It is Sunday, July 26, just after noon. It is foggy and 62 degrees. A moderate, but steady rain is falling on the verdant countryside.
It is beautiful for me for three days ago at this same time, it was 90 degrees. Heat seeped into my every pore as I sped towards the Charleston International Airport to begin my sourjorn to Portland International Jetport and parts North.
Right now in Charleston it is 85 degrees with 67 percent humidity. On island it is 93 percent humidity with no wind. Even at this late in the day, one can barely discern the field across the street.
For me, this is a delightful diversion. For the people in Maine, it is the summer that wasn’t. There has been maybe a week of sunny weather since Memorial Day. The temperature hasn’t reached 80. By and large, there’s dancing in the street when it hits 72 degrees and it is partly cloudy. This is the second time I have been up here since May, and I have seen one sunny day.
Round these parts, people are getting cranky.
I don’t recall ever wearing a sweat shirt at the end of July. However, I am in a different world. I had lunch yesterday in Rockland on my way to the ferry to Islesboro. Rockland is your basic Maine Coastal town. There is some tourism and a pretty healthy dose of art. It is my understanding that Rockland became trendy after all the beautiful people discovered Camden down the road and the art people could no longer afford the rent, so they moved the art, the galleries, and the restaurants up the road wholesale.
I’m told that it helped that the fish rendering plant closed.
One thing that I find interesting is that the road to the sea in South Carolina goes from the mountains to the Peidmont to the beach. In Maine, there is very little beach. One winds his way around a mountain, only to come out on the shore. It’s surprising that there is no warning. The mountain is one side of the road, the Atlantic on the other. They play very little half rubber.
Compared to the South Carolina of today, the state of Maine is sparsely populated. As one traverses the countryside from Augusta to the ferry at Lincolnville, the architecture is classic New England, 150 year old shingled Cape homes sit next to manufactured houses with a dozen cars for sale in the front yard.
Maine is not a rich state, but it is not impoverished. The coast is not growing the way the Charleston/Myrtle Beach corridor is. As the road winds through the lush foliage, there is little farmland. The soil is rocky and the growing season is very short. This year it will be abbreviated if the window box situation is any indication.
If one were to be traveling through Mullins or Loris, there would be the remnant of the sharecropping, the fields once replete with cotton or tobacco now supplanted by planned communities. Here, there doesn’t seem to be the room for McMansions nor the appetite.
There are no signs of the devastation of war, no generals haunt the town squares, no resentment towards New Jersey just for the accent. (Here, there is little tolerance for those from off, period. People from Portland are treated with same regard and esteem that somebody from Yonkers would be at the South Carolina Society Hall.) Refreshingly, there is no new money from Atlanta.
Instead, Mainers slog through the seasons with good humor and a steel determination.
I’ve been here in January. To treat life otherwise would spell death.
At first blush, one might think there is no connection between Charleston and Maine. They don’t shag. There are no beach shacks hidden away. They have no idea who the Tams are.
There are no bikinis. The upside to that is there are no thongs. (Although I am told the French Canadian men at Old Orchard are reason to look away.)
The one thing that bonds Charleston and Maine is not tolerating being told what to do or how to do it. You don’t like it? Flights leave daily.
I bet you could sell “We don’t give a rat’s behind how you do it in Massachusetts” bumper stickers round these parts. I bet they would sell like hotcakes.
Update: Now that I’m home, three things have stayed in my mind about that trip to the sea.
As I mentioned earlier, there are no furrowed fields, no crops. Instead, there are vast waves of wildflowers. The effect is breathtaking.
There is no litter. Really. I am mortified at the trash strewn along our beautiful Lowcountry highways. Maine has a bottle law (plastic and glass) whereupon each is returnable to a private redemption center worth 5 cents. We had that when I was a kid, and I think it’s high time we reinstate this practice (more on this down the road).
It took me a while to figure out why I was able to appreciate the breathtaking scenes I absorbed. There are no billboards. Not one. What a great idea!
(A note: The best billboard I ever saw was on Highway 25 from Hendersonville to Asheville, N.C., when I was eight in 1960. I’m not making this up. The top sign read “Jesus Saves.” The one below it read “S&H Green Stamps.”
This was 1960 in rural North Carolina. There was no sense of irony.)
One more thing: The fog that enveloped us on the way to Islesboro on Saturday was still fully socked in Thursday morning.
A quick word of advice: Do not mention “global warming” to Mainers right now. When I left, the leaves were beginning to turn. It’s July.
Maine and Charleston are two different worlds with the same used car and furniture commercials. We also share the same disdain and impatience for morons be they from Atlanta or Massachusetts.
We share something else: A fierce love of our native land and little tolerance for idiots best personified by this quote: “Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a brown and serve by the clean end.”
By the way, go to my Facebook page, and you’ll see where I get my inspiration.
