Happy holidays to all! My weekly Locke’s Mills column, along with those of several other former Bethel Citizen town correspondents, is now part of Western Maine Neighborhood News, found on Substack and at the website wmnn.org. Every other column by each of us is free to all subscribers, while paid subscribers will see every column, so I’ll be posting only the “free to all” Locke’s Mills columns here.
Since I’ve been writing the column for Locke’s Mills for more than ten years, I thought it might be fun, on some of the weeks when my current column doesn’t appear here, to look back through a decade of local news reports for the same calendar week, to see what was happening in and around our town in those years.
This week in 2015, I reported that “I was out doing errands when the first of the snow squalls hit—it only lasted about ten minutes, but it was certainly intense! I was in The Local Hub when it started, and was quite surprised to look out and see white-out conditions. Norm Milliard had left in sunshine to walk to the post office and got caught in the sudden blizzard on the way. He said his toes got a bit nippy, but the sun was back out by the time he got home.”
In 2016, we had a messy storm the weekend before Christmas, and I wrote, “Although Saturday’s snow didn’t add up to as much as the storm we got last Monday, the follow-up of freezing rain on Sunday made it much heavier to deal with, and left us with a driveway that resembles a skating rink. Thank goodness for the municipal sand pile right across the street. I used four buckets on the driveway on Monday morning before I even dared to drive down it, and brought home another four buckets to keep on hand for next time.”
The week before Christmas in 2017, Joyce Hathaway let us know that Dick Melville was recuperating from shoulder surgery at home, and I reported that Cathy Newell was staffing the rug-hooking exhibit at the Robinson House of the Museums of the Bethel Historical Society on Dec. 22 from 1 to 3 p.m. to welcome visitors, demonstrate the craft, and give people a chance to try it out for themselves.
In 2018, we were experiencing “a banner year for ice-skating,” and I wrote that “I’ve seen photos posted on Facebook of people skating on North Pond, Norway Lake, and other area ponds. One friend said he skated 15 miles one day last week!”
In 2019, Will had taken Eli for a hike on the Speck Ponds Trail, opposite Hutchinson Pond in Albany and had returned without the remote control for Eli’s e-collar. “Will was pretty sure he knew approximately where he had dropped it, so on Sunday we went back there to hike and, sure enough, found it beside the trail. It even seems to still be in working order, despite being out in a two-inch rainstorm the day before.”
Just before Christmas in 2020, Tony and I had received the wonderful news that “the world’s most perfect grandchild,” then two and a half years old, and her mom would be moving from Raleigh, N.C., where they had spent a year, to Portland, where our daughter Katie would be working remotely as legal counsel for the Boston Conservatory, and we were looking forward to spending a lot more time with them.
In 2021, “After reading in last week’s Citizen that a resident had complained about the way the Greenwood highway crew was maintaining our roads, Betsey Foster emailed Town Manager Kim Sparks and the three selectmen to express her support for the crew and highlight the great job they do: ‘We have probably the best road crew in this area of Maine. All anyone needs to do is drive to any of the surrounding towns to see how well our roads are maintained in winter compared to Bethel, Norway, etc etc. We need to be applauding our road crew not condemning them. Please let the folks who work for the Town highway department know that some of us do not agree with the complainant. They do great work and, since I hear them plowing in the middle of the night, they are out plenty early enough.’”
The week before Christmas in 2022, we had received 19 inches of snow in a single storm, and some places nearby had gotten over two feet. I wrote, “So far, we’ve spent two days cleaning up from the storm, and I’m planning to go to camp to clear the roof and deck tomorrow. Two feet of snow provides a lot of exercise and entertainment.”
In December of 2023, I reported that the Museums of the Bethel Historical Society had discovered online and purchased a wonderful painting, “Skating on the Bethel Common,” done by Eleanor Brooks in 1997, and was having it made into a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle. “The whimsical folk art painting depicts a winter scene of the Bethel Common, with the historical society, the Bethel Inn, the library, and other familiar buildings.”
In 2024, despite having had cortisone shots in both knees, and having scheduled two knee replacements for the following year, I was still hoping to make it to 100 hikes before the end of the year, and had just done three short hikes on three consecutive days, twice to Lapham Ledge in pursuit of sunrise (once a few minutes too late and once successfully), and once, with Tony, up Peaked Mountain in Maggie’s Nature Park and out to the overlook on the Red Trail on the way back down.
2025—I hope that all of my readers who celebrate Christmas had a wonderful one this year! We spent the afternoon of Christmas Eve in Portland with our granddaughter, Lila, and her family, and the afternoon of Christmas Day with my brother Steve and his family, and are looking forward to another celebration when our Colorado kids are home in a couple of weeks. Eli and I enjoyed our traditional Christmas Day hike (our ninth annual!) in fresh powder snow at Greenwood’s own Maggie’s Nature Park, and I got to try out both a new pair of snowshoes and a new pair of knees to see how they worked on unbroken trails in deep snow. (Both got high marks.)
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
I love reading about the goings-on up north!