RIDING AROUND IN STEPHEN KING

So many books...

At the Orono campus's Bear’s Den,

I finish off The Dark Half‘’s

Chapter 22, “Thad on the Run,”

and cruise homeward down Route 2
 

semi-searching for that fictitious

‘Gold’s Junkyard’ (where Thad

ditches his old suburban to

lose the cops tailing his ass)
 

and discover off to the right

(right where it should be)

not ‘Gold’s’  Junkyard, but Silver’s!

Ah, very clever, Stevie me boy!
 

Silver to gold… now how cool is that...

and roll down on into Bangor which,

just like King’s ‘Derry,’ has a Paul Bunyan

statue fronting its Bass Park (reminiscent
 

of that ‘Bassey” Park sprawling out

behind Derry’s’Paul Bunyan) …‘Derry’

situated across the river from ‘Brewster’…

Bangor sharing its waterway with Brewer
 

both municipalities landmarked by

high-standing water towers, their

‘standpipes’ (Bangor’s still standing...

Derry’s having avalanched downhill


like some “giant with his shoes

full of Ritz Crackers marching

down a flight of stairs”  back in

the great cataclysm of It in ‘86).
 

Oh, it’s fun riding around in

Stephen King up here in Maine,

smack dab in the middle of

Needful Things and A Bag of Bones--
 

Hey Phyl, LOOK! The Pittsfield exit!

That’s where Rachel Creed’s Chevette

mysteriously loses power on her way

back home in Pet Sematary!
 

But Phyllis never looks…

could care less…

an exit's just an exit…

won’t even read Stephen King…

---