Wells, Maine
There is no downtown in Wells, Maine: life in this tourist town is stretched out in long strips that run parallel to the three miles of beautiful sandy beach. The road that most closely resembles a core artery is the narrow-shouldered, sidewalk-less Route 1, which in mid-August sits thicker than a lobster bisque, clogged with traffic.  According to the US Census, Wells had a 2010 population of 9,589. But, various permanent residents estimate that Wells’ population booms during the summer to anywhere between 20,000-50,000, with Town Planner Mike Livingston’s estimate at about 30,000. Regardless the actual number, the summer swell of Bostonians and French Canadians, the latter whom have arrived in greater numbers since the exchange rate moved in their favor in 2009, is staggering and significant. Almost all cultural and economic activity revolves around the tourist season, which peaks between June and mid-October, but continues year-round due to Wells’ proximity to two ski resorts, which are both within a thirty-minute drive away.

Naturally endowed with a safe harbor, navigable rivers, waterpower, forests, and marshes, Wells was founded in the 1640’s by European families who arrived to build sawmills. The town’s early settlers struggled with both violent conflicts with the local Indians and being “subjugated” under the Puritan rule of the Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1653-1820. Yet, Wells’ prospered through shipbuilding (outdated by trains in the 1880’s), lumbering, ice harvesting, lobster fishing, and tourism. For decades, Wells merchants participated in a triangular trade system that traded lumber and fish for sugar in the Caribbean islands, which was then traded in England for manufactured goods that were delivered back to Maine. Though Wells still has an industrial park and a handful of manufacturers, its economy today can be captured by its status as a “vacation mecca”, according to Joe of the Historical Museum.

Evidence of the town’s existence as a visitor’s destination is ubiquitous. The cars in the overflowing beach parking lots mostly bear Massachusetts and Quebec license plates, and conversations on the public $1-ride trolleys are often held in more French than English. Vast neighborhoods of small second-homes and vacation trailers blanket the landscape. The town boasts a community college and an expansive antique auto museum but no daily paper, and a Wal-Mart lurks about seven miles away. However, the influence of any of these is hardly felt and practically invisible to the ephemeral eyes that head from myriad motels to the beaches and back, arms full of folding chairs, hands clutching lobster rolls and bags of saltwater taffy.  At night, Wells stays busy with its restaurants and snack shacks staying open until ten-thirty or eleven throughout the week. There is no local sales tax beyond the state’s 6 percent, and property taxes are among the lowest in the state, at a rate of .86 percent. Visitors love it so much, they don’t just come once, but habitually.  Some come so often that they’ve named their getaway beach houses in the tradition of ship owners: Second Wind, Canonicus.

Read Part 1, The Beginning

Read Part 2, Yazoo City, Mississippi

Read Part 3, Cadillac, Michigan

Read Part 4, Astoria, Oregon

Read Part 5, Trinidad, Colorado

Read Part 6, Fort Madison, Iowa

Read Part 7, Malvern, Arkansas

Malvern, Arkansas
The present day struggles of Malvern, Arkansas, hometown of actor Billy Bob Thornton, tell a precautionary tale of the economic forces that have dramatically altered life in American small towns in the past few decades. Malvern was founded around the railroad industry in the 1870’s, which was developed in the area to service the therapeutic hot springs in modern day Hot Springs. Just a decade or so later, Malvernites discovered large deposits of local clay suitable for brick making. This became such a big local industry, peaking in the 1920’s, that the town has proclaimed itself the “Brick Capital of the World” and hosts a festival every summer called Brickfest. According to multiple residents, Malvern enjoyed a terrific post-world war crescendo in industrial activity that reached its zenith in the 1970’s, but has since been parched and drained to a fragment of its former self. Unfortunately, Malvern has become the sort of city where visitors are referred to fast food franchises to eat, (with the exception of one boutique bakery that few residents know exist) the closest non-franchised eatery to downtown is over a half-mile away, Main Street segues into a wide and unwalkable road and is always roaring with traffic, and travelers are warned, “You won’t find beautiful girls here; you’ll find crack heads.”

