Horses Pull Sleigh During Moosestompers Winter Celebration.Local Maine Farmers Depend On Area Youth To Harvest The Spud Crop.
Frugal and cheap. The two are a pair of different cats in Maine.
Watching your everyday spending for survival, being frugal goes back to living on the farm. Not that long ago we all lived on a patch of dirt with three generations under one roof, working the land. Heating with wood from the hardwood ridge on the back forty acres. Having little money, but no debt. And all our basic needs met with food, shelter, family. Simple, God fearing, grateful for what we do have. Not lamenting what did not.
In Maine, if you are a homeowner, this is the time of year to apply to your local town office for property tax exemptions. Making sure you are eligible and taking advantage of the tax exemptions is not cheap, it’s more of that frugal we were just talking about. That spirit that is ingrained, part of the survival mode to squeeze any excess from our everyday spending to apply to what matters most.
If you are declared legally blind, an individual Maine tax payer is entitled to a $4000 property valuation tax exemption, or reduction.
You need medical documentation to back it up, to present to the local tax assessor. But you have to file prior to April 1 of the year you hope to establish, take advantage of the reduction.
In Maine, if you are a veteran, a widow of a veteran who served during a federally recognized war period and are now 62 or older, you qualify for a $6000 property valuation tax exemption. You may qualify for the same tax reduction if under 62 years of age but with a total service related disability. Again, you have to fill out the paperwork from your Maine tax assessor’s office prior to April 1st to catch the boat, to save the money, to be frugal for the coming year “rebate”.
In Maine, the Homestead Property Tax Exemption is the third available to homeowners. To qualify, be a legal Maine resident, have owned a Maine property for at least a year prior to April 1st. The homestead must be the taxpayer’s permanent residence. You can not claim more than one “homestead” and second homes, vacation lake camps, etc do not qualify for the property tax rebate, or reduction. A $10,000 reduction in your Maine property tax for the homestead tax exemption is available but you have to file the paperwork with the town office where your Maine home is. The state of Maine provides for this tax relief, to help home owners who qualify have an easy time coughing up the property taxes due.
As a Maine real estate broker, I encourage all buyers and sellers I work with to take advantage of the property tax exemptions available. They can be used in combination and help home owners stay in their homes when income is low and every dollar counts to not be forced to move for lack of funds to maintain that ownership.
That’s not cheap…that’s Maine frugal.
What the law provides as a property tax short circuit to preserve Maine home ownership. Here are more details on Maine property tax exemptions. Also the clock is ticking for the up to $8000 tax rebate for Maine home purchases too. Be frugal, scope out the options for first time home buyers and the extra $6500 available for existing home owners who decide to “move up” before the clock alarm goes off, ending the Maine program.
New Fresh White Snow Blankets, Wraps Around A Maine Victorian.Maine, Watever Floats Your Boat.
If you grow up in Maine with long views of rolling hills, fields, crystal clean lakes and a low population treading lightly, it is easy to forget it is not like this every where on the planet.
Maine images are vast too as the state is big, more than just lighthouses and lobster.
We have shot, posted over 1200 Maine images on Flickr. Our Youtube site has videos filled with community events, not just property splashes.
Without words, Maine images begin to show the flavor, what makes the state different, special. It’s the people that make the difference and their attitude to be good stewards of the area. To their piece of Maine to their kids in better shape, condition than they received it. There is a respect, a solemn appreciation for what we have and not wanting to lose it.
Maine, come sample it, taste it, drink it in. For more helpful links, Maine information, for everything the brochure left out see for yourself.
Sample the Maine fresh air, see the cobalt blue skies, brighter stars first hand with a visit on line or better yet in person.
Head up Interstate 95 the next chance you can, make time to see for yourself. Maine, you’re not you when you’re not in ME. Our sister blog Active Rain has over 1450 posts on what it is like day to day here. What it looks like, “tastes” like.
Four Seasons Beauty, The Major Ingredient Of What We Sell.
The blogs we write about Maine properties, the local community flavor, videos we shoot, edit, post in marketing real estate now started with radio.
