On Halloween night in 1973, I moved to Maine. It’s a little spooky, now, thinking that I have made this place home for almost 50 years.
I was brought here on the urging of college friends from places like Yarmouth, East Vassalboro and Long Island, and intrigued by reading secondhand copies of the Maine Times and essays by John Cole, a city dweller who himself became a “come here” in the ’60s.
If you dig deep enough you will eventually find a term (not always of endearment) that natives use to define folks from another state or territory who migrate, either temporarily or permanently.
Having spent some time as a summer visitor to an island in Casco Bay, I was a bit shocked to learn that the term islanders used for summer folks was “dogfish,” a species of fish appear in June and are gone by the end of August. A physician friend of mine who had lived there for over 20 years and who had doctored many of the island residents told me he had once been dismissed during a debate that had consumed the island for months. The third-generation islander who was in disagreement with the good doctor simply concluded: “Well, Doc, I wouldn’t expect you to understand; you’re from away.”
In the Northern Neck of Virginia, where my parents are from, the term often used is “come here.” In its small rural fishing and farming villages, most everyone is on a first-name basis. They don’t even need to see your Maine license plates to know that you’re a non-native.
I once encountered a familiar accent on a frosty Sunday morning at my church in Portland. Once the handshakes and “good mornings” were exchanged I was certain I had heard an unmistakable accent and asked: “What part of Virginia are you from?”
Surprised that I had identified her as “from away,” my new acquaintance replied, “Oh, a small part of the state you’ve probably never heard of.”
“Try me” was my reply. Once she named her place of birth, I told her where my folks were from. She interrupted me by saying the name of my grandmother.
“Everyone knew Miss Anna, she taught piano to almost every child in the Northern Neck.”
I had just shaken hands with someone whose fingers were guided over the piano keys by my own grandmother in a small rural Virginia town a half century ago. Six hundred miles from where I started out, I made a connection where I landed.
Maine has changed substantially in the last 50 years. There are now “come heres” from all over the world. Voters last November said a resounding “no” to a former governor who declared at one time that immigrants and people of color were “the enemy.”
My hope for Maine in 2023 is that we, once and for all, do away with the notion that there are folks “from away,” “come heres” even “dogfish.” We are a global community and we need the strengths and resources that everyone brings to the table.
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