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Published
May 23, 2019

C.J. Orser, Saco: Life in Maine is wicked good

Growing up in northern Maine – potato country – and living in Maine my whole life has given me appreciation for the simple pleasures and beauty surrounding our precious state. I remember our parents driving us around town admiring Christmas lights, decorations and cutting our tree. Making our own fun like winter skating, sliding, cross-country […]
Published
May 23, 2019

Steven Price, Kennebunkport: ‘Salty like the ocean … calm as a river’

By definition, a real Mainer is wicked funny. Arthur Gott qualifies. One day Arthur’s good friend Bill Matthews (then president of the Cape Arundel Golf Club) took Arthur and another friend, Eddie Spalding, for a picnic lunch outing on Bill’s boat up the Kennebunk River. On the way back, the boat ran out of gas. […]
Published
May 16, 2019

Michael Beaudoin, Portland: Frugal farmer knows his value

Going to “the camp” on the New Meadows River was always great fun for me as a kid, whether with my grandparents on most summer weekends as we made it through Cooks Corner without Pepere even slowing down his two-tone Studebaker, back when there was but a single stop sign at that intersection. Or with […]
Published
May 16, 2019

Elaine Parker, South Portland: A real Mainer eats baked beans every Sat’dee night

Yup, I’m a real Mainer. I have the birth certificate, stating I was born in Old Town, Maine. I have the accent, the one with no “R” in the alphabet, and I’m proud of it and refuse to lose it. Sure, people make fun of me when I say “cah” or “pahk” – but I […]
Published
May 16, 2019

Terry Smith Brobst, Freeport: Two for the trail

My real Mainer actually started out as two people, but after 60 years together they are certainly one real Mainer now. My mother said it was love at first sight – and those of you who know him agree that love must be blind. They married, raised four kids and worked hard all their lives. […]

Published
May 16, 2019

Cynthia Knight McGarry, Cape Elizabeth: Small audience for a big parade

So, it’s July Fourth, my husband and I are in Scarborough on Dunn Estates Drive. We have brought our L.L. Bean chairs and we are sitting on the side of the road waiting for the neighborhood parade to begin. We are the only ones watching the parade because everyone else from Dunn Estates is in the […]
Published
May 9, 2019

Mary Folsom, Kennebunk: Learning the language

If I were a Maine native, or if Maine and Massachusetts had not parted company almost 200 years ago, this commentary could not have seen the light of day. However, in the intervening years, Brad the Portland native and I, the Massachusetts native with a Bostonian father met and married across the ‘great divide.’ I […]
Published
May 9, 2019

Leslie Bowering, Concord Township: A real Mainer in every way but birth

On the face of it one might think and instantly proclaim that a “real Mainer” is a person born and raised in Maine – whether on one of the largest estates on the East Coast or in a humble weather-worn cabin in the woods. In fact, it is well-known here in central Maine that being […]
Published
May 9, 2019

Richard W. Perkins, Ogunquit; Firing up the wood stove

I recently read that as we grow older, we are only older on the outside, inside we are forever young. In reflection of that adage, I wholeheartedly agree. As I approach my 89th birthday on August 25th, it seems only yesterday that I was a barefoot boy, with a mop of blonde curls and blue […]
Published
May 9, 2019

Annunziata Graziano, South Portland: Learning how to be a Mainer

When I was young, I realized that I had a lot of friends whose parents were from Maine. And most of the time, their grandparents and great-grandparents had also been born and raised in Maine. My family was not like this. Both of my parents had moved to Maine for work and for its beauty. […]

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