Tag Archives: maine

TWO SECONDS LEFT WITH THE BALL IN MY HANDS by Peter Nolan Smith

Every high tide deposited beer bottles, oil containers, fishing lines, shiny candy wrappers, and plastic bags onto the sloping shoreline of Jomtien Beach. At low tide I harvested the trash into sea-worn rice bags. Within a half-hour the sand was devoid of any human refuse and I smugly regarded the pristine strand with pride. While […]

Pocket Radio

The following day my father brought home two crystal radio sets shaped as rockets. They were made in Japan. My father was an electrical engineer with New England Bell and explained their workings, “You attached alligator clips to a metal object. The signal is transmitted to the antenna and you tuned the radio with a […]

Aurora Borealis Maine July 4, 1971

On the 4th of July in 1971 John Gilmore, Mark McLaughlin, and Tommie Jordan and I left the South Shore of Boston to holiday in Maine. A large store at the New Hampshire border sold fireworks. John purchased $20 worth of M-80s and various rockets. The four of us stopped at my grandmother’s cabin on […]

Loneliness On The Day Of Love

The snow fell in silence. The clots of flakes feathered sidewalks floes. Snow shovels scrapped on the concrete. I threw out no salt. Drifts collected by the bottom of brownstones. No one came to shovel it away. That was an old man’s job. Mine. Snow loves the cold. I have good gear against winter. I […]

FOR THE LOVE OF HOCKEY by Peter Nolan Smith

My paternal grandfather had a saying about the seasons in Maine. “There are two seasons up here; winter and preparing for winter.” My early childhood contradicted this adage, for my five year-old senses recognized a very short and wet spring followed by a little longer and slightly warmer summer capped by a short and wet […]