Flowers, Flags, and Smiles

Lubec faces the future with hope

Barry Wheeler Lubec, Maine

Pictures, July 2018 Post, March 4, 2019

Lubec, Maine is a town of beauty and appeal. From across the river the neat homes and well laid out streets invite you.

Flowers and signs welcome you. As we begin our exploration, let’s review a bit of Lubec’s past. While Lubec has an extremely colorful history dating back well before the American Revolutionary War, Lubec’s highlights are past.

Lubec is not the town it used to be.

Lubec’s history is of herring – boats and smokehouses. More than a dozen smokehouses. 500,000 boxes of fish annually. Lubec’s history is of sardines – boats and canneries. 23 factories – over 3 million cases of sardine cans per year! This was the foundation for the jobs and retail businesses that supported a thriving population. There was a bowling alley and a movie theater.

There was also great foresight. During the boom the town built their infrastructure of roads, water supply, electric systems, schools and churches.

Now the herring smokehouses and sardine canneries are closed. A few abandoned buildings remain but most are gone. The boom is over; the population about half of what it once was.

A few buildings have been converted into quaint shops on the ground floor with their second and third story industrial history closed.

A converted factory now serves as a wonderful sardine museum.

Victor’s Inn on the Wharf is the converted factory that served as our home and restaurant in while we stayed in Lubec.

Some of the empty space where factories once stood now provides land for new shops.

Today Lubec still fishes.

Lubec sees tourism as a mainstay of its future but fishing will always be a part of Lubec’s future. The herring and sardines are gone; now lobster fishing is the big business. Less of this catch is processed and sent out. Some is now kept locally so that visitors like this blogger eat well.

Colorful lobster traps behind the restaurant let us know that special meals await.

Now in place of factories, Lubec has flowers.

Since tourists like me are a major part of Lubec’s future, everyone is going all out to invite us into their town.

Lubec’s homes and businesses are freshly painted and attractively maintained. Every home has flowers. There are flowers along the beach and in well maintained flower beds everywhere.

Click on the images in the gallery below and scroll through the inviting beauty of the flowers and paint.

Now in place of factories, there are flags.

Pride is welcoming. Not only do the flowers and paint show pride. Flags are everywhere giving us a sense of unity in this beautiful country.

Homes have flags. The cemetery has flags. Businesses have flags. The Monument to Lost Sailors has flags. In fact many homes, business, and public buildings have both flowers and flags!

Even small flags mean a lot.

With a sense of future, Lubec keeps building and repairing

While there are places for sale there is also new construction.

New homes like this one show Lubec’s vision of their future.

Oceanside maintenance and repair is never ending. Very time consuming and expensive. Often it has to be done in stages. Much remains to be done. Lubec’s people are doing it.

And everywhere, there are Lubec smiles.

Brian and Mekong greeted me as I began my walk on a wet, cloudy day. He told me stories and let me know I was welcome.

Linda smiled as she took my order in Sally Ann’s Cafe. A wonderful, farm-fresh meal.

Eric in perhaps the best organized hardware store I’ve ever seen!

Eric took me on a tour of his hardware store – I lost count of the levels. It was definitely the neatest, best organized hardware store I’ve ever seen!

Ron shows off his gallery on Lubec’s main street.

Rhonda demonstrates how the strings control Chucks puppet which is constructed of ocean debris. (Darn! I hope I have these names right. I took notes, but now I see they aren’t as well organized and detailed as they need to be!)

Felicia farms organic carrots, vegetables and herbs on a 1/2 acre plot. She sells them at the farmers market and to Sally Ann’s cafe and Cahill’s Restaurant.