Normalcy returns | The sounds of post-tourist Maine are unmistakable
Thurland Alley sat on his front porch enjoying the deep quiet that had settled in around his town now that October was here and even the stragglers among the “summer complaints” had packed up and headed south. After another season of marketing and managing his successful tourist business, he could finally slow down a bit and relax a little. Fall was finally here.
Thurland would never spoil this special calm with some of the foolish gizmos of modern life like iPods and iPhones. Thurland didn’t own an iPod and had no plans to acquire one. He’d once owned a peapod, an elegant rowboat, which is nothing like an iPod, but probably as close to an iPod as Thurland was likely to own in this lifetime.
Thurland knew people who had iPhones and was tired of hearing of how the gadgets had changed their lives — both their business and personal lives — but he didn’t believe any of it. These iPhone people didn’t seem any more organized than anyone else. To Thurland it was all so much foolishness. He had no need of an iPod or an iPhone and that was the end of it. He also had no intention of getting a Twitter account. All foolishness.
On this particular October morning it was quiet enough for Thurland to hear the customers talking to each other in the parking lot of the Shop-n-Pay at the corner. He couldn’t hear everything they said but heard enough to know that they were talking about how the store’s new manager had completely turned the store upside down, so that nothing was where it used to be. You now had to go wandering all over the store trying to find an item that used to take less than 40 seconds to find. The new floor plan was supposed to be the latest thing in grocery store marketing, where customers were “encouraged,” meaning “forced,” to wander around the store for an hour or two trying to find some simple item.
As his neighbors continued their grocery store discussion, Thurland began reading an article in the morning paper about all the shouting, arguing and name-calling that went on at a contentious selectmen’s meeting on the question of where to put the town’s new boat ramp. Some folks said the town did a terrible job of marketing the idea and now no one favored the plan.
Thurland was glad to see that things in town were getting back to normal. It was comforting to know that his neighbors were back to arguing about important things like the news manager’s product placement at the Shop-n-Pay and the town’s new plan for a public boat ramp. There’d be no more activities like sparring with tourists over parking spaces on Main Street.
On this particular morning, things were so quiet that Thurland could hear Thelma Beal down the street as she came out of her house and down her granite steps and across her new crushed stone driveway.
Soon after Thelma’s crushed stone was all installed, town people said that Thelma had the only crushed driveway in the village. Most everyone assumed she had gotten the idea from those new people from Rhode Island who had bought the old Nelson place on the River Road in June. First thing they did was have the Dow brothers come and replace the traditional Maine gravel driveway with crushed stone.
At first Thurland wondered what Thelma was doing heading out so early, until he remembered she had just gotten a new job at the school and had to be there by eight.
Once Thelma’s car had rolled out over the crushed stone, everything around Thurland returned to that deep quiet that he had been enjoying, that quiet that can only come to Maine when fall has come and the tourists have gone.
Soon all he heard was the sound of birds in nearby trees and way off he could hear the sound of a chainsaw.
At some point, Thurland realized what was really going on here. Summer was long gone and Maine was getting back to normal. Days were getting shorter and winter would be here before he knew it and things wouldn’t change for many months to come.
It was only then that Thurland realized what upset him about this time of year. Despite the deep quiet and all the parking places at the supermarket and the fact that townspeople had finally gotten back to the neighborly activity of arguing among themselves instead of grumbling about people from away.
Thurland realized that it would be a while before he could get back to doing for tourists what he enjoyed doing more than anything else: giving Down East directions to people without a GPS.
John McDonald, an author, humorist and storyteller who performs throughout New England, can be reached at mainestoryteller@yahoo.com.
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