When Sandy Lynch made her first trip to Fort Fairfield to visit the young man who would become her husband, she was impressed that, as they drove from the Presque Isle airport to his hometown, “he could tell me what was growing in the fields just by looking at them.”
As a New Yorker, she shared the view of novelist John Updike, who wrote, “People living anywhere else had to be, in some sense, kidding.”
The story of Lynch’s initiation into rural life, “Friendly Village: More than a set of dishes,” opens the new edition of Echoes magazine released Sept. 26.
In other features, St. David native Margaret Shore recalls the exciting shopping sprees in Presque Isle that were the payoff for picking potatoes, Lana Robinson of Benedicta honors the work of Sherman artist Sharon Sirois whose quilts tell life stories, and Norma Best Boucher reveals her hilarious “confessions of a hockey mom.”
Echoes raided the personal archive of Mary Lou Nelson of New Sweden for memorabilia and photos to honor the 40th anniversary of the Caribou Choral Society in an article titled “40 Years of Singing.” Richard Nichols of Fort Fairfield also contributed photos to illustrate a colorful feature on the chorus that has performed under the direction of Daniel Ladner since 1976.
Easton selectmen, circa 1899, star in an article by Elizabeth Todd Shaw of Gainesville, Fla., on the parsimonious negotiations for the purchase of a used hearse for the town. Shaw based her account on correspondence she found in her family home in Easton.
A poem by Peg Patton Winston of Caribou — “Gabriel of Lille” — complements a feature by Don Cyr of Lille on Acadian artifacts in the museum at the former Notre-Dame-du-Mont Carmel.
Maine’s Swedish Colony is the setting for “A Real Thanksgiving,” begun by Geraldine E. Bergquist in 1975 and finished by her son, David H. Bergquist of Hermon in 2016.
“Of course, the entire story is fiction,” he writes in an introduction, “but includes a description of life in the mid-1930s in a small Swedish town, which I think is quite accurate.”
Kristine Bondeson of Woodland anticipates the holiday in her column “Kristine’s Kitchen” with a recipe for Christmas Coffee Braid she inherited from her mother, Edith Bull of Washburn.
Glenna Johnson Smith of Presque Isle evokes chuckles in her “Old County Woman” column with a description of “The Week that Had Two Tuesdays,” while Houlton native John Dombek pays tribute to the women of the world in an essay titled “Mother’s Day?”
Dedicated to rediscovering community, Echoes is published quarterly by Caribou-based Echoes Press, echoesofmaine.com, now also on Facebook.
