New England Diary

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Augusta gold and Bangor gold

Stephen King's mansion in Bangor, in the Italianate style popular with the city's lumber moguls in the 19th Century. He also has a mansion in Sarasota, Fla. (Robert Frost had a winter house in Miami.) King had a very serious drug problem in the '80s, including with marijuana. He says he's been off all drugs since then, including alcohol. Maine has serious opiate- and amphetamine-abuse problems.
 

Stephen King.

"My wife says, and I agree with her, that what would be really great for Maine would be to legalize dope completely and set up dope stores the way that there are state-run liquor stores. You could get your Acapulco gold or your whatever it happened to be - your Augusta gold or your Bangor gold. And people would come from all the other states to buy it, and there could be a state tax on it. Then everybody in Maine could have a Cadillac.''

Stephen King, the novelist and part-time resident of Bangor.
 

''Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay. ''

-- ''Nothing Gold Can Stay,'' by Robert Frost