The Toddy Pond Summer

 It's been months since I've written a memoir.
I think it's time to continue the saga.

To read all of my memoirs,  (CLICK HERE) 

This next section only lasted a few months, but it was so jam-packed full of memories, it had to have it's own series.

( Map)

 Toddy Pond

In the last post of my memories, my father had announced that we were moving to Bucksport. It was the summer between my junior and senior years of high school. (Leaving Canaan)

Some friends in Bucksport, Vince and Hildred Conners, kindly let us use their camp on Toddy Pond. It wasn't very big- basically one room with a bedroom curtained off and a loft, but it was only a few feet from the water - Toddy Pond (actually, 2nd Toddy) in Orland, Maine, on the Surry Road. What a great place to spend a summer.

Loons woke us and sang us to sleep. 

(If you've never heard a loon call, it sounds something like "Ooh-hoo-hoo-hoo!"

(LOON SOUND)

 - like a person might say when wading into freezing water.)

We swam everyday out to a floating dock or paddled about in an old rowboat. Toddy Pond is filled with tiny island and shallow inlets. I'm sure my brothers and I didn't explore all of them.

Not only was our family (my parents, myself, and my two brothers) staying in the cabin, but we had two "adopted kids" with us - Bob Briggs and Deborah Haney. They needed a home and a family, and we took them in. So . . . needless to say, we were a bit cramped with seven people living in one room. Sometimes we got on each others' nerves, but we also made some great memories that summer.

(to be continued . . . )