Millinocket, Maine

There has been an arrest, and they are looking for a second identified suspect. Oddly, the suspects are from North Carolina. One of them is black and, if I had to guess, I'd say the other is probably Lumbee, given his name and where he lives. Both of them may be Lumbee, because many of the Lumbees look black. In fact, that was one of the arguments against their recognition as a Native American tribe, that they had more black blood than Indian.

I suggest that this is odd because, first of all, Millinocket isn't on the way to anywhere other than Baxter State Park, which is closed for most activities during the winter. We are about eighteen miles from the freeway, and the road doesn't continue on from there to lead anywhere else, other than Brownville, and going through Millinocket would not be the sensible route to Brownsville unless you're starting out in Millinocket. There's nothing in Brownville, anyhow.

Secondly, there are no black people in Millinocket so a couple of black people with North Carolina plates would certainly be recognized. Our only black resident moved when he lost his job at the grocery store. There are only a few thousand people in Millinocket and everyone knows everyone else, practically.

Third, as had occurred a few times when someone from out of town would rob a store in Millinocket and then try to escape, there are only three roads out of town, and none of them have any turn-offs. One of them ends at the park, and the gates are closed. Another is a 15-mile stretch to East Millinocket, passing right by the East Millinocket police station, and the third is 35-mile road to Brownville.

Despite the fact that everyone here has guns, we don't go around shooting them regularly so people notice gunshots. I'm surprised they weren't caught at East Millinocket, which would be the best bet for an escape. Probably the fact that we generally have only one cop on duty at a time allowed for that. I suppose they could have gotten through East Millinocket and to the Interstate before a bulletin was put out, but probably someone reported the black guys with North Carolina plates.

There still isn't much information available on it, but it is know that the victim grew marijuana and probably had cash on him. How that attracted someone from North Carolina, I don't know, unless he was trying to set something up with them.

 

Yes, there are several drug-related arrests, usually of out-of-state people along I-95 but Millinocket is nearly twenty miles from I-95 so they must have had something set up with the victim, who may even have been dealing in something other than marijuana. I'm not saying he was, because I don't know, but everyone here seems to know that he was growing marijuana; which, although still illegal federally, is no longer a state crime here in Maine.

Two Millinocket residents, both women, were arrested in Massachusetts a year or so and charged with possession of a large quantity of drugs, which there were presumably going to bring back.

 

It seems that one of the killers, the one they haven't caught yet, had killed someone in Robeson County, North Carolina earlier in December, which is probably what brought them to Maine. They had done some construction work on the guy's house who they later killed here, so they were familiar with whatever they were after.

 

The guy they killed here grew commercial marijuana in his basement, which is where he was killed. There are rumors, but I don't know what else he might have been involved with. Since it's legal to grow marijuana here and not in North Carolina, there might be a profit to be made transporting it from here to there. I don't know what any of that stuff goes for anymore.

 

Because Maine is much like the Upper Peninsula of Michigan used to be, with the addition of mountains. When I go home to the UP now, there are golf courses where people used to farm, no one swims in the swimming holes anymore, some of the forests are cut and developed, and I hardly know anyone, where I used to be related to nearly everyone.

I had thought of moving back home but all that I can see are the differences and, for the most part, they make me sad. Maine is much like what I grew up with and, since I don't have the memories here, I am not so saddened by the things that may have changed.

 

One thing I like about living in Millinocket was demonstrated this morning. Michelle had an eye appointment in Bangor and I got the car stuck trying to get out of the driveway, in the iced-over snow that the city had dumped in front of my driveway. When it's softer, I can drive right through it but it was about 6 degrees this morning and it got hung up on something in the middle. All I had was a plastic snow shovel, which is usually sufficient but not for the hard iced-over stuff we had today.

Three people stopped to help, only one of which I knew (our electrician). One of them had a metal shovel in his car and between the four of us, it came out before too long. I bought a metal shovel on my way home from her appointment but when I arrived, I found that someone had plowed the driveway.

I've seen it before. When someone is completely helpless on a regular basis, they might get talked about but, in emergencies, someone is willing to take the time to help. I have had people I've never seen before dropping their plow on the way by to plow out my driveway after seeing me working at shoveling it.

 

When I was in high school, a friend and I were on a not-well-traveled road sometime after midnight, on a cold night, and came across a woman who had gone off the road into the snow. We stopped to help but she practically screamed at us to leave her alone. I tried to explain that we were just going to try to get her out of the snowbank but I guess she was more afraid of us than of freezing to death in her car. It was hard to talk to her anyhow because she wouldn't roll her window down. We stopped at the next house and asked someone to call the sheriff's department.

 

A woman who has lived alone a few doors down from me, on the same street, for quite a few years, died a few months ago, and it turns out that she had been in the federal witness protection program. She was a friend of my neighbor, across the street, so I'd see her every now and then, but I had never spoken to her except to say hello. I'll probably never learn the facts, but although she lived here under an American name (Corrine), she was apparently from the Middle East. I hadn't noticed anything particularly ethnic about her, though. My neighbor is an auctioneer and he will be auctioning off her stuff. Apparently, she has a lot of expensive stuff, and I had thought that people in the witness protection program were forced to live rather frugally.

I guess it makes sense that there would be people on the witness protection program here. We're out of the way. No one passes through Millinocket unless they're going to Baxter State Park, and there are a lot of empty houses here. On the downside, people tend to know one another here, so someone would have to be pretty good at playing a part.