My relationship with Maine started before my birth. My father and mother were dating in 1954. Mom came up to Old Orchard Beach from Rhode Island with a few girlfriends. Dad got a few of his friends together, and they followed them up.
Mom was pleasantly surprised to see Dad and his pals, but realized what a rascal he was when he set his car clock back an hour. Mom was staying at a bed and breakfast that had a curfew, and she returned late. Being the kind of person she was, Mom was very embarrassed.
Dad got his comeuppance the next day, though. Used to the warmer waters of southeastern Massachusetts, where he grew up, he ran pell-mell into the frigid waves of OOB.
And ran right out again. Poor Dad. Cold water gave him the hives.
I often think, in the summer, about the perceptions I had of Maine before I moved here 31 years ago. This is because I’m often irritated by vacationers who seem to think that Maine is, well, vacationland.
For example, my husband Paul and I were in a coffee shop in good-sized town recently. This community has a theater, a thriving downtown, an excellent library and destination restaurants. It is not “hicksville.” Yet some of our fellow customers, clearly from away, seemed surprised to find such a cool place in what they obviously thought was the very edge of civilization.
Ugh. But I must not forget the time I came to Maine when I was in college.
The parents of one of my roommates had moved from Rhode Island to the midcoast when she was in high school. She therefore had an outsider’s viewpoint. An actress and an adept mimic, she would imitate the traditional Maine accent. “People don’t talk like that anymore,” I told her.
As if I knew. Though my family traveled quite a bit when I was a child, we didn’t go to Maine very often. And when we did, it was usually to—Old Orchard Beach, which is not exactly a microcosm of Maine life. By the time I was a college sophomore, one of my cousins had married a Maine boy and moved to Belfast to teach. I hadn’t had a chance to visit her there yet, but on visits home she had mentioned that many of her students’ parents were “chicken pluckers.” I didn’t even want to think about what that meant.
My college roommate invited me and our third roommate to visit her Maine home during a vacation break. A classmate who lived in Bangor drove us up and left us off on the side of the road somewhere on Route 1 near Thomaston. My first impression of Maine north of Portland was: there are a lot of trees, and it is very dark.
We had to wait awhile—my roommate’s father was late in picking us up. We soon headed down a long, dark road—the road from Thomaston to Port Clyde. Their white Victorian farmhouse stood above and back from the road, and well away from any neighbors.
Perhaps I was a little too heavily influenced by my addiction to the soap opera “Dark Shadows.” It was set in Maine, of course, and was deliciously scary. On the other hand, I was used to more populated areas. When my roommate had described where she lived as “on the Thomaston Road,” rather than in a specific town, I was confused. I had to remind myself that not every state was like Massachusetts, with town after town neatly following one another, each highway boundary marked with an identically-designed sign: “Welcome to Somerset,” my own said, “Founded in 1790.” I had been out west. I knew there were places that didn’t seem to belong to anyone.
By day, the landscape was more welcoming, and definitely beautiful. I heard Maine accents at Port Clyde. When I returned to the “house on the Thomaston Road” a year later, and visited Rockland and Camden as well, I had a more well-rounded vision of Maine.
Fast forward eight years. Paul and I come to Maine for jobs at the Lewiston newspapers. I am used to wearing my classic L.L. Bean boots around Boston, where I’ve been taking writing classes, but I have noticed Bostonians don’t dress well for the winter weather. I am hoping that in Maine people will have more sense.
They don’t.
Next, I notice that the rivers freeze over in winter. That was news to me. I liked it, though. When we moved to the Augusta area a year and half later, I would learn about the midwife Martha Ballard, who rowed across the Kennebec River (which divided Augusta into two parts) in the warm months, and walked across it the rest of the time. Impressive.
The weather was rough our first winter in Maine, and that was followed by a major flood. I’d never experienced a flood before, but as a journalist, I was in the thick of it. I went up to Gardiner, Hallowell and Augusta, where people were in row boats on the streets.
At 30, I was less impressionable than I’d been at 20. I knew the floods wouldn’t come every year. I knew I could find good restaurants and culture right around me. Well, maybe I’d have to drive a little farther than I was used to, but they were there.
But that was then, and this is now. Maine, for better or worse, is more like Massachusetts. I can never forget where I come from, and sometimes my heart aches to return. But I love Maine as well, and try to open my mind to those who just don’t know us yet.
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