It’s past 10PM on an unseasonally cold May evening and our Greyhound bus has just pulled into Dysart’s truck stop. We get off and A. hails a cab while I marvel at the fact that I’m standing where Emilio Estevez was chased by a killer truck in the cinematic masterpiece that was Maximum Overdrive. I can tell this is going to be a trip to remember.

Fast forward to our cab ride, during which the driver entertains us with fun facts like Donald Duck’s middle name and what you call the dot on an i. He looks like Sam Elliott and carries a conversation like what I imagine an alien who’s been put on this planet to spy on Earthlings sounds like when it’s had to learn how to small talk from books. We tip him generously. He goes on his way leaving us at our motel alive and unprobed. I shower while eyeing the drain with suspicion.

The next morning, we meet Stu, our guide and owner of SK Tours of Maine, in the parking lot. This is our ride, and it’s incredible.

He takes a look at our shirts and goes “I guess I don’t have to ask you if you’re Dark Tower fans”. He asks who the bigger Constant Reader is (me). I get to sit shotgun and my tortoise and rose make friends with a certain clown on the dashboard… while A. is confined to the back and has to keep an eye out if he wants to keep his leg.

Stu starts driving into town and we talk about our favorite Stephen King books. I can’t stop grinning like a loon because I can finally bash the dumpster fire that was The Lawnmower Man movie with someone else who’s actually seen it. Stu has lived in Bangor all his life and both him and his wife have been Stephen King fans since Carrie came out. He lives just a few streets over from the Kings and has known them personally for almost as long as he’s been a fan. He used to run a bookstore in town specialized in Stephen King books and collectibles, and has started doing these tours ever since retiring. He refers to him as “Steve” and you can tell that his heart brims over with love and admiration for the man.

For the next three hours, he took us all over town to every important Stephen King related sight and filming location, all while providing anecdotes and fun facts – I’ve been a fan since I was 8 years old and curated my own Stephen King related blog for some years, and yet Stu still had stories that were new to me! He also provided some insights and historical facts about the town, and clearly knows his stuff. Stu adapts the tour depending on the people who are taking it – whether you’re a Constant Reader or a relative newbie to the King world, he will make sure you have a good time and leave with a wealth of new information. On the day and time we took the tour, we were the only two people, and it felt very personalized and unique.

Mountain Hope cemetery is gorgeous, the second garden cemetery in the States, and one of the oldest in the country. There are tombstones of every kind, snaking through the trees and up the hills. The oldest ones are illegible, overgrown, and have toppled over in places. There is a pond surrounded by graves, and Stu tells us how the locals will have picnics by it and bring the kids out to play on weekends. He shows us where the corpses used to be stored before drills made it possible to have burials in the wintertime. Why would someone like Stephen King ever feel the desire to live anywhere else? Of course this feels like home. He points out the spot where he stood for his cameo in Pet Sematary and explains how the cameras were set up so that the cemetery would look larger than it was behind him. He shows us the patch of earth where Louis shambles up (down?) in terror during the movie, as well as the spot where the actor was supposed to climb the fence but refused to, which is why in the movie there is a cut and he is suddenly inside. We spot the Walking Dude’s grave. Who, by the way, was named after a kitchen supply store in town. Apparently, Stephen was intrigued by the name because he’d never seen “flag” spelled with two g’s before. He kept the R as an initial too.

In Steve’s and Stu’s youth, there used to be a local rock radio station that Steve loved – it ran out of funds and was about to shut down a few years after he could finally stop worrying about money, so he bought it. There are now three of them – one, the original, is named after him – WKIT, Stephen King’s Rock Station. It’s still Maine’s only live 24/7 radio station and one of the few remaining in the country. The K stands for King, the IT you can probably guess. WZON was named in tribute of The Dead Zone, which had just come out. Stu’s favorite book is IT, because he’s lived in Derry his whole life. In fact, we stop by his house where he grabbed some awesome goodies for us – and his house is right next to the Thomas Hill standpipe, which is, of course, the water tower from IT. He points out a bench in a patch of grass across from it and tells us that Steve would wrote much of IT there.

