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Side-by-side in the ‘Old Maine’
By John McDonald
There’s about a half-mile stretch of road on the way to our camp that makes me feel nostalgic every time I drive it. I know when to expect the special stretch because there’s a steep dip in the road just before it begins, and there are signs advising you to reduce your speed to 30 miles per hour as you go by about a dozen houses on both sides of the road. The houses along this stretch are all different, but when taken together, they remind me of the “Old Maine” — the Maine most of us knew from childhood, the Maine that’s disappearing right before our eyes.
Some of these houses look well tended and tidy, some look a little less cared-for. One or two of them look like they’ve been roughed up badly over a long period of time. Horse people would say the houses look like they’ve been ridden hard and put away wet. House people would probably say these particular structures are in need of a comprehensive and sustained building maintenance program.
One of the rougher-looking houses in the group is small and has no hint of a lawn around it because of the dogs, goats, chickens and kids running around it most of the time. There’s also a rough-looking old car on cinder blocks by the front door, which is often left wide open. There’s a tripod over the car’s engine compartment, and although I’m no expert, I’m willing to bet that neither the car nor the tripod would receive a passing grade from the folks at OSHA, but then, OSHA probably wouldn’t have approved a lot of things that went on in the Old Maine I remember.
I’m sure the car’s owner is just waiting for the right part or the right time — or both — so he can get out there in the yard amid the dogs, goats, chickens and kids and finish the job to get the car out of the way so the dogs, goats, chickens and kids will have more room to run around in and the wife can put in that flower garden she’s been planning for some time.
Other houses in the group have neatly covered snowmobiles or ATVs in the yard. From the looks of the houses and the lawns, I can only assume all these vehicles are well maintained and immaculate. All the houses — the tended and the untended — look like they belong together, like houses did in the old Maine I remember.
On the road I lived on as a kid, there were two identical cape-style houses built side-by-side at the same time by two brothers. One brother was a plumber and the other a mechanic, and they couldn’t have been more different, except they each decided to build the exact same house. When the houses were done, you couldn’t tell one from the other. As time went on, differences appeared and eventually became quite striking.
People from away, who don’t know the details, would look at the two places and wonder how two houses so different could exist so comfortably side-by-side. They existed together because they were both in the Old Maine. I don’t think they’d fare as well in the new.
Shouldn’t there be some kind of museum for such places? Otherwise, we might forget they ever existed.
