In Freeport, Maine, diagonally across Main Street from L. L. Bean, stood the Patterson Block, a squat dark green building in which were located Cole’s Drug Store, and a gift shop called Ye Green T-Kettle. In 1933, the year I graduated from Freeport High School, Mr. Cole offered me a summer job as a soda jerk for a dollar a day. My classmates thought I was lucky.

From behind the soda fountain I could watch the comings and goings of the community. Since Bean’s mailorder business filled his building, he had located his salesroom in a small space at the rear of the third floor. To get there, a customer had to climb an open stairway on the outside of the building to a second-floor entrance and pass through the cutting room, redolent of leather and rubber, to an internal stairway to the third floor. Here arrows led through the sewing room and the shipping room and past a glass-enclosed office overlooking Main Street, where one could usually view Mr. Bean himself, a large, leonine man with a wide face, broad hands, and a booming voice.

One sultry August morning, when I was alone in the drugstore, I saw a Cadillac convertible with the top down pull into a parking space across the street. Bright chiffon scarves tied to the heads of the two women in the car flowed in the breeze. Behind them another sleek convertible took the next parking space. Two men dressed in solemn suits and shirts with starched collars jumped from the second car to assist the women.

The women moved to the sidewalk. They were dressed in skirts and what my mother called shirtwaists and wore flat-heeled shoes. One carried a clipboard and a small handbag. The other glanced briefly in a shop window before she turned to speak to her companion. It was Eleanor Roosevelt. I dashed to the street for a better look. They walked abreast toward Bean’s stairway, but Mrs. Roosevelt leaned forward as she moved so that she constantly had to look back at her friend with a movement that reminded me of a mother hen tucking a chick under her wing. Old Fred Ward, who worked at the drugstore, limped by without even recognizing her.

Someone had to be alerted. I felt like Paul Revere, but I was alone in the store and couldn’t leave. I flung open the door to Ye Green T-Kettle next door. “Did you see who just drove into town?” I shouted. Miss Strout, who had been my first-grade teacher and was now clerking as a summer job, was waiting on a customer. Miss Caldwell, the owner, was on her knees rearranging a display. She peered around the corner of the showcase. “Mrs. Roosevelt!” I proclaimed without waiting