Pick A Side, On The Maine USA Border Crossing Looking In To Canada
Maine, Are We Near Canada?
To be on the US Canadian border is neat, special and the question comes up regularly “how close” are we to the country with the great hockey players waving the red maple leaf flag proudly.
This image pretty much sums it up. I listed a Hodgdon Maine farm property yesterday and one photo can spell it out clearly, without a doubt that we are right on the USA Canadian International Boundary.
Maine, are we near the Canadian border?
Half our relatives are from Canada to begin with and it is amazing how often we get asked is it dangerous living that close to the border? I chuckle because Canadians are not the enemy, they are family.
The only temporary friction might be when your kid on ice skates is across the border, way ahead in a hockey game but suddenly gets blown out, loses.
And our pride for our team is bruised, gets a little bent out of shape. Until the next match up on the sheet of ice on this side of the Maine US borde. And the results flip flop, reverse.
Since 911, that US Canadian International Border crossing also represents one major labor contributor to the local job economy too.
It is sad 911 happened, but the good that comes out of tightening up the US border is more employment of US Customs, Immigration, Border Patrol employees. And the goods and services locally that that beefed up US Canadian border represents in local sales that would not be there otherwise.
Come up to see the US Canadian border.
Cross in to Canada, either the Atlantic or Quebec provinces. And see how lucky we are to be at an International border crossing. For cultural exchange. Come see how some of your notions about Canada may need some updating, serious revisions. I an fortunate to live in the border town of Houlton Maine in a state far enough to by rights be in Canada had the lines been drawn just a little differently years ago.
Are we near Canada living in Maine?
Always Close To Canada! Love To Head From Maine To Canada!
Yes we sure are.
Depending on the value of the American dollar, the Canadian looney, it can be a good economic boom to either side of the USA International Border with cross country traffic. Lots of Maine milk dairy products, gas car fill ups and turkey head from the USA in to the Canadian provinces from my home town of Houlton Maine.
Pass The Hot Dogs And Vinegar French Fries Will Ya?
I wished my four kids had known the fun of going to the Borderland outdoor drive in movie theatre on a Maine summer evening.
Our closest one to Houlton Maine was the Borderland Drive In. There was the Cummings Theatre, an outdoor drive in in the Woodstock New Brunswick Canada are. One other one pretty handy was in Enfield, Maine. Another in Presque Isle and further north in Maine.
This Borderland outdoor drive in movie Maine theatre on the west side of the North Road, US Rt 1.
Hidden from the road by low trees so you could not see the rows of parked cars. But from the the highway you could not miss the bigger than life actors as you slowed to a crawl and drove by. Western mountain ranges, lots of horses, cattle and cactus. Sometimes a little more exotic. Not so “G” rated or family friendly now playing up on the big outdoor movie screen. Shield your eyes kids. Don’t look Ethel but it was too late. Like in the Ray Steven’s The Streak song.
And during the intermission of a double feature or before the first show started, dancing mouth watering hotdogs, candy, popcorn and happy beverage containers rotated.
Did a jig on the big silver outdoor movie screen. To entice, make you trot to the concession stand that was bathed in yellow light. For those hungry souls with a little spending money in the movie going audience.
That concession stand had two of the heaviest spring loaded outdoor screen doors closers known to mankind.
I bet you a ten dollar bill that door racked up a beefy pull snap with about an 80 pound or higher torque. Better get in quickly or lose a body part, getting grazed or caught by the swift shutting screened door. Everyone learned quickly and don’t think it was OSHA approved. The cooks and wait staff assembling your quick here you go take out food orders. They all wanted the night air flying pest to stay on the other side of that snack shack eatery screened doorways.
Houlton Maine’s Borderland Drive In Theatre Was Fun Place To Watch Summer Outdoor Movies.
The beginning drive in theatre show was preceded by the bright lights on, dancing food marching across the screen.
All designed to make you drool for fifteen minutes. For the call to action and get your butt to the concession stand before the movie reels and the arch lighting behind the film started projection started whirling. The take out food advertising highly effective to sufficiently plant the seed you really need hot dogs, hamburgers, clam baskets STAT. The local Maine potatoes sprinkled with vinegar on your home made fries and onion rings adults and kids. Work on your parents little ones. Those sitting on the wallet, with the pocketbook over their shoulder with money to buy them. If you whine convincingly long and loud enough.
