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Rumford police stop cars early on a Friday night to check for drivers who are operating under the influence of alcohol. Roadblocks are part of a tough campaign against drunken driving waged by police here for the last several years - a campaign, it is widely said, that has been strikingly effective. Staff photo by David A. Rodgers

RUMFORD - Strobes flash. Drums thump. A deep bass throbs, pulsing through the smoky, surreal darkness.

It is late at the Barn Board, a cavernous bar that often serves as the high-voltage, last-call drinking hole of choice here. Revelers slouch at wooden booths, flush with smoke and beer and the blurry, easy recklessness common to barrooms everywhere.

Through the vast room, people shout and lean into each other like hapless seafarers on a listing boat. They are neighbors, co-workers, ex-lovers. They know the stories of each others' jobs, cars, kids, losses, marriages and drinking habits. They have been here before, and they will be here again.

Patty Gedaro, out with her girlfriends, sounds their common, mill-town lament.

''There is nothing else here for us,'' she says. ''We have a great big mill, and a bunch of bars. And that's it.''

Perhaps more than any other town in Maine, Rumford is a drinking town. Alcohol lies at the heart of its history, from its early days as a down-and-dirty loggers' haven to its present as a modern paper mill town, smell and all.

Rumford - which in local parlance usually includes the neighboring towns of Mexico and Dixfield - fits the classic mill-town image. Its mill rules the horizon and the economy, its future looks much like its past and present, its denizens often bewail that they feel trapped in a dead-end place of finite possibilities.

The Mead Paper mill in Rumford is the lifeblood of the town. But it also generates a common lament: ''There is nothing else here for us,'' says resident Patty Gedaro. Staff photo by David A. Rodgers

And they drink, often in excess.

The most frequent claim made by Rumford residents - with pride or dismay, depending on who's talking - is that this area has the highest per-capita consumption of alcohol in, variously, the state, the country or the world.

True or not, statewide statistics for 1996 show the area has some of the highest rates of alcohol-related problems in Maine. Of the 16 counties, Oxford County ranks at or near the top for alcohol-related traffic fatalities, alcohol sales outlets, and binge drinking.

Figures compiled by Anne Acheson of the state's Office of Substance Abuse show that adults in Oxford County have the third-highest rates of alcohol use and binge drinking in Maine. With almost half its young people reporting they had binged in the past month, its sixth- to eighth-grade students rank a close second statewide in binging, and high school students rate second.

Police here say alcohol is involved in most of their cases. They cite one victory: Fewer people driving drunk, thanks to a militant OUI campaign.

But with almost 20 places serving alcohol in the three towns - and despite the increased public awareness of recent years - drinking remains an enduring, disturbing fact of life.

Says Sgt. Hart Daley of the Rumford police, ''It just seems like, in Rumford, that's what people do.''

Because Maine remains a predominantly rural state, and because poverty and unemployment - the economic conditions that often contribute to alcohol abuse - are worse outside the state's larger cities, Maine's alcohol abuse remains in large part a rural phenomenon.

Probably more than anywhere else in rural Maine, alcohol has been key to life in Maine's mill towns. Hard work, less education and a lack of other options often combine to make drinking - not uncommonly, to oblivion - a popular form of entertainment.

Rumford lies in a still-rural area of farms, sawmills and small-engine repair shops. Piles of firewood sit drying in many yards, awaiting winter, and the night, even in the heart of town, is silent enough to hear peepers clamoring.

Since the turn of the century, Rumford's landscape has been dominated by the billowing smokestacks of its massive pulp mill on the Androscoggin River. Downwind, its sour, sulfur stench fills the air, mingling with the equally acrid smell of outlying broccoli fields and the occasional passing skunk.

Rumford was incorporated in 1800. Mexico was incorporated in 1818, named in sympathy for Mexico's war of independence against Spain.

Old-timers in Rumford recall a dusty town carved from the wild. Burton Dupaul, 88, remembers his grandfather driving herds of cattle down the street to the slaughterhouse; his grandmother would stand out in the yard in her apron, shooing the cows off her much-prized rose bushes.

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Aubrey Thompson of the Rumford Area Historical Society says Rumford was ''a very rough place'' until the arrival in 1890 of Hugh Chisholm from Canada.