As County Judge and former Malvern Mayor Bill Scrimshaw and his colleagues recount, Malvern’s economy has been battered by a series of crippling events. Coinciding with global recession of the early 1980’s, many of Malvern’s largest employers cut jobs or closed shop. One of the most calamitous exits occurred in 1985, when Reynolds Aluminum shuttered an enormous plant eliminating 1,400 well-paying jobs in this town of ten thousand. Amidst the job exodus, Wal-Mart entered, exacerbating Malvern’s economic insecurity by cleaning out local businesses downtown. Testament to Wal-Mart’s irresistible magnetism, Burger King recently boarded up and literally moved a half-mile closer to the Super Center, located just off the interstate. A shopping plaza on the other side of town where Wal-Mart was previously located is now a vast, desolate, and marginally occupied plot of gray pavement. Though the few businesses surviving on Malvern’s Main Street have grown increasingly lonely, jobs have slowly returned to Malvern, spurred by the recent relocation of a call center, which employs almost five hundred people.

Many Malvernites describe their town as a less-than-ideal place to live. A young African-American mother notes that citizens don’t mix, sticking to their own small circles. A female bank executive believes that the people of this dry town (no alcohol) tend to settle any differences through religious means: “Nobody can get along and when they have a conflict, they just split and form a new church.” Mark Bivens, editor of the Malvern Daily Record, estimates there are 72 churches within the immediate area. Furthermore, the community’s leaders are astoundingly inaccessible, and are occasionally referred to with a snicker for their absenteeism. Several individuals corroborate that, contrary to what the US Census found, Malvern’s population fell over the last decade; the discrepancy is explained by a prison built five years ago. A Chamber of Commerce representative lists only four tourist attractions: kayaking behind the Wal-Mart, a walking path by the kayaking area, the historical museum, and the movie “thee-ay-ter”. Darrell, owner of a local diner, remarks, “They keep saying it’s going to be a tourist town, but if I was a tourist I wouldn’t come here. There’s nothing to see but old empty buildings.”

Read Part 1, The Beginning

Read Part 2, Yazoo City, Mississippi

Read Part 3, Cadillac, Michigan

Read Part 4, Astoria, Oregon

Read Part 5, Trinidad, Colorado

Read Part 6, Fort Madison, Iowa

Fort Madison, Iowa
Situated exactly 235 miles from Chicago by rail and stretched out alongside one of the few east-west sections of the Mississippi River lies the pleasant town of Fort Madison, Iowa, established in 1808 when Thomas Jefferson ordered thirty-six soldiers to build a fort there to serve as a “trading factory.”

The director of the Fort Museum, describes the structure as a “Wal-Mart of the frontier” where Americans could trade with the local Indians, providing high quality manufactured goods at cheap prices. The outpost served as a lever for “economic imperialism”: the Americans used trade deficits to put the Indians into debt, which they would then be freed of only by relinquishing land rights. Yet the fort, named after President James Madison, was burned and abandoned by its occupants during the War of 1812 when the British and their own Indian allies attacked it  in the summer of 1813. The site remained untouched until its excavation in 1965.

Fort Madison was eventually reestablished as an industrial town when Wisconsin built its territorial prison here in 1838 and employed the prisoners to manufacture export goods. (Later, when Iowa attained statehood in 1842, the town  had to purchase the prison from Wisconsin for $125,000.)  Beyond this, Historical Museum Director Andy Andrews informs me that Fort Madison has enjoyed a diversity of industry that developed beginning the 1850’s, peaked in the 1950’s when the town had nearly 16,000 residents, and still continues in strength today. The variety of industry Fort Madison has hosted include lumbering, a hospital, agriculture, Sheaffer Pen, DuPont, Chevron Chemical Company, and an eclectic assortment of manufacturing (trailers, “beanie weenie” sausages, airplane de-icer, 151-foot wind blades for turbines, etc.). Andy and his co-workers claim that many of these companies are hiring but have had difficulty filling their industrial positions because welfare dependency, drug testing at companies, and a “brain drain” of talented youth to the big Midwestern cities.

