Julie-Ann Baumer

The Final Countdown

Posted on July 23, 2014 by Julie-Ann Baumer

I try not to use song titles as blog titles, but I was born in 1964. This means I was raised on rock and roll and FM radio. Petroleum runs through my veins from all those years of cheap energy—racing around in one of my father’s big Chryslers with the radio blasting and secret cigarette smoke blowing out the rolled down windows. “The Final Countdown” by Europe may very well be one of the worst rock and roll anthems of all time, except for the title, which appeals to every excitement junkie on the face of the earth.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against arena rock bands and their anthems. If I had to choose one band’s song, I might select Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger.” It’s got a beat I can really pound the pavement to, counting down to the completion of whatever chaotic project I’m championing in my never-ending quest to save the world through voluntary action.

My never-ending quest to save the world through voluntary action. There. I’ve said it.

So here I sit. It’s the final countdown here at the Mason family compound. There are a lot of plates spinning right now as I plan to move my technology and my bed down to my new old house on the hill. I’ve already moved my living room and my dining room…enough furniture to have hosted my first party over a week ago. As much as I love sitting up here on The Ridge, I’m anxious to get into the house.

And I’m anxious to write more stories about small town life. I love writing about Moxie and The Moxie Recipe Contest and that’s become part of the story. There are so many other stories to tell and I was reminded of a few of them the other day when I picked up a vintage orange Bates bedspread for one of the spare bedrooms at my new old house on the hill. Or maybe the Moxie Master Bedroom, I’m not sure.

Oh, and it’s show house season in York, Maine and I still haven’t told the story of the night I slept in a show house.

Stay tuned!

Then there are lots of people I miss. Like Uncle Bob. The last time I saw Uncle Bob was right before the Moxie Festival parade—over a week ago. Mon Dieu!

I miss my parents. Ever since the day so many years ago when my father helped me build my Surprise Garden and my mother contributed her perennials towards the beautification of Lisbon Falls, my parents have “had my back.” They may not always understand what drives me to volunteer for crazy schemes and projects, but they’ve supported me through each one in large and small ways. One of these days, I’ll catalog their many generosities here for readers.

I miss going to French Mass and Luigi’s with Slipper Sistah.

I miss Jaxon. I hope he doesn’t think I’m angry with him. I haven’t done a good job of staying in touch. I think about him every day.

I miss my Junior League of Boston BFF, too. Did you know she’s going to be the PRESIDENT of the league next year? I haven’t had a chance to write her an over-the-top congratulatory card.

Sigh…it’s after 7:00 a.m. I’ve got to make the donuts. At least they’ll be Moxie Donuts with Moxie Glaze Drizzle, thanks to Kathy Veilleux.

Let’s go!

Posted in Just Writing | Tagged Anthem rock, Museums of Old York, show house season, The Junior League of Boston, voluntary action | 1 Comment

It’s the Way Life Should Be

Posted on July 21, 2014 by Julie-Ann Baumer

Another beautiful Monday morning in Maine…carloads of visitors trickle out of the state while new carloads speed in. They come here because clever marketers have told them it’s the way life should be.

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of activity here in my little corner of Maine.

Of course, there was The Moxie Recipe Contest, that all-consuming Friday night fire. One of the jurors “from away” wrote a wonderful summary of it here. Looking back with a week’s worth of sleep, it was exactly the way I imagined it in my mind. Thank you, Dani, for capturing so many of the fun details.

There’s a new boutique on Main Street that sells vintage clothes and youthful new things. Being a few years beyond the “youthful” cropped tops and short shorts, I’ve got my eye on a few vintage pieces that might work well for my 2015 Moxie Recipe Contest outfit.

Or maybe the Moxie Tennis Tournament?

There’s also an orange wool cape with white fuzzy buttons…why not promote Moxie all year round? After all, the motto of this year’s festival was “it’s always Moxie season in Maine.”

I am getting ahead of myself.

My Moxie house guests from Florida are enjoying life. I’ve done my best to provide them with the optimal small town Maine experiences within an hour or two of Lisbon Falls. I’m so glad Moody’s Diner is now less than an hour away.

Yep, I’m still moving into my new old house on the hill. My apartment here on the Mason family compound is pretty bare, just my office and my bed. I scheduled the office move for Thursday afternoon.

With no distinctively different tasks to complete on Saturday, it was a treat to go happy motoring with my landlady and friend, Gina. We started at an estate sale in Leeds and ended up in (where the heck is) Wayne, Maine. Yackety yackety, we talked ourselves out before we got back to the compound.

