Writing Maine:
How To Write About Maine Life Accurately


By EelKat Wendy C Allen

Looking for any info on Portland, Boothbay Harbour and Cabbage Island, Maine and surrounding area for my novel.

[quote=*******]Looking for any info on Portland, Boothbay Harbour and Cabbage Island, Maine and surrounding area for my novel. Anything that you could share with me, description, life styles, events, traditions, weather, housing, what there is for scenery, how they were named. I'm very appreciative for anything you can share. Thank you![/quote]

You are asking about quite a VAST and LARGE area - BoothBay Harbour in nearly a 5 hour drive from Portland. I live in Old Orchard Beach, just outside of Portland. Can give you a Native Mainer's view on Southern Maine, outsiders, and Americans. Can't help you with the Northern Maine stuff though.

Portland is in Southern Maine on the border of Massachusetts about an hour from Boston.

BoothBay Harbour is up in the Downeast region, (Mid Coast Maine) half way up to Canada with Augusta, Bangor, Bar Harbour, Rockland, Rockport, Lincoln, Camden, etc. and is a more then 5 hour drive from Portland.

Not sure the plot of your story, but chances are if your characters live in Portland they have NEVER seen/visited Bar Harbour. As 73% of all Portlanders do not have driver's licenses and only go to places they can walk to, with more then 50% of Portland residents having been born in Portland and have lived their entire lives without ever setting foot in any other town, not even neighbouring South Portland.

The only reason I've ever been outside of my hometown is because we are Gypsies and travel to all the towns around Maine during festival season, returning to Old Orchard in the off season, but never leaving the state of Maine. Us Gypsies being considered by most Mainers as "weird" BECAUSE we travel more then a half-hour from our drive way.

The average Native Mainer has NEVER set foot out of the town they were born in. EVER in their lifetime. Pointing out here that:

  • A tourist is someone who comes to Maine from America - most Mainers, Native and otherwise, depend on tourists for the bulk of their annual income


  • An American is anyone from the Lower 48 and is ALWAYS seen as a threat


  • An outsider is a person from America who has invaded our territory and committed the sin of buying or building a house in our state


  • A transplant is an outsider who has gained our trust by living in Maine WITHOUT CHANGING ADDRESS for 5 years


  • A newcomer is an outsider who has gained our trust by living in Maine WITHOUT CHANGING ADDRESS for 10 years


  • A Mainer is an outsider who has lived here 10+ years and whose children were born here AND DID NOT commit the sin of of doing what Americans do and going to out of state college


  • A Local Mainer is someone who was born in Maine, regardless of if their parents were outsiders or not


  • A Native Mainer is someone who is born into a family that has had at least FIVE generations born in Maine, without ANY of the 5 generations EVER living in another State for any time longer then 6 months. If you can prove your Native Mainer status there is such a thing as "the Native Mainer license plate".


Pointing out too, that Maine, up until a few yeas ago, was part of Canada, and Native Mainers do not consider themselves Americans, and every year vote to secede the Union to return Maine back to Canada where it belongs. The average Native Mainer also does not have a Social Security Number and refuses to accept American citizenship on any level, most still identifying as Canadians. We do not like that the Americans invaded our territory, stole our land, ripped it off of Canada and declared us Americans without our will or permission.

Though now in their 80s and 90s there are still Mainers alive today who were born in Canada, yet have never left their birthplace and are now considered Americans simply because America so very rudely declared a change of the border. They vehemently teach their children, grandchildren, and great grand children to hate with a vengeance "those evil thieving parasitic creatures who call themselves Americans and come in like Satan to kill, steal, and destroy". It is for this reason, that tourists are able to instantly identify transplanted Americans who just happen to live in Maine versus the actual Native Mainers who are openly vocal of their hatred for all things American.

Differences between transplants and Native Mainers:

  • Transplants send their children to public school


  • Native Mainers great school officials with a gun to the face, and cite the fact that "Satan controls the American government, the American government controls the schools, no child of mine is going to be brainwashed by you filthy Americans."


  • Transplants dress like Americans
  • Americans tell us Native Mainers we dress "bizarre" "weird" and "outlandish"


  • Native Mainers have a distinctive accent
  • Transplants talk like Americans


  • Transplants live in built up areas, and have monster sized houses
  • Native Mainers live in what transplants call "woodshed" or "tiny houses" most under 20 feet square; preaching "waste not want not" and viewing transplants as wastful spoilt brat city kids who only live in giant houses because they are snobs who want to be waited on hand and foot


  • Transplants are often white
  • Native Mainers are not white (the bloodline is a mix of Scottish, Native American Indian, Middle Eastern Jewish (Black/Hebrew Jew not White/Khasa Jew), and French)


  • Transplants are often Christian
  • Native Mainers are almost never Christian, if they have any Christ following religion at all, it's likely Catholic or Gnostic or Mormon or Mennonite
  • Native Mainers are far more likely to be of a Pagan faith such as Wicca, Faerie Faith, Voodoo, Enochian, Shamanism, etc


