News in shorts

(Actually, we do not wear shorts here, although we are about the only ones not to.  With so many 80 degree days and with some flirting with 90s, it’s hard to find a true Mainer not in shorts.)

We read in the local newspaper the other day that three teenagers were arrested in a Portland suburb for breaking into cars.  The article noted they were targeting unlocked cars.  Sad to say folks in Maine may need to get used to locking up like us city transplants.  Amazingly, many Mainers don’t lock their cars or their houses.  Some even leave the keys in the car.  One person noted to us that when they lived in Bath, Maine, he misplaced his front door key and never got around to looking for it until he sold his house a year or so later.

In cheerier news, there is a whole new bunch of frogs down in the lily pond at the Maine Audubon Gilsland Farm site.  It is full of them.  We’ve watched them since they were tadpoles and now they are all grown up. 

Here’s Josh looking for Tiffany.  Hope those crazy kids aren’t thinking of trouble.

Holy preservation!  We were on Bailey Island on the Harpswell peninsula yesterday having lunch at Cook’s Lobster House (so-so for me with a fried haddock sandwich, better for John with deep-fried sea scallops) and looking out at the cribstone bridge connecting Bailey Island with Orr’s Island.  Who knew it was on the National Register of Historic Places (known as Bailey Island Cobwork Bridge on NRHP website)!  I didn’t even take photos of it and now need to rely on web pictures.  The 1,150-foot bridge was completed in 1928 by stacking granite blocks in a pattern that allows the 12-foot tides to pass through unimpeded.  It was just recently repaired because some of the stones had sheared.  It is purportedly the only one left in the world.  Someone told us there was another one in Scotland, but it was destroyed in World War II.  Whatever the case, it is really narrow with hardly enough space for two cars to pass.  Before it was built there were years of controversy between the residents of Bailey Island and Orr’s Island.  Bailey Island is the last major island out on the peninsula and was cut by a small piece of ocean from Orr’s Island, the next island in, which by chance was connected to the mainland.  Orr’s Island residents were content with having the only connection to the mainland didn’t want to spend money helping Bailey Island connect and potentially luring away the residents and tourists from their own island.  I guess people are people no matter where and when.  Finally, more rational thinking prevailed, the Maine legislature stepped in and the bridge was built . . . and there you have it, a piece of history.