The Day I Met Capt. James T. Kirk

With the new Star Trek "prequel" about now in theaters, I thought it would be fun to describe when and how I met the original Capt. James T. Kirk. Star Trek's original episodes aired from 1966 to 1969, and around that time, I often vacationed with my future first wife's family in York Beach, Maine. They owned a cottage on the main road near that bustling tourist village, and because I've never really enjoyed sun and sand, I spent lots of time just poking around town.

"Bill & Bob's" was the place to go to get your sweetie a silver ring. Bill (or Bob) would reach into a tangled mass of silver threads, and drop dozens of rings on the counter for your selection. "Pop's Shell Shack and Museum" had beautiful shells for sure, but Pop was a crank. So I didn't go there much. The "Wild Kingdom Animal Park" was a small clutch of cages and kiddy rides in a pine forest near the beach. It's bigger now.

And then, there was the "Goldenrod," stationed right across the street from Short Sands. It was the classiest restaurant and gift shop in town, and sold justifiably famous salt-water taffy by the box. A colorful ancient machine cranked away in the Goldenrod's beachfront window...pulling taffy to the right consistency, rolling it into a sticky rope, cutting it into bites, twisting colorful wrappers around them, and dropping them in a bucket. It was an all-in-one mechanical wonder.

One evening, I was just loitering there, watching the machine crank out my favorite flavor (lime), when someone strolled up beside me, and in a familiar voice exclaimed, "Isn't technology wonderful!" It was Capt. Kirk (playing the role of William Shatner). Nice guy too. We chatted breezily for a while. "The Devil in the Dark" was his favorite Trek episode (about a blobby but intelligent beast that was killing miners on the planet Janus VI). My favorite was "The Trouble with Tribbles," a funny story about squeaky, furry lumps that bred so fast they could strip a planet's ecology or a starship's food supply (which would be amazingly pertinent today).

And Shatner was simply standing beside me because he was starring at the Ogunquit Playhouse in the next town over, had swung by York Beach to soak up some carnival atmosphere, and was drawn (like I) to the gizmo in the window.

The Goldenrod is still there ( www.thegoldenrod.com/), and still makes its century-old taffy recipe. I should go back...see if the machine is there as well. And Capt. Kirk's enjoyment of its ancient technology still amuses me, as does the thought of folks eating and shopping inside, who may have noticed a tall, skinny, dorky young fellow discussing the contraption with an older, shorter, stockier gentleman...who seemed very familiar, and yet oddly out-of-place outside the window.