At first, Chisholm sold newspapers on the trains. In 1893, he began the Rumford Falls Paper Co. In 1898, he and several other men bought 26 mills, which became the International Paper Co. He bought land along the Androscoggin, built dams, produced hydroelectric power, and started the spring log drives.

With the advent of the river drive, loggers stayed in woods camps all winter. They worked, ate, slept, filed their saws. Come spring, they sent their wood down river and headed for town. They were ready to party.

Rumford became a boom town, bawdy and loud. Beer parlors, brothels and hotels sprouted. The loggers came from Italy, Ireland, Lithuania. They were immigrants in pursuit of the same sweet dream, each group tenacious, and each territorial.

''Where there's drinking, there's fighting, and they were rough fighters,'' says Thompson. ''After a few months, they were a pretty wild bunch. There were knifings and killings, and the police were busy all the time.''

Over time, change came. The ethnic groups melted together. The river drive evolved from tree-length logs to four-foot pulpwood; it ended in the 1970s in the name of environmental protection. The mill changed hands: Oxford to Ethyl to Boise Cascade to, last year, Mead Paper Co.

One thing, though, did not change. People here kept drinking.

Longtime residents recall a town with ''a bar on every corner.'' Many cite a bar in Mexico across the river from the mill. Each payday, millworkers walked a footbridge to the bar, where the owner obligingly cashed their paychecks.

''They'd go home two sheets to the wind,'' says Sue Waterhouse, 60, ''when the money was gone, and they couldn't stand up anymore.''

Over the years, alcohol has remained what Bernice ''Bunny'' Easter, an older resident, calls ''one of those things that are a plague forever.''

Today's Rumford and Mexico are still linked by bridges, and much else. Though they maintain separate town governments, they are intertwined enough that most people include them both in the generic ''here.''

The two fire and police departments work together; Mexico is dispatched through Rumford. Mexico's police chief lives in Rumford. Rumford's police chief lives in Mexico. The high schools are merged, and they share sports facilities.

Both remain intimate enough that everyone knows everyone else, and what they drink. People leave doors unlocked, and keys in car ignitions - one reason, police say, that auto theft and joy riding are common here.

And both towns' populations are in decline, exceptions to the thriving rule in most of Oxford County. Rumford has about 7,600 residents; Mexico has 3,500.

The mill remains the lifeblood of both towns. It sits at river's edge on the Rumford side - so close to Mexico, people like to say, ''you can spit across.''

The band Night Crew performs at the Barn Board as Rumford's ''destination bar'' begins to fill at 11 p.m. The nightclub is ''the last place to go and cut loose,'' says its owner. Staff photo by David A. Rodgers

Once, most families had at least one member at the mill. Since a couple of ugly strikes in the 1980s, the mill's work force has shrunk from more than 3,000 to about 1,200, the result of attrition, automation and layoffs.

In recent years, the towns have labored to provide activities for their young people. The towns have built baseball, football and soccer fields, tennis courts, a skating rink, and a paved walking trail.

Still, the most common litany heard here is, ''There's nothing to do.'' People must drive at least a half-hour to a network of surrounding towns - Auburn, Bethel, Farmington - for movies, theater, Wal-Mart-scale shopping, or the night-on-the-town feel of a crowd big enough to lose themselves in.

Little wonder, many say, that the kids flee their small-town confines as soon as they can. If they stay, they often drink.

In the three towns, they have roughly 20 places, including restaurants and private bottle clubs, to do it in.

Dixfield has one restaurant, the upscale Dixfield Village Restaurant, that serves alcohol. Mexico's last remaining bar closed last year, but there are two popular restaurants that serve alcohol.

The Chicken Coop - ''Good eatin' that's our greetin' '' - is a family restaurant featuring 1950s rock 'n' roll decor, chatty waitresses, and bathrooms labeled ''Hens'' and ''Roosters.'' Its small bar downstairs usually hosts a couple of guys nursing beers and cigarettes, and an upstairs bar and lounge is often used for parties; the sounds of people shouting and glasses clinking wafts inevitably downstairs to families working on their teriyaki chicken.

The Far East serves Chinese and Polynesian food. Its bar is famed for potent, exotic drinks like the Waikiki Beach Comber of gin and fruit juices - ''a combination you will long remember,'' promises the menu; the Zombie, a ''lethal libation, a real dirty stinker;'' the Hula Hula, ''two drinks in one - if the first one doesn't get you, the second one will,'' and the Hawaiian Sunset, ''relaxing but convincing.''

