Date: Thu, 16 Jul 1998 19:53:52 -0500 From: Phanny Subject: [WRITERS] SUB: CONTEST: Sightings Sightings About ninety miles from the Quebec border, at the confluence of the Kennebec and the Dead Rivers lies the tiny hamlet of The Forks, Maine. A few people traveling to Canada, will recall miles and miles of pine forests, a half-mile strip of houses, two general stores, and crossing the bridge over the Kennebec. Nearly everyone else will arrive at the Canadian border without ever knowing that they had passed through The Forks. Before the advent of cable TV and white water rafting, people living in The Forks had few sources of entertainment. Nestled in the Katahdin Mountains, the town had poor TV and radio reception. The only time that the place came alive was when Postmistress Ellie made her deliveries. Magazines and newspapers were then passed from neighbor to neighbor until the print rubbed off. (Then they were used as kindling to light the kitchen stoves.) We did, however, have some offbeat sources for amusement. For example, going to the town dump was quite an adventure since several black bears came there regularly in search of good things to eat (from a bear's point of view). With only a few swipes of its paw, the average black bear could kill you. With the bears prowling about the dump, getting rid of your garbage became rather exciting. Uncle Mark and Cousin Berwin would time themselves to see how fast they could dump their rubbish and race back to their truck. Soon, the rest of us joined in the contest to see who could dump their trash the fastest. Cousin Berwin's brother, Garth always thought that garbage dumping should have been an Olympic Event. When the snow prevented easy travelling, we enjoyed watching the animals through our porch windows. Of course, you simply had to call your next door neighbor to tell them what animal you saw the other day. On Tuesday, Frances phoned Maude to tell her that coming home from church last Sunday forenoon, she saw three moose down by Indian Pond. After Frances hung up, Maude called Marion to inform her that "Frances saw three huge moose down by Moxie Falls". The next day, Marion phoned Junior, and they talked about the time of the day of Frances' astounding sighting of a moose herd. Later that day when Junior went to get gas at Clifton's store, he speculated with Clifton about who else saw the bull moose. As he rang up Cousin Berwin's groceries, Clifton asked him about the moose over at Wyman's Lake. A few days later, Cousin Berwin dropped in to see Uncle Mark. The two men discussed how big the bull moose was at Wyman's Lake. A week later, while she delivered the mail, Postmistress Ellie stopped by long enough to relate her story of how she almost ran down a moose with her postal truck. No sooner than the talk about the moose died down, that Ida Mae looked out her kitchen window and saw a black bear in her back yard pulling down her clothes line. . . . On summer nights when the midges were biting, everyone drove up and down the road to look for deer. Late one night, my family were driving along a logging road, when a dark shadow with one bright light floated in front of our Nash Rambler. Screaming "A UFO!", my father hit the brakes. The rest of us hid under the car blanket. After she had heard the shadow honking, my grandmother realized that the UFO was only a moose crossing the road. When our excitement died down, my father meekly said, "Gee, I thought it was a giant firefly." Of course our moose sighting was duly reported to the neighbors by my mother. A week later, I walked to the post office to mail some letters. While Postmistress Ellie weighed my letters, she told me about the time a giant firefly had punctured a hole in one of her truck tires. . . . Cable TV could never measure up to such entertainment.