6 a.m. on an August Saturday morning, and the parking lot at McLaughlin’s Lobster Shack is full. A crew of men are unloading pop-ups and tables from the back of pickups while another crew carries boxes and bags and baskets inside the restaurant.

 This isn’t the usual summer morning. A typical one finds owner Rick McLaughlin methodically preparing for the day’s meals – the lobsters, fried clams, burgers, and chowders that make up the menu of his busy seaside business.

 This one morning, though, the menu is simple and the action starts early – 7 a.m. to be exact. Blueberry pancakes, sausage, bacon, juice and coffee will be served to some four hundred hungry diners, and all by 10:30.

 The Lincolnville Improvement Association pulls together all its members and friends of members for this one fundraiser, the Blueberry Wing Ding, which annually raises around $4000+ for the scholarships the group awards to local high school graduates every spring.

 The BBWD, as a friend referred to it in an email the other day, is nearly the last of Lincolnville’s summer fundraising events. Tranquility Grange starts the season with their Spring Fling Bean Supper and Variety Show, then comes United Christian Church’s Strawberry Festival, followed by Lincolnville Community Library’s Summer Picnic and Auction, the LIA’s BBWD, and the Grange’s August Bean Supper (to be held this Saturday, August 18). Tucked in there are smaller events such as the UCC’s monthly Indoor Flea Markets, and the Lincolnville Women’s Club annual yard sale.

 The money raised by these events is used variously by the different organizations from upkeep on their buildings to scholarship funds to supporting the programs of their group. Certainly the money is important, but just as important, it seems to me, is the fun people have working together.

 Take the BBWD. Nearly everyone who was out at 6 setting up tables and tents had gray hair. Or would have gray hair if they didn’t do something about it. The LIA, once upon a time called the Village Improvement Association, is mostly made up of retired people. Not only that, most are summer folks, snow birds, from away.

 Like Andy Andrews, the guy pulling the pop-up out of the back of his pickup; he just celebrated his 90th birthday a few weeks ago. Andy grew up in Connecticut, but his father was Lincolnville through and through. Think Andrews Pond if you know your history; today it’s called Coleman Pond and Andy can tell you why his ancestor’s name was expunged from the map.

 Most of the fellows helping him with the chairs and tables, signs and flags are closer to 80 than they are to 70.

 Out in the kitchen, plugging in griddles and laying out boxes of blueberries, pancake dispensers, tying on aprons and mixing up batter is another crew of over 70s. One exception is 21 year old Aubrey Heald, Rick’s kitchen manager when he’s home from school at Providence, RI’s Johnson and Wales University. He has no trouble keeping up the patter with these folks who are as old as his grandma and grandpa, flipping pancakes with him through the long, hot morning.

 Waiting on tables, bussing and cleaning up, making coffee, pouring syrup, taking money (including 94 year old Peg Miller, Aubrey’s great-grandma and who was also the Strawberry Queen at July’s berry-of-the-month festival) – everything runs smoothly, mostly due to one woman, Lee Cronin

 BBWD chairman Lee Cronin is a master organizer. When the annual LIA rummage sale (which Lee and her good friend, Julia Payne, inherited from Lena Brooks, a former powerhouse organizer) became too much work Lee came up with the idea of a one day, actually 3 1/2 hour event, that could raise just as much money as the weeks-long effort of a big rummage sale.

 Lee first came to Lincolnville as a toddler, visiting her aunt and uncle, Lucy and Frank Kibbe who’d settled in town after Frank’s stint in the army in World War II. Dr. Kibbe was the area’s only pediatrician for many years and still remembered fondly by his former patients.

 Lee has been here every summer since then, first as a child, then a young mother with her own brood. She taught second-grade in Connecticut for 24 years, bringing colleagues up to help her and Julia with the rummage sale. Since retiring, she and husband, Brian, enjoy staying through the fall in Lincolnville.

 The town has had a summer population since at least the 1880s when the first “rusticators” began building their cottages on Pitcher Pond and Beach residents took in boarders during the summer months. Putnam Frohock had a hotel on the banks of the brook that bears his name, Chez Michel’s parking lot today. Farmers took in their city relatives who worked off their board helping out the during the busy days of haying and harvesting.

 The more affluent summer folks bought the houses left abandoned during the early 20th century’s migration off the rocky land that was proving too difficult to farm. Before the automobile took over, people arrived by the daily Boston boat which came overnight from that city arriving in Camden at 5 a.m. The women and children settled into the house or cottage while the men returned to their city jobs, perhaps coming up for a week-end now and then, as well as for a solid couple of weeks vacation with the family.

 Today, their grand- and great-grandchildren are still making the trek up the coast to the same summer houses, picnicking at Ducktrap, catching mackerel off the dock, picking berries on the hillside fields. “Lincolnville has always been the constant in our lives,” one woman told me, “the one place we thought of as home.”

 A newer trend seems to be the energetic retired people who are buying or building a house here, often staying six months or more, leaving only in the depths of winter (though many hearty souls embrace the full experience with the rest of us for whom this is our only home). These are the ones who often can be seen taking in everything the Midcoast has to offer – the plays, musical performances, book groups, elder classes, nature walks, movies, and lectures.

 And they’re also the ones cooking hot dogs, serving shortcake and pancakes, setting up tables, cleaning away the trash, the elements of a good, old-fashioned summer wing ding.

 Speaking as a member of that gray-headed cohort, after the frantic years of child-rearing, income-earning, ladder-climbing, the working world, it feels right to give something back to the community. On that one sunny Saturday morning it’s fun to see how many of our neighbors are sitting by the seawall, eating pancakes and enjoying the best our town has to offer – the sea, the sky, the loons, the sun – and each other.

Tuesday the 14th the knitting and needlework group meets, 4-6 p.m.Bring your project and enjoy the company of this lively and talented group.

 Then Tuesday at 6 p.m. the book group meets to talk about

"Educated: A Memoir" by Tara Westover.  Librarian Elizabeth Eudy says “This book begs for discussion!  Please join us!”

 On Wednesday the 15 th at 7 p.m. Cyrene Slegona, Maine Master Naturalist, will be speaking on Monarch butterflies, sharing her love of these beautiful creatures, including how to raise and release them.

She’ll discuss butterfly anatomy, life cycle, predation, diseases, and international protection efforts. Cyrene loves sharing how to create a Monarch habitat and how to raise and release the butterflies. Free and open to all. For more info email questions@lincolnvillelibrary.org

The LIA meets Thursday the 16 th, 5:30 at 33 Beach Road; a potluck will be followed by Paula Jackson Jones and Angela Rice presenting “How Not to Have a Tick Encounter” and how to prevent, identify and treat lyme disease and other tick-borne diseases and the role their organization plays in helping affected people, raising awareness, fostering education, and advocating for change.

Erin and Don Shirley, owners of the Spouter Inn at the Beach, have sold the inn and are moving to New Hampshire this month. I, along with many others, especially in the Lincolnville Business Group, are sad to see them go. They’ve been energetic and friendly, and got involved in many projects around town. Best of luck to you both, and yes, I’ll miss seeing you and Miss Maya, the most beautiful Samoyed, walking at dawn along the Beach.