The first time I heard his voice it came from my parent’s stereo system. I was a 7-year-old boy then. By the time I met him in person, some 20 years later, Mike was a living legend.

Although famous mostly for his spoken word recordings, in his late thirties Mike possessed the easy grace, casual good looks and thousand watt smile of a film star. His boyish charm and self-deprecating manner were so disarming that, within minutes of being introduced, you’d feel as though you were his closest friend.

Mike also had the gift, extremely rare in the ego driven world of professional entertainment, of genuine enthusiasm for the work of his fellow performers.

Oddly enough this was particularly true of those who logically might have been considered his direct competitors. In a manner reminiscent of president Lincoln, Mike tended to be most comfortable when surrounded by a “team of rivals.”

Although not a native, a fact that he was quick to point out, Mike nevertheless loved his adopted state of Maine. Following a well-worn trail blazed by such iconic Maine “transplants” as E.B. White, Andrew Wyeth and Robert McCloskey, he fell permanently under its spell. By the time I got to know him, Mike was considered by many to be Maine’s unofficial “ambassador of humor.”

Deeply fascinated with the oral tradition, Mike ferreted out the undiscovered tales and storytellers tucked away in the corner stores, bait shops and coffee counters of Maine’s “hinterlands.”

With the patience of an archaeologist and the energy and charisma of a natural born pitchman, he set to work polishing these rough-hewn treasures and putting them on display for all to see and appreciate.

As a means of showcasing undiscovered Maine talent, he founded The Maine Festival.

Debuting on the quad of the Bowdoin College campus in Brunswick in 1976, this lively celebration of native Maine arts continued through the mid-eighties. It’s doubtful that anyone but Mike could have pulled off such an ambitious “cultural jam session.” But he made it look easy.

And Mike’s boundless enthusiasm for the eclectic and obscure was certainly not limited to the performing arts. His insatiable curiosity, mixed with a lifelong love of bicycles, a knack for tinkering and a network of like-minded “gear heads” resulted in a range of oddball conveyances.

One winter he proudly showed me his latest innovation, a 10-speed bike equipped with a set of homemade “chains” enabling him to navigate the streets of Portland during white out snowstorms. Perhaps his best-known invention was a truly bizarre contraption that looked like something from the mind and pen of cartoonist Rube Goldberg.

Utilizing the basic chassis and running gear from an old-fashioned railroad hand car, Mike managed to convert the original up-and-down hand pump mechanism to a new system of his own design. It featured a series of reduction gears powered by a rider with a bicycle style pedal arrangement bolted to the top.

He transported this rig to remote abandoned stretches of railroad track. Perched atop it, he’d head out on his “rail bike” to explore miles of track across rural Maine.

Once, following a Saturday night performance in South Paris, we were packing up our gear and Mike asked if I’d mind taking the P.A. system with me since his car, a muddy brown, diesel powered, VW rabbit was “full.”

Curious, I glanced over and saw that the whole rear end of his little hatchback was stuffed with an odd assortment of gear, including a colorful beach umbrella and a massive fully inflated inner tube.

“What’s all that for?”

“Oh” he said. “I’m sailing to Islesboro tomorrow.”

As if that explained everything.

Several weeks later someone mentioned that they thought they saw Mike early one Sunday morning about a half-mile off Lincolnville Beach.

He was sailing along, all by himself, tacking to-and-fro in some sort of strange watercraft. From a distance, it appeared to be a large inner tube rigged up with a beach umbrella as a sail.

“But he was quite a ways out,” the fellow explained sheepishly. “I might have been mistaken.”

“No,” I said. “You got it right. That’s exactly what it looked like when I saw it in the back of his car.”

These memories and many more came flooding back to me last week when a friend handed me a faded color publicity shot of Mike taken shortly before his untimely death at age 45, killed by a drunk driver while riding his bicycle in Hawaii.

Now, forever young, he grinned up at me from the worn glossy paper, my old friend Mike, known to the rest of the world as Marshall Dodge.

