York Corner
After the quite-recent blizzards and last week's widespread torrential rains, this past weekend's sun drew people back to the area - and out-of-doors - in what seemed the thousands.
And on Sunday afternoon, among the throngs out on the causeway by the Wiggley Bridge, we met so many folks we knew that it seemed like old home week.
The first was Kinley Gregg, out with her new dog, Hester. Kinley ran for the state legislature last year, and this spring she's a candidate for the Board of Selectmen - but on that day she and Hester were just out for a brisk walk. They'd trekked from Kinley's home on Lindsay Road, via Steadman Woods and the Fishermen's Walk, to the Harbor Beach and back, Kinley reported, a trip that usually takes them about an hour. "But," she teased, "only if I don't stop to talk to a reporter along the way."
Beatrix, Kinley's former much-loved dog, succumbed to cancer last Thanksgiving, we learned, and Hester, like her predecessor, was a mixed-breed adoptee from the Kennebunk Animal Welfare Society shelter. Close to age four and light tan with giant stand-up ears, Hester is great with people, we were told, but not so good with other dogs - and she illustrated for us by straining at her leash each time another passing dog drew near. She's getting obedience training, Kinley said, and does very well in class - but, alas, Kinley added, "she checks her halo at the door when she leaves the class."
We didn't talk politics.
Still, we were glad, in the interests of fairness, when Sue Little also came by, because Sue's husband, Ted, is also a candidate for selectman.
But we didn't talk politics with her, either. We did, however, agree to pass along notice of a talk coming up at 9 a.m. this Sunday, April 29, at St. George's Episcopal Church, where Sue is active. The speaker will be a tribesman from Darfur, and the talk, which is open to the public, will concern the genocide and resulting conditions current there.
We next bumped into Darrah Mont, accompanied by Joyce Stowe, both of York, and Susan Gannon, who, we learned, was visiting Darrah from Wellesley, Mass.
York people (and perhaps even more, too, from "away") will know Darrah as the proprietor of Harbour House Apparel, which she ran for 27 years - and we shared a moment of amazement as she reported that it's been almost a decade since she closed that landmark shop in October of 1997.
Now she works at staffing the front desk at York High School, working mornings only, and during the school year only, and she called it, for those reasons among others, the perfect part-time job.
"I love it," she added. "It's fabulous."
Joyce we knew from her work, still continuing, on the ambulance board, but for the past five years, she told us, she's also been working at Town Hall, issuing absentee ballots. About half of the voters in York, she said, now vote absentee, and she explained to Susan a major reason: York ballots are now so long that people prefer to fill them out at their leisure at home. (Maine, she also pointed out, doesn't require justification for requesting an absentee ballot.)
Susan, it turned out, has been a friend of Darrah's since each was 14 and both were in the eighth grade together in Wellesley, where Darrah's family lived at the time. Susan is now an attorney in private practice in Wellesley where her focus is on what she called mental health litigation. The commonwealth of Massachusetts, she explained, hires her to advocate for persons judged requiring commitment to a mental-health institution.
That wasn't the time, on that beautiful day, we decided, to explore that challenging topic, but we did touch briefly on another.
Joyce and her husband, Lewis, Joyce said, spent two-and-one-half years in England when Lewis worked for Rolls Royce, and there they met Sandra and John Leese from Derby, near Nottingham. Last week, the Stowes played host in York to the Leeses, who were on their way to Bermuda before returning home to England after visiting their son, who lives in Marblehead, Mass.
While strolling in Marblehead, Joyce told us, laughing, the Leeses had been interviewed by a reporter - and now, in a sense, it was happening again.
And she told another story about them.
The Leeses, she explained, had spent a month vacationing in Australia when they got word through their daughter in England that somebody in Australia would welcome them as house-sitters for another month. And then, after that month, yet another homeowner sought them out as house-sitters, so that, all told, they ended up spending three months in Australia.
"Talk about lucky!" Joyce exclaimed - and the three women agreed: "You can do things like that when you're retired," they said.
We've neglected to mention here another member of Darrah's group that day: Ollie, a nine-year-old standard poodle. Susan found him via the internet after his previous owner had a stroke, and she bonded with him instantly, she reported, the moment she met him.
"He's a very good dog," she said, while Ollie, sitting patiently and watching the passing during all these exchanges, didn't disagree.
Before we left the causeway, we met and talked with a York couple, probably known to many, who were there with two of their three children, tossing bread and other food scraps to the gulls - and we'll report on them here next week.
The news that day in that place wasn't earth-shaking, but all seemed to agree that it had blizzards and torrential rains beat all hollow.
