You Can Get there....From Here....

 Picture this if you can. I know a place where there is no Starbucks, McDonalds, Olive Garden, Circle K, Barnes and Noble, Jiffy Lube, AMC Theatres or Safeway. However there is a Café Milagro, Docksider, Lighthouse Inn and Restaurant, Pine Tree Market, McVay’s Service Station, Sherman’s Books and Criterion Movie Theatre (a 1930’s Art Deco movie theatre still in operation). There are towns with names like Blue Hill, Winter Harbor, Hulls Cove, Seal Harbor, Searsport, Belfast, Northeast Harbor and Sommesville.

Where is this you may ask? Well, if I told you, everyone would want to go there, and then it would be like every place else! There is still a world out there of small towns, places where neighbors know each other, where most of the businesses are owned by people who live in that town. There are local papers that report the news that is happening right there, and, though it may seem a bit morbid, the obituaries are real stories about real people who become genuine when you read about their lives.



Add some natural beauty to this starting with the Atlantic Ocean. Sometimes calm and flat as a mill pond, other times gentle swells. And it can change, quickly, very quickly. Forces unseen and miles away can bring about quick and sudden changes. Then there is the shoreline, mostly rugged and rocky, at some places the forest marches right to the coastline, and at some places there are flats and beaches.



Then there are the forests; forests so thick you can barley walk through them. Forests with Oak trees, Maple, Ash, Hickory, Hawthorne, Chestnut, Poplar, Willow and Pine Trees. Don’t forget the apple orchards, where there is fresh pressed cider this time of year.



And of course, food! That one wasn’t going to get away. There is nothing in the world that can hold it’s own against steamed clams and fresh lobster with drawn butter. That’s it, the entire meal. Maybe some sweet corn, and possibly a small dish of maple/walnut ice cream to finish it off. A meal that is impossible to get anywhere else other than this particular spot in the universe.



To top it off there are friends of old. The best kind, the ones that care for you no matter what, and take you back in again like the family that you really may be.



Where is this place? For now it is resting in my memory, but I know how to get back there.

The Bean

Coffee




It goes by many different names, java, joe, juice, mud, brew, battery acid and sometimes by it’s real name, coffee. It’s origins, like some of its brews, are muddy. It seems that it has been around since at least the 13th Century. Interestingly it was first used for the “energizing” effect it had on people. If you’ve been to a Starbucks you would see that this is true, it seems the baristas (people who make coffee), generally partake too much of their product.



Not the point though, and neither is Starbucks. I’ve done a lot of experimenting with coffee over the years. Strangely enough I didn’t begin drinking coffee till I was well into my thirties. Prior to that I thought that coffee was some type of legal but toxic substance. Some of that may have been due to the fact that one time I drank so much, with so little sleep that I honestly thought I was going to have some type of coronary event, and it didn’t seem like it was going to be on the positive side of life. Along with the shakes and sweats I was pretty sure coffee wasn’t for me, so it was with some trepidation that I picked it up again later.



Instant coffee in a Styrofoam cup isn’t a great start on becoming a connoisseur of the bean. A little known fact about coffee is that you can make instant coffee with hot tap water in a styro cup….I don’t know why anyone would do that though. I’ve done it, so you don’t have to.



There is a coffee that a friend of mine introduced me to one time when we were camping on the beach in San Carlos, Mexico. Combate! What a name, how can you argue with a coffee whose name literally translates to Combat. That is what coffee is all about. Toss a few spoonfuls, plus a few more in a percolator, put it next to the fire and let it go. You can’t over perk Combate, the longer you go the stronger it gets. This stuff lets you walk on water when you’ve had a few cups in the morning. I don’t know if it’s legal in the U.S. yet, but I’m looking for it.