The Way of the WASP: Driving with Chester

Everyone who grows up in New England has a Maine story to tell.

It started in the 1970s — life well before the Internet and GPSs. And I was just along for the ride, literally and figuratively. I had no idea where we were going

There is no shortage of picturesque towns and fishing villages scattered throughout Mid-coast Maine. Nor craggy peninsulas (peninsulae, to keep my Latin teacher happy), where the roads are long, narrow, winding, and hilly. And with sharp drop-offs at the edges. Ditches if you will. Everyone drives fast. And at night, Maine is dark. There are very few street lights.

This is why, back then on these trips, I never really knew where we were going, or where we had been.

The driver was a family friend. My parents were relegated to the back, and I was always in the front passenger seat. (Plus ça change.)

This friend, Chester, had bought the property next to where his parent’s summer house had been, which they had bought when he was a freshman at nearby Bowdoin College. And his own summer house had the most breathtaking view. Literally you gasped, every time. Up on a hill looking out over the bay, the islands and out to the Gulf of Maine. Lobster boats at sunrise, sailboats at sunset.

He would host us there many times each year. (We both lived on the Connecticut shore, and during the hottest summer days he would call us and say, “I am in Maine and you are not.”)

Part of staying with him included his taking us all around Mid-coast. Either in his shiny new Volvo wagons – silver or grey (he bought a new one every year) – or a bit later, his magnificent Mercedes wagon, diesel. The Mercedes, I remember, was heavy and stately. Always playing was classical music, and on Sunday mornings, it was Robert J. Lurtsema. Pro Musica on WGBH out of Boston.

Shopping was one raison d’être for excursions, mostly for antiques. (Antiques hadn’t yet been verbed.) The Maine coast was, and still is, filled with old Captain’s houses and barns out of which antiques are sold. Sometimes by appointment only, or if you were lucky enough to see an open sign. Maine is an independent sort of place.

Partridge Antiques — a highlight — was in an unassuming but vast old barn, filled with brilliant English antiques (mostly Georgian, hence the brilliant) which they regularly brought back from their native England. They kept exotic Egyptian dogs, greyhound-like in appearance. At that point Mr. Partridge and his wife were quite old, and they were elegant and friendly and I enjoyed their lovely British accents.

But the majority of drives centered around eating. Or later in the day, drinking.

Breakfast could be at the Bristol Diner, probably 17 owners ago, the earlier the better to hear those rich Maine accents of the older generation of lobstermen. Or at the Pine Grove restaurant, somewhere in Damariscotta (I never really knew how we got there). Once we went in search of the alewives fundraising outdoor breakfast being held on a Saturday morning, which I now know was in Damariscotta Mills. We slowed down, saw a cluster of men cooking under the tent as the rain poured down, slickers on. We decided to keep going. I always felt a bit guilty about that.

Sometimes it was a longer ride down one of the peninsulas — although it was always a long ride to get anywhere — to Christmas Cove and the Mitchell’s popular waterfront inn/restaurant. Decades later, an early childhood friend would marry into that family.

Going to Camden and then to the Sail Loft restaurant in Rockport (with their petite blueberry muffins) were regular treks. And somehow always twisting ourselves into fits of uncontrollable laughter, especially at the Sail Loft, which Chester could always do with my mother.