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This picture is of all the students and the teacher at Lisbon Center School. The year is 1957. On the top row 4th from the left is Harold Aldrich 6th fromthe left, same row, is Ray. I'm in the Middle row 4th from the left. Ernie Aldrich is 1st on the Bottom row and Rob is 4th from the left.

Dad worked part time at a gas station just off of the base owned by Dave. It was a Shell Station. Dave lived in the neighboring town of Lisbon Falls. Somehow he or someone there introduced Dad to Mr. Zaymore. Mr. Zaymore was starting a housing sub division in Lisbon Center and needed a surveyor. Dad had never surveyed before but it was only a matter of math and Dad was a wiz at Math. Said he could do your taxes with a carpenters framing square. I believed him. Anyhow Dad decided to buy the first house in the new development. This was the beginning of our adoption by Mr. and Mrs. Zaymore. We spent the summer between my kindergarten and first grade living in the Zaymore House at the mouth of Booth Bay Harbor.
My favorite memory of Booth Bay besides the Blue Berry bushes that ran all the way down to the ocean was a visit by Uncle Cliff, Aunt Evelyn, Dads sister, and their kids Betty & Larry. Dad decided that we should have Lobster for dinner & to show off a little took his brother-in-law and all us kids down to the docks in the harbor to buy some. There was an old Maine lobsterman sitting in his boat with a ‘Lobster For Sale’ sign propped up. Dad asks the price of Lobsters and the old dude states a price for a certain weight cooked & then the price uncooked. Uncooked cost less so he ask for a couple of a certain weight. Ole dude reaches in a tank and pulls out the ugliest green & brown monsters you’d ever seen. Dad say “ No No No! I want two of those nice Red ones”! Ole dude says “Ayup! You wan em cooked”!

There was a short stay in an apartment in Lisbon Falls before we moved into the house. It was on the second floor in a curve on the road to Lisbon Center. Memories here are of taking hands full of maple tree seeds up on our porch and throwing them off. A cloud of helicopters was fun to be under. Another is of Mom taking us shopping on Main Street in Lisbon Falls. Outside of one of the businesses some men were standing, one of them was a midget smoking a cigar. As we passed Sheri asked Mom “Why’s that little boy smoking a cigar?” loud enough to be heard by all.
By the time school was to start the house was finished and we’d moved in and made friends with every kid within shouting distance. Our best friends were Ernie and Harold Aldrich. They lived on the farm that bordered our back yard and the rest of the development. Not really much of a farm. They had a cow and some chickens, a couple of apple trees and a good slice of land that ran all the way down to the river. Mr. Aldrich was a painter/carpenter/ whatever during the six months a year that there wasn’t snow. The rest of the time he was home. This was where I went to the first grade. A six grade, one teacher, one room school. It had once been a two room school but the room upstairs wasn’t used. We walked to school rain, snow or sun. Really wasn’t that far.

There was a fall festival in Lisbon Falls that they called ‘Pioneer Days’. It was strange to be in Northern New England and watch people dress up as Cowboys & Indians with covered wagons and all the extras. They would rope off an area on Main Street and dump sawdust there, then dump nickels, dimes, quarters and a few (I seem to remember the number 5) Silver Dollars in and mix it up. On the big day they let the kids in and you got to keep what you found.

By the time winter hit in Lisbon Center it was our second Maine winter and we were snow survival specialist. We wore LL Bean one piece fleece lined Mukluks back when they were only known in Maine. We spent hours putting on our layers of snow clothing so we could stay outside all day. Sledding, tunneling, snowball fights holding a pee for hours ‘cause if you went in you never got back out, turning blue. Spending the night at Ernie and Harold’s there was no heat upstairs, come to think of it there wasn’t much downstairs. Their mattresses were feather and they had goose down blankets and once you got in bed and screamed through the first few freezing minutes you were warmer than in any bed you’d ever been in. In the morning when you poked your head out you felt like your face would freeze off. Harold would jump out of bed in his underwear and race to the fire downstairs to get dressed but there was no way I was going to do that, his Mom might see me. Anyway Ernie couldn’t do that cause he wore braces. He was one of the unfortunate kids of that time that got Polio. So I put on as much of my clothes as I could under covers and just suffered through the rest then went down with Ernie.
Another family favorite both times in Maine was to go to Bradbury Mountain State Park. There was everything there you could expect in a state park. Swings, teeter-totters, slides, picnic tables, grills, bathrooms and a mountain to climb. The adults would go up the path and we would go up the face of the mountain. A very tame hill in retrospect but in those days it was Everest or something near it. All day was never enough and every time there was another opportunity to discover.
But back to our adoption by the Zaymore’s, they lived in the house next door, the second house finished in the neighborhood. Mrs. Z was always making cookies and having the neighborhood kids in to eat them. She also used to read to as many as would come by. She read Winnie the Pooh to us. I believe there’s still a copy in the family that was given to us by her. This was before Disney got hold of Winnie, there were no Tiger dolls or movies. Her reading to me hooked me on reading. I used to read under my sheet at night with a flashlight after lights out.