Is it just I or do all geezers get sudden memory flashes of years-gone-by when one reaches one’s 80s? Well, folks, I have and I do. Some good, some not so good. OK, mostly good. Today, for reasons I do not understand (you know, the geezer thing), I began to remember how it happened that my family and I came to Maine — which I’ll confess had a certain amount of personal nagging as the impetus. But that’s another story, involving the long-suffering Mongo.

I remember telling my Father-Who-Knew-Everything nearly 50 years ago about our plans to move from NJ to ME. He looked at me as if he was seeing salamanders climb out of my ears, shook his I-Know-Everything head, took a deep and conspicuous breath (always a signal for those of us who were cognizant of such signals to beat it the hell outta there) and having him announce knowingly that were we to follow this hare-brained (another favorite) plan we’d live to regret it.

Dad was given to cliches.

Mainers, he announced importantly, were cold and unfriendly and that they would have nothing to do with us because we were not from there, that they do not take kindly to strangers moving to “Maine to ruin their way of life,” that we were very likely to be smothered in an unexpected avalanche “lots of those sorts of goings-on up there y’know, all the time, couple a month at least,” and that we’d soon “hightail it” straight back to NJ. And by the way, he added, don’t think for one second when that happened, we could move in with him. (I did not need even one second to decide on that.) Oh, and let’s not forget about those wild wolves roaming about everywhere waiting to ravage and eat us.

Well, in spite of Father Who Knows All Things, we packed up and moved to Maine anyway with a brace of budgerigars, two guinea pigs, (one pregnant) a good dog and three human sons, and we quickly settled in. And guess what, Pop? Ha ha! The joke’s on you. Those dire warnings of all that unpleasant, unwelcoming Mainer stuff, marauding wolves and rogue avalanches, have never, ever happened, not even close. Mainers from the git have been exceedingly good to us, consistently friendly, kind, funny, helpful and accepting, with emphasis on the funny. And there was one incident years back that convinced me for certain we’d made the correct decision to come to Maine.

Back then, we owned a big Chevy Suburban we called the “Bread truck.” For those readers of the younger persuasion, breadstuffs were often delivered to one’s home in big bread trucks and our Suburban was a direct copy. It was Fall, cold, late afternoon, and dark as it does get in Maine in the late afternoon in Fall, and I had our three sons in that “truck” when on a hill covered in invisible black ice, it began to fishtail, careen, gather speed, and, completely out of control it slid and careened over an embankment and into a deep ditch, its tail high in the air. I got the boys out of the truck, and somehow shoved them all up the icy slope and onto the road. It had begun to sleet.

Suddenly, a green pickup truck appeared and stopped in the center of the hill. The doors flew open and a bunch of huge burly men got out, all dressed in hunter’s fluorescent orange. It looked through my terrified eyes like about a dozen but probably was only five or six. Without a word, without even looking in my direction, they scrambled down that slope and surrounded the Suburban, picked it up like it was a box of tissues, shoved it back onto the road, got back into their truck and drove away. Not a single word was spoken. It all happened in about three minutes.  The only noises I could hear came from my weeping and snuffling and trying to pay them, trying to get them to stop and listen to my blubbering thanks, but no. Off they went into the sunset leaving me slobbering like a deranged lunatic and my sons laughing and cheering in awe.

I knew at that very instant as I’ve known from the git, that I was home. For good.

Copy the Story Link

Comments are not available on this story.