Fort Madison’s condition is captured well by the similar states of its downtown and its local government: getting by but with room for improvement. The main street, Avenue G, hosts many quaint boutique stores (because Wal-Mart has sandwiched the town twenty miles to the north and south in neighboring cities), but seems perpetually deserted of shoppers. In an effort to enliven Avenue G, a longtime business owner and active Main Street program organizer  has helped initiate the “First Friday” program, where merchants extend their hours on the first Friday of each month. It hasn’t caught on yet, but is only two months old and needs time to be cultivated. In Town Hall, there is a dearth of candidates for government positions. Point in case: the current mayor is a full-time dentist twenty miles away in Burlington. Despite the meager interest in public service, this solidly democratic Iowan town persists as a healthy community. The public library is in a new and clean facility, residents take weekend refuge from the summer heat at the community pool, and business owners I talked to feel the local schools are good enough to send their kids to without worry. If and when the new Amtrak station is finally built, its citizens take more ownership of their government, and foot-traffic downtown picks up a bit, Fort Madison will be a happening place.

Read Part 1, The Beginning

Read Part 2, Yazoo City, Mississippi

Read Part 3, Cadillac, Michigan

Read Part 4, Astoria, Oregon

Read Part 5, Trinidad, Colorado

Trinidad, Colorado
Trinidad, described by some as “The Sex Change Capital of the World” on account of a former Trinidadian doctor who pioneered this field of surgery in the 1960’s, started as a trail campsite near the Purgatoire River that became very heavily trafficked in the 1820’s after Spain annexed Mexico, opening up trade between the Mexicans and Americans. The region got its first Western establishment in 1833, when traders established Brent’s Fort, an adobe trading post that served as a staging area for the 1846 Mexican-American War. Trinidad’s first five permanent settlers were actually farmers who started growing crops for passing travelers in 1861, but much of its economy later developed around livestock raising and coal mining. The town was largely constructed by Italian stonemasons and German carpenters, and reached its economic peak around the turn of the century with as many as 35,000 citizens.

Trinidad is no longer a boomtown and much of the old industry has left. The community now suffers the common small-town ailments of weak volunteerism and widespread social service dependency. However, Trinidad is blessed with a many, many strengths including quaint brick streets laid in 1888, a charming Main Street (if sadly half empty), a new train platform used exclusively by Amtrak (while all the noisy and dangerous freight trains skirt around the town’s edge), a location  halfway between Denver and Santa Fe, five museums, a free trolley tour of the city provided by the Visitor’s Bureau, the well kept Cimino (chih-MEE-no) Park where a weekly farmers market is held, a clean and welcoming walking path along the river, and outstandingly friendly citizens who go out of their way to greet me or offer rides.  Yet, there has been an ongoing and increasing social tension that seems to have distracted many Trinidadians’ attention to their town’s incredible resources.

Many individuals attribute the tension to the convergence of outsiders and deep-rooted native families, sometimes referred to as the “old boy’s club.” It seems non-natives have been attracted to Trinidad for a couple of reasons.  Jane, a Houston-native B&B owner, believes that “people from out of town have money, a fresh perspective, and a better appreciation of the architecture.”  The former mayor’s wife attributes the 1996 Amendment 17, which raised the potential arrival of gambling to town, to attracting speculators. The effects of outsiders’ arrival over the past two decades is quite visible: much of the downtown is owned by folks from California, Montana, Texas, and even England.  Trinidad’s old-versus-new friction has exploded into turmoil in the public sector as well. Just last week, the mayor resigned after citizens petitioned to vote for a recall. In the past year, forty-two teachers have left the public schools, largely in protest of the superintendent’s perceived bad intentions. Divisive and personal bickering has obstructed progress at City Hall and at the public schools, and it seems the citizens have lost the forest for the trees.

Trinidad is at a crossroads, poised for a dramatic leap upwards or an embarrassing stumble and deterioration. In my mind, because of its myriad aforementioned strengths, the town is only a few steps away from small town greatness. The community needs to rally behind a strong and less controversial leader, to refurbish its deeply historic downtown, and to continue support for their local businesses (staving off box-stores as long as possible despite the attempts of the misinformed economic development director).  As this happens, I believe, Trinidad can become a truly magnificent place to live and to visit.

Read Part 1, The Beginning

Read Part 2, Yazoo City, Mississippi

Read Part 3, Cadillac, Michigan

Read Part 4, Astoria, Oregon

Astoria, Oregon
Astoria, Oregon is an inspiring example of a small town that has bounced back magnificently from struggles only two decades ago. This is not only according to Brett Estes, Astoria’s Community Development Director, but also corroborated by many downtown business owners who describe Astoria’s last peak as taking place in the early 80’s when fishing and logging were still serious economic drivers. Several noted the moment when Bumblebee, a large cannery, closed its last local operation in the 1980’s as the turning point when the city fell from prosperity. They unanimously agree that while the rebirth of  local industry has helped the economy, the near miraculous turnaround owes a great deal to tourism.

