The Long Branch

Previously published by Discover Maine, 2015

The hotel remained from the days when vacationers came to town by passenger train.  It towered near the railroad trestle in the Junction and could be seen in the distance from any direction, four stories tall and rambling, with classic, stately lines, mansard roof and a white-painted 2nd floor balcony porch that hung in the air near the street.  From this porch you could look out over the street and down onto Wiggin Stream and the row of small, working-class homes along the opposite bank.  High on the ridge beyond these homes stood the lumber mill that gave the Junction its sound—a far-off din of screeching saws and diesel engines and warning beeps that settled over the valley every day from morning until night and nobody ever complained about the noise because it meant that men were working.  

    The people who stayed at the old hotel were blue-collar sportsmen who traveled to northwestern Maine for the woods and the water and the remoteness.  They didn’t come in search of luxury and they certainly didn’t find it.  Never known for elegance, the hotel had, by the 1970s, grown dated and tired.  Guest rooms still opened with skeleton keys and hallway floors squeaked beneath your feet, and the long balcony porch, now weathered and warped, stretched along the building's front like a wrinkle on an old woman's brow.  Few rooms had private baths, fewer still had TVs.  None offered air conditioning.  But guests appreciated the clean rooms and modest rates with hearty meals and boxed lunches included in the price.  They also enjoyed the staff's genuine, small-town hospitality.  And of course, they loved the barroom.  Everybody loved the barroom.

    With its old tin ceiling and the long bar of dark wood and the small tables with their wooden slat seat chairs, Moosehead Lake Hotel's street-level cocktail lounge looked as though it belonged in a western, so much so that the locals took to calling it The Long Branch, after the saloon in the 1960s TV series, Gunsmoke.  The real Long Branch may have been better known than its television namesake, at least in this part of Maine. In the history of drinking, there has perhaps never been a honky-tonk better destined for success.  It operated during the 1960s and 70s, an era when the logging industry still thrived, jobs remained plentiful, and laws against public drunkenness were viewed as mere suggestions among residents of this little village in the woods.  Moreover, as this little village in the woods boasted only two cops and one cruiser, most residents ignored such rumors.  Add live music, 25 cent drafts and a fun-loving proprietor with a Devil-May-Care attitude, and it's easy to see how The Long Branch became the epicenter of debauchery for an entire region of Maine.  Indeed, the place could be as rough as its barn board walls.  Sometimes it was funny and sometimes it was scary, but even when it was scary, nobody ever wanted to leave.  Such is the allure of 25 cent drafts.

    There are still many people living in Maine's north country who drank at “The Branch.” Each will tell you in his own way that there's never been another place like it, and then you'll hear the stories. All the stories are good, and some are truly wonderful. If you're lucky, you might hear about the day Dave Holmbom married wife number four while standing behind the bar in front of the Budweiser tap, the Protestant minister presiding, or the night that Charlie Barriault, irritated at having been shut off by the bartender, fetched a chainsaw from his truck and attempted to cut down the cedar posts that held up the ceiling and the three floors above it. You might hear about an otherwise quiet afternoon when Rollie Lizotte found himself being thrown out of the bar through the front door only to be thrown back in a minute later—this time through a window. If you're very lucky, as I have been, you may encounter a man—a senior citizen now--who will tell you about his very first visit to The Long Branch.

    The man and his friend had spent the morning fishing for trout at a small pond north of Greenville and decided to have a drink at The Long Branch as they passed through town on their way home. Neither had ever been to the place and wanted to give it a try, but they found The Long Branch empty, not a customer or employee in sight, and they hesitated inside the entrance, wondering if perhaps the barroom hadn't yet opened for the day. They decided to stay, though, when they heard the smacking sound of billiard balls emanating from somewhere out back.  The men sat down at the bar and waited, and the bartender appeared a moment later, a man is in his 60s with a horseshoe of white hair and a pool cue in his hand. “Hello there! What can I get for you, fellas?”

    “Whiskey and ginger,” said the first man.  The other raised a finger and gave a nod. “I'll take the same.”

    “Sounds like a winner,” said the bartender, who leaned his pool cue against the bar rail and began scooping ice into glasses. He placed two ice-filled high-ball glasses on the bar, then peeled the pop-tops from two cans of Fanta Gingerale and placed those on the bar.  Finally, he placed a full bottle of Canadian Club on the bar. “Holler if you need anything,” he said, and the two men stared at each other, dumbfounded, as their bartender grabbed his pool cue and walked away.

