VOICES OF CENTRAL MAINE
A citizen access resource for residents of central Maine.

Mar

8

The TILBURY CHRONICLES #4 - Tourism in Tilbury

Filed Under All, Text, Tilbury Chronicles

You won’t find Tilbury Town listed in any Triple-A travel books or Cook’s Tour Guides, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have a tourist season. We do. Last year, for instance, our Tourist arrived a little later than usual. Harriet Meekel’s trip was delayed a couple of weeks. Her only means of transport was a Norwegian unicycle which needed a replacement part from Oslo.

Ten years ago, before the Big Blast, of which more later, our tourist business was twice what it is today. Every summer for twenty years, Harriet and her husband Otis cycled all the way from Cooper’s Mills to enjoy two solid weeks amidst the natural and unnatural wonders of life on our little island.

The opening of tourist season is always an occasion for festive celebration here in Tilbury. It all centers around Gram and Gramp Boolean’s Bed and Breakfast just up the street from our famous Theatre-on-the-Fritz.

Up to the year of the Big Blast, the guest room was located in a separate cottage down back of the crabapple orchard. In the off-season the cottage doubled as a low profile distillery, which produced a brew the proof of which has never been matched up or down the Kennebec River. Sod Ferment’s potato crop surplus provided the raw material, Grammy Boolean’s ancient recipe provided the ways and Gramp’s engineering genius provided the means. Every year on the day before the Tourists were scheduled to arrive, the machinery was moved to an empty stall in the barn, the cottage was given a quick airing out, furniture and linen was installed and everything was made ready

The brewing method Gramp used was an open vat process. This required that the chilled distilling hood sit loosely above the vat allowing plenty of room for vapors to spill over into the general quarters of the cottage.

This went well for years until Harriet’s husband Otis, a traveling salesman at the time, decided to come directly to Tilbury rather than go to Coopers Mills and cycle up with the missus. Gramp was rushing through a final batch before the two-week hiatus when Otis arrived a couple of days earlier than expected and couldn’t find Gram or Gramp who were off-island at the moment. He headed for the guest cottage unaware of the alternative use being made of it during the off-season. Ignoring the no smoking sign, Otis, lighted cigar clenched firmly in teeth, opened the Cottage door and stepped into history. The blast was heard from Waterville to Wiscasset.

For months small pieces of the original cottage were spotted around the island but, except for his sample case, no trace of Otis was ever found. This was possibly due not so much to the octane of the brew as to the large number of small carnivores on the island. But the sample case is still stored at the Town Clerks office, just in case Otis shows up someday.

Communication being what it is in Tilbury, Harriet had no way of knowing that she had become a widow until she arrived at the scheduled time. She took it well, everything considered. The fact that there was no need for the fuss and expense of a funeral helped a bit to ease her grief and she decided to go forward with her vacation.

With their little cottage industry suddenly terminated, Gram and Gramp had quickly taken measures to make their guest’s visit pleasantly wistful and fully reflective of Tilbury hospitality. By putting an old table top over the business end of the three-holer attached to the wood shed, adding a little creative interior decorating, some lye and plenty of incense, the Booleans created a respectable ambiance quite enjoyed by the new widow Meekel. How the Boolean’s and guest manage for two weeks every summer without an outhouse is curious but not essential to the story.

The return of the tourist is also the occasion for much merriment at the Fish House Bar and Grill. That year however, the Tilbury Towners for whom the Bar and Grill was a way of life had mixed feelings about the Meekel’s role in destroying the town’s only source of native bar booze. Since Otis was only a memory, the tendency might be to take it out on his poor widow. Harriet sensed this possibility right away and for the next ten years, right up to now, she always arrived not only with her two weeks supply of lingerie and other stuff, but with a full case of Jim Beam Black Label for the boys in the Bar. Whether her motive is conscience or protection remains her secret but the full measure of Harriet Meekel’s generosity is best put into perspective by recalling that her only means of transporting the Jim Beam is that faithful old Norwegian unicycle.

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