Slow start to season? Greenville grins and bears it

Sunday, January 23, 2005

OUTDOORS: Deirdre Fleming

It's a strange thing to drive through Dover-Foxcroft, Abbot Village and Monson in January and see soil and vegetation.

You walk up to the famous doughnut bakery in Abbot and step on only a thin layer of snowy crust.

You wonder if the drive three hours north to Piscataquis County sent you into the future rather than back in time to this old mill and textile region of northern Maine.

You wonder because it feels like the end of April rather than the middle of January in these small, blue-collar towns.

Then you go 30 minutes farther up Route 15 to Greenville, Snowmobile City, USA, and it's more of the same.

In a town that turns from fishing tourism in the summer to snowmobile income from December through March, a thin layer of white three weeks into January is a problem.

Snowmobiling brings up to $350 million into Maine, according to state figures.

Greenville, home of the state's largest lake, is one of the sport's prime destinations, with Moosehead serving as the gateway to the North Woods and the far-off winter towns of Fort Kent, Presque Isle and Madawaska.

Yet by the third weekend of January this year, there was no rumble of snowmobiles at gas stations, no noise of sleds racing across the landscape at night, no snowmobile motors sailing over Moosehead Lake toward the half-dozen eateries that dot the lake-side town.

The snowless streak saw a break Thursday night when as much as 5 inches fell, but by and large, winter has had a slow start in Greenville.

And you know how locals dealt with the loss of tourism, business, and cold-weather buzz?

They did one of two things. They either made the best of it, or made fun of it.

They called to ask if you wanted to cancel your reservation at their motor lodge.

They abandoned the cash-register post at their abandoned snowmobile rental/ski shop/Internet café/and outdoor retail store and helped you find the information you needed in a local newspaper.

They tried to sell you the cheaper pair of ice creepers found in the back of their Main Street store rather than the pricey pair at the front.

They kept the light on long after closing at the Rod-N-Reel Café so you could get one last home-cooked meal before going winter camping.

And, while the staff cleaned tables all around you at this grandma-style eatery, they entertained you with talk of the big event in town that evening: "bag night" at a local bar.

(This helped explain the night strollers wearing bags.)

Remember the Unnamed Comic from the Gong Show? Same idea.

Except this was no joke.

The local bar featuring "bag night" had a hook: Best bag face wins $50.

You consider this bizarre activity and, at the same time, you admire the length to which the locals in this small, woodland town go to find amusement during a cold, snowless streak.

"Bag night," in fact, is the perfect anecdote for the wonder-struck ways of these winter folk.

Certainly, some hunker down indoors around wood-burning stoves.

But most keep their coats up, remain hopeful and wait for colder days and customers.

By and large, most don't complain about the lack of business.

Instead, they shop and dine along their little corner of the 30-mile-long Moosehead and look out over its clear, clean, frozen surface that holds barely a dozen fishing shacks.

Then, when the Windham snowmobile club cancels its weekend reservation that would have filled the Kineo View Motor Lodge, the motel's owner calls the only other customers he had booked that weekend . . . and says the unthinkable:

"Hi, Deirdre. This is George up at the Kineo View Motor Lodge in Greenville. I just wanted to leave you a message that due to the rain that we had on Thursday night into Friday morning, we lost a great deal of our snow up here in Greenville.

"So I just wanted to give you a heads up that if you're coming to play in the snow, we lost quite a bit of it . . . Thank you very much."

At this point, you may ask, who in their right mind tries to send customers away during a slow season?

Simple: the kind of folks who accept Old Man Winter for all he's worth: good, bad and indifferent.

Staff Writer Deirdre Fleming can be contacted at 791-6452 or at:

dfleming@pressherald.com

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