  • Christians have given themselves a back reputation in the past decade. Due to their hate mongering ways, terrorist attacks, hate crimes, and extreme levels of violence, Christian transplants are RARELY welcomed or accepted by Native Mainers and are often viewed as "monsters" or "beasts" and "the wolves in sheep's clothen" whom Jesus warned would come in his name to "kill, steal, and destroy". As the Christian hate crime attacks against increase against all things not white, not Christian, and not straight, Native Mainers grow steadily more fearful of this radically violent religion and many families now live in mortal terror of anything even remotely Christian
  • Catholic, Pagan, Atheist, Muslim and Jewish transplants are FAR more welcomed by Native Mainers, due to their peaceful, friendly, non-violent ways which starkly contrast the insane levels of violence and hate actted out by the Christian transplants
  • Fastest way to be eyed with suspicion by a Native Mainer, is to introduce yourself as a Christian and be a white skinned American
  • Non-white Christians and Christians from any country other then America, are accepted by Native Mainers same as Jews and Muslims are, due to the fact they lack the history of hate crime violence white power American Christians have displayed to us


  • Transplants average 1.5 children (how can you have .5?)
  • Native Mainers average 8 children


  • Transplants speak American English and have difficulty understand anything we Native Mainers say
  • Native Mainers speak Scottish English and have difficulty understanding anything Americans say


Americans love to lash out at us about our speech, belittling the way we talk, mocking it horribly. Native Mainers are often bullied and tormented by Americans who joke and laugh and call us retards, hill billies, mountain folk, hicks, etc, simply because we speak a completely different language then they do. They say our language is made up and not real. Our language is a real language, it's Scottish English - below are the ACTUAL and CORRECT spellings of Scottish words along with the ACTUAL and CORRECT grammar rules for Scottish English, which are usually horrifically ignored when a non-Scotsman author tries to write a "Scottish" accent and usually come off making a total mockery of our language):

Scottish English does not have "typical" American/UK/Canadian English contractions:

  • don't = does nae


  • didn't = dids nae


  • didn't see = dids nae sees no


  • didn't hear = dids nae hears no


  • couldn't = could nae or coont


  • They didn't ask you? = Dems dids nae no ask ya, eh?


  • You don't know the answer? = Ya does nae know de answer, eh?


  • I don't know the answer either. = Ayah, me does nae know dems answer, no?


  • He couldn't do it. = Hims coont nae dones ett.


  • He didn't see it. = Hims dids nea sees ett.


  • I hadn't thought of that. = Me hads nae thunk ett.


Scottish has contractions, not found in America, though:

  • am I not = amn't I


  • aren't = amn't


  • Am I not invited? = Amn't I invited?


  • Aren't you ever going to be done with that? = Amn't ya never gayyn gets done with dat dair?


  • Can't = Can'na


  • It's too dark, I can't see. = Ahya, ett do be too dark. I can'na nae sees a bleeding t'ing.


Plurals are different:

  • moose = meese


  • mice = meeses


  • wives = wifes


  • feet = footsies


  • He has big feet. = Hims does got wicked big footsies.


Pronouns are different:

  • he = hims


  • you = ya (meaning that in Scottish English ya'll is actually correct because it is contracting ya all not you all which is contracted y'all)


  • my = me


  • they = dems


  • That is my horse. = Dat dair do be me pony.


  • This is their horse. = Dis here do be dems pony.


Sentences are very long and wordy do to "reversed grammar" and "double negatives"and "them there" is added all over the place, "reversed plurals" and "descriptions" are added to try to explain what you're talking about and some words are just plain different.

  • He went to Rite-Aid to pick up his prescription. = Hims did go to dat yawn dair new fangled store dems new folks call da Rite Aid place, ta gets himself some of dems dair wee pills what dar doctor gone und tells him, him has ta take each morning, a-yep, hims did, causing I's saws him doos ett I dids.


  • Why do you want to go to black tower? = What for ya does be wanting ta gayyn ta der blauch towar for?


  • I didn't do it. = I dids nae no does ett.


  • I am very upset, because they don't have any clam chowder. I am very hungry and wanted to eat clam chowder. Why didn't they say on the menu that they were all out of clam chowder? = Dey does nae be having de clam chowdah. I is very upset over dis. I has been wanting de clam chowdah. Me does be very hungry un dey is all oot of ett. What for does dey still has ett on deys menu iffy deys does be all oot of it, eh?


  • I was bitten by mosquitoes while camping in Bar Harbor. = I's got bits up by dems dair 'sketahs whens we wents a'camping oot on dar Bah Harbour (pronounced - Hahbah).


  • I took the lobster out to my car and found I had left the bag of potatoes in the trunk last night.= Me did tooks dem dair lobstah oot to me cah an did finds me had gone und left dems bag o'tattahs in de boot oovah night.


  • Could you turn on the lights? = Could ya open dems lights?


  • I turned the lights off didn't I? = I dids close de lights, eh? Dids I not?


  • That's great! = Dat wicked good, eh?


  • You're talking nonsense = Yer bums oot de windae.


  • He made a fool of himself. = Hims gone done hung hims bum oot de windae.


  • Well blow me down! = Well flibber me jiggered und toss me oot a windae.


Long words are often not able to be pronounced at all and are replaced entirely with "that there thing" with the addition of a description of the item you want to say (making one word become a full mouthful):

  • air conditioner = dat dair t'ingy hanging off dar yawn windae


  • Chrysler = dat dair big old car t'ingy what ya drives around in


  • prescription = dems dair wee lil purple pills what me doctor has gone und tells me, me has ta take each morning, afores me's can eats nothing


The fact that the Americans think, someone speaking a different language make that person sound stupid (they used the R-word) says a lot about their own views on people, actually. I mean, think about it.

