J.J. Walters wrote:Hoo! Nice
Conch! I've been wanting to take a trip to Maine for years! I've read so much SK (and know so much about him) I feel like I know the state like the back of my hand. But it's not quite the same as being there in person.
If you are going to Bangor, you should definitely swing by his house (address easily found online). It's in a public neighborhood, right on the street. Beautiful Victorian with a gothic wrought-iron fence. There's also a really good SK Bangor tour run by Stu Tinker who used to own Betts Bookstore in Bangor. I've heard from many people who say it is fantastic. He takes you around to all the SK Bangor landmarks (Bangor is the fictional city of Derry in many King books): The Standpipe, Paul Bunyon statue, Mount Hope Cemetery (used during the filming of
Pet Sematary), Bangor's version of "the Barrens" (from
IT), the laundry where King worked after college and some of his early residences, as well as places in Bangor that King and his wife helped construct or expand (the community swimming pool, youth baseball field, Bangor Public Library. etc.). I think it's like $45.
In between Portland and Augusta there is the quaint little town of Lisbon Falls, where SK lived in his HS years (Lisbon Falls High School, Class of 1966). Lisbon Falls is the inspiration for Castle Rock and features heavily in
11/22/63.
Univ. of Maine at Orono, Bridgton (
The Mist), Old Town, Center Lovell... and on and on.
"Ayuh!" (Maine speak for "yes; okay; sure; that's right")
I'm surprised that people pay for a tour of Bangor. This is the first I've ever heard of it. Bangor is very small for a "city" (population: ~33,000 people), and it wouldn't be hard for anyone to go to all of those locations themselves. Even driving around randomly in Bangor you'd probably run into most of those places without even trying.
Stephen King used to be out and about in Bangor quite often before he was hit by a car, and if anyone wanted to meet him, they had a good chance of doing so simply by going to the Bangor public library. Or, you could go trick-or-treating at his house on Halloween. He used to personally hand out candy at the door; I don't know if he still does that or not. It was also common to see him at the grocery store, mall, movie theater, etc.
In 1990, he and his wife Tabitha were directly behind me in line to see his movie
Misery at Hoyts Cinemas (now known as Bangor Mall Cinemas). I was surprised by his size; he's a big guy (6' 4"). I'm 6' 2", but I was only 15 at the time, so I was about 6' or a bit less. He towered over me, plus he's heavily-built; very imposing. He was wearing neon pink Converse All Star sneakers, which I thought was funny.
In the mid-1980s the pair of gargoyles on his wrought-iron fence in Bangor were stolen (you can see them in
this, or any other picture of his house). He was on the local news asking for them to be returned, no questions asked. Soon thereafter he found them one morning in a box in front of his gate.
He owns, or used to own, property in my hometown of Dexter, which is about a 45-minute drive from Bangor (e.g., the former hospital building in which my mother was born). He also filmed the prologue to
Creepshow 2 in Dexter:
https://youtu.be/Hh0Q1VFgjYM
I had to take a detour to get to school the morning that was being filmed. The movie camera was positioned at the bottom of Zion's Hill, which is the most direct route to both the high school and the former primary/middle school. Downtown in general was blocked off that morning, from the base of Zion's hill to the stoplight. Also, that's the actual sound of the town clock's bell you are hearing, i.e., it isn't a dubbed-in sound effect. I went downtown this morning so I took a picture from that same location:
And while I was there the clock bell began to ring, so I took a video of that:
https://youtu.be/hz5RuhQx0V8
As you can see from the current picture, a few things have changed in downtown Dexter since the mid 1980s. The most noticeable is that the Reny's department store building is one story shorter now. Shortly after the prologue to
Creepshow 2 was filmed, Reny's roof collapsed due to heavy snow. Back then, Reny's consisted of two buildings separated by a narrow alley (there was a very cool phone booth in that alley too; I used to go in there to get out of the rain when I was a kid). When they repaired the collapsed roof, they combined the two buildings, eliminating the alley and the phone booth. There was also a tall, narrow building with a steeply pitched roof on the left side of the street, a few buildings past the town clock, which became shorter, and was given a nearly flat roof, due to a fire there in '87 or '88. It was recently torn down completely, which I never even noticed until today (Google Street View still shows it there, in its short, nearly flat roof form).