July 9, 2013
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Summah Complaint
Overheard at the crowded local general store: “I seeh they got here”. “Ayah”
Downeast Maine is very seasonable – quite busy in the summer- pretty deserted in the winter, and the local economy very much measures this – wintertime jobs are hard to find.
A good friend of ours (Much younger and very much local -his family have only lived here for the past 250 years!) is quite happy that his winter job working on $13 M “Improvements”on a “summer cottage” out on the island has been guaranteed for another year.
This does not mean all summer visitors are welcomed with open arms – often their expectations and attitudes are dead wrong. Native downeasters speak with a pronounced accent which some regard as “quaint” and the speakers as unsophisticated and very provencial. The person I referred to above has been to Europe twice playing with his HS Soccer team – his wife spent her jr college year in France. Regarding them as “Hicks from the sticks” is absurd – but common among the “Summah complaint”
Comments (10)
Hi, Welcome and thanks for visiting my site again! God speed, ~ Pete"Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart." Psalm 37:4
Funny how we often view outsiders through tainted lenses.
Dear Dick,RYC: The lightbulb is in Livermore, CA. It's been burning for 112 years. We just don't have "summer people" and "winter people" here on the West Coast. You either live here or you don't. LOL.Michael F. Nyiri, poet, philosopher, fool
@baldmike2004 - Mike I;m sure there are lots of califorinans who have summer homes up in the woods- Did.t you get to stay in one of them?We have had our summer place here in downeast Maine since 1970 - but we are still part of the "summer complaint"even though many of those in our area have grown up knowing us - as summer people. We and our ilk are actually the backbone of what little prosperity there is here - what with the price of lobster being what it is (Fisherman get about $2/lb at the dock- and though catches are up, they still are not getting rich)Of course one difference is that there is a greater difference between, say Maine and Florida, then there is between No. and So CA.I don't think there is anyplace quite like ME on the west coast - it is certainly much different from the rest of the east coast - indeed the rest of the country. One of the few places where people have lived in very small somewhat isolated communities for hundreds of years - with there own peculiar accents and expressions.
Dick, You're right of course. I'm sort of making a joke. There really aren't "summer" or "winter" people cause there really isn't any summer or winter to speak of. Jack's cabin is certainly a vacation home, and there are winter and summer seasons in Lake Arrowhead, so as a tourist town it does fill up when snow is on the ground (Snow Summit in Big Bear is the largest ski resort in SoCal)or during the summer months when people vacation there for lakeside activities. I went the first week of May and pretty much only 'locals' were out and about, those who live and work there year round. But along the coast where I live, you don't get the fillups of people that you're describing "in season."My two weeks on Nantucket ( a true "vacation resort" island) were in September in 1999. It was sort of "end of season" but I was astounded at the difference between walking around in the evenings (after the last ferries left for the mainland) and during the day (when the ferries began disgorging tourists.) And we have Catalina off the coast of L.A. Which I don't think of as being a vacation island, since I can hop a boat right out here in the harbor and I'm there in a half hour, but it is definitely a place geared toward 'the tourist trade' and probably 3/4 of the homes there are vacation rentals, empty for most of the year.Michael F. Nyiri, poet, philosopher, fool
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