Original Appeared in the Boothbay Register

Perhaps you’ve noticed that just as the weather has begun to cool in the waning days of summer, the rhetoric in the long running feud between Maine lobstermen and their Canadian rivals is heating up.

Don’t worry, I won’t be jumping (literally or figuratively) into the middle of a disagreement between rival gangs of lobstermen.

I’ve had enough first hand experience with lobstermen to know that they tend to be precisely the sort of tough, pragmatic, rugged individualists you wouldn’t want pick any sort of fight with, particularly one which involves the manner in which they choose to make their living.

Let’s face it, lobstermen have been hauling traps and hurling insults (among other things) across the border at one another for about as long as anybody can remember. If there were a simple solution to this longstanding maritime squabble, somebody would have sorted it out by now.

So I won’t use this space to weigh in on the Maine/Canadian lobster spat. In fact, I only brought it up because it involves different approaches to the harvesting and marketing of soft shell and hard shell lobsters. The soft shell/hard shell brouhaha is a whole other kettle of shellfish, one about which, like a lot of Mainers, I have plenty of opinions.

Of course, not everyone considers the prospect of making a meal of a lobster to be a particularly enticing proposition. Honestly, can you blame them?

Even a lifelong lobster lover such as myself must ultimately concede that one’s first encounter with a steaming hot, fresh-out-of-the-pot Homerus Americanus staring balefully up at you from a dinner plate is liable to be a tad off-putting.

No doubt, the prospect of breaking and entering the rock-hard carapace of a critter, which until about 2 p.m. yesterday afternoon was minding its own business, crawling along the ocean floor, takes a little getting used to. Nor am I one of those judgmental types who view failure to appreciate this Maine delicacy as a sign of moral turpitude. It’s simply a choice. But I believe that it should at least be an informed choice.

Here’s what I mean: For a decade or so, Dan Gianneshi was my regular soundman for my “Postcards from Maine” essays on CBS.

Prior to working in Maine, Danny’s experience with lobsters had been almost exclusively influenced by stuffy, overpriced, upscale urban eateries. No wonder he wasn’t impressed.

That all changed the first time I took him to out for a meal at the Boothbay Region Lobsterman’s Co-op. The pure joy of bellying up to a picnic table with a spectacular water view to chow down on fresh Maine lobster while dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt was a revelation.

It didn’t take him long to figure out that tearing into a lobster using his bare hands, with no fear of embarrassing himself in front of his friends or generating a massive dry cleaning bill for that rented tux, was a real “game changer.” From then on, any Maine video shoot with Dan commenced with a visit to the nearest lobster wharf.

Having established that atmosphere is a critical aspect of any successful “lobster feed,” it’s time to take the crustacean by the claws and tackle the perennial soft shell vs. hard shell controversy.

In terms of Maine culinary lore, this controversy ranks right up with there with the epic “crumbs vs. batter” fried clam debate (another story for another day), and people certainly have different tastes. So, there’s really no right or wrong answer.

Wait a minute! What am I saying? Of course there’s a right answer.

Hard shell lobsters are far better than those wimpy soft shells any day. Basic lobster 101 teaches us that lobsters achieve their growth by the periodic shedding of a protective outer shell. This means that a lobster which is almost ready to shed (the “hard shell” stage) yields nearly twice as much meat as one, which has recently slipped into a new (soft) shell.

For a lobster lover like me that makes hard shell the obvious choice. As far as I can tell, the whole point of the soft shell lobster is that it’s easier to break into.

What fun is that? Should we simply abandon our vaunted Puritan work ethic so easily? I think not. I was raised to believe that anything worth having is worth working for. So I’ll take my lobster with the hardest shell available, thank you very much, the harder the better.

Oh, in case you were wondering why I insist on keeping a hammer in my silverware drawer? Well, now you know.

