Sticking to the basics | The tourist attraction that could be right in your front yard
It’s always been said that in summer, people come to Maine from all over the country to see a moose, eat a lobster and photograph a lighthouse. The more eccentric among the tourist class might claim — just to be different — that they come here to eat a moose, photograph a lobster and see a lighthouse. No matter what order the essential Maine nouns and verbs are in, most Mainers still feel that the best way to sell something to tourists is to convince them it is somehow related to one or more of The Big Three — moose, lobsters and lighthouses. This information wasn’t revealed to Maine people by some marketing consultants in New York. Maine people figured this out all by themselves by noticing the number of people with out-of-state cars who stopped and asked questions like, “Where can we see a moose?” or, “Where can we get a lobster?” or, “Is this the road that goes out to the lighthouse?”
When you hear questions like that day in and day out from Memorial Day weekend to Labor Day, you’d have to be pretty numb not to detect a pattern in tourists’ thoughts and behavior. These same observant Mainers also noticed that when summer tourist season rolls around, gift shops, bookstores and even convenience stores always stock up on authentic, Chinese-made items of the moose, lobster and lighthouse variety. If you’ll pardon a little shameless self-promotion, I’ll just add that my first book, “A Moose and a Lobster Walk into a Bar,” was titled after closely observing the buying patterns of tourists.
Over the years, people who don’t understand these simple but essential tourist truths have claimed that Maine is so much more than moose, lobsters and lighthouses. These people merely reveal their lack of knowledge about the real Maine and the tens of millions of camera-toting tourists who flock here in summer. It could also be that these people don’t particularly care for moose, can’t abide lobsters and don’t understand all the fuss about lighthouses. Various phrases are often used to describe these people, phrases like “from away” or “Yankee fans.”
When you talk about Down East to these people, they think you’re referring to that section of Manhattan between avenues A and D. The truth is, tourists aren’t that complicated. They want their time in Maine to have something to do with Maine, and the three things that have done it best for millions of tourists are moose, lobsters and lighthouses.
I began thinking of all this the other day after reading an article in the Portland Press Herald about the people now involved in promoting Maine tourism. It sounds like they want to rewrite the rules that have served Maine so well for the last 100 years. These people say we should downplay the moose, lobster and lighthouse business because Maine is now a place for bird-watching, eating and golfing. That is the idea the Maine Office of Tourism hopes to convey with its new advertising campaign, “There’s more to Maine.” The new campaign was unveiled recently, just in time for the spring and summer tourist season. The state plans to spend $900,000 running ads in newspapers, magazines and on television (they forgot radio) to push the message that the state offers a wide variety of attractions.
The last thing I want to do is tell these ad people how to do their business, but I think they’re ignoring a major part of Maine business and culture that flourishes in spring and summer thanks to tourists. I’m referring of course to Maine’s YSI — Yard Sale Industry — an enterprise that affects the lives of every man, woman and child in Maine. The Yard Sale Industry is overseen by the powerful Yard, Flea and Garage Retailers Association. No one is sure, but rumor has it the influential organization that controls a significant portion of Maine’s retail sector is headquartered in a sprawling office complex on the outskirts of West Paris. The association operates on a simple but successful idea: When tourists arrive, get out on a lawn somewhere and sell something — anything!
“Your trash is someone else’s treasure,” is not an empty saying. To YSI associates, it’s a firmly held belief. Tourists buy tons of our trash, in the form of yard sale “treasures,” strap it to their cars and haul it off to New Jersey, thus saving Mainers millions on rubbish disposal fees. As you might expect, Maine officials have always had issues with Maine’s influential Yard Sale Industry because it operates without any government regulation. Also, each yard where a sale is held becomes a little piece of New Hampshire, in that every YSI enterprise is completely tax free. It’s enough to give a state tax official a peptic ulcer.
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 at www.mainebiz.biz.
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