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From Our Archives
July 1967

From our Archives, July 1967

Taking to the Water

From the unsigned “Letter from Home” column in our July 1967 issue.
From our Archives, July 1967
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With graduations over and school recessed for the summer, teenagers either have summer jobs or are enjoying their outboard motorboats and Japanese motorcycles. The young set at Bar Harbor, who lost their popular “tin garage” for rock-and-roll dances when the town council voted to tear the place down for a parking lot, won assurance that dances would be held twice a week this summer in another garage.

In another youthful accomplishment, 16 members of the Lafayette Chapter, Order of Demolay at Kennebunk, set a new world’s record of 220 consecutive hours of playing ping-pong. One hardy lad, well fortified with Coke and potato chips, played 140 games in a row without a break.

Today’s teens may lack their forebears’ absurd dedication to table tennis, but teenage summer rituals are otherwise much unchanged. Plenty of Maine youth still spend their summers playing, lazing, and flirting on the water, as in this seemingly intimate moment captured by photographer Douglas Armsden. A multi-decade contributor to the magazine, Armsden died in 2009 at age 91. A collection of 400 of his photo negatives is housed at the Historic New England Library and Archives in Boston.

Claude Montgomery (cover)

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