Broadcasting in a small market like a Houlton, Maine was a great job for a fourteen year old farm boy. The station WHOU, and two others in Calais and Millinocket Maine, were owned by early television pioneer Howdy Doody (Buffalo Bob) who had a summer place in Princeton ME.
My job as a one-man show was do everything from spin tunes, find lost dogs and cats, take out the trash, make sure the transmitter was turned to low power during lightning, and rip/read the news, sports, weather.
The Associated Press machine chattered and spit out the news. I always thought it odd that 99% of the news we broadcast was for starters, just read and not in the news makers own words. And two, mainly copy on events in the Maine cities and around the world. But not local. We had a station bunker bomb shelter constructed back in the cold war days. I thought if there was ever a nuclear attack at Loring Air Force Base in Limestone, no one locally would know until it came over the wire. News locally went unreported unless called in to the AP and re-routed back to the announcer. If they took the time to check the wire.
When I entered college at the University of Maine at Orono, I landed a job at WLBZ radio 620 on outer Broadway in Bangor, Maine. Station manager Eddie Owen specifically sought employees from “The County”.
He figured my growing up on the farm meant I knew how to work, and I liked it. He was right.
WLBZ radio was just coming off an all-news format that had not scored well in the Bangor market Arbitron ratings. As we struggled to find a niche, a following on the return to the music dial, our news roots carried over in being more than a rip and read AP robot. Sound bites from the news makers themselves were aired. We would rewrite and edit three or four paragraphs down to two. Adding a local angle for home grown flavor and appeal, sparkle.
We had lots of local news aired around the clock in Bangor involving all the satellite towns, making us different. We were worth listening to. Besides our setup, only newspapers and television outlets were covering the local beat. I worked throughout the year, racking up many radio hours. I also attended UMO where I earned a broadcasting degree with heavy concentration in speech, film and advertising/marketing journalism courses.
WABI radio program director George Hale offered me more pay at a higher-rated station with the chance to get in to commercial production. I remember being the TV voice of the horse used in a series of Jack and Jean outlets around Bangor. Because channel 5 and sister country station WBGW were at the same facility, the option to learn more was all around me. The film animation courses I took at UMO came out so much more professional due to the access to editing and other enhancements at “Studio City” at 35 Hildredth Avenue near Pilot’s Grill. I was able to do every air shift. I even had to spend the night a few times. One morning, I had to open up the station for George Hale due to a major snowstorm that caused state police to order traffic off the road.
Eventually “Humble But None The Less Mighty John Marshall” called me while I was on the air at WABI. He offered me a job to come back to a new Z-62– A rock station with many of the former employees of WGUY that had come across town to breath new life in to the old WLBZ, Then WACZ and now WZON. I spun records as Andy Powers, and news as Andrew Powers. The new last “air” name– thought up by Mighty John–was meant to impress the president of Maine Broadcasting with that also shared my new last name.
I remember rolling in before 5 AM to get the station news ready for Mike Ohara, Tim Comer and eventually Mighty John. When news of a fire at the Greyhound bus stop and The Phoenix in downtown Bangor Maine hit the scanner after one newscast, I fired up my Pinto.
I raced downtown with a portable cassette recorder and microphone to capture the event’s fire engine sirens, the clanging of busy fire fighters and to interview the chief.
Later, I would learn it was an electrical fire, and two fire fighters developed smoke inhalation. A cat and a dog in an apartment had died.
Next, it was a race back to the station–Edit the sound bite–Write the wrap around copy. You did not hear me say “Bangor Fire Chief Daigle says this or that.” I would lead in with “Bangor Fire Chief Leo Daigle” and he would say the fire started on the second floor, “When we got to the blaze, the second floor was pretty much smoke filled, and the cold temperatures hampered our efforts to get water where we wanted it.” The sound bite was blended with natural event audio that put the listener at the scene with live captured sounds. Sirens in the background, windows being cleared, broken glass sound, fire fighters shouting and the fire venting process under way.
Barry Hobart, another Houlton boy that was the station’s sales manager, said he was stuck on the new third Bangor Brewer bridge in traffic, wondering what all the smoke was. Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way” ended and the lead in story on his radio was the Z’s Bangor Fire Chief explaining what the hub bub was… and where all that smoke was coming from that Barry was wondering about. The best compliment was when he asked how did I get down to capture it, back to edit and air in in the less than 30 minutes between newscasts? I smiled and said “I’m from the County and hustle is something you and I learned growing up”. He grinned.
