The Countryman: The second Maine

In 36 years, I have traveled more miles on Route 2 than on any other road. Not between New Sharon and Farmington, as might expect, but between New Sharon and Bangor/Orono.

I’ve seen lots of change along Route 2, change that may be a microcosm of rural Maine.

Best I can figure, I have driven from New Sharon to Bangor/Orono about 1,120 times, an average of 31 trips a year. For three years, I drove up to four times a week to the University of Maine. For 21 years, I delivered Turkey to Bangor at least 14 times a year. For 10 years, I drove to Brewer or Orono every week for farmers markets. For 19 years, save when Marilyn or I was sick, we have held season tickets for the University of Maine women’s basketball games, first at Orono, now at Bangor. Lots of Route 2 time.

Articles in the Bangor Daily News and other places have made rural Maine a hot topic lately. The attention is welcome, but I’m not sure the folks looking at us country bumpkins see us as we see ourselves.

Jason Isbell wrote, “I know every town worth passing through, but what good does knowing do, with no one to show it to?” So, ride with me along Route 2, and I’ll show you a compilation of the changes I’ve seen over the years.

Traffic has changed along Route 2 as paper mills have gone cold. The Sappi mill in Fairfield keeps trucks running to Canaan, where they turn onto Route 23, but closures in Madison, Old Town, Bucksport and Lincoln have cut Route 2 truck traffic. This week, we got home from Bangor, 71 miles, in 75 minutes, using I-95 and Route 2. No trucks.

Everyone knows the impact of mills closing. Hundreds of jobs (214 in Madison, the nearest to us) and scores of woods workers, scores of truck drivers. Those are direct job losses. As we ride, we can see other job losses, some perhaps residual to mills closing.

Farms and farm fields once lined Route 2.

Mercer: A dairy farmer no longer keeps heifers. He milks just a few head and may buy bred heifers. Two homestead farms no longer plant. A little homestead that kept a few horses keeps just a field, grown up in weeds and obscuring the horse barn.

Norridgewock: A big dairy farm has no cows outside, so it may have followed 800 other dairy farms (in 30 years) into oblivion. The farm had hired herdsmen and milkers.

Pittsfield: A good-sized veggie farm closed, the owner retired back to Connecticut. Much of the Rock Maple potato farm across the road wasn’t planted last year. A chicken house closed when Avian Farms’ offshore owners flew away to Kentucky.

Palmyra: At least one beef, one strawberry and one hay/grain farm have bit the dust.

And so on. Farmhouses convert to suburban houses, the farmers perhaps commuting to paid jobs in town. Or just retiring when no one wants the farm.

For a couple of years, Maine was losing convenience stores at the rate of five a week. Along Route 2, c-stores have gone down in Mercer, Skowhegan, Canaan (two), Pittsfield (three), Palmyra (two), Newport, Hermon (a full market and three c-stores). And more. That’s 14 entrepreneurial dreams shattered, perhaps 100 jobs lost.

Besides farms and c-stores, markets are closing. And restaurants. In Skowhegan, two downtown buildings have been razed. The Lisherness car dealership closed years ago. Store fronts are accustomed to being empty. In Newport and Norridgewock, too.

If Route 2 is a microcosm of rural Maine, Canaan, 26 miles from us, may be a microcosm of Route 2. We often stopped in Canaan for fuel and road food. It still has two gas stops, but McGowan’s is long gone. When the McGowans were there, you could fill the tank, grab a bite, talk politics and take home some lobsters to surprise the family.

Next door was the Purple Cow restaurant, now boarded up. Good food, good service, homey. We went sometimes for Saturday supper. We planned delivery trips to include a meal stop at the Purple Cow, and we stopped after ball games. I negotiated a SAD 9 superintendent’s first contract — I was board chair — at The Purple Cow, to which he had driven from Frankfort. The owners of the Purple Cow opened a second restaurant in Canaan, plus others in Skowhegan and Benton, and had a redemption center for a while. Today, no trace of Canaan’s Purple Cows or the redemption center.

A sandwich shop is for sale on the former McGowan’s lot. Another ex-eatery houses a construction company. A tractor dealership became a restaurant inexplicably named the Outhouse. Good sense arrived too late to save it when the owners renamed it Our House. An entrepreneur opened a variety store in a big tent that lasted a few years. It fell about the same time as the Purple Cow, McGowan’s and Our House.

Yes, there are new businesses and houses along the way. Norridgewock has a new Dunkin’ Donuts, and a Chinese takeout took hold about a decade ago. In Skowhegan, the West Front Market is succeeding after the old Southside Grocery became a bar, and The Bankery is a carb-laden bright light. A downtown gas station with a Dunkin’ counter has turned into a Dunkin’ without gas pumps. In Canaan, a new Dunkin’ with gas is under a second ownership, replacing four restaurants and a gas stop.

A diesel repair shop has replaced three successive unsuccessful c-stores and a bakery in Pittsfield. The ash-handle mill that Garant (Ames) closed has been reopened and repurposed. Palmyra has a newish c-store in the village. A glimmer that isn’t a Dunkin’. Those are all job gains, and some may be at higher wages than were paid by the stores and restaurants that went down.

Still, you get the overall picture. All along Route 2, the east-west artery of rural Maine, much is vanishing. Much of what’s taking its place is weeds, literal and figurative.

We seem to have fallen so low that officials don’t even bother to lie to us about their intentions toward rural Maine. Mark Lapping, who retired from USM after studying rural life for a lifetime, told the BDN that Maine is not talking about how, or whether, to address rural decline. “We’re basically saying, ‘You’re going to die, and there’s nothing you can do about it. And, frankly we’re not that interested,’” he said. Get used to it.

A posthumous shout out for Dr. Harold Kearney. For something like 50 years, Dr. Kearney was a cooperative extension professor at the University of Maine. He drove from New Sharon to Orono in great big cars — he felt they were safer — back when Route 2 was the only route, and cars could race passenger trains alongside the road in Newport and Carmel. I’ll never challenge his record for trips or years on Route 2.

Bob Neal hit the Bangor road again last night when the UMaine women beat Northeastern, 68-49. Good trip.