An Essay by a Maine Man in Mexico
Let me begin by saying that I was not born in Maine so I am not a Native Mainer. That fact makes a difference to some "real" Mainers, although I can't for the life of me understand why. I guess it's like being Italian or Jewish. A way to include some and exclude others. I was brought to Maine when I was three and raised as a Mainer. I have not, however, lived in Maine for many years. Some of those years by choice and some by chance. If the philosophers are correct, we experience life as a succession of choices which have consequences, which lead to more choices and ...well, you get the idea. Anyway, through a long sequence of choices and consequences I have been away from Maine since 1973. But my memory of Maine and it's seasons is as clear as if I had never left. Maine has only three seasons. Humorists and cynics say there are only two seasons, Winter and Tourist. While others insist that Maine has four distinctly separate and beautiful seasons. This could be true if a Spring and Fall can be a week or ten days in length. And then there are those who divide Maine into recreational seasons. There's Black Fly season, Trout season, Mosquito season, Hunting season, Black Fly season, again, and, of course football season, High School Football Season, to be correct. But I know, having been raised there, that there are only three distinct seasons. One of these seasons, however, repeats twice during the year.
Winter is the longest of these three. It begins somewhere around Columbus Day and ends around Memorial Day. Other than being exceptionally pretty once in a while, winter is dark, cold and quiet. Dark because the sun doesn't rise until after school or work begins and sets at, or very nearly at, the time you get home from work or school. Quiet because everyone bunkers in, shuts down, and goes into hibernation mode for the entire season. The tourists are gone, the "away" people have left for another year, and, other than ice fishing, and that strange crowd that ride snowmobiles, there's really nothing much to do. Winter in Maine is cold. Not a refreshing, exhilarating type of cold. But a forehead numbing, finger freezing, peel the skin off your cheeks, cold. And damp. I have many, not so fond, memories of walking home from school in the dark when the temperature was dropping from a high of 15. By the time I got to the old iron bridge from Bangor to Brewer I was so cold that my tears froze on my cheeks and I couldn't feel my forehead anymore. Why was I crying? Well, I hated the fact that I had to go to that Catholic school five miles away instead of the public school which was literally in my back yard. Now I know that sounds like sour grapes, and maybe it is. I had no one to blame for my fate. I had behaved badly in public school and was sent to the Nuns for the discipline I so desperately needed. So, I made that trip every day for three school years. As it turned out, I learned much more about myself and life than anything the school taught me. These daily treks alone through the freezing cold and stinging snow gave me time to contemplate my fate, and I hated my life in Maine at those times. This same walk in the opposite direction, however, was full of promise and excitement. It was just as cold and just as long, but the walk to school was, somehow, fun. I looked forward to it almost every day. Some days I would stop at the Bangor Rye Company and buy a freshly baked "Boogie" roll for a nickel and use it to warm my hands. It also warmed my body as I savored it while walking up the hill to Broadway and St. John's School, and later, John Bapst High School. I loved my life in Maine during those times.Summer, or Tourist Season, began around the middle of June and ended precisely at 6:00pm on the first Monday of September, Labor Day. Why 6:00pm? That was the time when the restaurants brought out the "off-season" menus, priced for the Mainers. Summer was the time when Mainers would gear up to take money away from the people coming from "away". These "away" people were those who came to Maine each summer to work in the tourist traps. A lot of people refer to the "away" people as tourists, but they weren't. College kids, hucksters, Carnies, and "foodies" were the real "away" people. They would open craft stores, "antique" shops, and "Authentic New England" food stalls with food shipped in from New York. And summer was their time. Even though they were resented, Mainers permitted these "away" people to come to Maine to work because they always spent more then they earned. The did the work that Mainers did not want to do. And, for the most part, they provided a constant supply of beer and causal sexual opportunities for the locals. Otherwise, they stayed to themselves.