The little brothers and sisters made use of the drive in theatre outdoor swings, slides and turn style rides in slippered pj’s in the night air.
It was a big deal to go to the drive in with your friends, a date. Your family depending on your age and if it was still cool or not. The end of the movie meant Lou Webber reminds you what was coming up for future film attractions. And to make sure you replaced your speaker. The tinny silver one on the end of a wire on to its matching white metal pole “saddle”.
What’s Playing This Week At the Borderland Drive In Theatre In Houlton Maine?
It seems my three older brothers did not always remember and I found quite a collection over the machine shed at the farm I grew up on.
Not exactly high fidelity. And in later years a shift to sound transmitted thru the lower radio band took over. Helped keep the mosquitos out of the car that did the limbo to one by one squeeze in by the hanger of that tinny speaker.
The Borderland Drive In Theatre had church services back in the 1980’s.
Stay in your car, roll in as you are. For worship, song, watching and listening by tuning into a low powered FM radio transmitter broadcasting the presentation this week. Maybe the Borderland will come back into operation. The drive in for future area high school graduations one by one commencement ceremonies happening outdoors in the open air. Your well wishers in their respective cars more than 6 feet apart on the rows and rows of raised mounds.
The high school graduations from Maine high schools during coronovirus sheltering in place and quarantined work arounds. Could bring outdoor drive in theatres back to life with more purpose. Than only nightly flicks thrown up on the summer night screens. Where you see no hand holding, hugging, zero fist bumps.
The graduation ceremony parties both stepping back six feet or more by those presenting and the high school senior student on the receiving end. Rolling down the incline, gravity sliding the rolled up tube or elastic wrapped curled tightly diploma. Here it comes. Launched tube for pick up at the lower exit point. Across a six foot or greater presentation sluice way. Over a squeaky clean prep table herded with a rod or broom handle.
Maybe using the “Grabber” bought on television from Ronco and they really work folks. Or a second one for half the price. Senior citizens reach for them nine to one over other brands as there favorite device the high rotation run of schedule ROS broadcast ad states. For reaching out to retrieve fallen items down so low or ones way too high up for the go go gadget arms secret power extension.
Oh look, at dusk there’s the graduating senior who everyone came to the event to see the ceremony huddled inside the Chrysler mini van or family sedan.
Get your camera ready to catch an image or two of the senior wearing that funny square hat with the gold tassel in the gown smiling ear to ear from the accomplishment. That might be the best work around during the COVID19 pandemic. Might mean putting the silver screen hibernating so so long back up and in better working repair condition. The screen “gone with the wind” from neglect lack of use and weather damage.
My real estate office secretary’s family members all connected and worked together with a little friction at the Borderland drive in outdoor theatre operation.
They started it. Talked to Brian Cole this morning out at his retirement home on Drews Lake in Linneus Maine. Brian worked at the Borderland Drive In with his brothers. He remembers people sneaking in from the B Road during Buck night. Recalls to that some people went to the outdoor movie that never ended up watching it. Not even one scene of the flick flashed up on the bigger than life screen beyond the car hood out front.
Pat Cassidy another work used to go car to car to offer to wash our windshield for free.
Usually got a quarter or more tip from those that did come to the sci-fi creature or whatever double feature. Maybe it was a big sky spaghetti Big Sky Western pair of movies or back to back James Bond shows. People who did want to watch and munch on pop corn. To eat homemade french fries with ketchup and vinegar that still has the potato peelings on them. Washing it all down with Bubble Up, their favorite flavor of local bottler Fitz’s Beverage or an adult barley pop drink.
Remember the concession stand with yellow light bulbs and wicked strong high tension door springs to keep the mosquitoes as big as robins at bay?
Double Feature Movies Show On The Big Outdoor Drive In Screen. It’s Summer Movie Time.
That little crack where the tinny sounding speaker with the long wire hung after rolling the glass almost to the top. Leaving a gap where the buzzing varmits looking for your fresh blood could squeeze into your car or pick up truck or van space.
Or you could use the coil you lit up with a match and placed on the dashboard.
