Maine, it is often said, is saved from 50th place in the Nation only by our tourism. It is one of, if not the most, "whitest" states in the Union. We are in wont of jobs. My own county, and several others further "Down East" or in the northwest rival Wasilla, Alaska in the production of meth.
A look at Maine's largest city through the eyes of a lifetime of part-time Mainer who has in the last year decided to become a resident and voter. Follow me over the fold.
I moved to Maine full-time last year. I was conceived here, and spent much time here over the last 40 years. A couple of years ago, I started really living here a few days a week nearly year-round, commuting back and forth to Massachusetts. Last April, I moved here for good, splitting my time between my Island place in Mid-Coast Maine and Portland, where I am wintering.
Portland in the winter is something that tourists rarely see. It is a place of hard winds, bitter cold, much snow; its library on Congress Street (where I spend quite a bit of time) full of homeless and semi-homeless folks getting out of the wind. Today, I saw homeless youths in Monument Square with their jackets over their heads, sleeping on the snow-covered steps of the monument to the great patriots of the civil war, the many, many, Mainers who--being Abolitionists--eagerly went to their deaths to preserve the Union. From a state which was only thirty years independent from Massachusetts.
The other day, I attended a hockey game with our AHL team (the "Portland Pirates", which, I was informed, feed into the Sabres) and although we lost to the Whalers, and rightfully so, was quite a cultural experience.
I'm a smoker. I decided, after the second period to go out and have one. I took a look around the arena, around where I was. I observed. When I went out to where I could smoke, I overheard a group of youths--and I mean very young guys only one of which could have been legal to buy cigarettes--exchanging stories about "house arrest" and "monitoring devices" and it was clear that they had all had a brush with the so-called Justice System. My heart broke. But then I looked around some more. From the seating in the stadium to who smoked or did not it was clear that the vast majority of the folks attending the game that day were poor. I know I am. On my way home, I started to think about this.
I live in a city of waifs, drifters, and hopefuls. I am only able live here because I have a free place to stay while trying to get back to work. Were it not for the generosity of my family during this time of unemployment, I would be homeless, too. So I engage strangers in conversation sometimes, and I find many backgrounds, many stories. They are, of course, not the kind of stories that end up in "Down East" and "Yankee" magazines, about how people from New York can have a great week for only five grand or the five best summer camps for your teen under two grand a week. That's for when the snow is gone, and the police get the waifs out of Monument Square legitimate business can make a profit; so people from Long Island don't have to look at our poverty. Those folks are not interested in our story, only in our myth.
When I engage some random guy on the street, or he engages me, I tell them my story, too and encourage them to tell theirs to EVERYONE. I have learned from being a gay man that there is much power in the telling of the story. I wish sometimes more of our summer tourists would take the time to listen.