For me, Summer was that brief interval between school terms when I had to work. I worked in the tourist industry, sort off. My Aunt Anna worked in the New Franklin Laundry. For over forty years, she did almost every job in this large commercial laundry, from sweeping the floors to packing finished laundry for delivery. It was hard, crippling work, and she did it every day of her adult life. It was through her influence I was able to get a coveted position each summer. The laundry operated a second shift during summer to accommodate the motels and hotels in the area because they could never keep up with the demands by themselves. I worked the dryers. Four large commercial gas fired dryers that I kept busy for the entire shift. Each afternoon I would begin loading hundreds of pounds of towels, wash clothes, and bath mats into these dryers and then I folded the dried product and packed it for delivery. It was hot, heavy, and repetitious. But I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was left alone. I knew my job and did it without interference from the foreman or other distractions. These were happy times. And I got paid real money. Twice as much as I could get bagging groceries or picking beans or berries. Probably as an omen of the future, I spent a large part of my savings at the end of each season taking the Greyhound to Boston to see the Red Sox and be the same type of resented tourist in Boston we resented in Maine. My mother still says that I couldn't wait to get out of Maine, even then. Maybe she was right.The last of the Maine seasons is Mud Season. This is the few weeks at the end of winter when the melting snow and ice causes the ground to swell with wetness. In farm country, like Iowa or California, this wetness would be welcomed and promise banner crops and beautiful green, well, everything. In Maine, at least the part of Maine where I lived, it meant a soggy bog of slate gray clay mud. It oozed up through the cracks in the pavement, it crept out from under sidewalks. This disgustingly slimy, silvery mess splashed out of potholes large enough to sail in, dousing passersby with gray yuk. Every car was gray. Every tire on every car was gray. Every shoe not covered with rubbers, was gray. There was no escaping it. Now, as I said at the beginning of this piece, Mud Season is the one season Mainers get to enjoy twice each year. Enjoy is probably a poor choice of words because there is nothing whatsoever enjoyable about Mud Season. As slimy and sticky as the "after Winter" mud season was, at least it held a promise that things were getting warmer and that Summer was close by. The "after Summer" mud season was particularly uncomfortable. It provided all of the same yuckiness, without any promise of hope. This season was marked by rain. Relentless, cold, steady, days at a time, rain. Not a nice thunder storm to clean the air. But a cold, gray rain, falling from dark gray clouds that hung so close to the gray streaked ground that you felt like a iron gray anvil was hanging over your head. This mud season did not promise hope, it was the preamble to the long, dark, quiet, and cold winter. I believe that this Mud Season had a purpose, however. This Mud Season was designed to make people wish, no pray, for a change, any change. Winter, with all of it's problems was a welcome relief after enduring the clammy, gray cold of Mud Season. That first clear, crisp day of winter, with it's bright, sparkling blue sky that went on forever, was so refreshing and renewing that it made living in Maine a joy.In his infinite wisdom, the creator put those two sets of despicable, miserable few weeks in Maine to force Mainers to appreciate their short, hot, muggy summer, dominated by "away" people who had more money than sense, and their long, dark, and cold winter when nobody had anything except school, church, neighbors, and family.There is much I miss about living in Maine. My family mostly. I left Maine 35 years ago to earn a living, something not available in Maine at that time. I have traveled back "home" many times over the years. But each time, I was aware that I was now from "away" and not really a Mainer. I'm not alone in this. I heard the same thing at reunions from classmates who, like me, left Maine to find a career and go back now to visit. We had become tourists in our own home town. My wife and I have discussed returning to Maine now that we are retired. We remember events in our childhood and remember the places that were special to us. And then we talk to my parents, who continue to live in Maine, and hear that those places are no longer there. They tells of heating oil at four dollars a gallon and how it's a struggle to make it from one year to the next. So, unfortunately, now that we are retired and on a fixed income, we can not afford to live in Maine. We left Maine because of money and we can't go back for the same reason. We now live in a small city in Mexico. Our meager pensions go much farther here allowing us to live a comfortable, quiet life. No snow or cold weather. No heating oil bills, no snow tires, or heavy winter clothes. And, we get very little rain. But when it does rain, we get mud. Slimy, sticky, baby poop yellow mud that gets into everything. It splashes on the cars, cakes on our shoes, and tracks into the house. It's very yucky. It makes me homesick, sometimes.
