First Impressions
First Impressions
We bought our house on Barters Island in Boothbay, Maine in August 2016. We closed on the 12th and the 17th, the third Wednesday of the month, as regular as the tide, the Barters Island Community Association held its monthly Potluck. We were newbies, but we decided to go and introduce ourselves.
Barters Island is a small island in the Sheepscot River connected to the Boothbay Region by the Trevett Bridge, one of the last human-powered swing bridges on the planet. When a boat hails for passage on VHF radio channel 9 or 13, a bridge tender comes out of her shack, lowers the traffic barriers, and then proceeds to the center of the bridge with a six-foot-long lever. She attaches the bar to a spindle in the center of the bridge and rotates the gearing twenty-four times. Once she gets everything in motion, if the wind is blowing right, she can push the lever and stand in one position without needing to walk behind it. The bridge dutifully turns ninety degrees, the boat passes, and then the tender engages the 96:1 gearing in the opposite rotation and the bridge closes. The traffic barriers are opened, often with the help of local motorists, and all returns to normal so the 318 residents of Barters Island are free to come and go as they please.
Barters Island is an old place. According to the Boothbay Region Historical Society, Mr. Samuel Barter, a housewright born in 1711, left Arundel, Massachusetts and settled on Barters Island about 1737. Back then, Maine was a colony of Massachusetts who was a colony of Great Britain. By the way, the correct local pronunciation of Barters is Batters.
Kathy and I arrived at the Barters Island Community Center, filled out our name tags, and began introducing ourselves to the friendly and welcoming forty-or-so-residents in attendance. A Barters Island Potluck involves drinks and appetizers, the main course buffet, and a dessert table. Nothing fancy and nothing overly-programmed. No one puts on airs.
Between the main course and the dessert, the Community Association president, Evelyn, made her report. The Association had helped a couple of Barters Island families who had fallen on hard 
times. Evelyn reviewed the fall calendar and entertained other announcements. Then, Evelyn kicked-off a raffle. The item to be won was a hod of dug-that-morning quahog clams and a bottle of oak-aged Chardonnay. A hod, by the way, is a half bushel basket, a clammer’s tool, constructed of wooden lathes and sometimes called a roller.
The locals had sussed out that my attractive, outgoing, and personable wife was a Certified Public Accountant. So, after the fundraisers worked the hall and after I played along buying $20 worth of tickets, it was time for the awaited drawing. Evelyn’s hand was almost in the Tupperware ticket trove when she announced, “Wait, we’ve got a CPA here. Let’s let her draw.” So, Evelyn held the plastic bowl above Kathy’s head, and Kathy reached up and in, and the first ticket out was, of course, mine. That’s the way to make a first impression. I might have re-donated the quahogs, but they looked delicious that warm August evening piled against the chilled, sweating bottle of wine. So we kept them and steamed them for lunch the next day. I still have some in the freezer waiting for chowder. I’ll invite our neighbors when I get around to making it.
By the way, if you want to see the human-powered Trevett Bridge in action, you better do it this summer. According to the Maine Department of Transportation (MDOT), the 86-year-old pony truss structure is clanking and not in a good way. MDOT says it’s time to go, time for an electric motor and a computer interface and so long to Terry, the smiling tender. I wonder if 8.1 million dollars’ worth of technological advancement will make as good a first impression as Terry circling with her lever. – SJH
