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.

Since Bath is near Freeport, Maine, several members of Laetitia’s group had requested a trip to L. L. Bean. Founded in 1911 by a Maine outdoorsman, the mail-order company’s name has become a household word likely to be known by Americans who know nothing else about Maine.

Having satisfied her group’s urge to shop, Laetitia took them in the direction of Castine, Maine, their evening’s destination. Situated on a peninsula on Penobscot Bay, the area was of great strategic importance in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The British built Fort George there in 1779, and in 1811 the Americans built Fort Madison. The former is partially restored, and the earthworks of the latter remain. Laetitia’s group visited both, as well as the Maine Maritime Academy, which has been educating and training prospective members of the merchant marine since 1941.

The community has a large tourist population in the summer, but its coterie of permanent residents is much smaller. As in all small towns, there are a few citizens who like to make the business of other people their own. For one with a proclivity to eavesdrop, the cellphone is a great boon, because people using them have a tendency to have personal conversations anywhere and everywhere. As one who frequently bases her limericks on gossip heard while snooping in bars, Laetitia smirked as she turned an overheard conversation into the day’s limerick.

The townsfolk all though it obscene
When a phone call o’erheard in Castine
Ordered rubbers, large size,
But they failed to surmise
‘Twas for footwear sold by L. L. Bean.