You will also find Native Mainers are not welcoming of transplants, outsiders, Americans, or tourists, ALL of whom are called "invaders" and often greet them with a loaded rifle. The hatred Native Mainers have for Americans can not be under estimated and heaven help the tourist who thinks otherwise. They WILL be shot. Which is why some of us are trying to get guns banned here in Maine.

The Greater Portland Area includes :

  • Falmouth (don't know much about this one it, nearly a 2 hour drive from me)


  • Westbrook  (don't know much about this one it, nearly a hour drive from me)


  • Freeport (don't know much about this one it, nearly a 2 hour drive from me; home of L.L.Bean and the world's largest work boot, and the Bootmoblie)


 

  • Portland (home of the famous Dimillo's "floating restaurant" which is literally floating in the bay and catches you meal when you order it guaranteeing their "freshest fish in Maine"; about 10 feet from Dimillo's is a rather unique thing, your characters will be sure to stop and see and if they are a couple, ESPECIALLY a LGBTQ couple, they'll leave an engraved padlock on the Love Locks fence on Commercial Street then go out on the Dimillo's restaurant for a romantic dinner and throw the key out into the bay to seal their love for eternity - it is the ORIGINAL Love Lock Fence that started the now international tradition; Portland is also home of Maine's infamous "Purple Church" the first church in America to marry same sex couples - doing so since the1980s, long before it was legal to do so; also the most heavily vandalised and protested church in Maine; it is difficult to attend service as one must fit through the crowds of KKK and Westboro Baptists, to get into the building; the church Lady Gaga attends on her frequent visits to Maine)


 

  • South Portland (home of the Maine Mall - claims to be largest indoor mall/shopping center in New England; has 200+ stores on 2 levels, the building and it's surrounding parking lot covers 300 acres, to walk from the entrance, around the outer edge and  and is 14 minutes from my driveway; home of PortCon video game and comic book convention)


 

 

 

  • Pine Point (the town where the clam cake was invented, and the town responsible for the invention of canned soup; home of Maine's Lobster Wars - literally a war between lobstermen who stand out on their boats and shoot each other)


 

  • Old Orchard Beach (one of Maine's smallest towns with 3,000 residents - filming location of the Stephen King movie Thinner, home of the world's most haunted car that inspired the book Christine, and home of the mute Autistic girl that was the inspiration for Chinga and Rose Red - resulting in we get 2million+ King screaming fangirl tourists here ever summer;


  • has a sign which reads "Welcome to Old Orchard Beach, the 99.9% whitest town in America, in the 99.9% white state in the country" ;


  • is currently attempting to pass a law making it illegal for LGBTQ citizens to own property & LGBTQ+ citizens were forced out of their homes on January 4, 2016 by a court order declaring them: "Too Gay For The Family Friendly Town of Old Orchard Beach" - after 9 months of protest and living homeless in their cars in nearby Biddeford, the 140+ families got the court order overturned and were allowed to return to their homes on September 2, 2016) 


  • Old Orchard Beach has The Ross Forest, known for it's huge white pine trees, some as much as 500 years old. The largest of which, sits in my driveway and is around 130 feet tall last time we had it measured - it has about 2 feet to go to reach a world record.


  • Most residents of Old Orchard, Ocean Park, and Pine Point (the 3 sister towns that share the same beach) could be described as "red necks"



  • Old Orchard Beach has a "Jewish District" where many Orthodox Jews live, keeping largely to themselves, not having contact with anyone; one of Maine's large Jewish Synagogues from the 1800s is in Old Orchard, right on the beach itself. 



  • OOB is one of the few towns where you'll see the more "extreme" Jews - the Rabbis with locs and aprons and fur hats; men in caps, women in veils and head wraps; you rarely see this "type" of Jewish person in Maine.


  • Houses are TINY. The average 4 room house is 20feet by 20feet, and the 4 room are 1 bedroom (that sleeps up to 8) and a kitchenette/dinette combo and a bathroom (water closet) and a"living room" that is too small to fit a sofain so has lawn chairs in it instead.



  • One room 12x12 "beach cabins" with no kitchen, no plumbing, and a port-a-potty on the lawn for a bathroom, are very common. A few hundred families have that set up here in OOB.



  • From the time I was 12 I grew up in a house that was 16 feet long and 9 feet wide, with 7 people, 8 dogs, and 5 cats. Before that I lived in the back seat of a 1964 Dodge 330 (aka The World's Most Haunted Car, yes, the real "Christine") that towed a 10foot by 8foot Vardo that my parents lived in.



  • I spent 9 years (2006 to 2015) living in a tent made out of a 8x6 tarp.



  • I currently have a 22' motorhome (inside living space is 14 feet by 7 feet - bedroom/living room/kitchen being all one room)



  • You only have to go 4 or 5 miles inland to find a DRASTIC change of lifestyle - inland Mainers have HUGE 30 foot by 40 foot houses, that out-of-state tourists say are TINY (and then they see our houses in OOB and say their cars are bigger then our houses.)