It seems like life can’t get any fuller. That’s what I was thinking while I was parked at Food City the other night. I was checking my grocery list, making sure I had gotten everything I needed, and another friend, Karen, pulled in and parked next to me. Karen owns The White Dresser, an antiques, vintage, and upcycled home goods shop. We were just chatting about nothing in particular; then we said good-bye and I drove off.

So it’s another beautiful Monday in Maine…

Thinking back on the past few weeks, I don’t know if my “Lady Alone Traveler” book will ever get written, mostly because I am never the “Lady Alone Traveler” anymore. I live in a place I love, surrounded by my family and so many friends I love. I have to wipe a little tear from the corner of my eye because as some character in a movie once said “there ought to be a new word for happiness.”

And that, my friends, is the way life should be.

Posted in Home | Tagged Dani Mardayat, I am home, small town life, The way life should be | 1 Comment

I Told Them Where to Go!

Posted on July 18, 2014 by Julie-Ann Baumer

For most people here in town, The Moxie Festival is a marker, a pin on the seasonal map that says “this is the high point of summer.” In anticipation, everyone drags their chairs down to Route 196 and prepares to watch the big parade go by.

For the last many years, I’ve been watching the parade from a shady spot across from The Bait Shop. Good friends of my parents have welcomed us to share their pleasant and cool location about mid-way along the parade route and we’d sit on the edge of our lawn chairs chatting and listening for the sounds of the first parade unit. We’d snap to attention and put our hands on our hearts as the first flags passed by and then we’d sit down again until another flag passed.

The good local people build floats and decorate their trucks. Municipal bands sit on top of flatbeds and oooom pah pah their way along the winding parade route. This year, we had the distinct pleasure to welcome a marching band from Wisconsin and they deftly tootled and twirled and turned the corner onto Main Street to the applause of thousands.

I still have to wipe a little tear from the corner of my eye when I think about those wonderful and talented teenagers.

There are many unusual entries unique to our little town’s parade. For instance, a man of the cloth might don distinctively different clerical apparel.

Then, there’s 99 year old Dottie.

There are politicians. Of course, there are always politicians, but some years there are more than others because there are these civic exercises called elections. I don’t want to be a downer, but I don’t care for the parade politicians anymore, unless they’re also neighbors here on the family compound where I’ll be living for just a few more weeks. Before the last couple of parades, my mother has had to warn me in advance that she doesn’t appreciate it when I shout out somewhat unladylike things as certain members of both political parties sidle by, waving like marionettes and pageant princesses.

This year, I decided there was only one way I could handle the parade and the politicians, and improve my mother’s parade experience. I volunteered my services at the parade line up.

From 6:00 a.m. until the parade starts, floats and characters of all stripes arrive at Capital Avenue. Uncle Bob even made an appearance on his bicycle.

So what was my job at the parade, you’re asking?

You can only imagine me delighting in the delicious irony of telling local officials, the governor, U.S. Senators and Representatives, and various political hopefuls “where to go.”

When I wasn’t bossing the politicians around, I was walking about the circle for a few hours, seeing all the parade entries, and talking to new friends and old. Once everyone was lined up and ready to go, Gina Mason gave the sign from her John Deere gator and the parade became its own living thing. I had a choice to ride with her or walk along the parade route, so I decided to do the latter and I marched alongside the Lakeside Lutheran Warriors all the way from the start of the parade to the former Holy Family Church. Occasionally, I’d stop to hug old friends and encourage my neighbors to cheer on the band. They didn’t need my encouragement, though.

Then I walked back up to Capital Avenue and jumped in the gator with Gina. Excuse my unladylike language, but I had so much friggen’ fun; I don’t know why more people don’t volunteer to help with the parade. Honestly, there would only be one way The Moxie Festival could be any more exciting than it was this year and that would be if I was on a float in the parade.

It’s been a long time.

I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but yesterday I started scheming out a parade float in my mind. A flatbed truck, a few high-end appliances, maybe some pots and pans and some folks wearing aprons and twirling wooden spoons. I could include some winners of The Moxie Recipe Contest sitting on kitchen stools, waving like princesses and rocks stars.

Can you see it? It just might work.

Stay tuned…

(All photos courtesy of Debra Wagner, except “unofficial” Uncle Bob.)

Posted in Friday Pillow Talk | Tagged Debra Wagner, Gina Mason, Lakeside Lutheran High School, Parade floats, St. Matthew's Episcopal Church, telling politicians where to go, The Moxie Festival, Warrior Marching Band | Comments Off

A Favorite Photo

Posted on July 17, 2014 by Julie-Ann Baumer

We started going through some of the public relations photographs from the 2014 Moxie Festival. Tomorrow, I think I’ll tell you more about the parade and here’s the preview.