Original Appeared in the Boothbay Register

Like most folks, I’ve gradually developed an idealized internal image of myself that’s often wildly out of sync with the me that outside observers experience.

That’s OK. I understand. They’re just wrong. No biggie. See what I mean?

I’m an easygoing dude. Call me Mr. Mellow.

I like to think that I’m basically a calm, rational open-minded fellow. So patient and tolerant I’m surprised The Nobel Peace Prize Committee hasn’t called yet. Compared to the real me, of course, this is all a huge pile of Grade A nonsense, a fact which recently smacked me in the face like a big gooey custard pie.

Last Thursday I fired up my old Mercedes roadster (a mellow ride if ever there was one) and joined the stream of bumper-to-bumper traffic along Route 1.

Despite the glacially slow progress, my mellow mood never faltered. I simply relaxed, enjoying the warm, sunny weather as, ever the good son, I motored on down to the Harbor to visit my mom.

The first cracks in Mr. Mellow’s persona appeared around the middle of the second round of what is currently my mother’s favorite game “Upwords,” a clever three dimensional variation on the old classic Scrabble. It began to dawn on me that I was, once again, being badly trounced by the unfailingly polite, always charming matriarch of Clan Sample.

Taking my intellectual defeat (a more frequent occurrence than I like to admit) in stride, I slapped on a smile and headed back to Route 1 to get to a meeting with some friends in Yarmouth. Mellow fellow that I am, I had even factored in time for the inevitable Wiscasset bridge traffic jam.

Did I say traffic jam? Well, that’s certainly what the tourists have to put up with. But not me. Not Mr. Mellow.

I just took the local insider’s short cut around the backside of Cod Cove and let some polite tourist wave me back into line at the entrance to the bridge. Having thus saved 20 minutes, I was ahead of schedule!

The second slip in my laid back facade came when a fender bender in Brunswick slowed traffic to a crawl bumping my blood pressure up at least a couple of notches. Grr, this is not good. Mr. Mellow always arrives early. Mr. Mellow is not a “time waster.” To be perfectly honest, Mr. Mellow is beginning to get just the teensiest bit ticked off.

Once I was on 295 south of Brunswick, it only took a few minutes of arrogant, inconsiderate, pig-headed driving to get me to the appointed meeting place in Yarmouth.

I arrived about 10 minutes late. But where were my friends? My phone calls were shunted to voicemail forcing me to conclude that I’d been stood up. The nerve! Don’t they know my time is valuable? At this point I’d have to say Mr. Mellow had pretty much left the building.

My last remnants of mellowness in tatters, I screeched to a halt in the Maine Mall parking lot and rushed inside to retrieve a pair of glasses my wife had asked me to pick up for her.

(By the way, my sincerest apologies to the elderly lady I nearly bowled over on my way through the door.) Mr. Mellow was now in a full-blown meltdown!

I was returning to my car when my cell phone rang. My friends were wondering why I never showed up for our meeting in Freeport. Freeport? Yup, Freeport. Not Yarmouth after all. Oops. The fact that they were having a jolly old time without me just rubbed salt in my wounded ego. But the fun wasn’t over yet.

Upon reaching my roadster I attempted to open the trunk only to discover that it was jammed shut and wouldn’t unlock even with the key. Yikes! With visions of the jaws-of-life, cutting torches and thousands of dollars in repair bills dancing in my head I raced over to the Scarborough Mercedes dealership and explained my dilemma.

The 12-year-old manager in the service department was extremely patient considering that he was clearly dealing with a hysterical old person.

I explained that the motionless trunk lid was blocking access to my briefcase, which contained my driver’s license, photo I.D., credit cards and most importantly: my laptop containing my half finished newspaper column.

As I blathered on the service manager gently reached down and pressed the trunk release button. The trunk magically popped open. Embarrassed? You bet. Humbled? Plenty.

Reviewing the half written column I found myself striking off in a whole new direction, one which I hope you’ve found interesting. If so, perhaps Mr. Mellow’s meltdown will not have been entirely in vain.

