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True Confession
A few summers ago I was walking with my husband down a quiet road near our home. A car
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I always apologize for having been born in New York City. But I suppose that’s not a bad place to have been born either.
I’m always very careful, when I travel away on book tour, to specify that I LIVE in Maine. People always thinks that means I’ve been here a few months…instead of 24 years.
You’re right, Lea, that it’s important to lay out your cards and be accurate. Several years back I was at a Maine Writers and Publisher’s Assn. party and one very distinguished, much lauded author, who had moved to Maine so recently he probably still had his Louisiana driver’s license, announced to all and sundry that he was a Mainer. The whole room buzzed with it, and to this day, whenever someone who was at the party mentions his name, you’ll get a scandalized look. Said he was a Mainer. Who does he think he’s fooling?
Okay, Lea, you guilted me into it—I’m not a native Mainer, either. But there is another way to ALMOST make the grade. My husband was born in Bangor and has lived in Maine all his life. I came to Maine to attend college and met him there and I’ve been an official resident of the state ever since, well over 40 years now. Where was I born? Rural New York state, in the foothills of the Catskills (aka The Borsht Belt), which looks remarkably like the Western Maine mountains. Every once in a while, though, you can still hear the New York in my accent. I pronounce most of my r’s and Long Island tends to come out as Lon Giland.
Oho! I was born in Rockland. Graduated from high school in Union. Was a candidate for Maine Blueberry Queen. Have ancestors who stormed a British ship moored in the Penobscot River and took the commander captive in his nightshirt. But my poor mother was from “away.”
Blueberry Queen? Oh, Kate, you never should have told us that…
Candidate. That’s all.
Kate — Blueberry Queen? Of any rank? We need pictures! Or maybe a whole post! That’s too good to hold back on! Lea
Lea, I’m not from Maine by any standards. I was born and grew up in New Jersey, but as a military spouse some years past, I lived in many places. The last assignment turned into a twenty-year stay. Alabama. For most of those years, I was known as a Yankee, but in my job and my work with the Leukemia Society, I became close with the people. I’m proud to say that during the last five years of my residency in Alabama, I was affectionately called a Damn Yankee which translates to “a finally accepted outsider.”
Coco…that’s a great story. If you care about a place, as we all clearly do about Maine and you about Alabama, it’s so nice to feel accepted.