  • The Corporal of the Loyalist White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan lives 8 houses down the street from me.


  • An 8 foot tall white cross stands in my yard to remind me I'm not white.


  • Contrary to popular belief, Heaven's Gate is still active, now waiting for a comet called WormWood, headquartered out of Palmyra Maine and has members who live in Old Orchard Beach.


  • Old Orchard is the "drug hive" of Maine, with opium/heroine/marijuana/meth growers/chemists making up a good 1/3 of the 3,000 residents.


  • OOB has a ravine where drug lords in the 1970s used to dump bodies; and bones are continually being found in the ravine, most recent finding happened June 13, 2016


  • The town bills itself as "Family Friendly" yet as 2 topless bars, a tavern is the kindergarten's next door neighbour, another bar sits in front of the elementary school, and crime is so bad that the ELEMENTARY schools (grade k to 4) require police officers stationed as each exit point


  • and WATCH OUT when the Eagle Mountain Holy Roller Gang arrives in town - about 10,000 big burly super Christian white power bikers in leather chaps many of them ordained ministers, some of them neo-Nazi skinheads, quickly followed by their much more famous rivals The Hell's Angels an additional 20,000 bikers - they come to Old Orchard Beach for a massive motorcycle convention every June, and OOB becomes a mass hoard of gang fights between Holy Rollers, Hell's Angels, and the Crpyts (Bloods & Blues); our 24 officer police force takes on an additional 48 officers from June to August to deal with the gang problem.


 

  • Ocean Park (not a town, but rather a district of Old Orchard Beach, and refuses to believe it; one of Maine's most outlandishly radial populations and so popular with horror authors to base "small town Maine" off of that it houses a hotel that invites authors to come and write horror stories about it's super insanely extreme radical residents; is rumored to be the town which inspired The Lottery by Shirley Jackson.; has a ban on: tobacco, alcohol, "blacks", "Indians", "Japs", "Chinkos", Irish, Catholics, Muslims, Jews, and "Christians of debatable faiths" (meaning Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, and Jehovah's Witnesses - I know because, I asked) you can be arrested for any of those "crimes" (such as being a black person and walking into town, because being born with black skin is a criminal offence). I once tried to buy a house in Ocean Park (in 2006) and was told by the Ocean Park Real Estate (the ONLY real estate agency approved by the Ocean Park Comity to sell houses) that I was not allowed to buy property in Ocean Park because I was #1 not white (Scottish Gypsy) and #2 not Christian (Mormon & Voodoo) to which they added "our town has standards you know" they said. Ocean Park is a super extreme white power town that thinks it's a gated community. Many residents are proud KKK.


 

  • Saco (pronounced like Taco) (another filming location of Thinner; home of the tiny grocery store Saco Shaws aka the "transgender murder store" where white powers stake out the parking lot and beat up LGBTQ citizens with shopping carts, resulting in 3 murders at the store - one an 90 year old black man, one a mother of 4 children, and one a white power mom who was killed when a transvestite fought back and cut her head off in August 2015; police have had to beef up security around the store and the poor LGBTQ+freiendly store manager is at wits end with the KKK attacking his customers)


 

  • Biddeford (one of Maine's largest cities with 26,000 people;


  • first town in Maine to vote to allow big box stores, thus first town to have a WalMart; Due to being in Biddeford and being the closest WalMart to OOB, this is the WalMart which carries very distinctive "Jewish Cuinse" brands and items, not seen in any other WalMart in Maine


  • Biddeford WalMart was once voted "the most BoonDock friendly WalMart in America" and has a massive RV lot, several dozen acres wide, where you can see Travellers, Gypsies, Romani, SnowBird Seniors in big RVs, and Hippies, all camped in the parking lot - dozens, sometimes hundreds of RVs, campers, motorhomes, AirStreams, tow behinds, and 5th-wheels, lined up all around this extreme "nomad friendly" WalMart, that allows RVers to park for free for up to 14 days in a row, providing they check in at the service desk each day and buy their meals at WalMart every day while they are there.


  • WalMart BoonDocking is a big thing here in Maine as the homeless rate is so astronomically high. Biddeford WalMart has gained a reputation of being a "safe zone" for homeless, transient, and nomadic families in the area, resulting in many homeless with signs, standing in the medium street of the highway; it has become such an issue the past few months (summer 2016) that Biddeford police officers are now standing in the medium strips with signs, saying "please don't pan handle it's this is a dangerous intersection". Legally the officers can not tell the people to leave unless they do something to disrupt traffic.


  • home of the Dorothy Walker Bush Hospital Unit; a division of the Barbra Bush Hospital.


  • Biddeford had 2 abandoned hospitals, both hot spots with ghost hunters, Trull Asylum (later Trull Hospital and later Trull Nursing Home) and Notre Dame Hospital


  • a mill town built up and down the Saco River famous for it's massive brick mill buildings and it's 3 towering smoke stacks


  • home of the DownEaster Amtrak train;


  • home of the Saco River Curse; the location


  • where the KKK stages a lot of their biggest parades/marches/riots;


  • also home of the local "God Hates Fags" church and the Westboro Baptists of Maine can often be encountered marching around LGBTQ friendly stores throughout the Greater Portland area as a result; it's Rotary Park recently had to take down it's giant flag pole as it was the KKK's "hanging post" for gay men, who were being striped naked and hung by their ankles at the top, some 30 feet above ground, the park is not used much in the winter and one man almost froze to death after hanging there several days before anyone entered the park and found him


  • French is the native first language of most native residents of Biddeford


  • Christians are rarely encountered in this extremely Catholic city, where you often see nuns and priests walking in the streets


  • Biddeford has a "Jewish District" where many Orthodox Jews live, keeping largely to themselves, not having contact with anyone; one of Maine's large Jewish Synagogues from the 1800s is in Biddeford, just behind the police station.


