Audio collection charms

ONLY IN MAINE, two cassette tapes produced by The Bangor Daily News Book Division, in cooperation with Downeast Publications, Camden, total listening time: 1 hour, 46 minutes, $18.95, available from the Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor 04402.

Last weekend’s stormy weather afforded me an opportunity to stay indoors and listen to this enchanting audio collection of eight short stories culled from the pages of Down East magazine.

While the wind howled outside, inside narrator Hal Wheeler and friends transported me to an all-too-familiar world of a contentious town meeting, a coastal fireworks show gone awry and a beloved “lobster dog.” In a brief introduction, Wheeler swears the yarns, each penned by a different author, are true.

“They are authentic word portraits of life in Maine during earlier and less complicated times,” he says.

With a penchant for variety and pacing, Wheeler has selected these stories wisely. He begins the collection by reading William C. Roux’s “Bruin – The Maine Lobster Dog.”

“If Elroy Johnson’s dog, Bruin, wasn’t the smartest dog in the state of Maine, as Elroy claimed, he was mighty close to it,” he reads in his trademark soothing voice, showing obvious affection for the master and his companion that acquired a taste for fishing, and a sharp eye for undersized catches.

Jane Plummer, who works with Wheeler at Penobscot Job Corps, was recruited to read the poignant “A Magalloway Schoolmarm Never Goes Home” and “Let Winter Come.” Although this is her first foray into reading on tape, Plummer’s diction and Yankee dialect are well-suited to the nuances of these stories.

Plummer also contributes to the tapes’ finest performance, “The Boat Was Able,” an ensemble effort with Wheeler, Steve Robbins, his son Zach, and my former high school art teacher, Palmer Libby, whose voice is as supple and strong as the day in 1969 when he lectured our class on the miracles of modern art.

Bangor attorney Brent Slater takes a turn on “Maine Town Meeting,” an eyewitness account of a Bremen brouhaha over appropriations that was supposed to end at midnight Saturday, but which dragged on until 2:05 a.m. Sunday.

Also recounted are a spat over a railroad line, and the highs and lows in the lives of Kingfield brothers Francis E. and Freeland O. Stanley, who invented the Stanley Steamer automobile. Did you know that F.E. Stanley met his end on the highway when he turned off the road to avoid hitting a dawdling farm wagon?

“Only in Maine” gets Maine life exactly right, without resorting to pretension and phony dialects. The next time the weather outside is frightful, or even when the sun is shining brightly, listeners may want to drop a copy into the tape player to prompt a chuckle or even a tear or two.