NEWCASTLE (NEWS CENTER Maine) – Kids love to draw. Kids love to play outside. Eight-year-old Max Blake of Newcastle agrees with both statements and went to the drawing board to address something that bothers him, when he plays baseball outside with his dad.
“It kind of makes me want to go back inside when I see people go by really fast,” says Max Blake.
“We play outside a lot and just watching the cars go by we’ve always noticed that some cars go slow and then some cars will go fast,” says Rob Blake, Max’s dad.
One day recently, Max says he had enough of the speeding cars in his neighborhood. He sat down and drew a diagram of the speeding cars on his road, and wrote a letter to the town office to address this issue. When he hand-delivered his letter, he was greeted by Newcastle’s Town Administrator, Jonathan Duke.
“I get plenty of complaints,” said Duke. “I just don’t usually get them from eight-year-olds.”
Duke says this was a first for him, and he and his colleagues were impressed. He took Max’s drawing and placed in the selectman’s folder so it could be reviewed at the next meeting. He invited Max to that meeting, too.
“He said well my bed time is 7 o'clock,” says Duke with a laugh.
Max stayed up past his bedtime. Now the town and Maine DOT are discussing ways to not only improve the safety of the road where Max lives, but the entire town.
“I think some people could are now inspired from me to do that,” says Max. “Like pick up a pen and maybe a marker or something sometimes a pencil and just write.”
For the record, Max says he wants to be a lawmaker when he grows up.
