Sara and the Red-Top Boys (sometimes there was a Red-Top Girl in there, as well; membership in the band was fluid, changing with every performance) played around western Maine for over a year, maybe closer to two years. In towns all up and down the Western Line—Farmington, Skowhegan, Bridgton, Gates Falls, Castle Rock, Motton, Fryeburg—you’ll still come across their old show-posters at barn bazaars and junkatoriums. Sara and the Red-Tops were great favorites on the circuit, and they got along all right at home on the TR, too, which never surprised me. At the end of the day Robert Frost—that utilitarian and often unpleasant poet—was right: in the northeastern three we really do believe that good fences make good neighbors. We squawk and then keep a miserly peace, the kind with gimlet eyes and a tucked-down mouth. “They pay their bills,” we say. “I ain’t never had to shoot one a their dogs,” we say. “They keep themselves to themselves,” we say, as if isolation were a virtue. And, of course, the defining virtue: “They don’t take charity.”
Source: Bag of Bones ▫𓂃
(echo:: @ ⌗)