Features

Don Miskill has held onto a simple lesson his father imparted when he was young. "He just looked at me and said, 'People deserve your best effort every day,'" Miskill said in an interview.

Jack Wilson was not born to run. Entering the world many weeks premature, he weighed just under 2 pounds at birth. Emergency, lifesaving intubation inflated both of Wilson's collapsed lungs but left serious internal scarring. Though he survived, doctors told his parents not to expect any more miracles. Their son would never be anything like an athlete.

"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."

Fried chicken on a jumbo biscuit with sausage gravy and a drizzle of maple syrup. Beef on weck, a favorite in Buffalo, New York, with thinly sliced roast beef piled high on a homemade kaiser roll topped with caraway seeds and coarse salt. A "big smoked breakfast" with brisket, pulled pork, smoked sausage, two eggs, home fries and toast. Hungry yet?

The wind off Garrison Cove was wicked on New Year's Day. The temperature on Bailey Island was in the low 20s, with a wind chill that made it feel like single digits. The sun had set by 4:15 p.m., and the temperature continued to drop in the cold blue of evening.

Parny Hagerman and her neighbor Surrey Hardcastle have a lot in common. They live just a few yards from each other on Bailey Island. Both are retired school administrators and each has nearly two dozen grandkids. What's more, Hagerman and Hardcastle both have grandsons in the NFL.

When the Ku Klux Klan gathered in Harpswell on the Fourth of July in 1925, it wasn't behind closed doors or in the dark of night. Their picnic and parade attracted hundreds of klansmen with their families. A photograph from that day shows Harpswellians in klan regalia, hoods back and faces showing. One wears a scarf reading, "100% American." Women and children pose with them.

"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."