incognito in maine

Driving my Thursday paper route is a job that I enjoy. Hadn’t planned on having a paper route. I needed money and the job was available. So, for three hours every Thursday morning, I drive through the small towns of Waterford, Stoneham, Harrison and Bridgton stopping at small stores to deliver bundles of our local, weekly newspaper and collecting money from the last week's sales.

For the most part, my “stops” are at small, locally-owned stores. My route does not make money. Sometimes (rarely) a store will sell just one 60-cent paper in a week. Not a big "take" considering the price of gas :) But — small, local businesses are a community lifeline in rural Maine, and we report to this community. Weddings & birth announcements, town meetings, local sports news, dueling columnists, obituaries and police reports find their way into these older stores that smell of coffee and bacon & eggs in the early morning — The stores with tilting floors and with walls that have never seen plumb. Pizza signs out front. Rickety picnic tables waiting for guests. The woman behind the counter that announces; “The paper lady is here.” (I love that!)

We should like our jobs. With that in mind, I listen to public radio for the entire 3 hours of my route. I keep my attention on my driving, and I am alert for anything that might surprise me.

I’m a memory collector. And, don’t you know — first time out delivering papers — driving down the back roads — early spring, not many leaves on the trees; I see several large brown mounds in a farm field. Not boulders, but placed around the field in a similar way. They moved. Buffalo! (Actually, Bison is the proper word. The words are used interchangeably, but real Buffalo live in Asia and Africa. Who would expect to find either in rural Maine?) The small store half a mile down the road sells bison burgers. Here was the living animal. It was my first surprise. I had to wait a full year to see them again in the same field. Both times were exciting. Yup, I'm keeping this job.

With a smile from Maine, karen
selling a jumble of used merchandise at incognitoinmaine.etsy.com