The problem was getting to work from my house, near Evergreen Landing on the northwest corner of Peaks Island, all the half mile or so along Island Avenue past Trefethen and the yacht club, with its flotilla of a half dozen tiny turnabout sailboats, past the one-room school and the windowless, brick telephone exchange building to Gonzo’s place, a laundromat where you could wash your clothes, get your outboard motor repaired and pick up a canister of LNG for the stove. Then down the hill to the pier to catch the hourly Casco Bay Ferry over to the Portland waterfront and cobblestone Commercial Street with its railroad tracks running right down the middle of the street. That was the easy part.
Getting from Peaks Island to Commercial Street in Portland was the easy part of the commute to the Maine Mall. Dan King photo
At the employment office they had said, you’re in luck, the hiring agent for Jordan Marsh is here today and she’s looking for someone just like you for unloading the trucks as they bring in merchandise for the grand opening at the new Maine Mall. They’re stocking the shelves now.
And sure enough, she said, “I see you’ve worked for us at our warehouse in Cambridge at a dollar forty-eight an hour. I can bump you right up to a dollar fifty-six, and you start tomorrow morning at eight. You’d be great in receiving. I’ll let them know you’re coming.”
When I asked, so where was this new Maine Mall, she pointed toward the northwest and said it was about six miles.
That was the hard part, getting the six miles from Commercial Street to where they were completing construction of the Maine Mall in South Portland without a car, bus, taxi or bicycle. My thumb worked fine the first day. After that, Marie was the solution.
She was one of those people who pop into your life, spend some time with you, and then are gone. I can’t tell you Marie’s family name, because I never knew it. She felt someone knowing her full name would be an invasion of her privacy, and yet, she was as much a friend as I ever had. You could count on her. She was a salesclerk at the Jordan Marsh (now Macy’s) department store and was helping stock the shelves with whatever goods came in on trucks each day from the central warehouse.
She drove to work right along Commercial Street and right by the Casco Bay Ferry Pier and offered to give me a lift there and back again at the end of the day. I took her up on the offer, but there was a catch. She would not stop her car on Commercial Street because the waterfront was a dangerous area and you never knew who might be lurking there.
And so, I learned to wait and watch by the side of the road, to run alongside her car when she came by, open her car door with the car still moving and jump in, all in one smooth motion – a trick I don’t think I could repeat now that I am older.
She would not stop the car, but she never let me down, and I was never late to work at the new Maine Mall even once. That’s friendship and that was Marie.
Maine has some very special people.
Orrin Frink is a Kennebunkport resident. He can be reached at ofrink@gmail.com.
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