1989

A Subaru, not my original

  I bought that car new in 1988, it was a good one!  My drive to work was 37 miles, each way and the mileage added up fast.  Besides going to work we drove all over the place, Hollie could be quited by riding.  The railroad had abandoned a lot of track in the Medford area, and the construction of Interstate 95 had left gravel pits and "roads" all over Lagrange, so we drove on those a lot.  By the time five years had passed the car had 243,000 miles on it.  I had replaced a water pump, 3 windshields and 2 cigarette lighters - that's it!  Except for the routine and required maintenance those were the only things that broke, no clutch or brake jobs ever.  It really was a good car.
  I also changed jobs again (surprise, surprise) but this one was at the same place.  Elaine had retired as Tax Collector and I got the job, it turned out to be the longest I ever worked at one job, 12 years.  I count my Navy time as different jobs, each place I went I did different stuff.  So tax office here I come, remember I had already balanced all of the accounts.  My first job was to tackle all of the overage stuff, there were taxes due on things from 12 or 15 years before, all small amounts, about $4.00.  I asked Elaine once why one account wasn't "written off"; I said this man moved 10 years ago, and she stated "well, the son of a bitch is still alive!".  I asked City Council to write off that account and a bunch of similar stuff.  I can truly say that it was an enjoyable job, even with two death threats and one man coming into the office with a pistol - serious business, we had a button to push that brought the police.  All in all it was peaceful and relatively quiet, and busy.
  On the home front, Rhonda came home from Ellsworth, her work done at that school, so we had 2 high school students and a five year old, who still was a few years away from diagnosis.  I knew now that she wasn't deaf; she started to talk at age 3 (quite a bit late), and was using language.  Hollie went to a kind of pre-school in Bangor called the Childrens Garden and worked with a speech/language person and some others.  One of the kids (Luke) is now in the same day program with her, they finished high school in the same class too.  So Hollie needed a lot of rides which she enjoys to this very day.


The rail bed from Medford to Lagrange



A beaver dam, there were a lot of these, one dam was very old and large and the road was right in front of it, you
could look up to see the dam.



Some peoples idea of a tax collector.