    I heard this story many years ago. The man who told it to me chuckled hard at the memory as he slapped my shoulder with the back of his hand.  I smiled at him and felt the sting around my eyes because he'd been talking about my Dad.

    I often went to work with my father in the years before I started school and afterward on weekends and summer breaks. The bar opened at 1:00 o'clock each afternoon and so we arrived in late morning.  Dad parked the pickup truck out in front, and I slid across the seat and he set me down.  I heard the lumber mill in the distance and felt the summer heat radiating up from the asphalt.  We stepped into the shade beneath the porch and Dad unlocked the hotel's wide wooden front door.  The door opened with a long creak and I followed Dad into the barroom.  The heavy door closed behind us with a rhythmic whoosh and satisfying clank, and then the only sounds were the hum of beer coolers and our footsteps along the plywood floor.  Two small rectangular windows high on the wall on either side of the fireplace cast narrow beams of sunlight diagonally downward to the floor. We walked amid a strange daytime darkness through a maze of tables and chairs and bar stools, and the air felt cool and smelled of cigarette smoke and stale beer.

    Dad stepped behind the bar and opened the circuit breaker box on the wall, and The Long Branch revealed itself section by section as he snapped the switches one by one. On came the florescent light over the air hockey table, then the light over the pool table, the foosball table, the other pool table, then the wall lights on each side of the fireplace, the entryway lights and finally, the bar lights themselves.  He flipped one more switch to turn on the jukebox and it flickered to life in silence. Sometimes the jukebox would turn on in mid-song at extremely loud volume, filling the room with the twang of whatever 1970s country record had been playing at closing time the previous night. Whenever this happened, Dad would walk over and reach behind the jukebox to lower its volume. He enjoyed music, only not so loud so early.

    While Dad swept the floor with the push broom, I retrieved my Big Wheel from the dance floor and went for a cruise.  I rode giant loops around the building's first-floor, pedaling down the middle of the two-sided bar and continuing down the hall.  I took a sharp right after the liquor closet and drove through the hotel lobby, past the ladies' room and the men's room and the staircase and back into the bar through the main entrance. Dad moved tables and chairs as he swept, providing me with a brand-new obstacle course each time I came barreling through the door. I zigged and zagged as fast as I could peddle, and so long as I didn't drive through any dirt piles, he never seemed to mind.

    When he'd finished sweeping, Dad took the change drawer out of the safe and placed it in the cash register. I climbed onto a stool and watched him count the money. “Daddy?”

    “...eight, nine, ten, yes, dear?”

    “Can I have a Shirley Temple?”

    “...thirteen, fourteen, fifteen--what do you say?”

    “Please?”

    “...seventeen--sure, give me just a minute, Trav, and I'll make you one. Eighteen, nineteen...”

    He finished counting and filled the ice bin, then made my Shirley Temple, spooning cherries from a gallon jar. He tossed a cardboard coaster in front of me and set down my drink. “That'll be fifty cents.”

    “Daddy, you know I don't have any money.”

    “Well, that's alright,” he said with a wink, “your credit is good.”

    I drank my Shirley Temple and stabbed the cherries at the bottom of my glass while Dad restocked the bar. He filled the reach-in cooler with fresh bottles of Budweiser and Miller and lifted each liquor bottle from the rack and held it up to the light to check its level. If one appeared low, he jotted it on a piece of paper. Next, he placed red hot dogs and fresh hot dog buns in the steamer and filled the chip rack and wiped down the bar with a wet towel. Hot, soapy water helped erase rings of congealed beer. Finally, he fetched the string mop and metal mop bucket from the closet. He filled the mop bucket with hot water and poured in a splash of Lestoil, and as he waved the mop back-and-forth across the gray painted floor, the strong chemical pine smell filled the room and signaled a brand-new day.