The one that smelled like something sprayed over Vietnam jungles for a defoiliant or an insense stick. Something from the head shop named the “Zodiac” on Broadway in Houlton Maine owned and operated by the Moran family. You know the one next to the S&H green stamp store, Beals family restaurant near the Aroostook County jail. The green stamp store where you got your sporting goods, camping supplies. My aunt Charlene Been worked there I remember.
As a little Maine kid wanting a tennis racket or baseball glove.
To play sets back and forth up and over the net at the rec center. Or to field stitched little league leather wrapped balls at short stop or out in center field or whatever diamond location.
It took 2.25 books of green stamps to score one when money growing up on a Maine farm during a poor bleak potato year meant those sticky back currency was the only hope.
Dead River Oil Company, local grocery stores like Don’s Brewer, Sampson’s, Wilson’s Market on South Street or the C&G IGA Foodliner.
Everyone gave out the green stamps that spit out of a machine you dialed like a rotary phone. The more you spent, the greater the connected coil of green stamps showed up to fold into the grocery bill receipt and hand back with a smile and courtesy thank you very much. Everyone in my small Maine town gave out green and gold plaid stamps too as a bonus perk for your shopping patronage.
Nola a little gruff all the time on the Borderland grill flipping burgers, adding cheese slices and pushing the hot dogs around the sizzling greased surface.
Deep fried clam baskets Ruth Peabody created lots. Teamed the take out fried food fryolator hot grease corner of the busy drive in theatre concession kitchen. While the two sniped back and forth about “Get Out Of My Work Space” you old bat snipes and verbal jabs. Ralph downstairs eating candy bars after the show. As any diabetic in this blog post audience knows that’s a big no no. That you should not be munching on sweets. Later, Ralph getting a kidney transplant and struggling with a royally messed up sense of balance vertigo for the rest of his difficult adult life.
Lewis Webber, Ralph’s his dad in the projection booth always on the PA looking for his son. Harold Peabody, Lou’s brother in law handing out the upcoming movie flyer hand bills.
As vehicles with Maine and Canadian plates lined up and rolled through the Borderland Drive In ticket booth check point. To lower the glass in the passenger side door. To fork over the cash for the number of movie goers in the car unless it it was buck night. All happening around dusk, rain or shine as one by one vehicles rumbled in and drove slowly to their favorite location.
Two Movie Theatres, No Facebook, No Twitter. Houlton Maine’s Vibrant Down Town. Movies A Big Deal, Indoors Or Outdoors Later On Til The Mid 80’s.
Opens in 1949, closed for good in 1985 the end of an outdoor movie going drive in theatre era.
And 450 outdoor theatre car outdoor movie going car spaces went unused after that as the grass grew tall and unmowed. Thee buildings, big screen too all decayed slowly in hibernation. After movies, the employees all walked back and forth to comb the premises around all those raised mounds. The ones kepts mowed and tidy. Where you parked your vehicle just so to gain the best hump rock back and forth angle. To finally throw it into park or leave it in gear shutting off the engine.
Sit back, push the seat away from the steering wheel of if a T-bird push it out of the way. Away from your pot belly. To settle in for the night time movie show. The one now playing in your small Maine home town as you looked up at the big screen in front of all the vehicles in a row.
Dad would bring us back boxes of popcorn with a happy clown on the front. Some bottles or cans of soda too. But we always suspected, my three olders brothers and I hunkered down in the back seat of the family sedan wondered. That Dad appeared to have trace amounts of mustard on his cheek. I bet he was gone so long not because he got talking or ran into someone he knew. But sampling a few hurried eaten hot dogs of his own un-beknowst to the rest of the family, Mom included.
The debris and garbage after that show from overflowing way way too small garbage cans. It found its way to 55 gallon rusted refuse barrels behind the snack shack and torched.
Back when outdoor open burning was okay and the norm for garbage before recycling centers popped up to service many towns trash loads. The candy wrappers, empty beer cans, cardboard carry out food trays and napkins all rounded up to get ready for the next outdoor movie show. Families, teenagers with fresh driving licenses and Cupid’s arrow at work. Movie lovers of all ages flocked to the outdoor drive in theatre location around Maine and New Brunswick Canada my neighbor just a few miles distant. The outdoor big screen pretty special for a and outdoor presentation long before LED screens went all out for little money and indoor home theatre set ups for the movie consumption.