After this, he took us to see the iconic King mansion just a little way down the hill. He told us how they would go for walks in this neighborhood when they were dirt poor and living in a trailer and how the red one was always Tabby’s favorite, and in 1980 their realtor took them right to it and they decided to buy it on the spot; how much later they had obnoxious neighbors who didn’t take care of their house, so the paint and dirt and garbage would flake into their yard, and Tabby had had it, so they ended up buying their house from them for a lot (A LOT) more than it was worth and putting another 3 million into renovations, and now it’s a beautiful white guest house to the right of their mansion and frankly it’s even more beautiful than theirs; how the neighbors took him in front of the city council because they heard of his plans of putting up an iron wrought gate with bats and three-headed dragons and spiderweb on it, but he showed them the design and they all loved it and told him to go ahead. Their gates were also just… open. Wide. Stu pointed out one of the cars in the driveway and said that Steve must be in town, that’s the car he drives, but we didn’t catch a glimpse of anyone (not even Molly, the Thing of Evil). This goth kid walks past us like “Oh gee, what a creepy house. I wonder who lives there! I heard it’s some writer…”. The mansion expands to the back in a way that I couldn’t fit into one picture. There’s an inside swimming pool somewhere back there. There are squirrels running around their lawn. On the far left of the property, just on the other side of the fence, there’s a big statue of a leaping frog, which Stu tells us was a gift from the publisher(?) and has something to do with Duma Key (which I haven’t read yet so it doesn’t mean anything to me…). And of course they don’t have garden gnomes, but gargoyles.

Behind their property, around the block, there’s a swimming pool and baseball field that the Kings contributed to and built from scratch and donated to the city, respectively. They were named after a Bangor High School diver from their neighborhood who used to babysit their kids and died of leukemia, and the son of a baseball coach who died of cerebral palsy. During the tour, Stu pointed out many other things in the city that were made possible by the Kings’ generosity, such as the children’s wing at the Eastern Maine Medical Center, and the renovations and new wing of the public library, which is where Steve got inspiration for the Library Police.

Stu takes us just around the block, which is where I almost get grabbed by Pennywise. This sewer drain at the corners of Union and Jackson streets (incidentally just down the road from the standpipe, somewhere between the water tower and King’s house) is the one that inspired him to write IT in the first place – Georgie running after the newspaper boat was the first scene he thought of.

Stu took us down to the river, where we saw the old Bangor Waterworks, which inspired Graveyard Shift. It’s been abandoned for years, and was recently turned into low income housing. Stu also took us to the Barrens, which I admit I always pictured as being more… marshy. A couple was enjoying an afternoon out, walking an empty stroller…

Next, Stu wouldn’t tell us where we were headed, and pulled into a car park, driving all the way to the open top level. He slowed down as he approached the side facing the street, and warned us that we were about to see the creepiest thing Bangor had to offer… and with that I knew. A. didn’t, and I wish I could somehow make you hear the noise he made when he got to see Paul Bunyan for the first time. Isn’t he a beauty?

A giant lumberjack from North-American folklore known for his superhuman strength… sure, he seems friendly enough, but isn’t there something decidedly creepy about that wide grin of his? I sure wasn’t laughing when he came to life and attacked Richie…

We drove back through the center of town after that, where we passed the Bangor Opera House, which houses the Penobscot Theatre Company. The 1984 world premiere of Firestarter was held here, and Stu was thrilled to be invited because he had a huge crush on Heather Locklear.

We drive on Bangor’s Ohio street, which is Derry’s Kansas street. It’s almost the end of the tour, three hours have flown past – fittingly, Stu takes us over to the Bangor airport. Interestingly enough, despite it being, you know, Bangor, the airport has a single runway longer than any of those found at the Boston airport, and it’s where many diverted flights go to for emergency landings. It’s mostly a military airport and was even designed by NASA as an emergency landing location for space shuttles, but most importantly, it’s the filming location of The Langoliers, in which Stu has a short cameo. We drive along its side, and Stu points out the spots on the road that inspired Insomnia and Fair Extension, and that’s the end of the tour. Stu was a genuinely nice guy with a wealth of information and anecdotes all around the King clan, and he clearly catered his stories to our interests and favorite books, and I wouldn’t hesitate taking it again because I’m sure we’d get a different three hours worth! Thankee-sai Stu for the wonderful tour and the memories, you’ve made a childhood dream of mine come true.

As a side-note, because I know that I somehow felt a bit weird about taking a tour that would take me right outside a living author’s home – Stu has known Stephen for many years, been a fan for over 40, and lives just a couple of streets over from him – it is clear that he loves the guy and is very courteous and respectful. You will not feel like you are invading Stephen’s and Tabby’s privacy. No Annie Wilkes feelings here!

After grabbing a bite to eat and strolling through town, we revisited some of the spots to get better pictures, and went back to the King neighborhood as well, where we were greeted by Monty, the black neighborhood kitty. He was adorable, and how fitting that a black cat would guard the Kings’ house from the other side of the road!

We grabbed dinner at Nicky’s Cruisin Diner, which is apparently one of Steve’s favorite places to grab a bite. The food was fast and really greasy, and I hope he doesn’t eat there too often as I want him to live a long life.

The next morning, before heading to Boston, we had an amazing breakfast at Dysart’s Restaurant, another of Steve’s favorite places to eat, and right there next to the truck stop that inspired Trucks, and where Maximum Overdrive was filmed.

And thus we come full circle.

Ka is a wheel.