Original Appeared in the Boothbay Register

Regular visitors to this space may recall a recent column wherein, upon returning from a family vacation, I discovered that an electrical breaker switch which has apparently been lurking in a box on the outside of our house ever since we bought the place, managed to fry itself while we were away.

Fortunately, our new best friend, local ace electrician Gary, had all systems up and running within 24 hours. Well, almost all systems.

Returning from my office a day later, I was greeted by a faint, annoying “beeping” sound, which emanated from the interior of our home.

For better or worse, “faint beeping sounds” of the “is that your cell phone or mine?” variety are an increasingly common fact of modern life.

Like most folks I’ve learned to accept these auditory intrusions for what they are: just one more off-key note in the increasingly jangly soundtrack of contemporary culture, a reminder of the still-a-work-in-progress technology, which pervades 21st century American life.

It seems that any consumer gizmo produced with a cord or a battery these days must also come equipped with its own distinctive electronic “voice.” As a result, domestic life often resembles an episode of what might just become the next wildly popular reality/game show, “Name That Beep.”

Ma: “Is it the microwave or the dryer making that beeping noise?”

Pa: “Um, neither. I think maybe it’s your new bread making machine, either that or maybe a low battery warning from the ozone detector.”

Ma: “You sure it ain’t just your hearing aids squealing again?”

Pa: “What?”

Alas, the sound I heard that afternoon was none of the above.

It was, in fact a distinctive, unmistakable and all too familiar tone. Not actually a “beep” at all, so much as a piercing high-pitched shriek, the sound of yet another smoke detector alarm “going off.”

Not that there was smoke within a hundred yards of the house you understand. From my own experience I’d have to say there rarely is.

Although I’m sure a fire would have done the trick just fine, from what I’ve observed, fire and smoke are pretty far down the list of things most likely to set the average smoke detector to wailing like a banshee.

In this particular instance I suspect the malfunction was related to our recent circuit breaker issues, but who can tell? It could have been almost anything. Ironically, water is often a prime suspect.

When shopping for new house in Portland a few years back, we rented an apartment in Portland’s Woodford’s Corner neighborhood. Though, my safety conscious Minnesotan wife was pleased that we were able to find one fairly bristling with smoke detectors, I was considerably less sanguine.

When I see smoke detectors, I expect trouble. In this instance, I didn’t have long to wait.

We’d barely gotten our things unpacked when the wailing began. Returning from a trip the corner market we heard the unmistakable ululations from several blocks from away. As we walked into our apartment, the cacophony was overwhelming.

A half dozen smoke detectors screeching in unison sounds something like I imagine a dressing room at The Metropolitan Opera would sound like if a gaggle of sopranos ensconced therein simultaneously attempted to hit a glass shattering “high C” note.

It was a devastating auditory assault, one from which I’m not sure our faithful poodle Maggie, snoozing peacefully in the apartment at the time, ever fully recovered.

Once the fire department had arrived, evacuated the building and checked everything out, we were informed that (surprise, surprise) no actual smoke or fire was involved. The culprit, they said, was “humidity.” But, frankly, it could have been almost anything.

Actually, my worst smoke detector nightmares have involved the dreaded “low battery” alert. There ought to be a special punishment for the sadistic genius who decided to make a smoke detector’s low battery warning virtually identical to the sound of a real cricket.

I’ve wasted countless precious hours of my life searching for the source of this random chirping. I once searched for nearly a week before locating the source of a hideously mind scrambling, intermittent “chirp” lurking under some acoustic ceiling tiles in our basement.

So what’s the solution? None that I can see. Until somebody wins an “X-prize” for developing a better system, I’ll just keep buying and using smoke detectors like everybody else. The risk of not doing so is too horrific to contemplate.

But I don’t have to like it.

Nope, I just don’t trust smoke detectors as far as I can throw them, which by now I’m sure you’ve figured out is a very long distance indeed.