It was dangerous driving south on US RT 1 and looking out of the corner of your eye at the X-rated movies flashing on the Borderland Drive In screen.
The drive in party animals just a little too tee hee social were off to the left, the leave me alone crowd on the right. Everyone with families down the middle all enjoying the movie in different ways and parking locations. Kids in their pajamas with the sewn in foot protection with vinyl bottoms. So you can trot to the swings and play on the ground slides. Or spin the circular get dizzy motion ride. Or hop the teeter totter hoping for no silvers before parent hollered come back to the car. Or your big brother or sister was sent to retrieve you. While giant dancing food and candy of all types kept waltzing in mouth watering formation across the screen with flood lights on the corners. Your hunger increasing to the point of borderline border land starvation. The lighted path to you know where and reminder hurry.
You just have barely enough time as the minutes counted off lighting up the drive in theatre bright as the sun with high powered spot lights.
Before pitch black total eclipse happened and everything went darker than the inside of a cow. And then pipe down hollered to rabble rousers. As SHHHhhhh, settle in, watch the show. Or get reported and asked to start up your car and leave slowly without hitting anyone loaded up with take out food trying to find where the heck they parked. No texting your partner for help. No GPS on your cell phone during the 40’s through 80’s decade in history. It’s show time on a hot summer evening in small town rural Maine and you feel lucky.
Herman Moran, self appointed deputy sheriff want to be would be directing traffic with a moving flash light to make sure US Rt 1 was not a log jam.
Herman wielded the biggest known to man multi battery police version flashlight to shine the way to exit out onto the North Road, US RT 1 that was fast moving. Many drive in theatre patrons a little sleepy after being cooped up in the car or so long. Herman took the job serious and I don’t he was of German lineage. His heroics service night after night so everyone could get home for the night without fanfare, a big production or any delay. His civil defense training and road hazard yellow lights, all the highway motoring gear made the event seem more professional to a high school kid. Buck night and five dollar car load night meant a few extras brought in to stretch our allowances for the week too. Still a few Maine drive in outdoor movie theatres.
My Dad, John R Mooers Was A B-24 Tail Gunner On A Liberator 4 Engine WW 2 Bomber Plane.
Two 50 caliber guns, in an unpressurized cabin that is cold, smells like a latrine with a War War Two B-24 bomber plane filled with other young nervous army airmen.
My dad John R Mooers was a tail gunner in a four engine bomber airplane during the second world war. The 15th Army Air Force, the 882nd Bombardment wing and the entire country behind you raising victory gardens, sending daily mail. Praying morning, noon and night you all made it home safely after each bomb run.
Dad was stationed in Italy, lived in a tent with a heater and waited to learn if the weather was favorable for a bomb run the next day.
Morning briefings on the primary target, secondary missions and reminded what to do if shot down over enemy lines. Being outside the wire…way way outside and in the air dodging highly accurate German 88 anti aircraft guns. The smell of cordite in the air, the plane vibrating from the percussion blasts. Fear of shrapnel always on your mind.
The US Army Air Force issued each member of the B 24 flight crew a survival kit.
Filled with a chocolate bar, a map, silk thread, an ampule of morphine, a prayer and some blue seal silver certificate currency. To “buy your way out” and in case the enemy sympathizers questioned the value behind those dead presidents on the green currency you carried. Just in case. The note in the survival kit given to all the flight crew on the B-24 bomber plane called the “Dragon Wagon” was written in several languages. To get help if you had bail out, if stranded in enemy territory if you B-24 plane got shot down. And it was every man for themselves. Hoping not to land in a tree dangling unable to release from your parachute because the drop was too far and would break both legs. Praying not to end up in enemy hands in German controlled lands below.
My Dad John R Mooers Was A Tail Gunner In A B-24 Airplane.
On Memorial Day, and every day I think of how Dad squeezed back in to this very small tail gunner position B-24 compartment.
On a mission of destruction. To kill or be killed. He wanted to be a pilot but Uncle Sam had all of those fly boys it needed.
Dad was slight, skinny and wirery enough to be the perfect fit back in the tail of a B-24 bomber aircraft.