 

  • Buxton (massive fields of horse, dairy, and pig farms, not many residents in between)


  • Dayton (massive fields of horse, dairy, and pig farms, not many residents in between)


 

  • Arundel (home of some of Maine's most radical churches, including yet another "God Hates Fags" church and the now infamous Arundel Christian Tabernacle (which shut down in 2003) who's Pentecostal minister was known for setting up huge tent revivals all over the state (which I attended), inviting big name TV Evangelists (think Kenneth Copland and his crew and rock star Carman ( the writer of the songs Our Turn Now and Sunday School Rock aka I Love Jesus and Great God, and Addicted to Jesus, and JC In the House,   if you've never encountered him before, he frequently does concerts here in Maine, Maine being the super insane, super over the top, extreme radical, house bombing, cross burning, cat murdering, gay hating super Christian region that it is) and  Jimmy Swaggart and Jesse Duplantis and Benny Hinn and the Eagle Mountain Holy Roller Motorcycle Gang); I attended the Arundel Christian Tabernacle for many years during it's 1990s hey days, before the FBI came in and shut down the minister who owned the church, because he had convinced several dozen senior citizens in the area to turn over their disability and SSI checks to him, which ended up resulting in the deaths of 2 women in their 80s as they had no money to by food or prescriptions they needed because their state checks were being direct deposited to the church.) 


 

  • Wells (famous for it's many miles of antique stores lining it's maine road, PBS's Antiques Roadshow often films here.)


  • Cape Porpoise (refugee town for Nazi soldiers in the 1950s; has high rate of active Neo-Nazi residents today; extremely white power town - very risky to be non-white in this town)


  • Kennebunk (extremely white power town - very risky to be non-white in this town)


  • Kennebunk Port (home of President Bush; headquarter town of the local KKK - very risky to be non-white in this town)


  • Ogunquit (won an award a few years back that billed it: "the gayest town in America" due to more then 90% of it's population being same sex couples; the town had legalized same sex marriage back in the 1980s; when anti-gay protests started in the 1990s, most every single house, apartment, store, and business in Ogunquit was painted shades of lilac, lavender, and purple; many of the buildings are still purple to this day)


 

  • Alfred (don't know much about this one it, nearly an hour drive from me; most farm territory)


  • Sanford (don't know much about this one it, nearly an hour drive from me; most farm territory)


  • Springvale (don't know much about this one it, nearly a 2 hour drive from me; most farm territory)


  • Shapley (don't know much about this one it, nearly a 2 hour drive from me; most farm territory)


  • Yarmouth (home to the Yarmouth Clam Festival; the one festival in Maine that attracts almost every resident of the entire state into one very small location all at once. This is one of the rare times you'll see the Romani (who are NOT Gypsies) as they are the ones who set up the amusements and rides.


 

  • Lisbon Falls (a town that nearly doesn't exist, has only a few hundred residents, and is so small, you can literally drive from one end of it to the other in under 3 minutes - if you blink, you'll miss it and never know you drove through. HOWEVER, if your characters are from Maine, they are going to move in a mass hoard along with the rest of Maine to land in the miniscule main street for one of Maine's most iconic events, an event that also attracts throngs of outsiders (people from America) who come to watch what most tourists describe as the most bizarre celebration they've ever encountered: The Moxie Festival


  • if your characters Native Mainers they will drop everything to not miss this event


  • if your characters are transplants, they will make lots of wise crack jokes about the event and probably avoid Lisbon the entire week


  • if your characters are tourists, they'll likely encounter a Mainer who's going to drag them to the event if they want to go or not


  • the highlight of the festival is to wait in a massive long line for 5 to 7 or more hours, and could be nearly a mile long weaving up and down every side street in town, just to do one thing: have "The Moxie Man" (seen on the bottle of Moxie) now in his late 80s scoop you out a scoop of his hand made Moxie flavoured ice cream into a tall glass of - Moxie! and get his autograph and a picture of you and him together with him doing his "Moxie Man pose" pointing at the camera and saying "Drink Moxie!"


  • See an interview with The Moxie Man here (also listen to his thick Maine accent)


  • it was the first carbonated soda invented, and invented in Lisbon Falls, birthplace of soda pop


  • in the 1870s Moxie had a different name: Snake Oil - Good for what ails you! It was guaranteed to cure multiple ills, including “loss of manhood, paralysis and softening of the brain”.


  • It is great fun for us Mainers (who chug Moxie daily, often drinking 6 to 12 cans a day) to watch the tourists as they make their first attempt to drink Moxie, then laugh hysterically while watching them run gagging and screaming and running around frantically looking for something NOT Moxie to drink, to get rid of the "burning sensation of having just drunk a bottle of kerosene" (as most tourists describe it)


  • Most tourists say "no wonder it's good for what ails you! it burns out whatever dares be in you!"