A Sombrero, prepared with Allen's Coffee Brandy, is the most popular mixed drink at the Barn Board. Staff photo by David A. Rodgers

Rumford has about 15 places to drink, including restaurants and private bottle clubs like the Elks and Eagles. Its most popular bars are the Hotel Rumford, the Barn Board, Prevost's Corner Pub, Tina's, and Diconzo's Candlestick Lounge.

Each of the bars has its own flavor and clientele. The small, dark Hotel Rumford, which opens at noon, draws mostly regulars. Prevost's attracts a tough, tightknit group, wary of outsiders. Tina's draws younger people.

The Candlestick draws mostly male crowds with its strippers on Tuesday and Thursday nights. The Barn Board is big and loud, with live music and frequent fights; one night, police say, they were called there 11 times.

The town is small enough - and the threat of OUI conviction real enough - that many drinkers spend nights walking from bar to bar, an army of unsteady but resolute fun-seekers patrolling the streets of Rumford.

In a town where yet another beer truck seems to lurk around every corner, drinking remains key to the fabric of life.

Melinda Worthley, 33, recalls growing up in a town of ''hard drinking, hard fighting, domestic abuse, the whole nine yards.'' Going to college in Farmington, she says, was a shock.

''That gave me a different perspective on my hometown - that not everybody thought it was OK to drink and drive, and to drink all weekend,'' she says. ''When you grow up in this town, you think it's the norm.''

Worthley is the director of Day to Day, a substance abuse program at Rumford Community Hospital that includes an inpatient detoxification unit and outpatient counseling. She says the most common patient profile is a 40- to 60-year-old male who has ''grown up using alcohol as a way of dealing with things.''

Over the past few years, she says, she has seen dramatic changes. The numbers of those entering detox and counseling are down - so much that her job has gone from full- to part-time. Those she sees ''are not as sick as they once were,'' she says, and don't reappear in the program as regularly as they did.

All of that could point to less widespread use of alcohol, she says, but it could also mean other things. Numbers may be down, not because people are drinking less, but because those with ''dual diagnoses'' of mental health and alcohol problems - and there are many - are seeking treatment in the mental health system, not the substance abuse system.

Kenny Murray, owner of the Barn Board nightclub in Rumford, sings with the band Night Crew from behind the sound board. Murray thinks fewer people drink today, but says an inevitable hazard of bar life remains ''people who drink too much and do stupid things.'' Staff photo by David A. Rodgers

Those who seem less sick, she says, could be drinking as much as ever, but because of greater public awareness and outreach efforts, they come to her sooner. ''People get the help they need earlier in the process,'' she says.

The Rumford area, says Worthley, continues to be ''a place where alcohol is an accepted way of life.'' She persists in a discouraging field, she says, ''for that one person out of 10 who gets better - you take your successes where you find them.''

For the other nine out of 10, officials agree, alcohol is often an abiding calamity, one that sometimes simmers quietly in the background of their lives and sometimes erupts into full-blown crisis.

Police say alcohol is involved in 80 percent to 90 percent of their cases - most commonly assaults, traffic accidents and domestic violence.

They say they see the same people get into trouble again and again. Often, alcoholism and its accompanying turmoil gets passed down from generation to generation in what one police officer calls ''a vicious little cycle.''

According to James Theriault, Mexico's police chief, underage young people routinely get access to alcohol, sometimes - whether illicitly or openly - from their own parents. For years, kids have gathered at a popular spot out in the woods to make a bonfire, spend the night and drink.

Drinking and its excesses endure, says Theriault, regardless of economics or any other factor.

''People will find money to drink, no matter how poor they are. And they drink every . . . single . . . day,'' he says, jabbing a desktop with his index finger for emphasis. ''During the week. Weekends. Winter. Summer. You name it, they drink.''

Of all the calls police get, Theriault says, scenes of domestic violence are the most volatile. ''You never know what you're going to get,'' he says.

The one thing they almost always get, he says, is alcohol.

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One of the few alcohol-related problems here that has seen change is drunken driving. While Oxford County ranks among the top counties in the state for most alcohol-related abuses, it ranks near the bottom in OUIs, or those operating under the influence of alcohol.

