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SEPTEMBER 2017 CHEBEAGUE ISLAND COUNCIL CALENDAR
Marty’s Memories: Night Life
by Marty Trower
In my land of memory, night life on Chebeague
took on many forms. My earliest memories are not
images but sounds of adult storytelling voices, big
band music, and show tunes drifting up through the
narrow stairwell and heat grate. At sleepovers at
Maggie’s, we kids would cuddle up under the slanting
ceilings and coax her writer father Jack to make up or
continue stories he’d concocted of Princess Rose and
her royal family. We would all be part of the story-
making process as he would ask us for suggestions,
plot twists, and new characters.
Later, the big event was always the Saturday night square
dances at the Hillcrest Hotel. We started to care what
we looked like. Maggie would leave her hair unbraided
all day, shaking it out, tossing it back and from side to
side while we sailed down Casco Bay in the
Islander
, the
heavy wooden cat boat our families shared. We even
started to walk down to the village on rare occasions,
but if a car full of boys came by and called out to us, we
were terrified and jumped into the bushes and hid.
A big change occurred when “The Restaurant” opened
at the Stone Pier. There was a long counter, some
tables, and a jukebox. Maggie told me she had learned
to drink coffee over the winter. I was stunned. She slid
up onto a stool at the counter and announced “I’ll have
coffee. Black.” But it was our crush on the same boy—a
tall, dark-haired “bad boy”—that tested our loyalty to
each other. We were there one evening. Heartthrob
Ricky Nelson was singing “Lonesome Town” from the
jukebox, our curfew was nearing, and the boy walked
slowly over to where we stood quivering and asked
Maggie to dance! Blessedly, the song ended seconds
before he took her hand and our friendship was saved!
There were years of being picked up by our gang and
riding around in cars, scooping up others, summer
and year-round kids, and starting a bonfire at the
shore, and storytelling took on a whole newmeaning.
Later, Saturday nights at the Bounty Lounge in the
basement of the hotel became the ultimate nighttime
experience. Everyone came, every generation swayed
or gyrated to the compelling music of Marlene, Med,
Gary, and Brother. I remember looking over our table
once and seeing my father smiling and appearing to
enjoy the loud, raucous music and thinking that was
unusual until I saw the white fluff of cotton sticking
out of his ears!
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EMODELING
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ECKS
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ENOVATIONS
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