Sipping from a steaming cup of freshly roasted, ground, and brewed Suliwesi coffee in the Emerald Victorian library, Laetitia was in a pensive mood. This was her last day touring the United States for a while. When she came back, she thought her selection of places to tour might be more whimsical, less systematic. Tomorrow she would cross into Canada, crossing the Bay of Fundy on the ferry and spending several days in Nova Scotia before heading back across the province of New Brunswick and west across the lower tier of provinces to British Columbia. But she still had to come up with today’s tour and limerick. She decided to go north to Presque Isle, Maine.
It was not clear whether the original settlement of the territory now known as Presque Isle was part of the United States or Canada. In 1838, the Aroostook War over boundary disputes resulted in their settlement with the Webster-Ashburton Treaty. Originally called Fairbanks after its founder, the town on the peninsula formed by the Aroostook River and Presque Isle Stream was renamed in 1859 after the French word for peninsula, presqu’île, or Presque Isle.
On the way to Presque Isle, the Mind’s Eye group had a picnic lunch at Mattawamkeag Wilderness County Park and made frequent stops for short hikes and to take advantage of photo opportunities. Arriving in late afternoon, Laetitia settled her group into their hotel. When she consulted her smart phone for a suitable watering hole for a pre-dinner libation, she noticed that the area had several clubs featuring both male and female strippers. However the stripper story that became the limerick of the day was one she heard from an old man at the bar where she went for happy hour. According to him, it took place a few decades ago. She wondered why so many of the stripper stories she encountered on tours were about women who chose to dress as Cleopatra. Perhaps it was because audiences found Cleopatra’s asp erotic.
On the stage dressed in Egyptian style
A stripper billed “Queen of Denial,”
Liked to brandish her asp
To make the crowd gasp
At a stripshow in Maine in Presque Isle.