A quick riddle. How do you identify a vehicle from West Southport? Look in traffic for something that looks like it traveled between Caratunk and Rockwood via dirt roads. These are pretty easy to identify, often driven by disgruntled and confused drivers who make hand gestures during lane changes. Do not take these gestures personally. Just return the gesture and smile. Non-local drivers eventually realize how much we like to share!

Now on to today’s adventure with my dear old, now applying inspection stickers in the sky, friend, Arthur Barlow.

I loved Arthur. He was my first local auto service experience. He and Dwight Plummer ran Harbor Motors which ironically occupied the space that is now “Ports of Italy.” Clem Brewer bought the building and undertook massive reconstruction. Oh, if the walls could talk. Arthur was a man of few words but his few words were very precise and quite well delivered. He and Dwight gave my original Maine vehicle, Betty Ford, a pretty good going over. Arthur was particularly smitten with an old wooden “Empty” dynamite box I had brought with me from Pennsylvania. He wanted it bad, but I had to deny his request. It was my last holdout from the good old days of uncovering coal back home.

Back in the day, Harbor Motors was a happening place, and the surrounding neighborhood full of diverse exceptions. The old Boothbay Harbor Dinner Theatre, later, Carousel and originally Reed Trucking building occupied a large portion of the left side of the driveway which led to the back door of Ebb Tide restaurant, a Peter and Nancy Gilchrist establishment. The Merry Music Box, where I met my wife, was up on the corner across from the Boothbay Harbor police station with Chief Leighton Davis presiding. Marty Lakeman lived opposite the Merry Music Box and Emerson and Sarah Webster rented half his house. We got to know everyone real well and always enjoyed our visits.

Arthur and Dwight always gave me a hard time but the entertainment value was too hard to resist. One day I recall Reynolds Miller pulling in with his Chevy Corvair — what a rig. I recalled the car from my youth. Rear engine, air cooled. Pretty neat. Renny could banter with Arthur and Dwight just fine and it was fun to stand by and listen. Things could go in the ditch quickly. 

One conversation I vividly recall went something like this: "Hey Plum, better slap a sticker on the old Fix Or Repair Daily for Mitch. It doesn’t have long. Charge him extra for annoying questions!” And we’d all laugh. Poor Betty was in hard shape. 

A final note. This goes back before my time. Try to imagine Arthur Barlow married to Ethelyn (Pinkham) Giles, eventually Boothbay Harbor’s real estate empress. I almost fell over when I learned this, of course long after the fact. But, wow! Ethelyn was a force. She helped us resolve legal issues that held up the purchase of our first home on Barters Island, back in the late 70s. A marriage between Ethelyn and Arthur must have been quite an adventure.

When I made the above photo with Arthur, he was living across the street from the Congo Church. He would sit at the front door step on a folding lawn chair watching traffic go by. I would stop in sometimes when I saw him there for a quick visit and some old stories. He wasn’t well then but did not lack for things to share. Quite an interesting young man.

P.S., Florence Haggett, Arthur’s sister, kept the books at Harbor Motors. She was 105 years old when she passed. Florence helped look after Arthur.