Astoria (nicknamed “The Graveyard of the Pacific” because of treacherous sandbars that form where the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean) was “discovered” by Lewis & Clark in 1804. It is the first permanent American settlement, established by Jacob John Astor’s expedition of fur traders (1811), had the first U.S. Post Office (1853), and still has the oldest surviving shoe store, Gimre’s Shoes, west of the Rocky Mountains. Like all early American cities, Astoria was built with the hands of a diverse immigrant population. By the 1880’s, when the city’s thirty-nine canneries reached peak production packing over a half million cases of salmon yearly, almost a quarter of the approximate 8,000 Astorians were Chinese. In addition, there were so many Finns that they formed their own cannery (1896), the Union Fisherman’s Cooperative Packing Company, and their own newspaper (1907). Though it is now a predominantly white town, one of the city’s few Hispanic business owners tells me that there are still a few hundred seasonal Mexican workers who live and work in the area.

It is here in Astoria that a man named Ed Parsons snuck up onto the roof of the Astor Hotel and strung a cable from the TV satellite over to his own set across the street, inventing cable television in 1949. Today, Astoria is the type of city where one can find an Alice-in-Wonderland themed boutique bakery, where swanky vanilla cupcakes retail for $3.50 and come packaged in bright pink boxes. Beyond cupcakes, several residents independently confirm that the “must-see” list of Astoria’s numerous tourist attractions includes the Flavel House, a gorgeous Queen Anne Victorian mansion built in 1884; the world-class Maritime Museum; the Film Museum, which is housed in the old county jail, and was the set of the opening scene in Spielberg’s The Goonies; the Historical Society Museum; the Astoria Column, which offers an impressive panoramic of the city and the Columbia River; and the Liberty Theater, a beautifully restored downtown centerpiece. (An added attraction is a slow-moving trolley—fare: $2 for all-day access—that quietly rolls parallel to a very pleasant walking path alongside the waterfront.)

For its residents, Astoria has a robust community college with a stunning view of the water, a year-old weekly summertime farmer’s market that accepts both food stamps and WIC, and a city government and public school system that no one I spoke to had any complaints about. On top if it all, there are many innovative and local businesses, like the Columbia Grocery and the Cannery Pier Hotel, which are actively defining the character of Astoria through their continued successes. Undoubtedly, if there is a small American town that is doing it right, that town is Astoria, Oregon.

Read Part 1, The Beginning

Read Part 2, Yazoo City, Mississippi

Read Part 3, Cadillac, Michigan

Cadillac, Michigan
Cadillac, Michigan, is a classic example of a comfortable and modest small middle class American city. It’s the kind of town where telemarketers still call your hotel room phone, young guys shout to you from their cars at the gas station offering to buy your cool suitcase for ten bucks, most all the tourists are other Michiganders (according to the Visitor’s Bureau), and “el pollo mexicano” is pronounced phonetically. The city’s character is defined by its plainness.

For example, Rod, a local business owner and Cadillac native, feels that taxes are reasonable, local government is effective, and the community is cohesive; it’s all pretty simple. Other community members report that the public schools are good and crime is fairly infrequent, besides occasional violence. Contrary to this, however, I met several individuals (usually at restaurants) who reported that a surprising number of meth labs have been uncovered in the past few years. According to a number of folks, the 1990’s arrival of the interstate bypass, which has so badly diminished other communities across America, hardly affected the businesses downtown. And, Economic Development Director Jerry Adams tells me, Cadillac has even managed to weather this past recession with impressive resilience, relying on the three engines of its diversified economy: industry, tourism, and retail. The city I found appears to be hung in complete stasis, appearing to have neither enjoyed much growth or development nor suffered any infrastructural deterioration or depopulation in perhaps decades.

