All my mother’s people were from Maine. My grandmother was born in Lexington Plantation, near the Anson Valley and New Portland. It was on a roadtrip in 1964 with my mother and grandmother that we drove to North New Portland to discover family resting places. We turned a corner in the golden fall of the Anson Valley, with breezes rippling through the long grass toward sunset, that we came upon a fair—with horse pulling, vagabonds, and sideshows with what were considered weird people in those days. I swore then that I would some day come back and see if the fair was still there and was not a figment of my imagination.
Forty years later, I did return. Place belongs in this time to the people who live there now, not to those whose dent left on the East is small, forgotten in country graveyards. The people who remain, through choice or necessity, are like the twigs and leaves caught in the eddies of a powerful river flowing downstream to new possibilities—worn and washed. They are out of the mainstream. This is an America that is fading away and I wanted to honor and record it before I pass or it passes.
