BY LORRY STILLMAN

There is a familiar feel and smell to the neighborhoods of Portland that calls me back to my childhood. The sway of the trees on Longfellow Street that shadowed my walk one short block to Portland Hebrew Day School; the crunch of fallen acorns under my feet; the skating pond on Devonshire Street where we sipped scalding hot chocolate from a slim thermos and captured spring polliwogs in great metal pails, hoping to see them sprout their legs; the smell of the early lavender on the fringe of Back Cove that became the first spring bouquets I brought my mother; the shadow of the former Porteous, Mitchell and Braun building where I climbed the gilt-edged marble stairs in search of lacy handkerchiefs; the elevator of the Libby building with a tiny, uniformed man who wore white gloves to operate the spinning wheel that lifted me to my piano lesson in the fifth-floor garret.

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