Jeffrey Good

"I grew up in Brunswick, but I've always come to Harpswell. This was the place we would take people from out of state because it's so beautiful. During the pandemic, Harpswell got gentrified. But when my girlfriend and I decided to move in together three years ago, we found an affordable apartment on Orr's Island. Our landlord had bought the property and lowered the rental rate for locals, people who would benefit from the community."

"My sister, Mary Patricia, and I grew up on the east side of Lowell's Cove with my grandfather and grandmother, John and Mary Tibbetts. My grandfather was related to everybody over there. When I was old enough, maybe 7 or 8 years old, I started working on the lobster boat, like young boys did at that time and still do."

"My stepfather ran gas stations all his life. He was old style, where you'd go in and someone would pump your gas, check your oil, wash your windshield. When it was slow at the pumps, he'd show me how to work on the cars in the garage. Growing up, my friends and I had cars, and we'd do our own work."

"Growing up in Boston, my mom was first-generation Irish and my dad was first-generation Italian. For both of them, everything was about Sunday. In the morning, you go to church, get your doughnut — our big treat for the week — and then everything was about Sunday supper."

"Dean and I were riding our Harley-Davidson through the cornfields of Illinois on our way to visit Minnesota, where he grew up. It was August and the corn was tall. It was like riding through a tunnel. The pastor here, Bob Herring, was retiring, and I was on the board helping to pick a new one."

"One night at the warming center, I looked around and thought of the movie "Groundhog Day." We were all doing the same thing every day, waking up without a home and then passing the day. Some people smoke it away or drink it away. Some people, including me, go to the library. But we all end up back in that same spot, sleeping on blankets spread across the hard floor."

"Swedish settlers began arriving in northern Maine in 1870, leaving behind famine and feudalism. They were paupers and most went to the Midwest, but Maine's economy needed labor to build rail lines. Bowdoin graduate W.W. Thomas Jr. was consul to Sweden during the Civil War, and he helped recruit a group of settlers who were no strangers to hard winters and rocky soil."

My mom's family is all from Cundy's Harbor. When I was about 4 years old, when my brother was about to be born, my parents bought a house on Harpswell by the Sea, and I lived there my whole life. Then, after I got married, my husband and I bought the house from my mom. So we live in the house I grew up in, and my kids will grow up in that same house.

I couldn't have asked for a better place to grow up than Harpswell. I was on the water, where I love to fish. Close to the mountains, where I love to ski. Where we lived on Doughty Point Road, there were five of us kids who'd always hang out. We'd take off on our bikes, be free in the neighborhood.