York Corner
The sun was strong at Harbor Beach early Sunday afternoon, and the skies blue with just a few puffy clouds on the horizon, but the wind whistling out of the west was so cold that just about the only folks in evidence arrived by car and remained in their cars.
The single exception we saw when we were there was one young man, strolling hatless on the beach while his dog raced on ahead, and when we accosted him, he graciously identified himself as Peter Foster, and his dog as Max.
Peter, whom we hadn't met before, turned out to be the 23-year-old son of Mark Foster, owner of the nearby Stage Neck Inn, and grandson of Phoebe and Bill Foster, York folk all.
Max, Peter said, was an 11-year-old Llewellin setter (a variation on an English setter, the internet later told us) acquired from an Arkansas breeder, and Peter smiled when he remembered the family's picking him up as a pup at Logan Airport en route to a Celtics game. He'd become enamored of Llewellins, Peter laughed, after watching a TV show called "Hunting with Hank;" "Hank" was a Llewellin.
A widely-publicized fire at the inn, this past weekend, had drawn Peter home from the University of Maine at Farmington, where he's a senior majoring in business and philosophy, he told us, and when we asked him if he knew what he'd be doing with his degree after college, he said, "Go into business in some fashion, and perhaps follow in the footsteps of my father… There's probably a good chance that I'll carry on his legacy."
Reported thus, this seems like boasting, but it wasn't. Throughout our conversation we were impressed with Peter's modesty and quiet articulation.
Peter described his father as an entrepreneur as well as an hotelier, reporting that, among real-estate interests, Mark has recently established storage facilities in Somersworth, N.H., and Arundel. Mark, Peter said, has also owned a Day's Inn in Dover, N.H., for about 15 years.
Right now, in between studying, Peter is working part-time at Sugarloaf, in a shop called Happy Tunes Service Center. The "tuning" there is "ski-tuning," sharpening edges, applying wax and otherwise improving skis, and Peter reported that this was his first season at that job.
"I like it a lot," he volunteered.
A skier himself, he noted that he was also following in family footsteps in that pursuit, too, since his grandfather, Bill, had pioneered in New England skiing, teaching it at Waterville Valley, and at "The Big A" when there was skiing on Mount Agamenticus - as had Mark Foster, he said, too, in both venues.
Surfing and travel are other chief interests, and Peter has combined the two in trips already to Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Mexico, Chile and Argentina, he said.
Come April, he added, speaking of travel, he'll be getting a graduation present in the form of a trip to Hawaii with Bill and Mark - just the three men setting off together.
Peter has two younger sisters, he told us, Katherine, 21, who's also a student at Farmington (and with whom he shares an apartment), and Sarah, 17, who's a junior at Berwick Academy, from which Peter was graduated in 2001.
When we talked about the future, Peter spoke a bit about the past; he told us that he'd worked at the inn from the time he was eight, and still does occasionally, doing, as he put it, "everything," from bussing and washing dishes to sweeping the parking lot, bed-making and cooking.
And when we talked about his studies and that business/philosophy degree, he waxed warm on the subject of philosophy as ethics and its relevance to modern business practices.
That day was Super Bowl Sunday, and we parted with some light talk about kicker Adam Vinatieri's ethics in deserting the Patriots for the Colts - with a little discussion about whom we'd be rooting for that night.
"As a good Patriot's fan, I'm taking the Bears," Peter said, and we laughed with agreement as we turned back to battling the cold.
On the next day, Monday, though it was still sunny, the temperature was lower and the wind was, if anything, stronger and much more biting, so, when we ducked into the Bagel Basket at about 1 p.m., the wave of heat that met us like a wall was welcome.
Inside was owner Sean Mitchell, dressed, most improbably for that wintry day, in sawed-off jeans.
"I wear them all year-round," he said, as he began, at our request, a summing-up of what was new there: a full line of pastries introduced this year; Congdon's doughnuts, available now only on weekends but available every day in summer; an expanded sandwich menu, including breakfast sandwiches; a gas fireplace, now in its first winter, in front of which patrons can now munch, ruminate, read, relax.
Next week: more of what Sean had to report about goings-on at the Basket, and a bit about some folks we met there that day.
