[TheForge] [Yarnin'] Re: Living in Maine.

[Mike]

> A young couple from "away" moves into this old guy's neighborhood.
> The young man says to the old timer, "Well, I know that I will never
> become a Mainer, but if my wife and I decide to have children, they
> will be Mainers."  The old guy replies, "If a cat had her kittens in
> the oven you wouldn't call them biscuits."

View from the opposite side of the fence:  Any place that *isn't* like
that isn't a place at all, it's just a convention, a happenstance
convocation of passers by, some of whom stay long enough to learn your
first name.

If you don't know that old Mrs. Pritchell wet herself in the 3rd
grade, why Mervyn spent over a thousand dollars to move that big
boulder into his front yard, why Deacon Wainwright hanged hisself in
the Grange Hall in '57, why you can trust young Perkins with your
horse, your car or your tools but not your money and who Alice Enlow's
real daddy is, well, son, you ain't really *here* at all.  You're just
not overly hasty about passing through.  And there's no way you can
find all that stuff out unless you lived here all your life.  Maybe
not even then.  Where'd you say you were from?

1965: Long-haired young feller in a VW Microbus with NY plates
pulls up in front of the general store in Beddington, Maine.  Three old
geezers are sitting in rocking chairs on the veranda, havin' a chaw.

Kid says,

  "Hi!"

Old fellers rock, don't say anything.

  "Looks like rain."

No response.  Rock, chew, spit.

   "My name is Jason Perkins."

No response.  So the kid grabs the the screen door handle to go on
into the store.  One old feller says,

   "Perkins?"

   "Yes!  Jason Perkins.  What's your name?"

   "Any relation to old Williston Perkins up Lead Creek, raises them
    black and white pigs?"

   "Oh!  Yes!  He's my grandfather."

Long pause.

   "So your daddy would be Harvey Perkins, married that little
    Ellsmore girl?"

   "That's right!  My mother was an Ellsmore before she married my
    father."

Long pause.  Spit, rock.

   "*Might* rain."




- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer@tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^

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