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This is an interesting thread. I'm a lifelong born Mainer with a globe-trotting spouse, and as of February we're now living in...Houston, Texas. To say it's been a mind-numbing change is an understatement. We could probably write a book about the transition. We've traveled extensively over the years, but we always had Maine to come home to (incidentally, we've kept our house and will be back as often as we can). This is the first time we've actually lived wholly away from Maine, though. More on that in other posts, perhaps.
Anyway, apart from being so homesick we could die, we laugh a lot (it's dark humor, believe me) about the societal differences we've encountered daily since we've moved. I'm not talking the obvious huge city vs. small town differences--it goes much deeper than that. Mainers really are unique (God bless us, every one!) in how we all approach things (usually very, very pragmatically) versus the rest of the world...well, I think it accounts for a lot of the bafflement outsiders feel. What "works," if you can call it that, elsewhere simply may not fly in Maine. What outsiders view as hostile or unwelcoming attitudes on our part is so often simple tooth-clenching frustration at being expected to change to meet their expectations, no matter how unreasonable.
Case in point: we were fortunate enough to live in a very small, very closely-knit community that, like so many places along the coast, has a significant summer population that outstrips the year-round population. We were on a stretch of road that was very picturesque, yet had managed to maintain a solid working-class base...fishermen, woodsmen, a nuts-and-bolts third-generation garage. Everybody co-existed beautifully, from the nationally-known author to the parakeet-keeping LPN. There was a very old and beautiful property (the oldest surviving property in the village, former ferry landing and post office from the late 1700s) smack in the middle of it all; one day, the new owners--he was an attorney, we're all still trying to explain her--rolled in. They had apparently inherited the place from her family, who'd vacationed quietly there...up to that point, anyway. The proverbial **** hit the fan almost from Day One. They were from a gated community in the mid-Atlantic and managed to ostracize themselves almost immediately, and I mean with virtually everyone, by acting exactly like they were still living in, well, a gated community. The first thing they did was to go after the little garage across the street...sued the owner for virtually everything you could imagine, from the cars being worked on in the yard to the laundry on his lines to his lack of fencing, then they even went after the stockade fencing he put up in a desperate attempt to block the offending view from his aggressive new neighbors. He couldn't do anything to please the newbies, no matter how hard he tried (and, God, did he try). Next they went after his business permit in an attempt to shut him down. Mind you, I doubt he cleared $20K a year, and this was his livelihood. I wish some of the less-enchanted on this thread could have sat in on the incredibly acrimonious Selectmen's hearings held in the town hall due to this. Virtually the entire town turned up again and again to support the garage owner during those hearings, and the newbies were just shocked by that. They really felt that they had a leg to stand on, and that everyone was against them simply because they were 'from away.' They truly didn't have a clue that the wagons were circling around the garage owner in a united front just because he was a genuinely nice man, deeply invested in our community (the fire chief, no less), who didn't deserve the crap he was being dealt.
I'll move on from that for now but can give so many more examples. I was sitting in a friend's real estate office last fall when the phone rang. It was a woman who was recent to Maine and renting on the peninsula; she'd heard gunfire--somebody sighting in their rifle in the gravel pit--and was panicked. Should she call the police? She wanted it stopped! Now! What? It was LEGAL? Was it safe to go outside? Who could she speak to to get it stopped? Now?!
I mean, I am honestly sympathetic to her fear, but did she research Maine one iota before landing in it?
Then (and I swear this is true) there is the woman--another summer resident--who called a family member of mine who's the Code Enforcement Officer for an island community...she wanted the lobster boats to stop running their engines while pulling traps at four a.m. off her place on the point as they were interfering with her sleep. I wish I could say I was joking. I'm not. She also wanted them to cease setting traps off her place altogether, again, due to the "disruption" of her vacation. Her utter sense of entitlement was unreal.
