A Suburb of Appleton, Maine

That's right, we grew up (until I was 10 and Vinny was 11) in Burkettville, a suburb of Appleton, Maine. I think Appleton has 1,000 people now but probably was around 600 or 700 while we were there. Our little suburb was the poor part of town. Some people poke fun at me because we lived there when we were young. Now it's actually a desirable place to live. I don't care either way. My mom did very well to buy a house so young with two little children and it was a magical place to live as a kid. Our neighbors were a mixture of local yokels - just plain Maine people and some kind of scary maybe murderers. We loved it anyway.

A week ago I drove up there just to see our old house and think about the things we used to do. As I took a left onto the Burkettville road, I saw a deer in the field. We used to see so many deer in that field as we made our trek into civilization. Appleton is at least 25 minutes from any bigger town. We actually ran out of gas a few times near that field. My mom didn't have any money and was always chancing the gas situation until the last minute. Then I drove by M & D market. That was built after we lived there for a few years. We loved, loved the times when we had the special privilege of getting a pizza. We always wanted to beat our younger brother up because, if we did get pizza, it was always peperoni. Next I passed our old baby sitter Abby's house. She and her husband Clyde used to babysit us when my mom first bought the house. They didn't have any money either. In fact, they didn't even have a bathroom. Vinny and I thought it was so cool they had an outhouse. We were very small. Clyde would drive us to the store and buy us candy bars and my mom told us later that they would leave groceries for us because they felt bad and loved us so much. Then I drove by George's Store. It hasn't been open since I was around 7. An old man George used to own it and he lived across the street from it. Vinny and I used to sing Georgie Porgie Puddin' Pie to him every time we went in. As I made the descent into the little area where we used to live I had to drive down the infamous winding hill of Burkettville. We had the coolest bus driver Teddy when we were kids. We loved him even if he did run over our cat. In the winter time Teddy would need traction to get up over the infamous hill, so he would ask all the kids to pile in the two back seats of the bus. After I made it down the hill, I passed over the river that Vinny and I used to fish in. Then I passed Mona's house. She used to babysit us too. Then Vaughn and family's house. Vinny and I never understood why Vaughn would chase us out of his yard with a rake. We would get up early in the morning, walk down over the hill to Vaughn's house and open up the door to his chicken coop. Now looking back, we probably let all of his chickens out every day. We had chickens of our own. Laverne and Shirley. We hatched them in our first and second grade classroom (we had the same teacher that year). They got eaten by foxes or coyotes pretty quickly. As I made my way up to our old house,I remembered walking up the middle of the road at night with Vinny and his friend Robbie sing "Take me home to the place where I belong West Virginia, mountain momma, take me home". I saw the area in the woods where I knew there would be a big rock behind the trees. I remember Vinny and I loved McDonald's as kids (like most kids). We used to play McDonald's on that rock. 40 Happy Meals, please. Everything was so overgrown at our house. The deck was gone. I didn't like the color. There were trees in the back yard that were never there. You can barely see the big field behind the house. We had a really old, really sad snowmobile. I don't know how we got it. Maybe someone gave it to us. It didn't have a headlight. Vinny used to drive me to my friends house at night through the old four wheeler trail behind the field by our house. It was very interesting dodging trees with the sound of coyotes howling in the background. We were petrified the whole ride. I have no idea how he dared to drive back by himself. I never really thought about it until I grew up. I wanted to get out of the car and walk through the woods to see all the places we made forts. Also so see what the big bad caves really looked like as an adult. (Zac got lost in those woods when he as 3. Our convicted criminal neighbors found him. See it pays to be friends with your neighbors no matter who they are.) It was getting dark, so I went to sit by Vinny's grave instead. I know with all my heart he's not there, it just feels good to be where we had so many good memories.