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September 20, 2010 There and Back

Nosy neighbors | Overnight visitors and more are fodder for public consumption in a small Maine town

By John Mcdonald

We’ve all heard complaints from folks — mostly “from away” — about life in small Maine towns. These people go on about how they could never live in such a place because small town people are much too nosy.

True, people in small towns are curious about the things people are doing. When some folks drive by a neighbor’s place, they’ll risk going off the road and into a ditch to take the traditional nosy neighbor look-see, wondering if there’s anything different going on in the dooryard. If it’s a new vehicle, does it belong to someone local? If it’s a visitor from the area, who is it? Did they stay all night? If they’re visiting from away, where are they from? How long are they staying?

If it’s just a new car, what did they do with their old one? Is it still for sale? If they sold it in a private deal, how much did they get for it? Where’d they buy this new one?

Standing around a local store swapping stories and drinking strong coffee, who hasn’t heard someone pipe up and ask something like, “Anyone know anything about the strange car in the dooryard at the Seavey’s place on the Ridge Road?” Or, “Anyone hear anything about the family that’s just moved into the Nelson place? That place was on the market for over five years and they reduced the price about four times. I heard it had mold problems or something and the new owners made them do a radon test.”

That’s when a friendly competition might begin. Who can reveal the most about what’s really going on? Someone might start with, “I hear the car at the Seavey place is a relative from New Jersey on their way to the Maritimes. Something about looking for cheap waterfront property down there since they say our waterfront is way out of reach for most people, even folks from New Jersey. They had some free time before they had to get the Cat in Bar Harbor so they stopped for a short visit. The husband works for the publishing outfit in New York that handles that fella Richard Russo’s books. The wife teaches music in Princeton or someplace.”

Next will come information about the Nelson place. “I don’t know their names but I heard the people who bought the Nelson place are from Massachusetts somewhere and he was just hired up to the university to teach sociology or something.”

Following the openers, someone else might add, “Marge down at the post office said the new people at the Nelson place couldn’t be nicer. Their name’s Hagopian. Armenian. Wife’s Irish and Italian. They say the husband just got his doctorate down in Boston and this is his first teaching job. Someone said his wife is hoping to get a job teaching history at the high school.”

Now the folks in the store are warmed up. Before long, the assembled know how many kids the Hagopians have and their ages. Thelma was asked if her daughter Becky would be available to babysit. Eventually, everyone knows how much the Hagopians paid for the Nelson place, where they got their mortgage, what interest rate they got, what renovations they’re planning and who’s been hired to do them. Just for good measure, someone on the outer edges of the discussion will chime in with the results of the family’s radon test.

Living in small towns, I never felt uncomfortable knowing that my neighbors knew stuff about me, and some of it’s even accurate. But no matter how much your small town neighbors know about you and your family, it probably pales in comparison to how much your government knows about you. Like it or not, there isn’t a whole lot you or I can do about it, except maybe move to the city. So I do what everyone else in a small town does — I live with it.

I was thinking about small town “nosiness” recently as towns across Maine began cleaning up from one storm or another. It’s a known fact that when a storm hits, there’s no better place to be than a small Maine town. The same nosiness that has no apparent use when it’s being passed around a general store can sure come in useful during and after a storm or some other emergency.

Because small town people know just about everything there is to know about their neighbors, they know who can take care of themselves and who’s likely to need some help. They will know that the Seaveys’ relatives might need help getting up to Bar Harbor to catch the ferry, or the Hagopians might need help dealing with their first Maine storm.

Rather than standing around wondering what to do during or after a storm, or waiting for the latest information from a government agency or some television station, small town neighbors go out and get it done.

 

John McDonald, an author, humorist and storyteller who performs throughout New England, can be reached at mainestoryteller@yahoo.com. Read more of John’s columns here.

 

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