From Away
We Mainers know what this means. It is a delicate mixture of subtle contempt for those folks who are not blessed to be from Maine and a well deserved pride for those who are by birthright full frontal Mainers. Does this really suit what we want? Because what we are getting is becoming the oldest demographic state in the nation.
Then a fine gentle like Andrew Wyeth artists passes on to his brighter light. And we celebrate his life as if he were a native son. But he is from away.
I grew up in Freeport. Now I live in one of the outer suburbs. Many of the shops on Main Street were once on my paper route as traditional small town businesses and residences. I have my own feelings about the legions of foreign license plates clogging this fomerly quaint New England village. I’d much rather they leave their money on the top of the Piscataqua River bridge, turn around, and go somewhere else. But that does not bring jobs to Mainers.
I myself, so through no fault of my own, am by definition, From Away. Never mind that I drive by grandmother’s great grandmother’s grave twice daily. Being a replant doesn’t count. Birthright is the single, simple and absolute definition. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
I propose a shift in philosophy that may benefit the tourism trade marketing effort.
Come home to Maine, there is a little of a Maine in all of us.