The low OUI figures, people agree, are the result of an aggressive campaign waged by police against drunken driving. Using federal grants to fund so-called saturation patrols and roadblocks, police have made it too expensive - in time and money - for people to be caught driving drunk.

At roadblocks, police routinely hand out a brochure listing the various possible costs of an OUI, with the total in large letters on the front: $7,000. The strict enforcement has helped drive home a basic rural reality: Losing your license - and mobility - is, says one resident, ''worse than a prison sentence.''

People here say alternatives to driving drunk have been widely adopted. Two taxi companies are flourishing in an area where one once barely survived, and designated drivers are a common sight.

The cautious atmosphere is a far cry from the 1970s, it is often said, when the mill was expanding, the bars were overflowing, and driving, especially on weekend nights, was a death-defying plunge into unpredictability.

Police repeatedly summon up the same images: people tumbling out the doors of bars, clambering into cars and careening shakily away; guys driving down sidewalks in the middle of town; drunks stopped at roadblocks toppling out their car doors when asked to get out.

Tensions run high after a fight at closing time outside Rumford's Barn Board nightclub. Officers have increased patrols to discourage drunken patrons from driving home after inbibing at the town's bars. Staff photo by David A. Rodgers

Sgt. Hart Daley of the Rumford police recalls the ''hard-core, falling-down, can't-say-their-own-name drunks, who, when they get arrested, think they're in Lewiston.'' Now, he says, roadblocks frequently fail to pull in any OUIs.

Kenny Murray, who owns the Barn Board, says he applauds the safer roads. He says he fought for years to get cabs to wait at the bar at closing time because ''at 1 a.m. the people are all right here - we could keep six cabs busy.''

The Barn Board is known as the destination bar, the late bar, what Murray calls ''the last place to go and cut loose.'' He has owned it since 1979, when he was playing rock 'n' roll here and at other local bars; at 47, he still plays.

Murray also has a master's degree in education and taught for many years. The two jobs are not as unlikely a mix as they might seem, he says smiling: ''I use my psychology here a lot.''

Over the past 20 years, Murray agrees, things have quieted down a bit.

His customers, he says, used to drink ''rugged'' drinks like whiskey and tequila. These days, they drink lower-proof drinks like Mudslides (Kahlua, Bailey's Irish Cream, vodka and ice cream) and light beers. Though more drink microbrews, the enduring favorites are Budweiser, Michelob Lite and Coors Lite. Average spending has stayed steady at $7, ''but you used to get more for it.''

Murray thinks fewer people drink today, noting that at Tuesday's karaoke night, ''the whole front row just orders water.'' Still, he says an inevitable hazard of bar life remains ''people who drink too much and do stupid things.''

Murray advocates moderate drinking. Alcohol, he insists, will not go away.

''It's a legal drug, and will always have a market,'' he says. ''If you're the type of person who's going to mess up your mind and party, you're going to find a way to do it.''

On a recent Friday night, people are working on it.

On stage, the band Illusion is playing. The singer, a stout blond woman in bare feet, short tights and a neo-leopard-skin tunic, wails into the mike, flicking its cord behind her as she prowls from side to side.

It is 9 p.m., early by bar standards. Only about a dozen people sit scattered at the wooden booths and tables, which are bolted to the floor. A few guys in jeans and baseball caps hunch at the bar, where two boxers bob on the TV.

The lights of a passing taxi illuminate the street outside the Hotel Rumford on a quiet Friday night. Two cab companies are flourishing in the Rumford-Mexico area, helping to keep intoxicated drivers off the roads. Staff photo by David A. Rodgers

A few more guys hover around the pool tables, upright cue in one hand, beer, usually Budweiser, in the other. Women in puffy hairdos stand nearby in self-conscious groups, eyeing new arrivals and exchanging knowing looks.

As the night wears on, people waft in, greet each other, drift to the booths or the deafening dance floor. At the bar, the boxers are replaced by a football game. The beer pitchers empty faster. The crowd thickens, and so does the smoke. People start to shout. They list and stumble, slightly.

As revelers drink, their personal traits emerge amplified, crystallized, as boldly outlined as a cartoon character's.

John LaVorgne, a 32-year-old electrician at the mill, sits passive and sad-eyed before his beer, a dazed smile fixed on his face. Asked how many beers he has had, he ponders the question, puzzled.

