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October 20, 2008 There and Back

Autumn chill and shagimaw | Tall tales and weather speculations overheard at the Stop-n-Talk

By John Mcdonald

We were all down at the Stop-n-Talk the other morning talking about how cold it’s been some mornings this fall and how warm it’s been other mornings and asking if anyone knew if any of it had to do with global warming. No one did.

After we’d exhausted all the usual weather-related items and the mail still hadn’t been sorted across the street at the post office, Ernie, a newcomer from Oregon, piped up and asked, “Does anyone know when Maine’s most dramatic temperature change occurred? When the official temperature in Portland climbed from 32 degrees at 5 a.m. to 86 degrees at 2:30 p.m.?”

The store went dead silent and everyone stopped what they were doing and looked over at Ernie, the newcomer. The clerk punching in someone’s Megabucks numbers stopped punching, the Megabucks customer stopped scratching his worthless scratch tickets and started scratching somewhere else, the woman behind the lunch counter stopped pouring coffee and the stock clerk blocking the aisle stopped stacking cans. They all looked over at Ernie. All wanted to know when such a startling 50-degree temperature shift occurred in Maine.

Poor Ernie was a quiet fella for an out-of-stater and he suddenly became red-faced because of the attention. Ernie was forced to admit to a store full of curious clerks and customers that he had no idea when such a temperature shift occurred. He said he just heard from his neighbor Wink Leighton that such a dramatic temperature shift had once occurred in Maine but Wink didn’t know what year it was, either.

Well, there you go. When Wink Leighton’s name was mentioned everyone in the store — EVERYONE — heaved a loud groan of annoyance. It was quite startling.

“Wink told you that?” scoffed Pearly Leighton, Wink’s distant cousin, many times removed.

“Yes,” said Ernie, the newcomer. He said he and Wink had been in the yard talking about the weather and at some point Wink started talking about strange New England weather happenings over the centuries.

Pearly then told Ernie that the only thing he knows for sure is that Wink Leighton has done much stranger things in his life than New England weather has ever done or is likely to do and Wink wouldn’t know a weather statistic if it kicked him in his backside, which wouldn’t be too bad an idea, come to think of it.

After a brief pause everyone shifted from weather talk to comments about Wink Leighton. Then followed the stories:

Hollis Strout said he remembered on a cold morning when Wink told another newcomer about the time when it was so cold he took a pan of boiling water outside, set it on his porch railing and the water froze so fast that the ice was still warm to the touch.

Forrest Tucker said Wink would often tell people that the mercury in his thermometer by the kitchen window often dropped so low in winter he had to go down cellar just to read it.

Yet another told of the time Wink told a fella from New Jersey that it would soon be shagimaw season and he should get himself a special shagimaw license and go get himself a shagimaw.

When the poor fella went to the town hall to inquire about a shagimaw license, the town manager — another Leighton and therefore a joker — made him up a fancy-looking bogus license and for days this poor fella was out in the woods cruising around every bog, tote road and lot line in the county looking to bag himself a shagimaw.

Eventually, he came upon a friendly game warden who straightened the stranger out about the Leightons. To make the poor fella feel better, the warden told him he wasn’t the first newcomer and probably wouldn’t be the last sent into the woods by the Leightons to hunt the elusive creature.

He went on to tell him that the shagimaw was an authentic Maine mythical critter that, according to several mythical-type witnesses, has two feet like a moose and two feet like a bear. Those who’ve hunted it say the fact that the shagimaw can make moose and bear tracks at the same time makes the clever beast pretty difficult to track.

Arthur Leighton, who had been sitting quietly in the corner, then said, “Shagimaw were once plentiful in Maine but it’s said they followed the loggers to Minnesota and beyond.”

By then it was time the mail was sorted so everyone went next door to the post office.

John McDonald, an author, humorist and storyteller who performs throughout New England, can be reached at mainestoryteller@yahoo.

 

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