    This had not always been my father's life, laboring in a barroom.  He’d been born in Greenville Junction, directly across Wiggin stream from the hotel, in a little apartment above his parent's restaurant, in the spring of 1915. The only of Jack and Annie Wallace's five children to graduate high school, Bill Wallace earned two college degrees during the depths of The Great Depression before marrying his first wife, Maxine, in the spring of 1937. The couple settled on Long Island and raised two boys, my half-brothers Bill and Maury.  By the time their sons had graduated college, my father and Maxine--still in their mid-40s—had a nice life but longed for a simpler one, and so returned to the hometown they loved. In doing so, my father had--nearly a decade before my birth—already lived his own version of the American dream.  From him I heard of life in New York during America's golden age.  He told me of The Rockettes and Rockerfeller Center, of watching baseball players named DiMaggio and Berra and Snider.  He told me of living Long Island and travel by train, of the views from atop The Empire State Building and The Statue of Liberty.  And he often told me of his favorite dessert, New York Cheesecake, which he said, “is about this thick,” while holding his thumb and index finger about 3” apart so I'd get the idea.  Smiling, he clicked his cheek and—as if recalling an intimate ecstasy—lowered his eyelids and said, “Oh boy, you talk about good!”  Through these tiny windows into my father's past, I gazed with fascination upon a world far beyond Greenville Junction, Maine.

    Dad finished mopping, pushed the mop bucket down the hall and out the back door.  He emptied the dirty water in the gravel parking lot and leaned the wooden handled string mop against the side of the building to dry in the sun.  Back inside, he pulled the metal chain on the neon OPEN sign, then walked behind the bar and called me over.  I stood next to him as the cash register opened with a loud “ca-ching.”  Dad took two quarters from the drawer and dropped them into my waiting palm.

    “Rack 'em up!” he said.  

    Time to play pool.

Game Time

Previously published by Mainely Agriculture, Spring 2022

I can still see my father with a pool cue in his hand.  He holds it upright at his side, its rubber bumper pressed to the floor.  A Chesterfield smolders between the fingers of his other hand.  He’s waiting for his turn to shoot.  More than that:  he’s watching me play, watching me learn.  The game of billiards is probably the thing we shared most often during our time together.  I grew up with a pool table in our living room.  But it’s those quiet afternoons at The Long Branch I remember best.  

Dad taught me to play pool before I could see over the table.  I learned while standing on an empty Budweiser case turned upside-down.  He provided helpful hints, telling me which ball to shoot first, how hard or soft to strike the cue ball, and where to strike the object ball to cut it at the proper angle.  He taught me bank shots by placing his index finger on the rail and saying, “hit her right about here.”  He referred to billiard balls as “she,” and “her,” the way people refer to boats.  Dad possessed his own unique billiards vernacular.  He called striped balls “the big ones,” and the solid balls, “the little ones.”  Leaving yourself without a follow-up shot meant that you had “stitched yourself,” and his announcement of “game time” meant you were about to lose.  Sometimes, he said things I did not understand, such as the idea that shooting pool was all geometry.  Geometry, he said, was about angles, and I would learn about it in school.  He told me that when he studied geometry, he once solved a problem for the class by sketching a theoretical bank shot on the chalkboard.  

Dad played pool very well, having honed his skills as a youth while hanging out at the local pool hall during the 1920s.  He played with finesse and was a master of the bank shot.  Most impressive, though, is that he played for position—that is, he knew just how to make each shot so the cue ball would line up perfectly for his next shot.  The game offered competition and camaraderie, two things he greatly enjoyed, and I suspect he viewed playing opportunities as a major benefit of owning a bar.  On slow afternoons, he often played against customers, and if his opponent wished to wager some cash, even better.  During the early 1960s, he and his friend Teddy, a local forester, regularly bet fifty dollars per game.  That was a lot of money for the time.  It’s still a lot of money for Greenville.

When Dad and I played, he allowed himself to take only one shot at a time—a voluntary handicap meant to give me a fighting chance.  This ended abruptly one day when, at age six, I beat him with a bank shot on the eight ball.  I’d driven the cue ball the entire length of the table where it ricocheted at a steep angle and rolled back seven feet to gently nudge the eight along the last foot of rail and into the pocket.  Mind you, this was no accident.  I’d called the shot.  Dad knew I’d made it as soon as he saw the cue ball’s trajectory.  “Well I’ll be go to hell!” he exclaimed.  The eight was still rolling to its resting spot inside the table when he looked at me with one eyebrow raised in mock incredulity.  Then a big grin spread across his face and he chuckled.  “I guess it’s time to end that ‘one shot’ rule.”

