POEM: Remebering Devereux’s ice cream parlor
May 5, 2026
By Patricia Ranzoni
Frank and Lowena Devereux ran the parlor on the North Castine-Penobscot line. Photo courtesy of the Penobscot Marine Museum.
Last week, the The Rising Tide shared a photograph of a 1930s ice cream parlor in Penobscot Marine Museum’s ‘BACKSPACE’ column. After seeing the photo, poet Patricia Ranzoni shared this recollection:
“I love this photo from the Penobscot Marine Museum reminding us how connected we long-time and new residents of this region are. Taking you up on your invitation to let you know if we remember this ice cream place, here's how I paid tribute to it and that North Castine neighborhood where I often visited my grandparents, Hattie and Duncan (Dunc) Dunbar in the 1940s at their Meadow (dairy) Farm where my mother grew up, now known locally as Dunc's Meadow. You can imagine the memories from the other details, putting the times in context, for a little girl from walking to the Deveroux's shop for ice cream treats. There was also a post office window at the side of the counter. Poem follows.”
TO CASTINE QUIETLY
Hush there where Lowena Deveroux sells ice creams
on her porch there where you’ll decide to bear west
around Morse’s Cove where families dig clams for canners
hissing with seaweed boiling over
onto sand, or stay straight ahead down hardwood road
watching where old maples hold over the curve. Hark
for gravel’s crunch. For stable floorboards answering steps.
For the drinking-dipper sinking back
into springwater bucket on the bench there where the screen door
sings open, claps shut. Sing! Clap. Sing! Clap. Inside,
gullcall of handpump lifting cistern rain
from cellar to slate to eternal flame.
Someone’s appendix burning in the stove.
The clock——clock, clock——clock pendulum marking time
to this day. Mind you the children overheard overhead tumbling
into featherbed play and woodpeckers
working their meadow below. Duncan Dunbar pulling out chairs
for Hattie. Others, after, pulling up theirs. His long
silent treatment for a sister who dared wear pants
to hay in. Hear ice-cutting years
and pleasures with pung there where firetrucks fill. Quiet
for Clara West lifting pantry latch and lids from crocks blessing cookies
to offneck kids. For her web-still thread
through a sewing bird’s beak there
on her worktable upstairs over Bagaduce dream. Shshsh
for Annie Lou and Jean stealing bareback races on pastured mares.
Catch them laughing still, free from pain again. Tinpail bales chiming
with climbers lunching up in that storied tree
there by that wooden school. Heed one room warmed and worn.
Hearken for the place the village begins. For a sculptor tearing away
what’s in the way of what he hears. For pens
weeping poems into night.
—Ranzoni was Bucksport’s poet laureate from 2014 to 2025.
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