''I dunno . . .'' he says slowly, struggling to concentrate. ''Seven . . . eight . . .?''

Does he drink often? ''Every weekend,'' he says, deadpan. Do people here drink a lot? Yes, he says, but they used to drink more.

''It's not the same,'' he says. ''The town's got nothing. There's nothing here.''

William Pulk reels red-faced around the room, raging against the mill where he has worked for 17 years.

''Mead madness!'' he keeps shouting. ''Mead madness!''

As closing time nears, people yell at each other - leaning in, mouth to ear, ubiquitous beer in one hand, smoke curling from the other - to be heard over the din. There is a frenzied, jagged, out-of-control edge in the air.

At 1 a.m., racing cars veer on TV. Suddenly, it seems, everyone is staggering.

John Austin, 24, carefully cradles two Coronas. ''Last call,'' he explains.

A rental store owner, he says he has been here every night for the last month, since he split up with his girlfriend. He nudges the beers, smiling.

''Drink - the great escape!'' he exclaims.

A few minutes after one o'clock, several guys slouch on a bench at the door of the Barn Board, woozily awaiting rides. They are watched over by Gary ''Harvey'' Mcquire, the bar's bouncer, who sits as round and placid as Buddha.

Says Mcquire, ''I've seen it all.''

The son of an alcoholic whose ribs he once broke in a fight, he says he started drinking at 13. Through years as a carpenter and pipefitter, he says, he drank every night.

He stopped drinking a couple of years ago, except for an occasional beer. Now, he regularly watches other people get sloppy-drunk.

''It makes me glad I stopped,'' he says, ''because I don't want to look like that.''

His charges are gradually delivered into cars and cabs. Outside, clusters of curious people stand surrounded by the flashing blue lights of police cruisers.

Mexico's Chicken Coop is one of roughly 20 establishments in the Rumford area, including restaurants and private bottle clubs, that serve alcohol.Staff photo by David A. Rodgers

After the blaring chaos of the bar, the street seems serene, and the police, in their dark uniforms, impossibly tidy. A couple of officers wrestle with an unruly drunk, who yells threats. They bundle him into a cruiser for the short ride to the station, where he is charged with disorderly conduct.

The crowd lingers, chatting with police officers who are, after all, their neighbors. As he climbs back into his unmarked car, Lt. Wayne Gallant of the Rumford police declares them ''a pretty happy bunch tonight.''

A wry plainclothes detective who sometimes helps with OUI patrols, Gallant wheels his car around, radio crackling. For the next hour or so, he roves streets so saturated with cruisers they often pass each other.

Gallant doesn't find much action. He stops some kids walking in the road, gently reminds them ''the town spent a lot of money on new sidewalks,'' and asks, could they use them? He provides backup to a few possible OUIs. Each time, he watches the officer's slow approach, the cautious leaning into the car, the flashlight scan and quiet questions.

Gallant checks out the last car. After it pulls away, he reports one passenger was ''teetering on comatose'' and another had had ''plenty of firewater.'' The driver had been called to come to their aid. She was in her pajamas, and sober.

The next morning the air is wet and steamy, so thick it seems to have absorbed last night's smoke and ragged noise. Downtown at the Christian Family Festival, the Ferris wheel spins, and the smells of fried dough and sulfur mingle in the dense air.

At VFW Post 1641, past the sign on the door that warns, ''No Profanity,'' morning looks like nighttime. In the smoky darkness, a few guys shoot pool and a few more belly up to the bar, sipping beers.

A grizzled Rick Bridges, Budweiser in one hand, explains why they're here.

''Get out of work and drink,'' he says happily. ''State law.''

Bridges says he has worked three seven-day weeks in a row. Now he is done, he announces, ''and I'm going to drink and drink and drink.''

Over at American Legion Post 24, Tony Gallant, toothpick in mouth, says he is all done drinking. He says he is ''a reformed alcoholic, a shot-and-beer man'' who stopped drinking 14 years ago because of the dry heaves each morning after.

''It was no fun,'' he explains, smiling.

John Belyea, his face equally creased, nods, remembering ''when I'd wake up in the morning and wonder where my car was.'' He has been coming to the post for 49 years, he says, to ''see my buddies, play cribbage, play pool.''

So, this is not really a place to drink? He hesitates, wrestling with history.

''We do our share,'' he says shortly.