COOPER – Driving the stretch of two-lane Route 191 between Machias and Calais flanked by miles of woods and water yields few clues about the town of Cooper. There is no sign announcing the Washington County town, for one thing.

But a visit inside the Cathance Lake Variety store, where there’s room for three to have coffee and conversation, reveals the feel of a town in turmoil. Cooper’s 145 residents simply aren’t sure whether they want to remain a town anymore.

Thursday evening, the town will hold a special meeting to vote on whether to move forward with the deorganization process.

Such a change – becoming a township – ultimately needs approval of the Legislature, which may hear Cooper’s case this spring.

Cooper, which was settled in 1812 and incorporated in 1822, has been turned down by the state once before.

That was seven years ago, and memories of the wrangle with the state in 1997 – when town and state could not agree on where Cooper’s students would be schooled – are still raw.

This time, the town could be approaching a Legislature working under stricter guidelines, where deorganizing is looked upon as a last resort.

“The Legislature used to pretty much stamp towns’ plans to deorganize,” Doreen Shieve, the state Department of Audit administrator who works with the unorganized territories, said Tuesday from Augusta.

“We won’t know what will happen until it gets to the Legislature. I would be surprised if Cooper is not asked some very direct questions,” she said.

Even the first selectman, Jonathan Reisman, isn’t clear on what’s ahead. He predicts a majority vote to deorganize will fall into place Thursday. But once the town’s plan reaches the Legislature, little else is certain.

After all, the Piscataquis County town of Atkinson got as far as the Legislature last spring in its attempt to deorganize – and got turned down.

If the Legislature does allow Cooper to continue on its way toward deorganization, a final vote by residents would take place at November’s general election. A two-thirds vote would be needed then for the town status to fall away.

“That could be difficult,” Reisman said. “There are definitely people who don’t want to do this.”

Most of the talk of the town takes place at the general store, which doubles as a game inspection station. The only store for miles, Cathance Variety – near Cathance Lake – sells live bait, smelts and shiners, among other necessities.

There, one of the town’s selectmen opens up at 6:30 a.m., and the town’s clerk, treasurer and tax collector watches the store the rest of the day.

But that’s just one more of the town’s problems, that one woman works in three town positions, her husband holds two more, and important meetings among town officials take place in the family’s basement.

Not that store owners and town officials Kathy and Travis Hull mind all the work or responsibility. They just wish that others would step forward and do their share to keep the town going.

“As far as people taking turns in town, no one wants to,” Travis Hull, one of the town’s selectmen and assessors, said Tuesday morning as he got the coffee going.

Although Kathy Hull has given her notice that she’s giving up her duties effective on the annual town meeting on Monday, March 28, she’s not sure anyone wants to take her place.

What Cooper residents are realizing is that, after March 28, they won’t be able to stop into the store and register their cars with Hull, or get their hunting and fishing licenses over the Cathance Variety counter where, at lunchtime, hot dogs go for 93 cents.

Now, they meet over breakfast to talk about taxes, among other things. They are taxed at $19.50 per $1,000 of property valuation. Residents of the state’s unorganized territories are taxed at $9.

“I’m all for deorganizing,” said Arline Flood, the town’s elections official. “We have many older, retired people here, and naturally they would like to see the lower taxes.”

Cooper’s move toward deorganization started at last spring’s town meeting when residents seeking lower property taxes voted to present a petition to the state. After the town gathered signatures of 50 percent of the voters, Shieve’s office acknowledged the town’s intentions and directed it to form a deorganization committee.

Cooper seeks to be the second Washington County town to deorganize in as many years. Such a move would take place – if residents so vote in November – on June 30, 2006. Centerville, population 27, became a township last June 30 after moving through the two-year process.

Still raw in the minds of many Cooper residents is how the state stopped the town’s wish to deorganize once before, in 1997. That time, the deorganization hit a snag when the state wanted the would-be township to send its students to the state-run Edmunds Consolidated School in nearby Edmunds Township.

Residents favored sending the pupils to the elementary school in Alexander, where many already attend. Still others catch the bus to Elm Street School in East Machias each morning from the store – because SAD 77 is willing to pay for a bus to take the tuition students back and forth.

What happens if the town of East Machias withdraws from SAD 77 this spring, as many expect will happen, opens even more questions not yet addressed. What would the Elm Street School tuition then cost Cooper, for example?

Residents may not be sure of the road ahead. But 7 p.m. Thursday in the Cathance Grange Hall, they can vote to keep moving toward deorganization, or not.