In Maine, it’s just another day

By Dick Matthews

“Now this is like the snow we used to get!”

That from my neighbor from across the street. Like me, he was shoveling out his mailbox (which stands three feet off the ground) after Friday night’s 22-inch snowfall added to the two feet we’d already accumulated.

He’s one of the town’s old-timers; born sometime in the 1950s, he’s lived in Phillips his entire life. And, like so many native Mainers (that’s pronounced Main-ahs), winter puts a swagger in his walk.

It’s not unusual, of course, for those with six or more decades under their belt to boast of the winters of their youth. “Yeah, back when I was a kid, we walked two miles to school in snow up to our ears,” they like to say.
Such nostalgia for hardship seems to be a standard memory for those in their 60s and 70s.

But Mainers rise to another level: It’s not just the accounts of their youth they flout, it’s the bravado in the face of current discomfort that they wear on their sleeves like a badge.

“Ayup, looks like we’re gonna get a little snow tomorr-a.”

“A little?” I say. “The forecast is calling for up to two feet!”

“Could be. Course if you’re gonna live in Maine, you’re gonna get snow.” – This a not so subtle reminder that we’re newcomers to these parts, a statement similar to dozens we’ve heard in the eight years we’ve lived in Phillips.

Now, if this were just his notification that, as people “from away,” our acceptance in the community is conditional on our attitudes and behavior, I could understand it. I’ve lived in rural towns much of my life and have learned that full status in the local culture is only begrudgingly – if ever – given. But there’s more to it than that.

Around here, a weather-related hardship is as likely to bring a smile as it is a frown. A swagger in the face of a roaring nor’easter is commonplace, and bad weather is greeted more with a shrug of acceptance than a complaint. But it goes beyond even that, taking form in a pride of endurance, almost a cheery dismissal flung of a storm that has just flung two feet of snow right in your face.

“Oh, this isn’t so bad,” says the man who plows our parking area. “Could be worse, I guess.”

“Yeah, well I expect we’ll get more than this before winter’s over,” says the man in front of me at the grocery store checkout, who has no hat, no gloves and is wearing knee-length shorts and a t-shirt, even though the temperature outside is in the 20s. As he says it, I wonder what he’d define as “worse” and, when that comes, what casual phrase he’ll use to dismiss it.

It’s always seemed to me a point of wisdom not to complain about something you can do nothing about and with Mainers and the weather that seems a requirement of being a native. It’s an attitude I both puzzle over and admire. The puzzlement comes because there seems to be something more to it than mere acceptance. In their shrugs and understatements, in their smiles and thrust-out chests, there seems to be almost a gladness that nature has thrown another trial their way. “I’m equal to it,” they seem to say; “No big deal.”

Well, I suppose I get it. A storm, after all, is impersonal and – looked at another way – offers a bit of drama and even fun. Not that they’d admit to such words as “drama” or “fun” to account for their casual attitude in the face of a near blizzard; those are frivolous words, after all. Yet something like that is going on.

And, so, should the ultimate snowstorm make the streets and roads impassible, knock down power lines, cover their kitchen windows with drifts, and pile enough snow on their homes to threaten collapsed roofs, they’ll say:

“Well, if you live in Maine, you’re gonna get snow.”

Dick Matthews is a former newspaperman, a freelance feature writer, and an occasional editor. He and his wife Pam reside in Phillips.