I'm sure anyone can rattle off Patten, Maine's many claims to fame, but as is usually the case, there is one cultural landmark that symbolizes the metropolis in one fell swoop. Paris has the Eiffel Tower; Rome, the coliseum; New York has Broadway; L.A. has... the 405. Patten, Maine has "Patten Pioneer Days." This week of home-spun festivities serves to annually redirect dozens and dozens of people from their daily grind to joys of community, heritage and cooperation. It is all that one would expect a small town festival to be, and exactly what it should be. There are "steak dinners" at the Masonic lodge, there are "chicken suppers" at the Shin Pond docks, there is a "Taste of Patten progressive dinner" at the the airport's Hanger Sandwich Shop, the Clam Shack and Debbie's Deli. There are historical exhibits and story times at the heritage society. There are craft booths with quilts, carved log art, pies and canned vegetables set up at Patten Academy Park. There is a joint outdoor church service with the Methodist and Pentecostal churches. I guarantee you something was going on at the snowmobile club, I just don't know what. If Aunt Bea lost her southern twang and Andy Taylor gave up sheriffing to become a game warden, they could pretty much slip into Patten Pioneer Days society seamlessly.
We arrived mid-week, so we missed the frog jumping contest and the children's art competition. Sad losses, admittedly, but for us the week always builds to a crescendo culminating in the Saturday morning parade and the lunchtime "Bean-Hole Dinner" at the Lumberman's Museum. Mimi and Grampy are members of the Lumberman's Museum and most of their Pioneer Days labor is invested there. On Friday morning, the day before the dinner, Grampy and I went to the local grocery store and picked up big boxes of reserved onions, molasses, powdered mustard and other must-haves and hauled them out to the Museum. When we got there the prep was well underway; Grampy set to putting up tables and I volunteered to peel onions with an old guy who looked like he would make a career out of it. Meanwhile a crew of a dozen other men filled huge cast iron barrels with water and beans, and dug the round underground cooking pits. The pits were filled with fire logs and the beans were "parboiled" over the flames. Later that evening when the fires had died down to embers the parboiled beans would be combined with their seasonings, lowered down into their pits filled with charcoaled embers, and covered with dirt to cook the night through. As I peeled the onions I tried to strike up a conversation with the old guy I was working with. He was not a brilliant conversationalist. The exchange took the form of me asking random questions in many scattered directions, seeking an in, and him responding invariably with a clipped Maine "a-yah." I rather suspected I'd intruded on his onion peeling turf and that wasn't appreciated.
When Saturday morning broke soft and lazy with it's muggy Maine summer sunshine Stacy and the kids were all amped up. The kids were itching to march down to the park to await a parade that wouldn't start for three hours. It took fresh blueberry pancakes to get them to sit and be still for a small fraction of the wait time. But the parade time arrived eventually. Grampy, with a full day ahead of him, had already departed for the Lumberman's Museum, so it was Mimi, Stacy, L, N and I that meandered the block down the road to the prime viewing spot at the park. (Grammy Betty, who doesn't get out much, simply moved her chair to the bay window so as to not miss the spectacle which drove right by the house.) And soon we were treated to the Patten parade.
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| The gathering of the faithful. |
The theme this year was "Cultures from Around the World." Grampy had said this would be a particularly good year because they had managed to secure not one, but two Shriner's lodges to come out for it - one drove mini-mopeds, and the other mini-go-carts. The go-cart group won the wow factor because they travelled the route with a cheerfully painted Suburban that had a ramp that run up its tail and another that ran down its hood. As the go-carts bobbed and weaved down the parade route they would occasionally form up and take a run at the Suburban, driving up and over the car to the delighted cheers of the onlookers. We were also visited by Egyptians, a bunch of Leprechauns, some Indians (no one ever says "Native Americans" in Maine), and, more true to home, a collection of self-proclaimed "redneck" floats. A visit by a somewhat despondent looking Smokey the Bear and the requisite fleet of police cars and firetrucks rounded out the event.
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| Leading the charge! |
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| Ride like an Egyptian. |
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| N about to secure a go-cart high-five. |
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| The Hee-Haw brigade. |
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| I strongly suspect Smokey is contemplating suicide. |
As soon as the parade was over Mimi hustled down the Shin Pond Road to the Lumberman's Museum. She had coleslaw duty. Meanwhile Stacy and I herded the kids down through the town, stopping at the various ad hoc booths and stands that lined Main Street. At the Red Moose, the only "touristy" store in town and one of the most anticipated highlights of Stacy's visits, we loaded up on postcards and trinkets and moose pajamas. Heading back up the road toward home I swung by the Clam Shack to pick up a cheeseburger dinner for Grammy (plain, no catsup!), then it was back out on the road for the 1/4 mile walk down the Shin Pond Road to the museum for lunch, or more precisely, for the dinner.
In Maine a "dinner" is a vaguely defined word. It can and some times does mean the evening meal (pronounced "dinnah"), but that meal is more commonly referred to as "supper," or rather "suppah." The term dinner implies something out of the ordinary. A special event meal, whether held at noon or 5:00 may be called a dinner, though, truth be told, it is not uncommon to have special "suppers" too. (We arrived too late to attend the United Methodist Women's Spaghetti Suppah this year.) It is very difficult to keep your Maine culinary lingo straight and if you ask what's for dinnah when you should have asked what's for suppah, you quickly reveal your foreign heritage.
