I was born at Portland Eye and Ear and for almost 65 years I resided in Maine. I went to Colby in Waterville and Law School in Portland. I represented Cumberland County in the Maine Senate. I was involved in Maine politics from 1968 when I tried to organize Maine colleges for Bobby Kennedy. I practiced law in Maine for over 30 years. And while my professional activities took me all over the country, my home was always in Maine.
Through my political and professional life I got to know the state as well as anybody extant. I have visited more Maine towns than exist. Maine currently advertises “almost 500 towns.” I have visited 503. Places like Centerville in Washington County and Bennedicta in Aroostook are now gone but not forgotten by this peripatetic son of the Pine Tree State. I would be the first to admit that there is very little practical use for the knowledge accumulated by crisscrossing the state hundreds of times, but I take some pride in having found one: helping the Democrats with redistricting for 2 decades.
But 65 is a good age to do something different and as I approached that important anniversary, we moved to Boston about 5 miles from Ben Franklin’s birthplace. Now, after 3 wonderful years in the new Athens we have moved again to Northern Virginia, about 5 miles from Washington’s Mount Vernon. These moves have been occasioned by my wife’s employment, but once again I find myself rewarded by getting to know new places.
Of course there are things I miss due to distance from my native soil: mostly the friends of a lifetime and the islands of Penobscot Bay. That said, much of what I miss of Maine is just a memory like Bennedicta. Towns dominated by dairy farms and apple orchards, a north woods pumping money into the Maine economy through the sale of timber and pulp, cities employing people in the manufacture of paper, shoes, shirts, blankets, kids cloths and cans, there things are for the most part gone. And in much of Maine nothing has really filled the void.
I grew up on a dairy farm in a Maine farming community, Cumberland, Maine. The farms are gone, overgrown by a plethora of housing developments. The town is much more affluent in this new iteration when it produces nothing then it was when I was young and we were providing apples and milk for Portland. This is the story of southern Maine, now more in the penumbra of Boston than it ever was prior to 1820. And Maine along Route 1 has benefited from the growth in the tourism industry and people seeking out coastal Maine in their middle or retirement years.
The rest of Maine is hardly a shadow of its former self. In spite of 50 years of state tax and spending policies, Humpty Dumpty has not been put back together. Five decades of a policy bankrupt of new ideas that now has devolved to where it has all the efficacy and charm of a Tijuana “businessman” touting the appealing qualities of his family members.
To be fair, much of what has happened to Maine has happened all across America to regions which relied on natural resources and the industries they supply. In fact Hawaii’s Second Congressional District looks alot like Maine’s. The sugar and pineapple farms are gone and the sugar refineries and pineapple processing plants are empty shells that mark the graves of once prosperous enterprises.
So my trips to the far corners of Maine are a bitter sweet experience that I do not miss. Maybe the families that have moved out of Maine will be better off and find fuller lives than their grandparents who lived here in better times. But I miss the self sufficiency and independence that once was Maine and applaud the efforts of young people to recreate it on a new framework.
Meanwhile, I will do my best not to brag on how many “Johnny Rebs” the Merrill boys shot on Little Round Top.
Through my political and professional life I got to know the state as well as anybody extant. I have visited more Maine towns than exist. Maine currently advertises “almost 500 towns.” I have visited 503. Places like Centerville in Washington County and Bennedicta in Aroostook are now gone but not forgotten by this peripatetic son of the Pine Tree State. I would be the first to admit that there is very little practical use for the knowledge accumulated by crisscrossing the state hundreds of times, but I take some pride in having found one: helping the Democrats with redistricting for 2 decades.
But 65 is a good age to do something different and as I approached that important anniversary, we moved to Boston about 5 miles from Ben Franklin’s birthplace. Now, after 3 wonderful years in the new Athens we have moved again to Northern Virginia, about 5 miles from Washington’s Mount Vernon. These moves have been occasioned by my wife’s employment, but once again I find myself rewarded by getting to know new places.
Of course there are things I miss due to distance from my native soil: mostly the friends of a lifetime and the islands of Penobscot Bay. That said, much of what I miss of Maine is just a memory like Bennedicta. Towns dominated by dairy farms and apple orchards, a north woods pumping money into the Maine economy through the sale of timber and pulp, cities employing people in the manufacture of paper, shoes, shirts, blankets, kids cloths and cans, there things are for the most part gone. And in much of Maine nothing has really filled the void.
I grew up on a dairy farm in a Maine farming community, Cumberland, Maine. The farms are gone, overgrown by a plethora of housing developments. The town is much more affluent in this new iteration when it produces nothing then it was when I was young and we were providing apples and milk for Portland. This is the story of southern Maine, now more in the penumbra of Boston than it ever was prior to 1820. And Maine along Route 1 has benefited from the growth in the tourism industry and people seeking out coastal Maine in their middle or retirement years.
The rest of Maine is hardly a shadow of its former self. In spite of 50 years of state tax and spending policies, Humpty Dumpty has not been put back together. Five decades of a policy bankrupt of new ideas that now has devolved to where it has all the efficacy and charm of a Tijuana “businessman” touting the appealing qualities of his family members.
To be fair, much of what has happened to Maine has happened all across America to regions which relied on natural resources and the industries they supply. In fact Hawaii’s Second Congressional District looks alot like Maine’s. The sugar and pineapple farms are gone and the sugar refineries and pineapple processing plants are empty shells that mark the graves of once prosperous enterprises.
So my trips to the far corners of Maine are a bitter sweet experience that I do not miss. Maybe the families that have moved out of Maine will be better off and find fuller lives than their grandparents who lived here in better times. But I miss the self sufficiency and independence that once was Maine and applaud the efforts of young people to recreate it on a new framework.
Meanwhile, I will do my best not to brag on how many “Johnny Rebs” the Merrill boys shot on Little Round Top.