Volunteering is fun!

Posted in Minimalist | Tagged 2014 Moxie Festival Parade, friends, Gina Crafts Mason, Photo courtesy of Debra Wagner | 3 Comments

Eu Bénite

Posted on July 16, 2014 by Julie-Ann Baumer

We had some special guests during this year’s Moxie Recipe Contest. A Tee Vee meteorologist, Charlie Lopresti, visited Chummy’s and did a live weather segment. The contestants, the tasting panel, and the audience were enthralled and although I was running around like a good hostess should, I could hear the delighted applause from the other side of the restaurant when the segment concluded.

Charlie Lopresti must have done some weather voodoo that night. Maybe he said some silent devotions or maybe he had a six-pack of potions he sprinkled about Lisbon Falls as he left in the news van, because the next two days of weather were spectacular. It was pleasantly warm, clear, and dry. There was a full Moxie super moon on Saturday night, too.

Ah…the mysteries of meteorology.

Even Charlie’s chants and incantations could not prevent a mixed weather bag from hitting New England after Moxie. I could feel it rolling in over Five Islands on Monday night as I sat at a picnic table with my Moxie house guests, eating fried clams and lobster rolls. It was a heavy mix of joint-swelling humidity and hair-frizzling dampness.

The rain started with the sunrise on Tuesday.

At 4:00 p.m., my friend and blog commenter SK texted “there are tornado warnings here! The weather channel is telling us to go into the basement.”

Charlie, help us!

By 5:00 p.m. there were rumbles of thunder and flickers of lightning in the darkening sky.

When I was growing up, before Charlie Lopresti and Moxie, these same types of summer storms would arrive in the middle of July. Sometimes they would come while my father was working at the Pejepscot Paper Mill. I don’t remember if my brother and I were frightened by it; possibly. Our mother would get a bottle of holy water and sprinkle a little bit in each room to protect our house.

Seigneur, prends pitié.

Then the rain would come down. A steady drumbeat would roll all night and sometimes the electricity would be lost. I worried about my father at the mill. If they lost power at Pejepscot, it would shut things down…the big paper-making machines that couldn’t stop and start on a dime. My father might not come home at the scheduled time and he’d have to stay at the mill until the big machines were rolling again. He would be tired when he got home.

I thought about that holy water last night as the electricity flickered. I thought about sacred rituals and where they belong in our lives. In my early adulthood, I mocked the rituals I knew as a child. Then, grasping for something in the darkness, I professed a ritual-free faith, castigating anything that wasn’t pure and unfettered from symbols as an “empty ritual.”

But I’m not so sure anymore.

When I was a child, my mother’s pure act of faith in sprinkling holy water made me feel safe. If the thunder and lightning had arrived during a visit to my French Canadian grandmother’s, a similar bottle of holy water would have come out there, too. I don’t remember if Nana and O’Pa had a holy bottle, but I remember seeing them cross themselves during storms. Little acts of safety.

I wonder if my mother still has a bottle of holy water at our house on Woodland Avenue? Maybe the holy water couldn’t save us, but it “safed” us when we were young and afraid and there might be something beneficial to that.

I told you last week that we’d get back to these existential questions after Moxie.

Nous rendons grâce à Dieu.

Posted in Just Writing, Weather and Seasons | Tagged Charlie Lopresti, Five Islands, holy water, The Pejepscot Paper Company | 1 Comment

The First Day of Summer

Posted on July 14, 2014 by Julie-Ann Baumer

After helping out at the Moxie Car Show Sunday and then taking a short nap, I visited Al and Dot Smith up at the Ridge School. This circa 1874 one room schoolhouse is lovingly tended by the Lisbon Historical Society. I’m embarrassed to say I’ve never made it to the schoolhouse before.

After all the mayhem of the Recipe Contest, the parade, and the Chugging Challenge (of which I will write more, I can assure you) a visit with Al and Dot was the needed remedy. It was peaceful and cool in the schoolhouse; Dot was serving delicious Moxie cupcakes and small shots of diet or regular Moxie. We visited for a half hour, then respectful of the 3:00 p.m. closing, we said good-bye.

The Moxie Festival concluded quietly.

My Moxie house guests and I took a trip to Brunswick and ended up at The Gelato Fiasco. Sometimes it’s hard to escape.

The theme for this year’s Moxie Festival was “It’s always Moxie Season in Maine.” Here in my hometown, that’s particularly true. We’re always thinking about Moxie and the festival. If we do divide the seasons in a linear fashion, though, they look like this:

Fall, winter, spring, Moxie, and summer.

