We decided to go somewhere different for lunch on Sunday and for the first time wound up at the casino at the Harrington Fairgrounds, where we were amazed to see so many people and the vast array of food available in the casino’s buffet section.

We paid the $16.50 tab for each of us and were turned loose on all the food. We ate well. We also enjoyed just looking around at the people.

One of these people was a lady wearing a sweatshirt with MAINE on it and, because I am both curious and originally from that state, I went over to her and asked if she was a Mainer.
(I should mention that if I am out of the state and see a Delaware car or anyone wearing something identified with our state that I usually try to strike up a conversation.)

Anyway, in this pleasant encounter I soon learned that while she was not from Maine she has a son, a U.S. Navy retiree, who is now living and working in Maine. She quickly told me that he was the one who helped kick off a mania in Maine for growing huge pumpkins. On his first try a few years ago he grew one that weighed 1,114 pounds.

She used that exact number and I wrote it down.

Not only that but what is now a craze to grow huge pumpkins has also produced a special race, a pumpkin race on the Damariscotta River.

Competitors grow pumpkins in the 500-pound class, she told me, and hollow them out. Then they attach a small outboard motor to them and around Columbus Day in October race them on the river.

My informant told me that this unique sport has been captured in a television program.

The pumpkin-growing area is concentrated in Greater Damariscotta and Newcastle, which is on the Maine coast about 60 miles north of Biddeford, in southern Maine, where I grew up.

There is now an annual Pumpkinfest which also features heaving 10-pound pumpkins as far as 4,000 feet, an exploit that pales in comparison to the serious pumpkin chucking that goes on in southern Delaware.

My lady informant isn’t from Delaware. She comes to Harrington by bus from southern Maryland for the casino activity.

*****

We were looking forward to hearing Ed Okonowicz telling some of his Delaware ghost stories at the Dover Public Library last week but it turned out that he suspected he was coming down with the flu and asked Mike Dixon of Elkton, Md., to represent him instead.

Mike is a college teacher, a writer and an experienced speaker. He has a particular interest in what can be learned and enjoyed from inspecting cemeteries and seeing what is carved on gravestones.

That may sound a little odd but you had to be there and listen to his interesting talk to appreciate why he is intrigued by his cemetery strolls.

Naturally there were a number of humorous engraved quotations he has come across. The one I liked most was “I Told You I Was Sick.”

The evening also gave us the opportunity to look over the latest drawings for the location of the new Dover Public Library. Plans for the library are moving along even though the withdrawal of Kent County Levy Court financial support was a big bump in the road.

This first-class library, long in careful planning, is to be where what is now the parking area between the Dover Post Office and Dover’s City Hall. The post office is looking for a new location.
One major change in the plans is the elimination of an entrance/exit fronting on Loockerman Street. It would have caused too many traffic problems. Instead, it will be possible to enter the library area from Kings Highway, thanks to an accommodation by Wilmington Trust.
Another entrance will be from a street behind what is now the parking lot.

Seeing the plans bought to mind the recent action of the Levy Court in first announcing that a new county library would be located about three miles south of the Dover Library’s new site. Then there was a change of mind, or heart, and another county library location was picked farther south on U.S. 13.

All in all, it seems a majority of the Levy Court members was more interested in building the county’s own library outside Dover than in cooperating in the Dover plan which will serve all Kent Countians, including the 35,000 county residents who live within the Dover city limits.

*****

We do eat many of our meals at home, although from my comments in this space you might think we were always out and about. But we did take the opportunity a few days ago to try the refurbished, and I mean really refurbished, Hollywood Diner on U.S. 13. Its history goes back 55 years.

The place now sparkles. Our meals were fine. Looking over at the northeast corner of the dining room, I had to wonder if the quartet of Old Dover friends — Tom and Terry Jackson, Bob Berglund and Joe McDaniel — would get around to breakfasting again on what used to be a regular Saturday schedule.

*****

President Obama’s midnight visit to Dover Air Force Base to observe the arrival of fallen heroes from abroad caused the Dover dateline to be used frequently across the country for a few days. It was a thoughtful use of the president’s time and underlined for him the stark responsibility he carries as commander-in-chief.

*****

A budding portrait artist with a growing reputation got a call from the gallery where his work was being featured.

The gallery owner told him: “I have good news and some bad news for you. A guy came by this morning and asked if your work was the kind that would see a big increase in value after you were dead. I said yes and he bought all 16 of your paintings.

“The bad news is that he’s also your doctor!”