As a Stephen King fan from way back I remember reading the "about the author" section on the back cover where it said that he lived in Bangor Maine. In fact if you've read any King you would know that Bangor is Derry, an often used town in many of his books like; It, Pet Cemetery, Insomnia, etc. etc. So I decided to do a quick web search to see if there were any "King" points of interest to visit. Instead I turned up Betts bookstore on Hammond St. (Insomnia for those who know the story).
The owner is an acquaintance of Kings and has devoted most of his shop to memorabilia, signed books, original manuscripts and so forth, better than a museum. We dropped by one morning and I had a wonderful conversation with the owner about our favorite King books, and a bit about King himself who he said, used to drop by every few weeks, as well as be seen frequently walking downtown, up until his accident.
After 10 minutes of conversation during which I proved my knowledge of Stephen King stories, I was apparently worthy of "the map", a xeroxed copy of the Bangor area to which he had highlighted several locations that had either inspired King or been used outright in his stories. Places like, the canal, barrens and water tower from IT, the Pet Semetary, etc. Then he drew a dot and house number on the map and said "and this is where he lives". Since it was fairly close to where we were, we decided to drive by. It was a beautiful red victorian with an iron gate (decorated with bats spider webs and such) around it more for ambiance than security, in fact I was a little shocked at how accessible it was, you almost expected to see him out front cutting his lawn (which by the way had 2 large "stop the war" signs).
