People of Service

In this humble little berg of only a couple thousand people (more live here in the Summer), I have some darn good neighbors. When I became a "dot-com" orphan, my across-the-street neighbor got me a job driving big rigs. It enabled me not to even have an interruption in my weekly income stream. My next door neighbor, before we even moved into the house, noticed a storm door flapping in the breeze one day and came over and secured it. It needed more than just closing, he made a repair on it that saved it from being damaged. He wouldn't have known me that day if I sprung up out of a hole in the ground and stomped on his foot.

Another neighbor heard I pulled my back a couple years ago (I made a stupid move while working on my lawn tractor). He appeared in my back yard as soon as he noticed my grass getting a little shaggy, and simply started mowing away. My back lawn takes a good hour to mow and it's not flat, it's one of those kinds of lawns that is a bona fide workout to maintain. Just like me, this neighbor happens to be a retired Air Force noncommissioned officer, like me with a son who currently serves as a noncommissioned officer in the Air Force, like me having just a single child, that son. Fancy that!

Still another neighbor, who lives in the last house in Maine on my road before one crosses into New Hampshire, saw a "window-peeker" standing in my front yard one night, came and chased the guy away, then told me about it later. We know the guy, he's basically harmless, but he sometimes drinks a little too much and then walks around in people's yards, looking into their windows from fifty feet away from their houses. This is about the worst thing that ever happens in Acton, Maine.

One other family nearby is worth mentioning too. It's a husband and wife legislation team no less. I don't want to use their names without their permission on this blog, but "Percy" is our district state Senator, and his wife, our newly elected state rep. (Yeah, I know, you could look up who they are on the Web in five minutes. But then I wouldn't have to feel guilty about it). Anyway, they're the most down to earth people you can imagine. All of us neighbors have some amount of land (mine is probably the smallest piece at one acre) which lie adjacent to one another in the back woods behind our houses. "Mr. And Mrs. Percy", when they're not up at the state house legislating, are in their yard toiling in the flower gardens they put in along the road, or clearing standing dead wood in the woods out back - because they like the healthy work, it obviously is what they live for. "Mrs. Percy" was a teacher for many years. She comes from one most honored profession and could probably just chill now until old age, and yet instead she drives the two and a half hours to Augusta when the house is in session, at practically no pay, and keeps right on serving.

Which leads me to the reason I wrote this post this evening. I wanted to at least put some links out here to sites that direct one to municipal and state legislators for anyone considering moving to this area. I'll include below also some links to York County organizations, since Acton is part of York County, and York County, both on the shore, and inland, is the first county you encounter when you cross into Maine from New Hampshire, and is one of the most welcoming and relaxing places to visit in New England. Some links below:

http://janus.state.me.us/legis/ (all of the State Legislators of Vacationland, both parties)
http://www.co.york.me.us/ (official York County web site).
http://www.umext.maine.edu/counties/york.htm (our cooperative extension site)
http://www.cornish-maine.org/ (about Cornish, one of those lovely inland towns ya gotta see)
http://schooltree.org/ME-YORK.html (this one's all about the schools here)
http://www.foreclosurefreesearch.com/relay/search/ME/031 (well, I'll be jiggered, look at the all the property you could buy cheap in York County!)
http://www.bangornews.com/towns/county.cfm?ID=YORK (interested in business climate in York County? This one is a veritable plethora of demographic info for the potential entrepreneur).

My still-mending collarbone demands I get out of this chair and return to the prostrate position in the Lazy Boy, so hey, talk to ya soon.