The Bean-Hole Dinner is more or less the lynch-pin of Pioneer Days, at least for our family. You don't go to the Bean-Hole Dinner for the latest in baked bean fashions. The beans are, honestly, a little on the bland side, and the biscuits baked in reflection ovens before the bonfire, while cool and pioneery, generally have an order of magnitude more baking powder than they needed. I've been warned to never try the fire-grate brewed coffee and have heeded the advice religiously. No, you go for the whole rustic, awkward, aw-shucks package. You go to watch men who look like bears (as all Northern Maine men do) haul buckets of beans out of the smoking ground. You go to hear the people talk about what they're doing to repair their ice fishing houses. You attend to hear the latest on the University of Maine's football team and hear all the disparaging comments on this new-fangled lacrosse stuff. You go because florescent red hot dogs are absolutely cool. You go because its your peeps and you know you can't understand them, but want to.
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| This makes him happier than just about anything else in the world. |
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| Don't even think about it. |
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| L in the Lumberman's Museum kitchen house |
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| L and N in the bunk house |
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| They were quite good! |
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| Bluegrass dancing |
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| Those enormous Maine skies... |
I'm sure anyone can rattle off Patten, Maine's many claims to fame, but as is usually the case, there is one cultural landmark that symbolizes the metropolis in one fell swoop. Paris has the Eiffel Tower; Rome, the coliseum; New York has Broadway; L.A. has... the 405. Patten, Maine has "Patten Pioneer Days." This week of home-spun festivities serves to annually redirect dozens and dozens of people from their daily grind to joys of community, heritage and cooperation. It is all that one would expect a small town festival to be, and exactly what it should be. There are "steak dinners" at the Masonic lodge, there are "chicken suppers" at the Shin Pond docks, there is a "Taste of Patten progressive dinner" at the the airport's Hanger Sandwich Shop, the Clam Shack and Debbie's Deli. There are historical exhibits and story times at the heritage society. There are craft booths with quilts, carved log art, pies and canned vegetables set up at Patten Academy Park. There is a joint outdoor church service with the Methodist and Pentecostal churches. I guarantee you something was going on at the snowmobile club, I just don't know what. If Aunt Bea lost her southern twang and Andy Taylor gave up sheriffing to become a game warden, they could pretty much slip into Patten Pioneer Days society seamlessly.
When Saturday morning broke soft and lazy with it's muggy Maine summer sunshine Stacy and the kids were all amped up. The kids were itching to march down to the park to await a parade that wouldn't start for three hours. It took fresh blueberry pancakes to get them to sit and be still for a small fraction of the wait time. But the parade time arrived eventually. Grampy, with a full day ahead of him, had already departed for the Lumberman's Museum, so it was Mimi, Stacy, L, N and I that meandered the block down the road to the prime viewing spot at the park. (Grammy Betty, who doesn't get out much, simply moved her chair to the bay window so as to not miss the spectacle which drove right by the house.) And soon we were treated to the Patten parade.
The theme this year was "Cultures from Around the World." Grampy had said this would be a particularly good year because they had managed to secure not one, but two Shriner's lodges to come out for it - one drove mini-mopeds, and the other mini-go-carts. The go-cart group won the wow factor because they travelled the route with a cheerfully painted Suburban that had a ramp that run up its tail and another that ran down its hood. As the go-carts bobbed and weaved down the parade route they would occasionally form up and take a run at the Suburban, driving up and over the car to the delighted cheers of the onlookers. We were also visited by Egyptians, a bunch of Leprechauns, some Indians (no one ever says "Native Americans" in Maine), and, more true to home, a collection of self-proclaimed "redneck" floats. A visit by a somewhat despondent looking Smokey the Bear and the requisite fleet of police cars and firetrucks rounded out the event.
As soon as the parade was over Mimi hustled down the Shin Pond Road to the Lumberman's Museum. She had coleslaw duty. Meanwhile Stacy and I herded the kids down through the town, stopping at the various ad hoc booths and stands that lined Main Street. At the Red Moose, the only "touristy" store in town and one of the most anticipated highlights of Stacy's visits, we loaded up on postcards and trinkets and moose pajamas. Heading back up the road toward home I swung by the Clam Shack to pick up a cheeseburger dinner for Grammy (plain, no catsup!), then it was back out on the road for the 1/4 mile walk down the Shin Pond Road to the museum for lunch, or more precisely, for the dinner.
In Maine a "dinner" is a vaguely defined word. It can and some times does mean the evening meal (pronounced "dinnah"), but that meal is more commonly referred to as "supper," or rather "suppah." The term dinner implies something out of the ordinary. A special event meal, whether held at noon or 5:00 may be called a dinner, though, truth be told, it is not uncommon to have special "suppers" too. (We arrived too late to attend the United Methodist Women's Spaghetti Suppah this year.) It is very difficult to keep your Maine culinary lingo straight and if you ask what's for dinnah when you should have asked what's for suppah, you quickly reveal your foreign heritage.
The Bean-Hole Dinner is more or less the lynch-pin of Pioneer Days, at least for our family. You don't go to the Bean-Hole Dinner for the latest in baked bean fashions. The beans are, honestly, a little on the bland side, and the biscuits baked in reflection ovens before the bonfire, while cool and pioneery, generally have an order of magnitude more baking powder than they needed. I've been warned to never try the fire-grate brewed coffee and have heeded the advice religiously. No, you go for the whole rustic, awkward, aw-shucks package. You go to watch men who look like bears (as all Northern Maine men do) haul buckets of beans out of the smoking ground. You go to hear the people talk about what they're doing to repair their ice fishing houses. You attend to hear the latest on the University of Maine's football team and hear all the disparaging comments on this new-fangled lacrosse stuff. You go because florescent red hot dogs are absolutely cool. You go because its your peeps and you know you can't understand them, but want to.
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