Route 109

Rte 109 is Acton's main artery to the World outside.  Roughly a north, south highway, it passes through Acton on it's it's way from the ocean to the eastern edges of southern New Hampshire.  The road outside my dooryard, used to be Rte 109.  When they re-routed it  about a 1/2 mile to my south sometime in the late 1960s, my road then became "Old 109".  It turned into Sam Page Road I guess about 10 -15 years ago when some bureaucrat up Augusta way decided that in order to make 911 work even worse than it did then, everyone had to have an address and every road had to have a name.  "Old 109" would not do.  A founding father from back in the day of oxen and log cabins was chosen to grace the the new green metal signs that sprung up one night or later the next day when I wasn't looking.  We were assigned an actual street number and given no choice as to whether we wanted to hang it out there for all to see. Welcome to the 21st century.

I don't know what my road was called before it was Rte109 and then Old 109.  I do know that it has been a main drag in this part of southern Maine for a couple of hundred years anyway.  The image above was taken from my lower driveway sometime around 1920.  The view, an overlook of the bustling downtown 500 yards west of me.  The church on the hill is still there.  The white house is too.  What is not still here is the house the dirt driveway on the right lead to.  It burned in the early 1950s and the barn was disassembled and moved down South Berwick way where it sits tall and proud today.

109 is a fine road.  By Maine standards, it is almost a super highway.  Has a shoulder and lines painted on it.  The state fixes it up more often than some other roads in the area.

I had a point before I began this post about a country road in southern Maine.  And damned if I didn't let myself forget what that point was.   Maybe it was how roads endure, even if we move them, destroy them, or forget them.  They will always lead us where we want, need, hate .....to go.

Keep it 'tween the ditches................................................