Horace Lee and Ethelyn Giles helped us buy our first house in 1978. It was a complicated purchase due to some unusual circumstances. We had no knowledge of real estate but we were excited for the opportunity to settle in to a neighborhood and become more a part of this wonderful community.

Kimballtown Road on Barters Island was an interesting stretch of road back then. We didn’t know a soul on the road and it didn’t take long to figure out that year-round folks from elsewhere were in short supply and not likely to win the local popularity contest. Let’s just say that we didn’t turn down many invitations to family picnics.

In time things improved. We became pretty good friends with the Burnham family across the street — Clyde, Barbara, Carl, Florence, Lizzie, Mumma and Daddy I think, were curious, but shy. Eddie Soule became a really good friend. His son Harold married Lizzie so traffic across the way picked up.

Donnie Clark lived next door. He and his brother James would venture up to say hi from time to time — they were adventuresome and didn’t realize that we were off limits. But we had fun visits and became good friends with Jimmy Clark, the boys’ dad. Sometimes we would give Danny Little, who lived with the Clarks and Barter-Littles, a weekend ride into Saturday night “Upstairs-Downstairs” or “The Alley.” I think Donnie saw that we were relatively harmless and he couldn’t resist the urge to explore the local aliens.

I made one of my most favorite black and white photographs of Donnie during his childhood visits. He had a twinkle in his eye, even back then, at the age of 3 or 4. We encouraged his visits. Susan, my wife , was way more interesting to the neighborhood boys than I was. Ol’ Mitch, was just a silly goofball they tolerated.

We lost track of our Barters Island friends when we moved in ‘85 to the Harbor. Donnie grew up, married and started a family, passing along the twinkle. We were always pleased to catch up with him and learn about how his life had evolved. And, he became a wicked skilled tree person who has climbed much more than the hill up to our house on the island. He’s in high demand , doing tree work all over the area. Most recently, our next door neighbor on Southport hired Donnie to take down some “leaners” and a few very tall mature spruce that were eyeing a tumble onto our house. Once again, it was fun to bump into him and catch up. He’s still got the twinkle and is still a little shy, but always polite and considerate ... and he still makes a point of asking that I say hi to Susan.

I’m still Ol’ Mitch and probably always will be.