I won't even get started on the seasonal cacophony of car alarms and rude drivers, people shouting on cell phones About! Their! Vacation! in our post offices, grocery stores, and eateries, or the prevailing attitude from too many out-of-staters that most Mainers are provincial rubes with no education. Hey, not only have I been around the globe, I read constantly, like good wine, own a bunch of Chanel and Christian Louboutins, and have a plum AmEx. I also kept dairy goats and chickens, have young adult sons who hunt very capably, plowed my own driveway with my truck, survived the '98 ice storm with just my woodstove, and am very comfortable in my Carhartt zip-ups and Sorels, which I lived in every winter. And..I dearly love and miss most of my neighbors and townspeople, the tenth-gen's and out-of-staters who "get it" alike. Who'd have guessed? Yes, I am for real, and there are lots of people in Maine like me.
Done rambling--- enjoy spring at home. Are the blackflies out yet?
I think that all of New England has a streak of "Yankee cussedness" that people from the rest of the country don't understand, and don't like. It's born of the rugged climate and the harshness of life in the northeast corner of the country. It has been said that the northeast was settled by the British and Europeans, while the rest of the country was settled by Americans. A New England Democrat is a whole 'nother animal than a California Democrat. Not as extreme, not as "new age", not as socialist. A New England Republican is likely more conservative than a DC Republican. Not that any of this is "good" or "bad" - just different. People moving to any of the New England states from the south, midwest, or the west, are often taken aback by the "old-fashioned" thinking and ways that they find in NE. It isn't just Maine. I see it here in RI, too, where my family and I are accepted as natives. I think we would do just fine up in Maine. It's about working hard for what you have, about not putting on airs, about not being competitive with your neighbors just because you might have come into a little money... be careful - you never know who the 'millionaire next door' is! I think New England folks, by and large, have more respect for the dollar, how hard it is to earn, and how fast it can be taken away from you. They are more likely to put some away for a rainy day, as we get so many of them here. Folks from away spend like there's no tomorrow, and it seems that much of what they do is for show. That never made any sense to me. We are not always as tolerant of "diversity" as other parts of the country, as we have been hurt by it and are distrustful until our trust has been earned. I know a lot of people find this exasperating and I don't blame them. The truth is, if you are not comfortable here after having given it a good try, perhaps your culture differs just a bit from ours. Not a bad thing, just a thing; recognize it and move on to where you will be happy, and don't leave with any bitterness, as we are all Americans just doing the best we can.
<snip>And..I dearly love and miss most of my neighbors and townspeople, the tenth-gen's and out-of-staters who "get it" alike. Who'd have guessed? Yes, I am for real, and there are lots of people in Maine like me.
Done rambling--- enjoy spring at home. Are the blackflies out yet?
Well said, Seaglass. I am one of the rank newbies to Maine... been here less than 2 months. I moved here from the "other" down east (NC) which has much culture in common with traditional Maine -- including, unfortunately, the summer people and folks like you rail about and I "got it" rather quickly when I moved there, largely thanks to having fallen in with someone like you... a well-traveled, well-educated local gal who was the director of a large community museum that has, as its mission, helping preserve and share the importance of the traditional local ways.
I know there are lots of folks here like you... I am meeting them, day by day and week by week. What I wonder is how anyone can have the impression that Mainers as a whole are unlearned and unread... when ever poke-and plum town, it seems, has a library and you can hardly turn around without seeing a bookstore of some sort -- most of them real ones, too.. mom and pop, often second hand. SOMEONE has to be reading those books the first time around! And there's a lot more than just titles from the best seller lists and Oprah's pick of the month...
Hi, Starwalker, and welcome to Maine! I hope you'll love it and that it'll be a great fit for you. As I tried to say, it's not a Maine vs. Out-of-state thing, it's a perspective thing. There are tons of people in my home town 'from away' who are beloved, valued, irreplaceable and unquestioned members of the community--our wonderful, wonderful minister, to name just one.
One of the many things I'm missing horrendously about home is the incomparable Blue Hill Books...if any of you out there have visited Nick and Mariah's tiny little jewel of a place, you'll know exactly what I mean. And, yes, Maine has lots of wonderful independent bookstores (we have to do something all winter besides ice fish--).
