Call me old-fashioned, but I miss the days when cabins were put up for sale on the outside of the local country store.

I am thinking of the Day's store in Belgrade Lakes Village, which until several years ago posted Instamatic photos of local properties on the side of the white clapboard building.

My suspicion is that wealthy tourists ruined the practice by shouting across the narrow, two-laned road crass remarks like, "Honey, look at this two-bedroom on the pond. I can buy it with what I have in the checking account."

Also, so many out-of-staters stood motionless reading about the great buys that movement in and out of the store was imperiled.

Well, that was "several years ago."

Now no one can buy a waterfront cabin with spare cash.

Cabins and cottages on the waterfront in central Maine run from $300,000 to more than $600,000.

Well, almost.

There is a one bedroom, one bath cabin on Long Pond listed right now for $258,000.

I could add that it's a fixer-upper but that would ruin the glow created by the sunny thought of a waterfront property for less can 300 Large.

Talking about marketing, the web site on which I saw this stated that the property had been viewed 162 times since it was posted on May 24.

See. If that many tourists gawked at the writeup outside of Day's, even over a two-week period. no one could get into the store.

Your Scribe last weekend took a ride through a new "development" of cabins in nearby Rome.

Several dozen houses are being constructed on Long Pond, behind one of those glorious horse farms on the hill.

My question: Will those snappy new seasonal residences sell if they are not on the water?

Most structures that I saw being built do not have views, though they likely will share a "common beach."

Do people buy summer places for $400,000 with no view and a common beach?

Such an offering would have fostered guffaws at the entrance of the old Day's country store for offering so little upside for so much money.

But things have changed since we gazed at those properties amid the pumping of gas, the teens grabbing snacks and the adults loading up on food and booze for a long weekend.

Have they ever changed.

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