco, Maine, built a bridge for his son, John, to walk from a fruit store to a classroom.

• 

  Salt, Vol. 6, No. 4

  Salt Institute for Documentary Studies

  Blarney and salami at Fitzhenry’s Store.

  Content

  • 2 Junior Miller A salute to Junior Miller, who believed in hard work, persistence and optimism. This issue is dedicated to him.
  • 4 The Deacon’s Bench Thomas Bradbury writes about Chester, the chicken plucker, in his column.
  • 7 Letters to Salt
  • 8 Center for Field Studies Salt’s Center hosts a series of visiting professors as part of its Semester-in-Maine program for college students.
  • 10 Fitzhenry’s Store Fitzhenry’s is so little “there ain’t too much room to wrassle,” but it has everything from pickled eggs to shoe horns-and some back country conversation to boot.
  • 18 Shaker Revival in Maine A decade ago, Maine’s Shaker community had dwindled to four elderly Sisters. As Maine Shakers adapt to a changing world, four converts have joined. This is a sensitive look at the Shakers by a Salt student who was their weekly guest for three months.
  • 38 “I’m Singulah!” That’s how John Gaskill describes himself at 92. He tells the story of a black boy with a mind of his own growing up in Portland, his own singular story.
  • 52 Black Child of Maine Geneva Sherrer is a native of Augusta, Maine, who has begun to document the untold story of Maine’s black people.
  • 62 Rhythm of the Loom Bessie Swain of Exeter, New Hampshire, is the grandmother of weaving in northern New England. She has taught her art to generations of students.

• 

  SALT, Vol. 5, No. 4

  Salt Institute for Documentary Studies

  Contents

  • 5 On Being Ten Salt celebrates its 10th anniversary and looks forward to the next ten years.
  • 6 Salt’s New Home A new piece of history is now being lived in Pinkham’s Hall in Cape Porpoise, Maine, as Salt finds a new home.
  • 8 Gems of Cape Porpoise The islands off Cape Porpoise, Maine, have retained their gemlike beauty as villagers save them, one by one.
  • 14 No Human Trace Jessica Jenkins learns to leave an island just as she found it, without human trace.
  • 15 Semester in Maine Salt launches a new Semester in Maine program for college credit developed by a panel of noted social scientists and humanists.
  • 16 Going Forward With Alberta “Ya can’t be backward about gain’ forward,” says 97-year-old Alberta Redmond of Cape Porpoise, Maine. Salt follows her around for a day and comes back tired.
  • 24 Tower Clocks of the Kennebunks The sounding bells and soaring clockfaces of Maine’s tower clocks are part of a still living tradition of public clocks.
  • 30 In Search of the 20th Century Penobscot Three generations of Penobscot Indians search through their experiences to define what it means to be a Penobscot living in today’s world.
  • 36 The Elders Clarence Francis, Violet Francis, and Madasa Sapiel.
  • 50 The Middle Generation Jim Sappier, Bobcat Glossian, and Governor Tim Love
  • 65 The Younger Generation Carol Dana and Junior Pehrson

• 

  Salt, Vol. 6, No. 1 & 2

  Salt Institute for Documentary Studies

  Eastport for Pride

  Contents

  • 6 EASTPORT: THEN AND NOW
  • 10 Water Street: From the Waco Diner to the Customs House
  • 19 On the Waterfront: Johnny Craig
  • 32 Causes: John Pike Grady
  • 42 Home: Helen Huntley
  • 48 The Border
  • 52 The Fourth
  • 59 SARDINES
  • 60 Inside a Sardine Factory
  • 67 “I Don't Cut So Fast Now:” Frances Miller
  • 70 Born with a Fish in My Mouth: Babe Baine
  • 80 Running the Holmes Packing Plant: Moses Pike
  • 86 POLITICS, PEOPLE, AND PITTSTON
  • 87 Meeting
  • 115 Anti-Pittston: Fred Soderstrom
  • 119 Pro-Pittston: Roger Conti
  • 121 Swing Vote: David Turner
  • 124 Other Voices
  • 127 REVIVAL OF THE WATERFRONT
  • 131 Longshoreman: Ed Barnes
  • 134 Return of the Young: Meg McGarvey
  • 135 Hard Work and Persistence: Junior Miller
  • 139 Salmon: Art Mackay
  • 144 Epilogue

• 

  SALT, Vol. 5, No. 3

  Salt Institute for Documentary Studies

  Contents

  • 2 Mount Desert Island: ‘They Were Rich and We Weren’t’ Through the eyes of native Mainers, we see what happens to an island dominated by millionaires.
  • 4 The Theater in Bar Harbor’s Changing World Showplace of the ’30s, Bar Harbor’s art deco theater is a witness to changing times, from the chauffeur-driven limousines of the Rockefellers, Fords and Vanderbilts to the campers of today.
  • 18 ‘Livin’ Where You Want to Live’ Draper Liscomb of Mount Desert Island tells how to make a living in Maine — “so you can live where you want to live.”
  • 34 The Search (A Story about Evelyn Turner) A modern fairy tale about a woman on Swan’s Island that will make you smile. As Evelyn sees the world, “S’lovely, darlin’.”
  • 44 ‘I Don't Feel Color’ Clarence Roberts, son of a slave, is the eloquent spokesman for the elderly in the all-white Maine Yankee town of Old Orchard Beach.
  • 60 ‘White As the Driven Snow’ Maurice Gordon of West Kennebunk, Maine, comes out of retirement to demonstrate the finer points of plastering.
  • 68 A Thousand Shapes in One: Pottery Making Lou and Bob Lipkin of Kennebunkport, Maine, take us step by step through the throwing and firing of pottery.