Meet Uncle Steve & Aunt Jane

This is my Uncle Steve and Aunt Jane. They live in Lincolnville, Maine a couple houses down from our camp on the pond. When we were located in Yuma, AZ for a travel nurse contract we visited Uncle Steve & Aunt Jane in Sun City, AZ where they winter for a few months. It is fun to be even closer to them now during this contract in Maine.

Uncle Steve restores old cars. And when I say old, I mean OLD. I took a look at two cars he is in the beginning stages of restoring and my thoughts were they belonged in the junk pile. I am impressed with my uncle's ability to take something I visualize as junk and with his skills and intelligence repair and restore the car so it looks brand new. This picture above is a 1934 Oldsmobile which he recently finished restoring in the past year or so.

^^^^We went for a ride in the 1934 Olds!^^^^^

I personally loved the grey upholstery of the interior.

When we walked into Uncle Steve's garage I saw a bunch of old looking parts. I am amazed Uncle Steve has the knowledge needed to build a vehicle from bits and pieces. The two pictures below show the next cars he's working on restoring. The first picture is another Oldsmobile.

This second picture is the body of a 1955 MG TF 1500. He has begun work for restoring it.

This is a a 1950 Plymouth Uncle Steve restored quite a few years ago. One summer Uncle Steve wanted to teach me how to drive a stick shift. This is the car he thought would be fun to take me out in. I definitely did not learn to drive it. It was probably one of the hardest cars to learn how to drive a manual. The stick shift was high up on the steering wheel and this car did not have automatic steering. But I do have fun memories of him trying to teach me how to drive it. Maybe Caleb will give it a try while we're here. Now that would be entertainment for me sitting in the back seat!

One day last week I met up with Steve, Jane, and Jane's cousins from Sweden to check out the Union Fair. There were events like steer and oxen pulling, horse harness racing, wild blueberry pie eating contest, a pig scramble, sheepherding demonstrations, and lots more.

I decided against the pull to eat regular fair foods of cotton candy, nachos, french fries, and fried dough (similar to a funnel cake or elephant ear but in Maine it's called fried dough). I am eating wild berries and seafood any opportunity I can get while in Maine. For lunch 4 out of 5 of us chose crab rolls. When they handed my sandwich to me they said it was the last of the crab meat they had. We ordered our lunch right on time! Uncle Steve got blueberry ice creams to enjoy later in the day.

The Union Fair is a "Real Maine Agricultural Fair." Living in Monmouth, Maine we are surrounded by many farms. I love getting fresh produce from the farm stand less than a mile away from our house. It's pretty neat how many of the farmers/gardeners go off an honor system. Their stand is unmanned in the front yard with prices listed. So you pick the produce you want and leave your money in the box at the stand. I've enjoyed some very tasty fresh picked corn on the cob. Another farm down the road from us has a "Pick your own berries." Berry season is almost over, but they have a late season of raspberries and blackberries in September I'll take advantage of and go pick. 

We tried some homemade pancakes with wild Maine blueberries and real Maine maple syrup this week. We have had a couple Lobstah rolls, crab rolls, and fresh Maine shrimp. I foresee a possibility of live lobster being cooked this coming weekend at our camp!