With its hospital, college, well-preserved Victorian neighborhoods, influential historical society, and active visitor’s bureau (which keeps the community calendar filled with public events), Cadillac seems to offer a pleasant life for its residents. I can clearly see why the throngs of tourists have arrived  in trailers to camp out and barbeque along the small canal between the two lakes, Lakes Cadillac and Mitchell. Cadillac citizens also have easy access to commercial amenities, ranging from Walmart to world-renown Austrian Chef Hermann Suh’s European Café, a phenomenal restaurant. Furthermore, locally owned businesses like Chef’s have tangibly anchored Cadillac economically and culturally.  “Chef” (as he is called), owner of the Café and the inn upstairs where I stayed, told me, “The feeling of hospitality when you travel… that’s what I’m going to protect for the rest of my life.” These are all terrific community assets.

But with all the comfort Cadillac offers, I admit that I was horribly bored as a young and lone traveler. Beyond visiting the historical museum and rounding the lakes, there was really not much more to do but drink coffee and read the daily. Additionally, though many residents defend it strongly, I found Cadillac’s downtown to be marginally attractive and at times very unpleasant to walk. The main street is both noisy and hazardously wide, carrying four lanes of traffic between parking lanes on either side. And though Jerry Adams informs me that the commercial vacancy rate downtown is only eight percent, there seems to be quite a few storefronts that are as empty as the sidewalks. Yet despite my minor criticisms and inclination not to return, the many individuals with whom I spoke throughout the city agree that Cadillac is a good place and the multitudes of visitors corroborate that it’s a good place to visit. If the city can find a way to retain more of its youth, particularly the young males who seem entirely absent, Cadillac will continue to thrive as a prosperous middle class town for decades to come.

Read Part 1, The Beginning

Read Part 2, Yazoo City, Mississippi

The second installment in a series of Dispatches chronicling Ryan Kim’s journey by rail to small towns across America.

Yazoo City, Mississippi
Yazoo City, Mississippi is a heart-wrenching example of a small American community left hung out to dry. The train that cuts its way through town, with its thunderous horn blaring in warning, offers a sobering view of the largely boarded up main street, government projects, dilapidated homes, and abandoned infrastructure. What can’t be seen from the train is less photographically poetic but equally depressing: multiple interstates, a sprawling complex of federal prisons, dozens of franchises, dusty strip malls, and overgrown sidewalks. Though the county seat was once prosperous from agriculture, lumbering, and industrial manufacturing, Yazoo has been diminished to an anemic shell. Its population fell over twenty percent between the last two censuses, and nearly half of the remaining population lives beneath the poverty line, many on government welfare checks.

Since Yazoo’s peak 30 years ago, the city has gotten stuck in a self-perpetuating downward cycle. Some say that the middle class has moved out because the public schools are terrible, pushing property values down and further weakening the schools. The community votes for quick-fix government, which inevitably has resulted in poor governance and a deterioration of the community fabric.  (In separate conversations with a business owner and a consultant who both asked not to be named, I was told that town officials have been known to pay $50 in cash through indirect means for a single vote.)  Some older residents believe Yazoo City is a textbook example of a stagnant welfare state. Many of the poorest citizens work temporarily only to receive unemployment benefits once fired; others have multiple children, presumably because welfare checks increase with dependents. Today, it’s hackle raising to walk anywhere after dusk. On top of it all, Yazoo has regularly been victim of devastating natural disasters. Most recently, a tornado swept through in 2010, obliterating huge swaths of town and leaving behind devastation that is still widely observable.

Citizens of Yazoo City have difficulty identifying the cause or the timing of the city’s decline. The reasons I heard most often are the mechanization of farms and subsequent unemployment of laborers in the 70’s and on, the arrival of the interstate that bypassed Main Street in the early 80’s, the ascension of impotent or possibly outright corrupt politicians to town government in the mid-90’s, the collapse of big employers like Mississippi Chemicals in the mid-80’s, the prevalent dependency on welfare checks, poor parenting, the rise in production costs of cash crops (cotton, corn, soybeans) and catfish over the past decade, and the exodus of the middle-class to neighboring Madison (a suburb of Jackson, Mississippi).

The federal prison, brought to town by Yazoo City native former Governor Haley Barbour, was supposed to “set the world on fire” upon its arrival to town in 1996, but really did nothing beyond attracting 19 franchise food establishments to open up to cater to the increased traffic. One woman tells me, “When cotton was king, this town thrived. Now we have the prison.  As far as major industry, we have none.” Everyone I talked to agrees that the decline began in the 80’s and really accelerated in the 90’s. Yazoo was once wonderful, they say, but is no longer so.