People tuned in listen to our news, even when they did not necessarily like our rock music. Our quarter hour ratings were off the scale because of this loyal “news” audience following. Our morning man Mike Ohara was from Houlton, Maine, too, just like Dale Duff, Pete Chambers, John Elliot and Mike Dow who worked the Bangor market. I also ran TV 2 camera for Eddie Driscoll and did the 6 o’clock news with Bill Green, Don Carrigan et al.
Suddenly, I realized I loved broadcasting, but to move up the ladder meant relocating every two years to places like WPRO in Providence, Rhode Island, and WRKO in Boston. I interviewed and was to be hired for a job at a Brunswick Maine station WIGY. But I had married a Bangor lady and decided I did not want our kids to grow up in the move to eventually outside of Maine. So, I took my real estate courses in Bangor, and for the last thirty years have listed, marketed, and sold real estate in Houlton ME. The broadcasting background and education from UMO served me well as video is taking over real estate promotion.
In 1980, the market was local. Your property buyers home grown, in the same town the property was parked. Now, the real estate playing field is worldwide. Instead of selling just the sticks and bricks, the area needs to be promoted to someone that has never been to Maine before. Local videos of sports, canoe races, local churches, the area banks, the hospital, soap box derby races all needed to be shot, edited, uploaded. I have close to 400 youtube videos and populate other sites along with posts on over 80 social media platforms we populated along with the blogs, podcasts, vidcasts. Here is a 9000 view example of the local Northern Maine Soap Box Derby Race, the largest for five years in a row in the entire nation. And here is a local hockey game video between two rival hockey teams, the Houlton Hodgdon Blackhawks and Presque Isle Wildcats. And one video showing how we sell Houlton Maine real estate.
The best program director that I learned the most from in Radio was Mighty John Marshall. It is not cocky if you can do it with his handle “Humble But None The Less Mighty John”. He handed us a dozen-page broadcasting “bible” much of which was from WJBQ, WLOB stints, gigs he had earlier in his Maine broadcasting career. It had advice for on air…don’t complain. Never tell customers to stay off the road on their way in a snowstorm to shop with the guy who pays your salary with his ad sales campaign that is underway during your shift. Never, never have dead air. Keep the levels hot. Talk less. Know what you are going to say, and when on the hour. And play the tunes, entertain, inform.
The drivers of a stock, super stock or master soap box derby car are the best. Because they are kids.
Why wait until you are sixteen to drive a car? The Northern Maine Soap Box Derby hosted their first race in Houlton Maine in 1996. And from 1997 for the next five years running, the Houlton race in Aroostook County was the nation’s largest local race. In a small town of around 6700, close to 200 cars and their racers competed to see who would represent the local at the All American Soap Box Derby in Akron Ohio.
The Houlton Maine race is held on a specially engineered hill to save time in set up, tear down. And so energy is channeled, not wasted in making sure cars are teched out, safe. The rest of the race details addressed so all drivers learn the “thrill of the hill”.
Races in Camden, So Portland, Rumford are not longer held in Maine. And talk of Bangor Maine’s Eastern division race being mothballed could mean Houlton Maine will be the site for a state soap box derby race. That is exciting and the local Northern Maine Soap Box Derby welcomes the challenge, privledge of being the host hill to find a winning champion to represent Maine in Akron’s race in July. This year’s local race is June 19th, 2010. Slide in to a derby car, it is not as easy as it looks.
And add to the experience if you were eight or nine and it was your first time behind the wheel looking down the barrel of a very large, fast hill.
Sponsor a car. Take a kid under your wing. I had two kids, a boy and girl who won the biggest local in the country and went on to Akron Ohio which was a great family experience. All four kids raced, with a special trailer used to hit rallies in New Hampshire, southern Maine. Look in to Soap box derby racing where gravity, less air resistance, less friction is your “engine”. The stock car weight with kid, car, everything is not to exceed 200 pounds. For super stock 230 and master’s lay down racer 250 pounds to make them sail fast if you find the shortest line to the bottom of the hill. And don’t hit the expensive timer.