In my mind’s eye, he moves around the table, calling his shots with a point of his cue, then gazing down the cue’s shaft with concentration and determination deep as the blue of his eyes.  He always tried his best, but was never a sore loser, even when playing for money.  He sometimes muttered an “aww, shit,” upon missing a shot, but never anything more.  Winning meant nothing to him compared to the thrill of competition.  He just loved to play, and he never beat himself up or put himself down when he lost.  This is surely what he wished for me when I struggled with my own failures.  When I shot too quickly, he would say, “Take your time, dear.”  When I grumbled at a missed shot, he would gently tell me to be patient with myself.  Only when I struck the cue ball out of anger would he speak sternly.  “You didn’t hit it hard enough,” he’d say.  He never had to explain what he meant.  And yet, I kept getting angry.  At myself, always.  Not every game.  Maybe not even one in three, or one in five.  But often enough that I can still close my eyes and hear him say, “You didn’t hit it hard enough.”

What I remember most is his left hand, the way he curled his index finger around the cue, with his thumb and other fingers fanning out across the felt.  Whenever he shot, I always watched that hand.  As a boy, I could not articulate it, but in that hand I saw strength, and elegance, and supreme confidence.  My dad looked as in-charge with a pool cue as Ted Williams looked with a bat.  To this day, whenever I encounter someone playing pool, I watch the person’s lead hand.  It tells me all I need to know about their knowledge of the game, their comfort, their confidence.  Or their lack of all three.  I have always held a pool cue in my father’s fashion.  But for too many years of my life, I would stare down my cue’s length to my own hand and know that I was faking everything it meant.

My Hometown

From Bangor Daily News, 5 June 2015

This spring, after 20 years residing in the burbs of a state to our south, I moved back to my hometown in the Maine woods. It’s a vastly different place than I remember. The veneer mill is gone. The lumber mills are gone. Log trucks no longer rumble through town. Locals try to compensate for these losses by selling T-shirts and hats to people from away. It helps, a little.

The good news? The town is still the gateway to God’s Country, a place where you can open your front door and walk in Thoreau’s footsteps. In the village you can still borrow a book, sit on a park bench, rent a canoe, visit two museums, order a Slush Puppy, fill a prescription, attend a church service and eat breakfast, lunch and dinner — all within sight of the lake. I’m grateful for all of these truths. But most of all, I’m grateful for the people.

Before I share my story, a qualifier: I believe that people are the same everywhere. Bangor or Boston, Brunswick or Bakersfield — it makes no difference. And so, despite the occasional rumor to the contrary, there’s nothing in the water that makes the residents of my hometown especially friendly or kind. Indeed, I’ve known a few who were neither. But the people of my town are all special, and they’re special in a way unique to small communities: They’re inextricably connected to each other.

Counting the snowbirds, the population of my hometown hovers around 1,600, a number that has varied little for more than a century. Grow up in a town this size and you’ll know most people by name. You’ll know their parents and grandparents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, cousins and classmates. All these people will know you, too. You’ll encounter each other at the post office and the hardware store, the grocery store and restaurants. You’ll attend the same church services, baked bean suppers and high school basketball games. Over the course of years, you’ll learn about each other through your intersecting lives. In a small town, everybody is a neighbor. The community makes the people, not the other way around.

Now, my story:

A week or two after relocating to my childhood home, I drove into town to run errands. I parked on Main Street and walked over to the bank to deposit a check, then stopped at the library to check email and the headlines. From there, I headed for the drug store to buy some postcards, only to realize en route that I didn’t have my wallet. Believing that I’d left it at home, I turned around and headed back to my car. (That I’d been to the bank only an hour before failed to cross my mind.)

On the way home, I stopped at a local convenience store and ordered a small veggie pizza. The store owner said it would be ready in about 35 minutes, say 4:30. “I’ll be back,” I said, “Gotta cruise up to the house and grab my wallet.”

I looked for my wallet on the kitchen counter, my desk, the dining room table and in the pockets of the previous day’s pants. No luck. Thinking it might have fallen onto the floor of my car, I went outside to have a look. I heard my cellphone chirping as I opened the door. I had a voicemail. The message went something like this:

“Hi Travis, this is Sierra at the bank. You left your wallet here. We’re closing in a minute, but rumor has it that you’re picking up a pizza at 4:30, so we’re sending your wallet over there.”

A man I had not seen for more than two decades found my wallet on the floor of the bank and handed it to the teller. This man had the presence of mind to telephone the convenience store where he recalled that I often stopped. When the store owner said I’d be back at 4:30, the finder of the wallet turned to the bank teller and offered to drop it off. The teller, in turn, started to ask the branch manager’s permission to hand it over, but the manager waved off the question. “Oh, that’s fine,” she said, “Go ahead.”

It’s good to be home.