Original Appeared in the Boothbay Register

I recently treated myself to a “mental health day.”

With my wife off visiting her family in Minnesota and the weatherman promising bright sunshine and temps in the high 80s, the conditions seemed perfect for some serious self-care.

I arose early and by 6 a.m. I’d fed and walked the pooch, taken out the trash and loaded the dishwasher.

Household duties duly dispatched, I headed to the garage for the ancient and mystic ritual of awakening my vintage 900 cc Honda.

After keying the ignition, I always check to make sure the green “neutral” light is on, after engaging the manual choke, I hit the starter button and stand around sipping coffee for another 3-4 minutes. When the engine is sufficiently warmed up, I back off the choke, reveling in the mellifluous four-cylinder symphony.

The auditory and olfactory stimulation accompanying this ritual affect me pretty much the way all that bell ringing must have affected Pavlov’s dogs.

I’m ready to ride.

Cruising a ribbon of fresh two-lane blacktop up near the Belgrade Lakes, I encountered plenty of other bikers with the same idea as me. I couldn’t help reflecting upon how far the sport of motorcycling has come since I started riding in the late 60s.

Back then, the prevailing image of bikers involved scruffy leather-clad outlaws looking for trouble. But this stereotype, reinforced in movies (like the “The Wild One,” featuring Marlon Brando and Lee Marvin attempting to terrorize the good citizens of a small California town) was about to be eclipsed.

Nobody could have imagined that a scant dozen years later, those bad-boy bullies would be sent packing, not by some rival motorcycle gang, but rather by a cheerful assortment of middle class housewives, Ivy League jocks, coeds and buttoned down junior execs zipping around America on a new breed of brightly colored, inexpensive, gas sipping Japanese motorbikes.

The sound track for this two-wheeled revolution was a catchy Top 40 style advertising jingle, the chorus of which promised: “You meet the nicest people on a Honda.”

So it should come as no surprise that I took my very first motorcycle ride on one of these diminutive imports.

That brief ride was all it took to convince me I had to get my own bike. In the spring of my senior year at high school I did just that after I spotted my dream machine parked in a dusty corner of a shabby used car lot on Route 196 in Lewiston.

The bike’s Ferrari red paint job and gleaming chrome tank cast a powerful spell, temporarily blinding me to its long list of less than stellar qualities including, but not limited too, its tiny size, skinny tires and conspicuous lack of anything remotely resembling actual horsepower.

Ah, but the clincher was the price. How could I possibly go wrong when the salesman promised I could drive it off the lot for under $250 including sales tax and 14-day plates? How indeed.

Did I mention the part about me driving it off the lot? Despite my utter lack of two wheeled experience or a valid motorcycle permit, I managed to talk the salesman into forking over the keys and my friend Bill into driving me to Lewiston to pick it up and to follow me home to make sure I got there in one piece.

Bill was one of the genuinely cool kids in town, due in large part to the fact that he drove an electric blue Chevy Malibu 396SS, one of the hottest muscle cars on the planet.

Only years later did I realized what a ridiculous sight the two of us must have made driving into town on that warm spring night.

The bike I’d just spent my life savings on was a well used Honda “sport 65” which might have hit 55 mph flat out in top gear going downhill with a strong tailwind.

At 6 foot 3 inches and 200 pounds, I’m sure that on the road I resembled a Shriner who’d lost track of the original parade. Bill, following close behind me in his rumbling muscle car, must have only served to accentuate the visual absurdity.

None of that mattered to me, of course. I finally had my motorcycle and the freedom was absolutely intoxicating. But that freedom was, sad to say, short lived.

Within a matter of weeks the bike and I came out on the losing end of an altercation with an octogenarian motorist piloting a huge battleship grey Plymouth Fury.

Sadder but certainly a bit wiser, I survived the encounter with nothing more serious than a bruised ego, a broken leg and the memory of my brief stint as a “rebel without a clue.”

Original Appeared in the Boothbay Register