Removed from the rest of the crew of waist gunners, bombardier, ball turret, radio man, pilot and co pilot. Tied with intercom plane communications but observing radio silence at the P-51 Mustangs, your “little friends” bugged out of the escort, dog fighting to get your closer to your target. Some bomb runs were “milk runs” and routine. Others required change of mission plans due to heavy German 88 anti aircraft and squadron damage. Think about being cramped in a tight quarters for six or more hours, unheated, wearing an oxygen mask and wondering if you and the B-24 bomber flight crew will make it back to base. In one piece, or at all. Daylight bombing was very efficient but had heavy losses of life and planes.
Remember Veterans Around The World Like At The Arc de Triomphe Paris France.
As you entered the IP zone, the place where one by one the planes in your B-24 squadron, flight group would open the bomb bay doors.
Pulling the pins first on the variety of bombs to be used in today’s excercise to win the war. Stop the war. Support the troops. I think of the sacrifice my dad the B-24 tail gunner and all his flight crew made. Would you fight for your country’s freedom today and serve in the armed forces to do what had to be done for the United State’s way of life? Would you protest the war, head to Canada? How would you treat the soldiers on their return from fighting the war wherever it was on the blue and green globe?
On Memorial Day, I honor guys like my dad, his flight crew, my two brothers that were in the service and all veterans.
Dead, alive, maimed. Many gave some. Some gave all. God bless America and the freedoms we have, fought for, preserve as the greatest country on the planet. Was being a tail gunner dangerous? Dad always said the ball turret, under the plane had the worse position. Your landing gear gets shot out, the hydraulics worthless and you can not sometimes put the landing gear down manually. The life expectancy of that ball turret airman had way way lower odds of survival on his life insurance policy. Hope you enjoyed this blog post on John R Mooers, tail gunner in a B-24 bomber airplane called the “Dragon Wagon”.
Folks In Southern Aroostook County Are Spoiled With Home Made Sadie\’s Bakery Donuts, Cookies, Breads.
Small Mom and pop businesses, the couple that know how hard it is to make a dollar, eek out a living being shrewd business people like Sadie’s Bakery in downtown Houlton Maine.
Tim and Sharon O’Donnell for over 32 years set the alarm clock to rise and shine very early. Yes because they have beef cows to grain, hay and water. But also because of the local tradition carried out as sacred. It started in 1948 in the Shiretown, County seat for Aroostook, Maine’s largest of sixteen. Time to make the donuts. Because in a small Maine town the hot fresh coffee and a just made local donut are priceless. The experience of sampling each is the key to jump starting your day. Miss that coffee break routine and you start to back peddle. Nothing goes as planned.
A different flavored donut each day. Everyone in the area can smell the fresh donuts that are addictive. Or dangerous if you are try to walk the straight and arrow when on a diet. The fellow that does my taxes next door to Sadie’s says your will power increases. But it was a struggle not to trot over every time Tim brings a new fresh batch in to the world. To resist loading up with a bag or two of hot, just out of the fryer, home made not cookie cutter store box donuts.
He says chocolate donuts are his weakness.
He tries to limit himself to one or two a week but he is in his 90’s and says maybe they extend life! What would you do at that age? Develop some new bad habits because you can? A local made donut is a small pleasure unique to the small Maine town.
In addition to donuts, breads, squares, cookies and other baked cooks come out of Sadie’s Bakery. On Midnight Madness during the 4th of July Houlton Maine celebration, there is a line out in to the street of folks waiting for a carnival like dough boy with confectionery sugar, cinnamon on them. Or Italian sausages smothered in onions and green peppers and home made rolls. (Stomach grumbling…that’s mine from not enough lunch I guess).
Tim and Sharon say the donuts are no secret shared only by local folks here in Houlton Maine or across the border in to New Brunswick Canada either. They ship 8 dozen to Alaska periodically to a fellow that pays a dollar a piece just for the shipping charges thru the US Postal system’s priority mail. The donuts arrive within 48 hours from being made, packed, shipped from Houlton Maine. They went up up and away..all the way to our 49th state, brought on board just before Hawaii.
What the O’Donnell’s make can not be mass produced and it is a hand made one at a time operation. That is the secret, hard work and what makes each baked good so special, sought after. With the internet, and blog posts like this word can spread and demand increase.