Let me begin by saying that I was not born in Maine so I am not a Native Mainer. That fact makes a difference to some "real" Mainers, although I can't for the life of me understand why. I guess it's like being Italian or Jewish. A way to include some and exclude others. I was brought to Maine when I was three and raised as a Mainer. I have not, however, lived in Maine for many years. Some of those years by choice and some by chance. If the philosophers are correct, we experience life as a succession of choices which have consequences, which lead to more choices and ...well, you get the idea. Anyway, through a long sequence of choices and consequences I have been away from Maine since 1973. But my memory of Maine and it's seasons is as clear as if I had never left. Maine has only three seasons. Humorists and cynics say there are only two seasons, Winter and Tourist. While others insist that Maine has four distinctly separate and beautiful seasons. This could be true if a Spring and Fall can be a week or ten days in length. And then there are those who divide Maine into recreational seasons. There's Black Fly season, Trout season, Mosquito season, Hunting season, Black Fly season, again, and, of course football season, High School Football Season, to be correct. But I know, having been raised there, that there are only three distinct seasons. One of these seasons, however, repeats twice during the year.
Winter is the longest of these three. It begins somewhere around Columbus Day and ends around Memorial Day. Other than being exceptionally pretty once in a while, winter is dark, cold and quiet. Dark because the sun doesn't rise until after school or work begins and sets at, or very nearly at, the time you get home from work or school. Quiet because everyone bunkers in, shuts down, and goes into hibernation mode for the entire season. The tourists are gone, the "away" people have left for another year, and, other than ice fishing, and that strange crowd that ride snowmobiles, there's really nothing much to do. Winter in Maine is cold. Not a refreshing, exhilarating type of cold. But a forehead numbing, finger freezing, peel the skin off your cheeks, cold. And damp. I have many, not so fond, memories of walking home from school in the dark when the temperature was dropping from a high of 15. By the time I got to the old iron bridge from Bangor to Brewer I was so cold that my tears froze on my cheeks and I couldn't feel my forehead anymore. Why was I crying? Well, I hated the fact that I had to go to that Catholic school five miles away instead of the public school which was literally in my back yard. Now I know that sounds like sour grapes, and maybe it is. I had no one to blame for my fate. I had behaved badly in public school and was sent to the Nuns for the discipline I so desperately needed. So, I made that trip every day for three school years. As it turned out, I learned much more about myself and life than anything the school taught me. These daily treks alone through the freezing cold and stinging snow gave me time to contemplate my fate, and I hated my life in Maine at those times. This same walk in the opposite direction, however, was full of promise and excitement. It was just as cold and just as long, but the walk to school was, somehow, fun. I looked forward to it almost every day. Some days I would stop at the Bangor Rye Company and buy a freshly baked "Boogie" roll for a nickel and use it to warm my hands. It also warmed my body as I savored it while walking up the hill to Broadway and St. John's School, and later, John Bapst High School. I loved my life in Maine during those times.Summer, or Tourist Season, began around the middle of June and ended precisely at 6:00pm on the first Monday of September, Labor Day. Why 6:00pm? That was the time when the restaurants brought out the "off-season" menus, priced for the Mainers. Summer was the time when Mainers would gear up to take money away from the people coming from "away". These "away" people were those who came to Maine each summer to work in the tourist traps. A lot of people refer to the "away" people as tourists, but they weren't. College kids, hucksters, Carnies, and "foodies" were the real "away" people. They would open craft stores, "antique" shops, and "Authentic New England" food stalls with food shipped in from New York. And summer was their time. Even though they were resented, Mainers permitted these "away" people to come to Maine to work because they always spent more then they earned. The did the work that Mainers did not want to do. And, for the most part, they provided a constant supply of beer and causal sexual opportunities for the locals. Otherwise, they stayed to themselves.