  • Oddly, not of us Mainers see it as "burning" or "tasting of kerosene" which is perhaps because most of us grew up drinking it from childhood and probably have long ago burned out any taste buds we had 


  • Most Native Mainers refuse to drink "bland" and "tasteless" Moxie competitors (Coke, Pepsi, Tab, etc) saying they feel "flat" on our tongues


  • The other highlight of the festival is The Moxie Chugging Challenge Contest - how many gallows of Moxie can you chug in as few seconds as possible, without needing to find something to wash the Moxie down with. Contest Rules: Chuggers will drink from 12 oz cans one at a time. You will not be able to open the next can until you have fully completed the can before. No devices, such as knives and spears, will be allowed. The winner will be the entrant who consumes the most soda in a 2 minute period. Not keeping your Moxie down will result in instant disqualification. Orange 10 gallon "vomit" pails are jokingly available for and handed out to the tourists who attempt to go up against a Native Mainer in this contest.


 

  • Parsonsfield (don't know much about this one it, nearly a 3 hour drive from me; Maine's large town land mass wise, home to the local branch of The Church of Satan, which is constantly vandalised and graffiti by angry Christians, mostly white power, who march around the church with signs)


 

The Greater Portland Area is on the boarder of Massachusetts about an hour from Boston. FBI office of Maine is in Portland, as it is one of the few "large" cities in Maine, though when compared to Boston, you could fit all of Portland inside of a single Boston block. Portland is known as The Forest City, because the trees are so dense that from the air it doesn't look like a city at all.

BoothBay Harbour is up in the Downeast region, half way up to Canada with Augusta, Bangor, Bar Harbour, Rockland, Rockport, Lincoln, Camden, etc. Don't know a lot about those regions as they are way up North and it's rare anyone in Maine ever travels more then 15 miles from where they were born. 73% of Portland's residents do not have cars/driver license, with more then 50% of them, never having set foot out of Portland their entire lives.

Most residents of Old Orchard, Saco, and Biddeford have never been outside of those 3 towns.

Maine has fewer than 2 million residents total in the entire state according to the last .gov census count. MOST of Maine's population lives in Lewiston, Auburn, Portland, Biddeford, South Portland, and Ogunquit.

The majority of Biddeford mega HUGE population of 26,000

I live in Old Orchard Beach, just outside of Portland. 

Coastal living in Maine has huge extremes from the super rich of Kennebunk, with multi-million yearly incomes, to the poverty stricken of OOB/Biddeford area with incomes of only $2,000 to $5,000 a year. Most residents of Kennebunk make more per day then most residents of OOB make per year. It is in these 2 towns where you see Maine's most extreme, extremes. Drive through one and then the other and it's hard to imagine they are in the same country, let alone the same county.

A lot of tourists, especially the Stephen King fans who come here looking to meet "Stephen King's Gypsies" (the Gypsy Clan he featured in the movie Thinner) say they come to Maine more to oogle at us "hicks in the sticks" or to see "the wild mountain men" or "get pictures of the gun toting fishermen", seeing how the rest of the country apparently doesn't have those, or so tourists like to tell me, while they are trespassing on my farm and tearing up my plants because "I just want a piece of the Thinner movie!"

I'm the "local witch" (even though I'm not a witch) but locals like to come throw rocks at me, shoot me with paint balls, or ask me to "can you put a curse on ___ for me, you know, like you did in the Thinner movie". If Stephen King ever asks to film a movie on your farm: say "No", the screaming fans will never give you a moment's peace for the rest of your life.

Know that EVERYBODY who comes to Maine, the first words out of their mouth are always: "Do you know Stephen King?" followed by "Can you tell me how to get to Stephen King's house?" followed by "What's it like living near Stephen King?" along with "So how many Stephen King books have you read, what are your faves, which ones...?

Nope, I don't know him. Yep, I do know directions to his house, it's a 5 hour drive north of me, nope, never read any of his books, nope, never seen Thinner. What's it like living near Stephen King, even though Bangor is about 75miles away? Annoying, tiring, his out of state fans never stop fangirling and fanboying, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, worse around Halloween when they arrive in droves. It's no wonder he lives in Florida now. Yeah - he's lived in Florida for a decade or so.

I'm not white. No. I'm a Gypsy. #1 tip for non-white people: be ready to duck and run - be able to run faster than bullets and recognized what direction they are coming from: KKK, Neo-Nazis, and gun toting lobster men abound around here. In the summer, the locals shelve the guns and smile sweetly at the tourists. From September to May, it's a hell fire of shoot outs. Yes, in 2016. (See my youtube channel for the 3 shoot outs caught on camera on my street just in the past month) In the nearby mill town of Biddeford, the KKK frequently gather and parade up and down the streets, often around the Jewish Synagogue. Locals proudly call OOB the "whitest town of the whitest state". I have an 8 foot tall white cross standing in my yard to remind me that I'm not white. A bomb blew up my house in 2006, to also remind me that I am not white. 10 of my cats have been kidnapped, 2 of them have had their heads returned to me, to remind me that I am not white.

