“The Street belongs to anyone who wants to use it”

The Street’s declaration that it belongs to anyone who wants to use it sounds like a rule of equal access, but its history and recurring use reveal the limits of that promise. In the novel, the road is both a physical common and a test of who is treated as entitled to belong: the slogan invokes shared ground even as the community’s customs and power relationships make access unequal.

A Common Right, and Its Limits

Max Devore invokes the principle while confronting Michael Noonan on the road. He describes The Street as the local equivalent of a town common, where people of different moral standing may walk side by side, and insists that no law prevents him from being there. His formulation turns a broad claim of public access into a defense of his own presence and a means of needling Michael over his involvement with Mattie Devore.

The principle is repeated when Devore tells Michael that the road belongs to everyone and asks how he could stop him from going home. The repetition makes the phrase sound less like a neutral account of access than a taunt: Devore asserts a shared rule while using the encounter to intimidate Michael. The Street may be common ground, but the right to walk it does not erase the imbalance between the men.

A History of Unequal Belonging

The road’s meaning reaches back to the community’s treatment of Sara Tidwell and her family. Around the turn of the twentieth century, more than forty Black people settled on the land that became Tidwell’s Meadow, buying it and building orderly cabins despite local opposition to their arrival. The protest against them exposes how the language of community membership could be used to challenge their presence even when they had purchased the property.

Sara and the Red-Tops performed around western Maine and lived on the TR for a time. Local acceptance is described through a narrow bargain: they paid their bills, kept to themselves, and did not take charity. That conditional peace contrasts with the later declaration that The Street belongs to anyone. The public ideal of shared access coexists with a social expectation that newcomers remain unobtrusive and prove their worth to those already established.

The history of Sara’s presence on The Street further unsettles any simple claim of welcome. In a later confrontation, the old exclusionary account says she had been warned away and was not spoken to; Michael challenges that version, recalling that local people did talk with her, asked her advice, and entrusted their babies to her. The conflict between these accounts makes the road a site where belonging is disputed not only through physical access but through memory and the story a community tells about its past.

Informal Power on the TR

The Street’s claimed openness sits within a wider network of local pressure. Bill Dean describes life on the TR as a shared bed in winter: everyone can get by if people rest easily, but one restless person keeps the rest awake. He warns Michael that the interest in Mattie is making him difficult to accommodate and that angering Max Devore can make others pay. Community peace, in this account, depends partly on individuals restraining themselves to avoid consequences for their neighbors.

The custody conflict shows how that pressure can travel through institutions as well as conversation. Mattie believes that Devore’s influence over supporters of the Four Lakes Consolidated Library contributed to her loss of work, leaving her vulnerable before the custody hearing. Her account links economic dependence to the same informal order that Bill describes: formal rights exist, but local relationships and financial leverage can narrow the choices available to those who challenge powerful residents.

Meaning of the Expression

The Street’s motto is therefore both an assertion and an irony. It names a shared public space and gives Michael a language for recognizing that Devore has a right to be there; at the same time, the history of Sara and her family shows that a nominally common road does not guarantee equal welcome. The expression’s force comes from that gap between access as a principle and belonging as a social judgment: the road is open in words, while the community continually negotiates who may occupy it without being treated as an outsider.