For me, Summer was that brief interval between school terms when I had to work. I worked in the tourist industry, sort off. My Aunt Anna worked in the New Franklin Laundry. For over forty years, she did almost every job in this large commercial laundry, from sweeping the floors to packing finished laundry for delivery. It was hard, crippling work, and she did it every day of her adult life. It was through her influence I was able to get a coveted position each summer. The laundry operated a second shift during summer to accommodate the motels and hotels in the area because they could never keep up with the demands by themselves. I worked the dryers. Four large commercial gas fired dryers that I kept busy for the entire shift. Each afternoon I would begin loading hundreds of pounds of towels, wash clothes, and bath mats into these dryers and then I folded the dried product and packed it for delivery. It was hot, heavy, and repetitious. But I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was left alone. I knew my job and did it without interference from the foreman or other distractions. These were happy times. And I got paid real money. Twice as much as I could get bagging groceries or picking beans or berries. Probably as an omen of the future, I spent a large part of my savings at the end of each season taking the Greyhound to Boston to see the Red Sox and be the same type of resented tourist in Boston we resented in Maine. My mother still says that I couldn't wait to get out of Maine, even then. Maybe she was right.The last of the Maine seasons is Mud Season. This is the few weeks at the end of winter when the melting snow and ice causes the ground to swell with wetness. In farm country, like Iowa or California, this wetness would be welcomed and promise banner crops and beautiful green, well, everything. In Maine, at least the part of Maine where I lived, it meant a soggy bog of slate gray clay mud. It oozed up through the cracks in the pavement, it crept out from under sidewalks. This disgustingly slimy, silvery mess splashed out of potholes large enough to sail in, dousing passersby with gray yuk. Every car was gray. Every tire on every car was gray. Every shoe not covered with rubbers, was gray. There was no escaping it. Now, as I said at the beginning of this piece, Mud Season is the one season Mainers get to enjoy twice each year. Enjoy is probably a poor choice of words because there is nothing whatsoever enjoyable about Mud Season. As slimy and sticky as the "after Winter" mud season was, at least it held a promise that things were getting warmer and that Summer was close by. The "after Summer" mud season was particularly uncomfortable. It provided all of the same yuckiness, without any promise of hope. This season was marked by rain. Relentless, cold, steady, days at a time, rain. Not a nice thunder storm to clean the air. But a cold, gray rain, falling from dark gray clouds that hung so close to the gray streaked ground that you felt like a iron gray anvil was hanging over your head. This mud season did not promise hope, it was the preamble to the long, dark, quiet, and cold winter. I believe that this Mud Season had a purpose, however. This Mud Season was designed to make people wish, no pray, for a change, any change. Winter, with all of it's problems was a welcome relief after enduring the clammy, gray cold of Mud Season. That first clear, crisp day of winter, with it's bright, sparkling blue sky that went on forever, was so refreshing and renewing that it made living in Maine a joy.In his infinite wisdom, the creator put those two sets of despicable, miserable few weeks in Maine to force Mainers to appreciate their short, hot, muggy summer, dominated by "away" people who had more money than sense, and their long, dark, and cold winter when nobody had anything except school, church, neighbors, and family.There is much I miss about living in Maine. My family mostly. I left Maine 35 years ago to earn a living, something not available in Maine at that time. I have traveled back "home" many times over the years. But each time, I was aware that I was now from "away" and not really a Mainer. I'm not alone in this. I heard the same thing at reunions from classmates who, like me, left Maine to find a career and go back now to visit. We had become tourists in our own home town. My wife and I have discussed returning to Maine now that we are retired. We remember events in our childhood and remember the places that were special to us. And then we talk to my parents, who continue to live in Maine, and hear that those places are no longer there. They tells of heating oil at four dollars a gallon and how it's a struggle to make it from one year to the next. So, unfortunately, now that we are retired and on a fixed income, we can not afford to live in Maine. We left Maine because of money and we can't go back for the same reason. We now live in a small city in Mexico. Our meager pensions go much farther here allowing us to live a comfortable, quiet life. No snow or cold weather. No heating oil bills, no snow tires, or heavy winter clothes. And, we get very little rain. But when it does rain, we get mud. Slimy, sticky, baby poop yellow mud that gets into everything. It splashes on the cars, cakes on our shoes, and tracks into the house. It's very yucky. It makes me homesick, sometimes.
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