10/20: All the Way East 1

Lubec Morning

The harbor of Lubec is neat and the fleet prosperous-looking, yet nearly every storefront on the main street is deserted. McCurdy's Smokehouse sits in the middle, with a pair of terminally-cute hotel/restaurants at either end of the street for summer people passing through. A convenience store and hardware store sit diagonally across Main St. from one another, each with its own philosophical quorum.

Lubec Downtown

Blueberries are no longer processed in Washington Co, but shipped to Canada immediately after being raked. Mexican guest-workers are processing sea cucumbers, a hard and dirty job locals have little interest in, rather than raking blueberries. Draggers go out for ground fish and sea urchins inshore (for the Japanese market exclusively), scraping the bejesus out of the bottom in the process. Commercial mackerel herring smoking operations ceased in 1991 (a small remnant of what was once a thriving sardine fishery up and down the entire Maine coast) in the wake of FDA regulations requiring the fish to be gutted before being hung to be smoked.

West Quoddy Head and the lighthouse, the easternmost point of the continental U.S., is four miles or so south of town.

Quoddy Head Light