O U T  H E R E  I N  T H E  R E A L  W O R L D

Coming and Going

by Eva Murray

As I write, it has been snowing all day—a sticky, dense, 32-degree snow that piles up on every nut, bolt, twig, and power line, and that has frozen my anemometer cups still. The State Police and the news stations are warning everybody about multiple pile-ups and accidents all over the state. My relatives in South Thomaston had a Time Warner truck upside-down in the road not far from their place. Friends flying in from out west to meet their newborn nephew in Damariscotta are likely marooned in Minneapolis or Detroit or somewhere, because the flights into Portland are all messed up. My daughter is stuck on a Boston-bound Amtrak train, stopped somewhere down by Wells, with nothing but snow out the window and visions of “Murder on the Orient Express.”

Obviously, the flying service isn’t running today’s mail flight to Matinicus. I am genuinely grateful that I am not trying to go anywhere. I do go to the mainland more frequently than most islanders, though.

There is a widely held, inaccurate belief that when you live on an offshore island, you hardly ever leave. Maine’s more distant islands are, according to the folklore, closed communities and resemble nothing so much as small, foreign countries run by hereditary warlords. People are born, attend eight grades of school, eat their chowder and grow old without ever learning how to use a Dunkin’ Donuts drive-thru. New arrivals are shot at, unless they are pretty young nurses or schoolteachers, who generally fall in love either with a strapping local seafarer or with island life itself, and that keeps the gene pool above board.

Such mythology might have had some basis years ago when island communities were considerably larger and the demographic much more well-rounded, but these days, with the boat engines much bigger and the cluster of children around the monkey bars much smaller, coming and going is perfectly normal. In retrospect, one wonders about the psychological well-being of those old-timers who resisted the siren call of the mainland with its delicacies and vices. I’ve been here long enough to have known a few of those last holdouts before they died. I cannot recommend the practice.

One of my neighbors tells the story about growing up here in a family where the older folks avoided leaving the island. When he left for high school at age 14 in the mid-1950s, he was provided three new sets of clothing, obtained by mail order: a Dickies twill work shirt and pants in green, a Dickies twill work shirt and pants in blue, and a Dickies twill work shirt and pants in that light brown color. By all accounts he survived 9th grade, but that story wouldn’t have become part of the repertoire had the experience not proved memorable.

Although traversing the water is fairly routine, a lot of islanders give serious lip service to this “never want to leave” thing. It is part of the accepted protocol that one whine and complain mightily when forced to go to Rockland for groceries or anything else. Neighbors say, “I just hate going to the mainland; I couldn’t wait to get straight home.” I say, “Oh, for cryin’ out loud, get yourself an ice cream cone while you’re over there.”

That’s generally my outlook on things.

By the way, before I go much farther, let me mention that if you happen to live on an “inshore island,” such as several in Casco Bay, we’ve all heard the know-it-alls and outer-island snobs expound on how you’re just a suburb. That may be true in comparison with, say, Criehaven (although that rock has got its own sort of suburban cachet going on, unrelated to proximity with any city, and which is another subject). That may be a fair statement when pleasant zephyrs wisp the cute little 6th-grader’s hair as he plays Magic Cards on the bench of his calm-water ferry on the way home from school some pleasant afternoon. But when it’s two o’clock in the morning and you’re deathly sick and huddling in the Portland fireboat as you cross the bay through a screeching gale, you know you live on an island.

I am on an absurd number of committees, each of which mean to benefit and assist my island community in myriad ways, but which meet on the mainland. Interestingly, people involved in most of those agencies and organizations assume their business is the only time I ever leave Matinicus.

Uh-huh: Every few months I creep out of the isolation, cross the mighty ocean, and go to the Ferry Service Advisory Board meeting. Or Knox County Emergency Management. Or the Island Institute Energy Conference. The rest of the time, I hunker down on my remote ledgepile, eat my chowder, and shoot at strangers. Sure.

Recently I was supposed to show up at the State House in Augusta to present some details to the Transportation Committee, but I couldn’t get there because there wasn’t any transportation. I hope that sort of made a point.

The joke is that when people wax poetic about how if they were lucky enough to live here they’d “never want to leave,” we say that makes perfect sense in two particular circumstances, both very common on this island: summer vacation, and when there is a bench warrant out for their arrest.

Coming and going may be possible if the weather cooperates, and may even be desirable to some such as myself easily tempted by General Tso’s chicken, but it is never cheap. Living here and trying to do anything on the mainland is pricey, let there be no mistake. The trip across and back is usually going to run over a hundred bucks, and more often than not there is an overnight stay involved. Each summer I have a few folks sidle up to me and hint broadly that they’d like the inside scoop on how year-round island residents do this—because surely “real” islanders don’t actually pay those astronomical rates for boat rides and flights and freight and ferries and parking.

Actually, friends, I do. Those who park without a sticker or avoid freight charges tend to be lobstermen, and they pay enough for their boat, truck, mooring or slip, maintenance, fuel, insurance, all the stuff the Coast Guard tells them they have to buy, etc. There ain’t no free ride.

I said, there ain’t no free ride.

And sometimes, there ain’t no ride at all.