Portland, ME – a city full of surprises

I was a bit giddy on this crisp Sunday morning, the air more fall than summer, as my travel buddy and I walked down a hill toward a restaurant on our first day in Portland, ME. The street was nearly bare of both people and cars, and for some reason, I felt safe walking so early on a morning when most folks were still in bed, having breakfast at home or getting ready for church.

As we turned a corner near a gas station, the street suddenly became sinister. A handful of scruffy-looking men were seated haphazardly on the pavement near the door. Up ahead, I spotted a tight group of young men walking toward us.

It made me uncomfortable, and then I realized that we were in a strange city on a street in a neighborhood we knew nothing about.

I was unraveled for a moment and mentioned my discomfort. The young men passed, skateboards in hands, talking animatedly among themselves and completely ignoring us. My nerves settled when I realized that they were harmless and I was being paranoid.

Portland was that kind of town for me – a place of surprises. The first was the size; I expected a major metropolis behind the name, but it was not. The downtown area felt small and confined, but that made it very walkable. And after that first non-encounter I felt safe and adventurous.

I settled nicely into my first visit of the New England coast, and here’s what I found in and around Maine’s largest city:

Black people do live here

I didn’t expect to see many people who looked like me. When I was a newspaper recruiter in the 1990s, I recalled chatting with a potential hire who was living and working in the city. He mentioned that there was not much of a black population here, and that being black in Portland or Maine was not the best place to be.

So, I wasn’t expecting to see many black people, but I did – many of them Africans. In fact, one of the first sites we found in a Portland visitor’s guide was the Museum of African Art & Culture, which I first read as the Museum of African American Art & Culture. My traveling buddy Kristin noted the difference.

A 2011 U.S. Census summary showed that blacks made up 1.3 percent of the state’s 1.3 million population. In the city of Portland, the minority population was 5 percent in 2010, an increase from 10 years before, according to a Portland Press Herald newspaper article. Statewide, more dark-hued folks chose Maine as their home, boosting the growth by 128 percent. Most were immigrants from the Sudan and Somalia, according to the newspaper.

Black people do have a (limited) history here

I found something, Kristin said to me after we’d ventured into a shop in the touristy Port District. I followed her to a gray stone marker on the street. It was inscribed with the history of a second-hand clothing store owned in the 1840s by African American Lloyd Scott. Behind me stood a new wooden door that led upstairs to corporate offices, but still had the original address: #44.

According to the Portland Freedom Trail self-walking guide, Lloyd and other used-clothing salesmen always kept garments on hand for escaped slaves stowed away on shops docking in Portland.

The city in the 1800s had its own anti-slavery and abolitionist movement going on. We drove to several sites on the trail, including the wharf, where escaped slaves slipped away from their hiding places on ships; hack stands, barber shop, homes of people who formed anti-slavery societies, homes that were safe houses for slaves and churches that aided them.

One of the stops was the Abyssinian Church, which is undergoing restoration. It was the main meeting place for African Americans and a site on the Underground Railroad, according to the written guide. Founded in 1829, it is said to be the third oldest black church still surviving in the country.

Thomas House Hotel and the Negro Motorist Green Book

One of the spots I knew I had to find was the Thomas House Hotel that was open to blacks traveling to or through Maine in the 1940s. It had been mentioned in the 1949 Negro Motorist Green Book and was located at 28 “A” Street. It obviously was no longer there, replaced by a modern house at the end of a street overlooking a strip shopping mall.

Food treats

I had some of my best meals – especially breakfast and brunch – in the city and along Route 1. We always scoped out good restaurants at fair prices that don’t usually turn up in the tourist guides:

Bintliff’s – the best homemade corned beef hash and great coffee.

Mount Desert Ice Cream – I had the “Beyond the Truth” flavor twice. It was pecan, caramel and chocolate sauce interwined with vanilla ice cream – the ingredients of my favorite Turtle candy. It was so good that I went back a second day for two more scoops. President Obama and family in 2010 visited the Mount Desert shop in Bar Harbor, ME. He had the coconut.

Hot Suppa – Fried green tomatoes.

Maine Diner (Wells, ME, on way to Portland) – Fried clams. I got my first authentic lobster roll (I’d seen Guy Fieri testing it on his show) with mayonnaise on a bun. I realized that I didn’t like mayonnaise on lobster, but my samplings at other places (including Day’s Crabmeat and Lobster in Yarmouth) with drawn butter were superb. Nothing gets better for me than someone else picking out my lobster meat. Down at the Menemsha Galley on Martha’s Vineyard, the roll came with lettuce on the bun (hold the mayo).

Portland Museum of Art

I saw some familiar names (Winslow Homer, N.C. Wyeth, Reginald Marsh, Ellsworth Kelly), and was introduced to the wonderful landscape paintings of artist Frederic Edwin Church, including “Mount Katahdin from Millinocket Camp.”

Born in a family of wealth in the 1800s, Church spent a lot of time traveling with companions (based on his paintings at the museum), capturing illustrative scenes that put you right there in the thick of their lives. He is considered the founder of the Hudson River School of painters seduced by the landscapes they encountered, and was one of the most traveled of its artists.

I also found several paintings that featured African Americans:

a circa 1913 Harry Willson Watrous painting called “The Drop Sinister – What Shall We Do With It?” of a mixed race family with a husband whose body held an apparent drop of “Negro” blood. The painting was mentioned in the May 1915 edition of the NAACP’s Crisis magazine edited by W.E.B. DuBois in which the writer – maybe DuBois himself since the opinion piece was not signed – explained that “the people in this picture are all ‘colored.'”

a circa 1900s painting of a black man in a boat by Homer called “Gulf Stream,” which one site noted was based on his trip to the Bahamas in the late 19th century. Next to it was a photo/postcard reproduction of Homer and his black servant Lewis Wright from 1883-1910.

The Fuller Brush man

About two years ago, I wrote a blog post about the Fuller Brush man after coming across a letter opener at auction. I had heard of these door-to-door salesmen but had never encountered one. I even interviewed a woman who still sold the products. I finally stumbled on a Fuller shop at the L.L. Bean store and outlet center in Freeport. This cardboard man greeted me at the door:

Read about other stops on my New England trip: Boston, Kennebunk, Brimfield and Martha’s Vineyard, along with enjoying the food.