Category: Maine Small Towns

Maine, Leave Your AR 15, AK 47 Behind…Bring Your Fishing Rod, Shoot With A Camera.

Heading Up Mt Katahdin, Baxter State Park’s “Saddle”.

Folks jammed in a small area with wall to wall people struggling with giant nose bleed high mortgages, stuck in bumper to bumper barely moving traffic….I’m talking somewhere other than Maine.

When you get more people spaced in over lap fashion, clustered, stuffed in too small a confine, like laboratory rats, they start to bite, shove, react in a hostile way.

Callers I have at my day job selling Maine real estate that stop in, phone us when living in an urban area ask about our population, weather, property prices. They learn there are no “bad towns” or risky neighborhoods with Maine’s 4th lowest crime national statistic. But these same folks share with me about how everyone around them is stocking up on ammunition, AR 15, AK 47 and hand guns of varying millimeter. I hear some real horror stories from relocating property buyers who are running away from some pretty scary situations.

Buildings Slowly Fixed And The Land Worked To Feed The Family. Welcome To Maine!

Living just enough for the city to get by is not living.

Survival if money runs out, the food got scarce. And all those cars to maneuver around if you had to bail out of a city. The area that used to be a neat small town but has become too big and expensive to stick around. When you live in Maine, suddenly many worries, concerns a person carrying a taser and looking over his shoulder, calculating the chance of crime about to happen are missing. Not in the picture.

Traffic, noise, high costs of living, pressures and urban stresses gone in Maine.

Income being made in Maine could be lower but so is your operating cost. More careful spending, getting what you need, not always what you think you want. Frugal living to get a handle on your expenses. The money going out not more than is coming in.

It’s safe and simple heating with wood, growing a good portion of your food.

Entertainment not expensive box seats at a musical. It’s all around you to absorb and enjoy. Hiking a Maine trail, seeing two deer, a moose and listening to a series of lake loons while you enjoy a meal cooked over an open fire. Only a half tank of gas the expense of your natural “HBO” living channel.

Lake Life In Winter In Maine Is Peaceful, Quiet And Reflective.

You get more for what you buy and healthier living for less or no money expended.

Money is taken out of the picture living in small town rural Maine. The dollar not depended on so much. Everything not hired out or delayed. Folks help each other in a “barn raising” sort of way. This weekend’s project at your home, farm, camp to fix this list of items. Next week at their place to tackle another laundry list of projects.

Barter. No money exchanged and having fun doing it together. Connected with a sense of small town Maine community spirit.

Is it like that where you live now? Maine, the way life should be. Leave the assault rifles home, bring your camera to shoot the wildlife, to capture the Maine four seasons scenery best.

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers

207.532.6573 | info@mooersrealty.com |

MOOERS REALTY 69 North ST Houlton ME 04730 USA

July 2, 2010
My Dad John R Mooers Spent 50 Missions In The Small B-24 Tail Gunner’s Tight Quarters.

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”.

I’m Maine REALTOR, ME Real Estate Broker Andrew Mooers

207.532.6573 | info@mooersrealty.com |

MOOERS REALTY 69 North Street Houlton Maine 04730 USA

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May 31, 2010
Picking Maine Potatoes, My First Entry Level Job As A Kid.

Everything I apply to life I learned in the Maine potato field. Sort of.

The 300 acre Maine farm I grew up on and now own.

Maine youth help area potato farmers get the spuds into winter storage during school fall break.

Seriously, you start each morning, listening to the radio to see what time the Maine potato farmer is going to dig today.

A little frost or rain over night means a delay, or no picking. A reprieve from above in the food chain. But when you do get to the spud field after a big breakfast and carrying your lunch and water jug, you have to pick out a section.

A section is basically, how long a responsibility in the field can you handle?

If the rows are long, and one digger proceeds at a slow pace back and forth uncovering spuds to pick, you have to judge what is doable. To still stay caught up. You don’t want to be waiting for the digger. You need to avoid being hopeless behind, rows and rows out of uncovered potatoes waiting to be picked. That is discouraging but so is life sometimes. The best lessons are mistakes or miscalculations. Taking ownership, responsibility and stopping them from happening over and over. And wondering why.

Four baskets fill a 165 pound Maine farm potato barrel.

You put your ticket on the barrel and it gets plucked. Placed in a can as the barrel is hoisted onto a flatbed farm truck. The potatoes head to storage, your ticket to be counted that night. Sixty cents a barrel was the pay when my four kids picked a few years back. Before graduating to work in the potato house or on the harvester for an hourly wage. Where they thought now we are cooking. Have really arrived.

Kids spend the money if they think the item is worth six barrels of potatoes or whatever the exchange is as they contemplate a purchase. I have seen my kids pick something up, put it back on the store shelf and utter the word’s “Dad, that’s not worth six barrels of potatoes”. They worked too hard to part with their hard earned proceeds for something deemed an unfair exchange or quality for the work required to buy it. Maine potato picking video I posted.

No one leaves the Maine potato field until everyone is picked up.

No one left high and dry. If you find yourself behind due to poor section selection or the hot sun slowing down your production, others will show up to pick up your section. To add to their daily barrel tally. If you run out of barrels, you pick tops off the rows you get behind so when you get barrels, you can pick your section faster.

Digger pulled by the tractor breaks down? You head to the woods to do your business, make a nature call. Or have a snack and enjoy the break. Put it to good use to rest up. Or if hustling for a new bike, you trot down to a section that is behind that has barrels. You pick one or two barrels to tag with your ticket. You stay busy. You make good use of your time.

Another Generation Of Farmers In Maine. Remember, No Farmer, No Food!

Being outside in the Maine fall scenic foliage is exciting and beautiful. Blue skies, cold mornings, blistering hot afternoons. That’s a lesson in picking potatoes, my entry level job that was the blue print for every other job after that.

Growing up on a Maine farm was a valuable experience. And you are needed by the grower, shipper. You and he both are at the mercy of the biggest unknown, the Maine weather. Your section may grow or shorten too depending on the division marker of your neighboring picker. Who may be an ambitious little red hen or become lazy in the afternoon sun like a slug.

The field section markers may mysteriously re-adjust between where you end and your neighbor starts too.

End rows also can grow as the field lengthens. You find grass, tough picking, sods on the ends as a rule. Those are the picking ABC’s of mastering a Maine potato field. Watch the operation first hand with this Maine potato picking video .

Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers

207.532.6573 | info@mooersrealty.com |

MOOERS REALTY 69 North ST Houlton ME 04730 USA

March 19, 2009