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“Then I Am
Really Home”
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Geneva Frost |
Geneva M. Frost,
Mariaville’s second selectman, has lived her entire life in
Mariaville. Today she is taking part in a group effort to start a
historical society for the town. Frost spent more than 40 years in
education. Most of those were as an English professor at the
University of Maine, Machias. After her retirement in May 1997, she
began sharing her “Mariaville Memories” with lifelong friends in
town. Here are some excerpts:
“ … Since I have
lived in this house, I have had four addresses: North Mariaville,
Ellsworth Falls, Ellsworth and now Mariaville again.
“The house where I
live was built by my grandfather, Mark Frost. Both my father, Leslie
Frost, and I were born in this house.
“I live nine-tenths
of a mile from the main road—Route 181—on a town road that runs
along Union
River.
In my childhood it was called ‘The Mill Road.’ In the 1960s and
1970s, people would say, ‘Eva and Geneva’s Road,’ as we were the
only people who maintained a residence here. Now it is called River
Road.
“The world I knew
best was my own road, and the road north of Goodwin’s bridge to the
Carter’s home and south to Albert Frost’s house. Here were the
houses I visited and the people I knew best. The area was and still
is home.
“Even today I find
I close out the rest of the world in four stages. If I come into
Mariaville at the south end of town, I need to get up over that
little hill by Albert Frost’s farm where the land flattens out; then
I begin to be home. If I come into town from the north, the first
stage of being home is when I reach the site where the Carter house
stood.
“The second phase
begins as I turn up the road by the river; the third stage of my
homecoming is traveling through the little wooded area between
Harnets’ and St. Pierres’.
“The final stage of
coming home is crossing the little bridge over Frost Brook and
arriving on my own property. Then I am really home.”
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