Well said, Seaglass. I am one of the rank newbies to Maine... been here less than 2 months. I moved here from the "other" down east (NC) which has much culture in common with traditional Maine -- including, unfortunately, the summer people and folks like you rail about and I "got it" rather quickly when I moved there, largely thanks to having fallen in with someone like you... a well-traveled, well-educated local gal who was the director of a large community museum that has, as its mission, helping preserve and share the importance of the traditional local ways.
I know there are lots of folks here like you... I am meeting them, day by day and week by week. What I wonder is how anyone can have the impression that Mainers as a whole are unlearned and unread... when ever poke-and plum town, it seems, has a library and you can hardly turn around without seeing a bookstore of some sort -- most of them real ones, too.. mom and pop, often second hand. SOMEONE has to be reading those books the first time around! And there's a lot more than just titles from the best seller lists and Oprah's pick of the month...
I have always felt that Mainers are extremely smart people. I was on here the other day b****ing about kids making remarks about my kid's skin color, but I also failed to mention that my kids have learned more here in Maine (in less than a year) than they ever would have learned in Round Rock. The kids are way more observant of the natural world here. My oldest son is collecting rocks, and my younger son wants to garden. They come home from school and tell me stories about the schoolyard being haunted. They wander in the woods out back of our trailer, pretending they are hunting. Their imaginations and intellect run wild here.
Flycessna, Your interpretation of Mainers treatment of you and others from away has kind of mellowed over the past few months. I know you still don't completely understand why people from Maine are the way they are but it seems to me that you are TRYING hard to understand and perhaps becoming more accepting of the fact that you really are not being singled out or snubbed because as you have observed many Mainers don't even talk to other natives they have known all their lives. Call it an indepent nature, crotchetiness, stubbornness or whatever but as you seem to be understanding it is not ignorance. It really is just the way people are around here. Good for you. Like I've said before it just takes time and understanding and you Will be come a friend to the native Mainers and you will fit in! I still have that bottle of maple syrup set aside for you...neighbor!
Thank you maineah, I can't really say I've changed any opinion....I just changed the way I articulated it. I would never think Maine people are ignorant. And i've never taking it personally. I just think that people who are coming here need to understand there is a little bit of a differnent culture.
Overall Maine is not the place for me to work and raise a family.........I realized it the first 3 months I got here.....and its been a 13 year struggle trying to find a way to move out of her and UP. I love the geography of Maine, will always come back for visit's. But I see no reason why anyone would be glad to see me leave
I was on here the other day b****ing about kids making remarks about my kid's skin color,... <snip>
Txmom, whenever somebody is hurtful or rude about children, you have the right to ***** loud and long in my book!
Glad to hear they are adjusting to Maine and it's unique charms. There is a ton of things for kids to poke about, and around. Most of them they will learn from. I wish I had a dime for every rock, pebble, piece of bark, or countless other things the kids have drug up to me and asked what it is, where it came from, and a million other questions. Good thing is that Maine doesn't have the poisonous snakes around for the kids to be careful of stirring up by accident.
One of the many things I'm missing horrendously about home is the incomparable Blue Hill Books...if any of you out there have visited Nick and Mariah's tiny little jewel of a place, you'll know exactly what I mean. And, yes, Maine has lots of wonderful independent bookstores (we have to do something all winter besides ice fish--).
Thanks for the welcome! I am anxiously looking forward to being able to SETTLE -- we are looking for a place to buy, the proverbial needle in the haystack, but at least realtors here don't laugh out loud at my wants and my price range they just look thoughtful and start digging deep in the MLS -- and put down roots somewhere in more or less central Maine. Not the coast -- not this time, though I will still love visiting the fishing communities -- and not as deep in the north woods as I would go if I did not have to find work. I do web and print design and the loons and moose (and the northern Maine woods dwellers who share habitat with them ) don't need a lot of my services. LOL I have my first Maine client -- a long-time guide with offices in Bangor -- so I will need to be close enough to touch base with him in person ever so often.
Gotta ask... what town is Blue Hill Books found in? We have been exploring -- and will continue to for a long time I am sure, and I will be sure to stop by when we are in the neighborhood, if only I know where to keep my eyes peeled.
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enjoy spring at home. Are the blackflies out yet?
