York Corner
At Zach's farm stand out on Route 91 last Sunday, when we asked Debbie Meyers, whom we'd just met there, if she was a regular customer, she shot back at us one of the most positive responses we'd ever come across.
"Yesss!" she sang out. And she followed it up with, "Who doesn't? You've got to be nuts not to!"
And at that moment, which was shortly after noon, it looked like many people agreed with her, because the stream of customers lining up to check out, their arms full of corn, melons, cukes, zucchini and the like, seemed thick and unending.
That visit that day, as it happened, turned out to be full of extremes of one sort and another, and, if there was a theme there then, it concerned friendship.
Debbie, for example, who's lived in York for some time, was there with old friend Sue Koeppel, also of York, and they'd hardly arrived on the scene when Sue was pounced on with a shriek of joy by somebody who turned out to be yet another old friend, long not seen, Elaine Mifflin. The two embraced and then, amid much laughter, the three women began joking about their age and unusual vitality.
Two proudly acknowledged being 65 while the third said, simply, "60 is nice" - and Elaine spoke for them all in summary when she tossed her head back and said, "We're older women that are so young at heart."
Then she added, decisively, "And we're getting better and better."
Incredulous about the passage of time, they swapped notes about the ages of their oldest offspring: Elaine's was 45; Sue's was 45 and Debbie's, 43.
Sue and Elaine couldn't remember exactly how they'd first met, though they figured it probably came about through Sue's husband's activities as a local auctioneer (he's Howard Koeppel), but both did remember that, when both were new arrivals in York, they'd commiserated with one another about how awful it was to be stuck in such a dead-end place. On Sunday, however, they looked back and laughed heartily about that stance, because they've since done a complete reversal and the memory was just a bit embarrassing.
In fact, Elaine, who now lives in Florida, was in the region for a couple of months not only to be near what she called her "grandbabies," of which she has 10, but to scout out local condos. One of her five children, she explained, lives in Washington, D.C., but the other four live in this area - one in Saco, one in Kennebunk, one in South Berwick and one - Lisa Getchell - in York.
Nor so embarrassing was Sue's remembering, gratefully, that when, 15 years ago, she was battling colon cancer, a kind and thoughtful Debbie magically appeared and announced, "I'm taking you to lunch!"
Sue called Elaine "the most free-spirited person I've ever met," and, to illustrate, reported that "The last time I saw her she drove up on a Harley-Davidson in leathers."
To which Elaine pridefully acknowledged that she'd indeed motorcycled from Florida to Maine and back and farther not long ago, but had now "graduated," as she put it, to a BMW touring bike.
Abby Mifflin, Elaine's South Berwick daughter, and her youngest offspring happened to be with her that day, and Elaine took the opportunity to give Abby's new business a plug. It's Abby's Chic, a flower shop just opened in February on Main Street in South Berwick.
"Never buy flowers in the supermarket!" Elaine urged.
Then, clearly not one to let grass (or flowers) grow long under her feet, Elaine departed, after which Debbie obligingly told us more about herself while Sue shopped.
Debbie and her husband, Martin Meyers, came to York on weekends for two years before they moved here permanently from Milton, Mass., 19 years ago, she reported.
Here, she said, she's now working part-time at the Jewelry Mine in the Meadowbrook Plaza, but for 23 years she ran a Boston exterminating company called Advanced Pest Control Services. Her husband and a partner started it over 30 years ago, then, when the partner bowed out, Debbie bought the whole business. She continues to own it but Martin now runs it - and he's the only man in what she calls an "all-girl" enterprise.
The all-girl part came about, she explained, because, when she became involved in it she hired some young women relatives who needed jobs. The hiring proved a good choice, and the practice was continued because the business specializes in serving apartment complexes and senior-citizen homes, and residents in both places feel most comfortable with women as their exterminators.
The Meyers had four children, Debbie said: Theresa, now deceased, Kenneth, now 43, Scott, 39, and Evonne, 36.
We didn't get a chance to ask more about them because, by then, Sue had picked out her vegetables and was ready to leave.
But she did linger long enough to tell us this story.
A daughter-in-law, she said, acquired a house in Osterville, on Cape Cod, and Sue remembered that some people who'd been the Koeppels' neighbors for almost 30 years elsewhere also had a house in Osterville. She and the daughter-in-law found them in the phone book, Sue called, and they were reunited.
"You can't lose good friends," Sue said emphatically, giving us our leitmotif for the day.
Next week: more about others met there that day, and a bit about what's new at the farm.