And guess what else? Try to find the white power terrorist attacks on the news. You can't. News reporters REFUSE to cover ANY white power attack on a non-white or LGBTQ person here in Maine and there being so few of us in the state, we have a hard time getting anyone from outside of the state to listen to our desperate please for help either because they always say :"But it wasn't on the news..." No. We know. That's the problem. Try going to the police. When a bomb blew up my house, the officer laughed and said "Well, it's just Gypsies." No investigation was done and when I went to the department a week later to find out why I hadn't heard back from them the officer said "whoops, we must have lost the bomb from the evidence room, we have no record of your house blowing up."

Welcome to Maine: the nation's "whitest state". 

Oddly, the white power anti-gay problem only started in the past decade. In the 1800s it was RARE to find a white person in Maine. Old Orchard and Saco were mostly Gypsies or black. Biddeford was most French and Irish. The Orthodox Jewish community was HUGE and included 2 synagogues and a temple (all 3 still in use). Very few people were Christian, most were Catholic, Jewish or Muslim. Biddeford has a large Muslim cemetery from the 1800s. Portland has several old Jewish cemeteries.

It wasn't until Stephen King got famous that we saw the influx of a lot of whites and Christians and the mass BOOM of the population. 

The problem we Gypsies have specifically was Stephen King's Thinner and Christine. 

Here's some general details of Gypsy culture (the race actually and correctly called Gypsy, not the Rom or Travellers or other groups).

In 1978, no one knew we lived up here, pretty much isolated from the rest of society. In 1980 a rival clan (The group the FBI refers to as "The Scottish Traveller Crime Family of America" and listed as "the 3rd most wanted crime family in America" as well as "the most dangerous gypsy clan in the world"; commonly referred to by Americans as "The Scottish Mafia") landed on our land and did what their clan is famous for: squatting on massive levels of hundreds of people and as many tents, setting up walls of barbed wire fences, and marching around the perimeters with illegal military weapons, holding the family who owns the land hostage inside.

Our peaceful farm life, quickly dissolved into months of terror, as the very "gypsy" clan that in the 1950s gave all gypsy cultures a bad name everywhere, forever branding all groups as thieves, kidnappers, and prostitutes landed like a plague in our yard. Wanted by the FBI for murder, kidnapping, and human trafficking, they set up a "drug shop" on our farm, turning our potato fields into marijuana crops.

That same year, a second "gypsy" clan, this one a French group from Quebec, known as the Canadian Travellers, landed on the farm next door to ours. Both clans are infamous for stalking each other across the country, staging small town take overs and then having massive shot outs at each other in trying to determine which clan now "owns" the town.

Their shoot outs were legendary across the midwest through the 1950s/60s/70s/80s most noted were the ones in Wyoming and Colorado.

But the shoot-out that would forever change how the world viewed us Gypsies was the Battle of 4-58, whi happened in Old Orchard Beach Maine, in 1983, as the two clan let loss in gun fire, with about 70 adults standing on either side of the driveway, justing shooting at each other. Police arrived and joined the shoot out. Americans arrived and joined the shoot out... and one of the French clans women ended the shoot out by pouring 3 gas cans over the doom house, and a massive BOOM leveled everything in the area, including the house, as a meth lab explosion sent the dome house to the top of a mushroom cloud that was seen all over southern Maine.

Our town had just hit 1,000 residents that year.... today, thanks to Stephen King, we get 2 million tourists gathering in our town, most of them barreling up into my farm with one question on their lips:

  • Do you really put curses on people like ya did in Thinner?



  • Can you get me Stephen King's autograph?



  • Omg! Omg! Omg! Omg! Omg! Omg! It's you! It's you! It's really yooooooooou!



  • Can you put a curse on somebody for me? Please, please, please, please, please, pleeeeeeeeeease?



Me: I'm just trying to grow my gardens around the crazy Americans fangirling in my driveway. WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING IN MY DRIVEWAY?!?!

Why?

Because after the FBI arrived, the 2 "gypsy" clans, The Atwaters and the Cyrs, fled, but...in 1994, as a result of the shoot out, I woke up one day to find a camera crew in my yard saying: "Hey, we're filming a movie. Stephen King wants real live Gypsies in it, told us you still live true to the old ways and are just the type of Gypsies he's looking for. Something about clan wars and shoot-outs, just go about your day, don't mind us, we'll be gone in a few hours."

They never asked or got permission to film Thinner on my farm or put our cars in the movie or film us real live Gypsies living our every day PRIVATE life on our PRIVATE PROPERTY. We'd never heard of Stephen King before, had no clue who he was or who these crazy Americans were or why they were in our yard, or the insane levels of extreme consequences it would have on our life, us letting a bunch of guys with cameras walk around our yard for a few hours with their cameras.

Our farm has been and endless parade of Stephen King fans trespassing in and out of here all hours of the day ever since 1997.

My life has become an endless stream of answering the question:

  • Omg! Omg! Omg! Omg! Omg! Omg! It's you! It's you! It's really yooooooooou! SQEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Can you put a curse on somebody for me? Please, please, please, please, please, pleeeeeeeeeease?