But there are still sunny days in Yazoo City. The countryside around for miles is gorgeous and verdant; the food is Southern delicious. What’s more, there are currently ongoing efforts to revive the town by various individuals and community organizations.  In my short three day visit, I met an array of the humble and unsung town heroes, like the Adams family and Ms. Ruth. The Adams’, residents of Yazoo for generations, has invested much of their wealth in buying up and refurbishing dilapidated buildings on Main Street since 2005. Bit by bit, they are breathing life and color back into Yazoo. Ms. Ruth never graduated high school, but is a perfect example of a principled, self-made older black woman who puts family values and hard work over everything, the American ethic that must have made our country great. She’s mostly retired, but has the energy and the charisma of a powerful leader.  Additionally, Yazoo is home to a number of cultural gems like the Downtown Market and the King Solomon Missionary Baptist Church. The market is a new family-owned shop that has been subdivided into rentable stalls filled with wares by local artisans. The church holds a two-hour service that consists of an exuberant and public welcoming, clapping, singing, shouting, and an unforgettably passionate sermon delivered a cappella by the reverend, shaking and sweating in the air-conditioned chapel. These are but a few resilient examples of Yazoo’s social wealth.

I don’t pretend to have any idea what the future holds for Yazoo City.  Though the city has struggled with the same economic dilemma as most of post-manufacturing America, I feel the crux of Yazoo City’s economic problems is actually cultural. As noted, there are two conflicting social forces present in town: one is a negative, corrosive apathy born of poverty and weak leadership; the other is an energized, hopeful spirit born of hard work and community pride. (Both of these movements transcend race, class, profession, and any other checklist category.) I know which side I’m rooting for, but am lost as to which will win. What happens to Yazoo over the next decade or two will be largely dependent on the domination of one of these two forces over the other. If the citizens can somehow empower and rally around effective leadership, I think there is great hope yet for this small Southern town.

Postscript: Beyond Haley Barbour, there is an individual who I feel is in a particularly opportune position to affect positive change, 21-year old Fletcher Cox, who was drafted to the Philadelphia Eagles in the first round of this year’s NFL draft.

Please let me know if I have misrepresented this city in any way. I have tried my best to summarize an unfamiliar place honestly, but welcome any disagreement. I have also used the terms “town” and “city” interchangeably.

Here’s how I got here: I’m a twenty-year old rising junior at Middlebury, and I’m taking trains across and around America for seven weeks.

Why?

It is in the same way that I could enumerate any number of reasons why my brother would eat all the family’s strawberries—from gluttony to hunger—that I can attribute my motivation for embarking on this trip to myriad causes.

Each of my reasons for taking this trip is, to a degree, honest and valid. Among the ones I am aware of: [1] escapism; [2] domestic exploration, because I’ve been abroad but America is still the world’s greatest; [3] patriotism and a search to understand my identity as an American [4] a love for small towns, which are unfortunately evaporating everywhere; [5] academic interest.

Here’s what I’m doing: To give my travels a specific and defined purpose, I am planning to write a report that compares and contrasts eight small towns across America.  More details can be found here. The eight small towns in the order that I will visit them are as follows:

1.    Yazoo City, Mississippi
2.    Cadillac, Michigan
3.    Astoria, Oregon
4.    Trinidad, Colorado
5.    Fort Madison, Iowa
6.    Malvern, Arkansas
7.    Connersville, Indiana
8.    Wells, Maine

As the previous hyperlinks suggest, I’m chronicling many of day-to-day activities, interactions, and epiphanies on my blog, though with an unfortunate lag of a couple days.

Additionally, I will be writing regular dispatches here for Middlebury Magazine throughout the course of my trip, which I will structure as prose summaries of each town I visit.

I’m an economics major, so you can readily expect that my investigations and descriptions of these towns will be noticeably tilted by this “follow-the-money” instinct. With this said, I am overdue to write a piece on Yazoo City and will have another about Cadillac, Michigan, where I’m just now finishing my three-day stint.

I will get these out ASAP.  Please do send any comments, questions, or miscellaneous feedback, no matter how critical, mundane, or celebratory it might be.

Editor’s note on July 30: Earlier versions of this dispatch included the incorrect name of a municipality in Maine. The correct name is Wells, Maine.