When you see the glossy colored brochures, write ups and tourism industry generated videos, promotional propaganda on Maine, you get excited.
Maine is vastly different than over populated areas with too many people to deal with, drive around, worry about crime wise. It is not like that here…life if so much simpler. After you get thru the slide show of Maine lobster, lighthouses, blueberry pie, potato picking and Mt Katahdin, there are the topics left out that enrich your life.
For starters, it helps if you aproach Maine with a slight attitude adjustment. Small mental tweaking on how you are living your life now. If it is a blur, where you are detached from your surroundings, and only absorbed in a few areas like work, a sport, or baggage from the past, we have some prep work. Happier living starts with a different outlook. And Maine then becomes the backdrop. Provides the scenery change. The removal, weeding out of too many people. And replacement with four season beauty to continue the “new you” enhancement.
When you find yourself, put yourself on the side of a Maine lake, and it’s 5am with the sun coming up, you have forgotten the freeway to work you do battle on most days. You are aware of the singing birds in the trees.Hear and see fish jump near the dock the kayak is lashed to. You are walking before a breakfast you cook that is not hurried, is actually fun to create. The kids are still sleeping because the jet ski tubing you did with them yesterday wore them out in a good way. In an energy drained, that was fun manner memorable fashion. Tomorrow you will take those same kids and hike in Baxter State Park. You will not be thinking of phone calls to return, emails to check, or stirring any back burner office projects for the next week.
This vacation in Maine removes the hectic you have assembled in to your life. Replaces it with a new awareness of your surroundings. You are in Maine. You have let go, relaxed and figured out a few of the secrets of a fulfilled, happy connencted life. Maine is more than a place. Fill your life with that clean air. Study the bluer than bluer sky during the day. The million star on black velvet same sky but at night under a moonlight that dances on that same lake you got energy from visually this morniing with that coffee. Maine is a people that are hardworking, family centered, willing to help you out and accept your quirks. And at the same time are curious and wanting to learn where you have been.What you have learned that you can share with them. That’s a true Mainer.
The connection to others. The awareness of the place we live and respect for all Maine offers starts with depending on ourselves.
The ingredients for contentment, serenity are like low hanging fruit in Maine. We don’t have to create the setting or buy the enhancements to create the flavor. It is already here, not spoiled or removed by man or development under the banner of progress. And being on a budget is a great way to carve out a simpler life in Maine.
You see a few of these and moose, deer on the Maine highways too.
Not many people will recommend hitch hiking.
But in Maine, the 4th lowest crime state, I never worried about getting picked up or myself giving someone road side a ride. I worked in broadcasting in Bangor Maine through out college and for two years after I graduated. And it was rare I could get back from Orono to Houlton Maine, two hours away. But when I could, even though I had a Pinto, sometimes it was easy to catch a ride. To save money. And the trip went by very fast with some neat conversations along the way.
It was not always a thumb out, and random hitch hiking either. My dad had a fleet of trucks used to haul Maine potatoes to market and french fry paper cartons back to the County. So many times a ride back on an 18 wheeler was not hard to coordinate.
Waiting on the side of the road just did not happen. Maybe it is Maine people being trusty, friendly. Or this young college kid could remind them of their kids, or themselves earlier in their lives.
Maybe if I was a young Maine lady I would have a different attitude.
But if you follow Maine news, you just don’t hear of mishaps, wrong deeds done with hitch hiking part of the crime. Some times there would be two of us with our thumbs out looking for a ride. And I still pick up a student, young person needing a ride. Without thinking twice about it. Maybe because folks did this for me getting back and forth to Houlton and Bangor Maine.
If you like people, are interested in them and don’t live in a high crime area, you can learn regardless from your new rider or driver. Hitch hiking can be a neat way to spend two hours getting to know about someone that always always has some friend in common with you in the low population county of Aroostook. There are 11 people per square mile in Northern Maine. Maybe that helps explain why folks look out for each other, can not drive by and leave someone out in the rain. Standing by the side of the road. Maine, its way way different here. Get here quick as you can to see for yourself.
