Well, the windjammers sailed into and back out of the harbor and the fireworks signaled the 249th birthday of the good old USA. I guess that means it is now summer in Boothbay Harbor and its environs.

Our friends in Wiscasset are once again flooded with strangers from away snaking through their little community on the way to heaven knows where. Some of them can’t wait to stop for a lobster roll at Red’s Eats. Many of the “experts” say Red’s serves the best lobster roll in New England. I don’t know if they are right, but I know Red’s lobster rolls are damn good and well worth the price.

I remember the late, great, New York Times pundit, R. W. Apple Jr., known as Johnny, once praised the fare at Red’s Eats. I never met Apple, but followed his insightful work on war, revolution and politics. I especially admired the way he spent large sums from his NYTimes expense account to fill his dinner plate. Once upon a time, on assignment in Ireland, he praised the salmon at a local eatery writing the renowned chef “just” cooked salmon was like saying Steinway “just” made pianos.

Back in the day, when newspapers were newspapers, editors and business managers frequently clashed over reporters' expense accounts. Back in the Midwest, before the age of credit cards, newspapers would send reporters out with a pocket full of cash. Once there was a sports reporter who was sent to the West Coast to cover a sporting event. He arrived a few days early and fell in with bad companions. Somehow he wound up in Las Vegas where, you guessed it, he lost the newspaper’s cash. He sponged off his new friends for a while, then wrote his editor and told him “Old money gone, send new.” The editor did so and later helped the wandering scribe file his expense account by labeling the lost cash as needed for research for a proposed story on sports gambling. Later, the publisher approved the expense account with a laugh.

Enough of tales from the good old days. How do you tell the tourists at the Boothbay Harbor Hannaford supermarket? They are the ones who look lost as they fumble around while trying to find where the clerks have hidden their favorites. Meanwhile, many of the store’s shelves are bare as new customers flood the store. That is good news-bad news for the locals. The bad news is that many of our favorite items are out of stock, the good news is that the store is making money. If it is hugely profitable in the summer, maybe that means it will stay open for us in the winter.

For our new friends looking for something to do, here are a couple of tips. Russ Pinkham’s market is a good place to shop for fresh seafood. The other day, I stopped for a slab of salmon and watched Russ perform surgery on a juicy halibut. He had just purchased it from a fisherman and, friends, it doesn’t get any better than that. If you are looking for a summer read, Sherman’s has the latest best sellers, but if you want a classic or some oddball book, try the famed used book store at Boothbay Harbor Memorial Library. For a couple of bucks, you might find that novel you always meant to read.

Gobbling up a summer read while sitting on a Boothbay Harbor porch is one of the great Maine traditional pleasures. I remember the time a high-toned society woman complained she could find nothing to do in Boothbay after she ate a lobster, took a boat ride, and eyeballed a lighthouse. There is nothing for me to do but sit on the porch and read, she said. Her companion looked at her and just smiled. For a moment in time, sitting on the porch with a good book in your lap, maybe holding an adult beverage in your hand, is just the tonic we all need to escape the beeps on our smarter-than-we-are smartphones.

Sorry, Mr. Google. Just for a few days will you give our friends from away a chance to ignore the breathless details of the latest rock star’s criminal sex scandal trial, or the slaughter of innocent bystanders in Iran, Israel, or Ukraine? We all know the Republicans in Congress just approved a big beautiful 940-page bill that most of them didn’t bother to read. I’ll bet it contains a tax break for the supporters of the GOP, as can be expected. As George Washington Plunkitt, the storied New York Tammany Hall boss, once opined: Of course he helped out his friends. Do you think I was going to help out my enemies?

I do worry about what the BBB will mean for our rural hospitals in Maine and the rest of the nation. Many of them are already skating on thin financial ice. But that is a story for another day.