But as Tim says “When we sell out, that’s it for that day”.
Similar to the German sandwich shop owner in Bangor Maine that retired recently after sixty odd years with a well known favorite “coffee pot” sandwich. The tradition builds the attachment and spans generations. Nothing trendy or faddish about the delicacy that is not from a copy cat chain but one of a kind offering.
If the Sadie’s Bakery donuts and our local Houlton Farm’s Dairy home made butter could easily get to Florida.
If the Jordan or Rices red hot dogs you can not buy out of Maine could get delivered to the retirees in the sunny south. Those folks would pay dearly for those items. Someone could become a very rich man. Scarcity adds to the sparkle and increases the hunger that improves the taste. Ever had a Sadie’s Bakery donut or other baked goods item? You have no idea what you are missing.
Being just a donut, butter and hot dog merchant, food broker would be profitable. But maybe they are all special because they are unique to Houlton Maine, the way life should be. Breath deep when you drive up in to Market Square. Chances are your nose will lead you to Water Street, the home of Sadie’s Bakery in Houlton Maine. Houlton Maine is the county seat for the Crown of Vacationland called Aroostook!
Lots of Maine potatoes, something to eat is not something everyone enjoys.
Some one special works behind the scenes to stock the food pantry shelves.
That loads up boxes designed for specific families as they are lovingly assembled. There is a local lady in Houlton Maine who works day in and day out at the Catholic Church’s Food Pantry.
She leads the leading force looking for loads of dented cans from large grocery chains and donations from this boy scout troop, civic organization or folks from every denomination. She is amazing and had eight kids of her own around long dinner table. There is a long list of helpers she created for unloading and emergency donations when the need is urgent.
This hard working volunteer lady is like the CEO for world hunger in the local Southern Aroostook area.
I asked her how come this cause…what drives her to be so creative and diligent year after year. She said as a child in the Boston area, she was hungry…a lot. She was raised with little money or food to go round and it became a way of life, survival. She did not consider it out of the ordinary to go to bed hungry without a meal when the rest of us sit down for sustenance or dine out. Not so unlike a concentration camp of past world wars. Or the poverty caused by the conflicts.
Trimming Beets At Nature’s Circle, A Local Organic Farming Operation In Northern Maine.
When you think about it…when was the last time you missed meals for a day, or were hungry to the point of passing out with low blood sugar and fatigue? I don’t mean dieting or young people purging or obsessed with skinny. This nation is so blessed with abundant food and at this holiday season, look around for food baskets to buy to feed a family over the holidays with beyond the bare essentials.
Consider signing up as our Rotary Club in Houlton does for ringing the bell of the Salvation Army’s Christmas donation kettle appeal.
Make it a ritual of what you do around the busy holidays to know the meaning of Christmas every year. Our local rotary club also raises close to a thousand dollars a year in $20 donations from club members to buy a basket with food given below cost by the local groceries in the Houlton area. It is so refreshing and heart warming to live in an area where people care for other people. Beyond the suppers for the cancer survivors or families that lost their homes in fires.
Also, Maine is loaded with farms. So much of the produce grown is wasted and left on the ground after harvest. Over-sized, kitchen grade vegetables are perfectly good for nutrition and just need to be gleaned. Before frost hurts the quality or the sun works its magic on the food left behind by the harvester. It is a same that roughly 30% of food goes uneaten that is perfectly good. Just needs to be channeled to the proper avenues to put it into the food chain before being lost.
You have so much…more than you could ever use and will get back a deep, sobering feeling of community by taking part in local drives.
Teaching Them Young. Mainers Help Mainers Of All Ages. To Learn Life Survival Skills!
Your kids are watching too and they can help ring that bell or deliver food to the pantry at your local soup kitchen! You may need a helping hand some day too. At our local rotary club we also have a Christmas auction with proceeds to help the local library and a portion for extra help for the Salvation Army Christmas appeal! Small towns in Maine are rural but tightly knit. The population pulls together to provide for the needs of all the locals and can expect the same support in life here in Maine.
Help get behind food pantries, soup kitchens in your area.
Shhhh.. be quiet as a mouse and do it like you are the only one that knows about the gift. That’s what makes it extra special and a sense of duty or a mission you can not avoid year after year!