I'm not in the movie, I've also never seen the movie, or read the book, but apparently in the movie, there is a "gypsy witch/fortune teller/queen" who puts a curse on somebody and makes hell of their life, and that character was based off of me, thus why they wanted parts of the movie filmed in my yard, because I am a Gypsy Queen (witch/fortune teller, being what the Americans call me). The result of which is the only thing any one ever knows about real Gypsies is that real Gypsies are different from Romani because real Gypsies put curses on people.

*sigh*

So, I get to see on an almost daily basis just exactly HOW the Americans view us Gypsies. And for the most part it seems the common belief is that we are not even Human, but some sort of "mythical race" like Elves or Gnomes.

Yeah... every year since the release of Thinner, thousands of people come up in here and ask me:

  • "Are you really a Gypsy? I thought Gypsies were mythical creatures like Unicorns and BigFoot. I had to come see for myself if Gypsies were actually real creatures. "



And another common phrase people say to me is:

  • "I wish I had natural born magic powers like you Gypsies do."


As well as:

  • "I hate being Human. What's it's like not being a Human?"



The Americans were all: "OMG! Stephen King's filming a movie in our town! Think of the tourist income it'll bring in!" Well, it certainly did that, but at what cost? Trespassers have traipsed up into our yard uninvited in such large groups all year long that my rose bushes are all destroyed. I can't even think of having a lawn as the foot traffic kills the grass before it can grow. I can't plant my crops because people walk over the plants and crush them. Tomatoes and lettuce smashed into the ground: "Oh was that something you was gonna eat? Ha ha! Silly me, not looking where I was going." Half my trees are stripped bar of lower bark and branches because everyone has to "take a piece of Thinner" home with them.

The local Americans got their filthy lucre money, but us Gypsies? Our lives been completely destroyed and no one cares about that. A bomb blew up my house. The KKK put a giant a giant cross in my yard. A neo-Nazi group has moved in down the street from us - 10 of my cats were kidnapped April 10, 2015, so far the heads of 2 of them have been returned. That same day - the kidnappers also filled my motorhome with feces 3 feet deep.

This is the reality of what it is like to be a member of the clan America has dubbed "Stephen King's Gypsies" or "The Thinner Gypsies". While the Stephen King fans are flocking in screaming fan girl hoards, destroying everything under their trampling feet, the anti-Semitic white power KKK and neoNazi groups are marching around killing our pets, bombing our houses, and carrying crosses - because unlike the Romani and the Travellers, we are REAL Gypsies, the actual race actually called Gypsy, and that means we have Jewish blood in us..

We didn't ask for this. We've lived isolated from white society for centuries. Before the Thinner movie our town had only 1,000 residents. Now look at it. We like our privacy, but ever since The Thinner movie was released, our lives have been under constant scrutiny to the point it feels like I'm living on a microscope slide and the whole world is stopping by the catch a peek. Do you have any idea what that's like?

And do you know, my car has been vandalized by Stephen King fans AND people terrified of ghosts and demons, so many times, that it has had all it's chrome stripped off dozens of times, I have to keep rebuying it because fans keep breaking off pieces of "the real Christine" and you remember that church I mentioned back there, Arundel Christian Tabernacle, that I was for a long time a member of? Well, one night they decided to gather together and cut my car in half - said they had to kill the car to kill the demon. Yeah. I had to but the chopped up pieces of my car in storage until I can come up with the $57,000 estimated cost it's gonna take to put it back together.

Weather?

We get hit by a hurricane every 4 or 5 years. They do massive amounts of damage when they get caught in the Bay and start circling over us again and again, trapped in the horseshoe shape of the Saco Bay. Most hurricanes miss us though.

Blizzards and Snow Squalls (a Blizzard at Sea, aka a Snow Hurricane) are far more common and extremely dangerous.

A Blizzard is a snow storm with 75MPH winds and a snowfall average of 3 feet per hour. They happen near daily in January and February. My yard frequently has snow in excess of 20 feet deep.

Keep in mind too, that Maine is FAR NORTH and in winter has only 5 to 7 hours of sunlight a day IF the sun is out. Right now in October sunrise is around 7:30AM and sunset around 5PM; come November during NaNo it'll be 8AM to 4PM, in December 9AM to 3PM.

February 1998, we got ice over a foot deep, most of the state was in full blackout (no electricity) for 3 full months (Google "Ice Storm '98" for the news reports)

I live on a beach. I February temps are -20F to -30F most years, BEFORE wind chill factor. Our coldest year was October 2007 when it reached -48F, wind chill bringing it down to -175F

January 24, 2015 we got 12 feet and 7 inches of snow, FROM A SINGLE STORM, multiple storms like that. (Google "Blizzard Juno" for the news reports). My motorhome is 12 feet 1 inch tall - she was buried in a single storm.

We have snow on the ground from October to May.

While it is uncommon to get snow June, July, August, and September, it does happen from time to time. August 2014 - it snowed.

Locals start wearing shorts and bathing suits when the temps reach a sweltering 60F. It's considered a heatwave the few days of June and July that we see temps of 70F to 80F

Most tourists I meet (and I meet about 30,000 each summer, thanks to Stephen King's Thinner and Christine) tell me that they find the average coastal Mainer to be "bizarre" or "outlandish" often saying they feel like we "are not Humans" and that we "act very alien" and that they feel like they've "stepped through a portal to another world". The inland locals tend to describe us that way too.

 

 

 

 








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