by Ardeana Hamlin
of The Weekly Staff
By his own admission, Mitch Littlefield of Bangor wasn’t the sort of late-1960s sixth-grader at the George Robinson School in Belfast who paid attention in class. He liked to joke with his classmates and he often spoke out of turn. This behavior, of course, got him into trouble more than once. But the time he got in trouble with his English teacher Miss Farley turned out to be one of the best things happened to him.
Littlefield failed to complete a class assignment that required he write a story, which he failed to do. As punishment, he was sent to the principal’s office to write the story before the end of the school day. Not only did he write the story, Miss Farley thought it was so well written she asked him to read it aloud to the class.
In Littlefield’s recently published book of essays about growing up on a farm in Morrill in the Belfast area, “Memories of Shucking Peas,” he writes, “So, this one is for you, Miss Farley. I’ll never forget you, or how you nurtured this hyper-active kid by encouraging me to write my stories and get lost in them.” Though the original version of the story he wrote as a sixth-grades, “The Fox,” has not survived, Littlefield recreates it in his book.
Miss Farley’s recognition of a young writer in the making is also a boon to those of us who enjoy reading stories about Maine. Thank you, Miss Farley.
In his book, Littlefield gives authentic voice to the triumphs, disasters and humorous situations involving his farming family. His stories, down-to-earth and earthy, focus on hunting, trapping, haying, raising thousands of chickens sold to the chicken processing plants in Belfast and the freedom of a childhood that was never free from the demands and delights of farm life work.
“We were a large family that loved each other, worked hard to maintain the farms and spent most of our time together,” he writes.
Littlefield is a storyteller whose writing is rich with the true Maine idiom spoken by his family, infused with ribald humor, good natured jokes and the delivery of certain blunt truths that often color the speech of Mainers.
The primary personalities in the book are Littlefield, his grandfather Pup, his grandmother Mamie and a slew of uncles, cousins, siblings, parents and aunts.
He writes of baked bean suppers at his grandmother’s house on Saturday nights and how the women in his family competed for the title of best bean baker, an encounter with an ornery bull in a pasture, the antics of the donkey named Ed Muskie and going to the drive-in movies with is sister.
One of the best stories in the book is “The Chicken Capital of the World.” In the story, he writes from a working man’s point of view — his own and that of others — of the work his did in the chicken processing plants on the waterfront in Belfast. He also brings to the telling of this story the perspective of a chicken farmer, which he knew in minute detail, having lived it.
Those who grew up in Maine — or not — will find much to identify with, much to chuckle over and much learn in “Memories of Shucking Peas.”
For information about the book, email mitch@minormeadow.com or go to minormeadow.com.