Machiasport kitchen, old & new

Our kitchen here is a mix of old and new. I've linked a photo with my great Aunt Abbie in August of 1985, she was 94. This was the last time I saw her, in her old kitchen. I was on a trip home from a visit to Van Buren, in far northern Maine where I had my first teaching job. That's 5 hours from here and it's nearly 7 more back to the house in Massachusetts. I never got back up to see her before she died in 1987. She was a funny as my grandfather was serious, but they sure looked alike.


This old house originally belonged to my great grandparent's, and their five children , Gordon(my maternal grandfather), Abbie, Ruth, George, and Sam. When my great grandfather died in 1955 at 84, his eldest daughter, Abbie was living with and caring for him. She continued to live here, alone, dying in 1987 at 96 in an ambulance in the lane after falling and striking her head on a tall radiator. She got her wish, dying quietly at home, no nursing home for her.

We started coming here on family vacations when I was 9 in 1958, but we never stayed at this house overnight. The upstairs bedrooms with ancient mattresses terrified my mother. She knew they were unchanged since the turn of the century, she and my dad stayed here in 1946 on a trip downeast as part of their honeymoon. The first year we stayed at some cabins in East Machias and after that we stayed at other relatives houses, all really comfortable, left empty for us it seemed for the exact two weeks of my dad's vacation. We often spent the entire day here with Aunt Abbie and took her out and about and all around with us. We'd come in and announce where we were headed and ask if she's like to go. She would throw off her apron, take the pot of beans out of the oven, grab her sweater and pocketbook and fly down the stairs on stilt legs to our waiting car. She was hilarious, quick with quips spoken with the thickest downeast accent you can imagine. Whistling S's with the classic loose false teeth sounds and quirky colorful speech.

When she died in 1987, she left this old house to my mother. My parents did some work that was sorely needed, but it wasn't until my dad died that my brother finally convinced my mother to do more. When my mother died in 2007, my brother and I inherited the house to share. My brother arranged a complete overhaul of the whole place. Now it's just the perfect home away from home and almost impossible to leave. I'm beginning to feel the pangs of the 2013 leaving...