Today is the first day of summer for us.

Happy summer, hometown!

Posted in Weather and Seasons | Tagged 2014 Moxie Festival, Al and Dot Smith, Gelato Fiasco, I love Lisbon Falls, Lisbon Historical Society, Ridge Schoolhouse | 1 Comment

The Moxie Show is Rolling

Posted on July 10, 2014 by Julie-Ann Baumer

No sleep until Moxie!

(Photo courtesy of Joya Martell Anderson.)

Think Moxie, Drink Moxie, and meet me in Lisbon Falls, Maine!

Posted in Minimalist, Moxie Recipe Contest, You've Got Moxie! | Tagged I love Lisbon Falls, small town living | Comments Off

My Reliance

Posted on July 9, 2014 by Julie-Ann Baumer

I was running a few errands the other day and I saw a sign in a parking lot.

What more is there to say about The Moxie Recipe Contest? The Moxie Festival?

A marching band from Wisconsin and 50,000 people are moving towards a little Maine town on the banks of the Androscoggin River. The weather looks promising. Remember, heat trumps rain for the Moxie Festival.

All the complainers and troublemakers are fading away.

The parking spots in Moxie Town are all reserved.

We are in the hands of Providence.

Posted in Abundance | Tagged Moxie Recipe Contest, Providence, The Moxie Festival | Comments Off

She Loves a Challenge

Posted on July 7, 2014 by Julie-Ann Baumer

Last week, I got an e-mail from Kathie Veilleux. She’s Leanne Pinkham’s sister and they both entered the 2013 Moxie Recipe Contest. I asked her the standard question. Do you like Moxie? She doesn’t, but you don’t have to drink Moxie to think Moxie.

Kathie, a 51-year-old sister, wife, mother and grandmother lives on Pattee Pond in Winslow, Maine. Even though she says she’s not much of a cook, she’s well-known by friends and family for her chili, homemade chicken soup, and chicken and dumplings. She grew up working at the little Mom and Pop general stores of North Anson, places like Jackson’s, Welch’s, and Rugh’s, and says “I remember many folks coming in to buy Moxie. It’s nostalgic and it’s sooooo Maine that ya gotta love it just for that!”

So here we have a woman who doesn’t like Moxie and she’s not much of a cook. Why is she entering The Moxie Recipe Contest?

“My sister Leanne loves Moxie and we enjoy doing things together. This is our second year and I believe we’ll be experimenting and participating for years to come. What’s funny is that my grandkids were with me when Leanne and I were experimenting with recipes last week and they LOVED the Moxie. They served as our taste consultants and judges.”

She also said “I love a challenge…give me a challenge and I’m on it!”

That’s the spirit of Moxie! Give me a challenge and I’m on it!

I am still on the hunt for a grill, so I couldn’t experiment with Kathie’s Smokey Moxie Pork Wings. I took the easy way out and drove to Lewiston’s new open-air barbecue joint on Oxford Street, near the old Grand Trunk railroad station. Moose’s Barbecue Kitchen, owned by Ron Kyllonen, serves up chicken, ribs, and sandwiches with traditional sides like baked beans, cole slaw, and mac & cheese.

There was no Moxie on the menu and I told Ron I’d be back with a complimentary case of the distinctively different beverage for him. I’ll tell him about Kathie’s wings and I’ll throw down a challenge for 2015.

Until then, for smoked ribs with Moxie, here’s Kathie Veilleux recipe:

Smokey Moxie Pork Wings

Parboil 1 pound of pork wings (or ribs)

Melt 2 tablespoons butter

Add 2 cloves garlic minced and 1 clove size piece of fresh ginger minced.

Simmer two cans of Moxie until reduced to 1 ½ cups liquid.

Add:

1 8 oz. can of tomato sauce
¼ cup molasses
3 tablespoons cider vinegar
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon McCormick’s Smokey Paprika

Combine all and simmer down until thickened or about 1 ½ cups of liquid. Let cool at least to room temperature. Marinated the pre-cooked wings overnight in the refrigerator.

Heat on grill until meat is falling off the bone.

Serve and enjoy!

The Moxie Recipe Contest will be held on Friday evening, July 11, 2014, at Chummy’s Restaurant in Lisbon Falls, Maine. The judging begins at 5:00 p.m.

Posted in Moxie Recipe Contest | Tagged barbecue joints, I love a challenge!, Kathie Veilleux, Lewiston, Moose's Barbecue, Ron Kyllonen, Smokey Moxie Pork Wings | Comments Off