Welcome to Waldoboro Voices
Testimonies from a small coastal town in Maine
This is a live collection where people talk about their lives and the things most important to them. Taken together, they make a portrait of our town, in this moment, this now, reflecting both their own journey and history, and our town’s.
Sometimes people talk about a loss, or a struggle, or about their aspirations and all the feelings they have around them. They might talk about watching a spouse grow foggier with each day, and the vigilance they need to care for them. Or they might tell me about their work and describe their workday from five in the morning until 2:00, 3:00 or late in the evening.
Sometimes, they speak directly about other feelings roiling inside of them, be it confusion, love, or grief. They might linger on fears or frustrations.
These testimonies reveal our culture. They reflect the fabric that ties us to each other, and our underlying feelings in this era of uncertainty and change.
Each week or so, a new voice will appear.
Taken singly, they reveal a layered and nuanced history of an individual. Taken together, they show the spirit and soul of Waldoboro.
A little bit about Waldoboro
Waldoboro sits on the Medomak River in midcoast Maine just where the river becomes navigable, at the point where the salt water meets the fresh water. The river, which comes down from Freedom, Maine, runs through town, dividing it into west and east. Only a few houses dot the boulder-strewn shore that’s fringed with eel grass, leaving the shoreline almost untouched.
As the river winds downstream, it opens into Broad Bay, a body of water with tides that can rise twelve feet, depending on the moon; when the tide recedes, it uncovers vast mudflats rich in soft-shell clams.
At the far end, Broad Bay narrows to a channel, and on the other side is Muscongus Bay, with cooler air, brisker winds and islands in all sizes. And right around there, Waldoboro ends, and towns with names like Bremen, Round Pond, and Friendship begin.
“The landscape belongs to the person who looks at it,” Emerson wrote. With a shoreline teeming with fish, a navigable river and a horizon of forests of pine and oak, this was a land of riches! And combined with the needs of the country, it turned into one of the largest shipbuilding centers in the young United States.
With the lumber they milled, the people of Waldoboro built hulls and masts. With the granite deposits they found, they built foundations for their jetties and wharves. The possibilities must have seemed endless. Indeed, shipbuilding here thrived for a whole century, with the 1850s its apex.
But if you passed through Waldoboro today, either via Route 1 or on Main Street, you’d think it was a very small town with its abandoned or unoccupied buildings and empty streets. Yet Waldoboro covers about 70 square miles. It’s the largest in the county and the second largest in the state. With hills in the north and countless inlets along the river, the landscape absorbs Waldoboro’s 5,000-plus residents to make Waldoboro feel sparse despite being the most populous in the county.
Library of Congress image
Alas, Waldoboro, squished between the more urbane and charming towns of Damariscotta and Thomaston, can feel like a drive-through town.
If you visit it, though, you’ll see remnants of a town that once was alive with people and trades and noise: the old boarding house above the village laundromat, the Custom House still sitting majestically on Main Street’s hill, the ornate houses constructed for shipbuilders and captains and more.
But it takes time to imagine that era, for today’s Main Street no longer hums with industry. The shops, even of my childhood, have closed, and only a few have hung out a shingle. Route 1, the thoroughfare to Vacationland, has usurped their role, though there’s not all that much commerce there, either.
Still – stop in, either here on this website, or in person. You will meet a town of proud and independent souls. They are clam diggers, hairdressers, carpenters, caregivers, metal workers, teachers, farmers, repairmen, trappers and so much more.
The Chapters
If I were an immigrant, I would have arrived on a ship, which would have sailed up the RIVER.
Once offshore, I would have needed to claim and clear my LAND.
And feeling the need for a form of communal order, I would have wanted a GOVERNMENT.
Meanwhile, everyone around me would be working hard to survive and even thrive, and Waldoboro would be growing and swelling with all kinds of TRADES.
And to help our settlement, and those of us less fortunate, I might have joined a club, or a volunteered in some way in our TOWN.
But closer to home, I would be thinking about my children’s future, and definitely their SCHOOLING.
As we expanded, our town would be alive with ART.
And PLAY.
Yet at any stage of life, in the background, there would be DEATH.
And in the face of dying and death, beauty and chaos, love and anger, I might seek a greater spirit. I might even find FAITH.
Recent Waldoboro Voices
An Invitation to Participate
Waldoboro Voices is a collaborative project. It’s a joint endeavor between me, the interviewer; the person speaking their mind; and finally, you, the reader.
If you haven’t been interviewed, please reach out to me!! I want to interview you! Think of this as a Waldoboro photo booth, where we all line up to get our picture taken. And just like the booth where you can throw away the picture if you don’t like it, you can do that with me, too. That’s because I read your voice back over the telephone to you, and that is when we work on it together. And if it feels or sounds like too much, if it feels too raw, or too wrong, you can withdraw it. So, join the photo booth. Join Waldoboro Voices.
As for the content on this website, yes, yes, yes! I am interested in your thoughts, ideas, and suggestions. They can be about people to interview, about subject matter I might be missing, or about the site itself.
I welcome your criticism. And your encouragement. I want to hear from you.
Tell me what Waldoboro means to you. Tell me what Waldoboro Voices means to you. Write to me if something touches you, or if it offends you. Talk to me.
We are in this together, you and I.
With much respect,
Rebecca Cooney