I drove through Lisbon Falls over the weekend. One week out from the town’s crowning celebration, the place looked like a ghost town. Save for a couple of banners strung up over Route 196, Lisbon Falls looked nothing like a place where 20,000+ people will flock to in order to celebrate a distinctly different New England soft drink called Moxie.

Moxie’s been on my mind the past few weeks as it often is during July, when Lisbon Falls again assumes its place as the epicenter of the Moxie universe for one weekend. Then, it will go back to being a community in obvious decline, much like it has for the past 30 years that Moxie’s been connected to the place.

When I decided to update the Moxie canon in 2008, I was merely looking for a follow-up book after writing my first one at the age of 43. Moxie made an amenable subject. When writing books, it helps to find a subject rife with material, some folklore, some history, and a few predecessors forging a path for you forward. Moxie had all of these. Best of all, nothing significant had been written about the drink in over 20 years, and to be honest, the existing history needed a makeover, much like the Moxie store could use one.

Last year, I wrote upwards of 20 posts about Moxie when my second book about the soft drink came out via Down East Books. Unfortunately, I posted this on a blog and site not owned and controlled by me and when Posterous pulled the plug on the site this spring, those posts went down the memory hole, save the files I kept for most of them.

I’m not planning to match that Moxie output this year. In fact, this post, tomorrow’s post (which will update the fuzzy Moxie math), and possibly a follow-up about Moxie weekend are probably the only JBE output you’ll find on Moxie for the remainder of the summer.