MeInMaine Blog

Tag: small town rural maine

  • You Better Learn How To Wave If Going To Maine.

    Adopt A Wave At Everyone. In The Islands You Find All The People Honk As They Pass.
    Maine Folks Smile A Lot, Wave All The Time, Are Friendly.

    Waving, nodding your head and smiling, saying hello to everyone you meet in Maine.

    Everyone, no exceptions. You have to become natural, at ease waving and being friendly if you plan to be in Vacationland long. There is a strong sense of community, a local connection and not just between native Mainers.

    Why? Because Mainers are interested in other people. Used to helping each other out from back in the days of I need a new barn on the Maine farm. And this weekend everyone is gathering to build one at your place. Next weekend, the same routine but down at my end of country road. We need each other, work together, survive and make it work.

    Mainers are strong community local volunteers and working together on local projects you get to know each other outside a work, professional relationship.

    The entire village also raises each others kids, watching them grow. Following their career and hoping for the best. Because we all had a stake as a little league, hockey, basket ball or whatever coach. Or were a teacher in public schools, church and we do know each other. Who your Dad and Mom are.

    Youth activities, family events in Maine are huge, common, happening all the time.

    So we bump in to each other, get to spend more time together in small town rural Maine.

    Kids are friendly, like to have fun and it rubs off on the adults that grow up but stay young at heart.

    Smaller population areas like Maine is famous for means we see each other a lot in the course of a week. At local community Maine events. At local farmers markets, down town shopping, sitting on a bleacher watching a youth sporting event. At an outdoor band concert. Beano or bingo, whichever way you spell low cost gambling.

    So back to waving, the new habit you better get proficient at if spending much time in Maine. To ignore someone is mean, hard too if you see them a lot. To be in a store and oh oh here comes so and so that you had a go around with a while back.

    Say hello. Just smile.

    Be pleasant, get over the misunderstanding and be civil. We don’t like being at odds, we fix broken relationships and don’t hate any one. We teach our kids to do the same.

    And if you don’t know someone from Adam or Eve, be friendly anyway. Make eye contact, hold doors open for them, let them go in traffic which is pretty light all the time in sparsely populated Maine. Wave at them. Everyone does. In showing Maine real estate I will get asked one question right off the bat by the fellow that came in with New Jersey, New York or some other state tags than ones with Vacationland stamped on the bottom. Do you know all these people they wonder as they ride shot gun looking at recreational properties on a lake, land in the middle of the woods.

    Most of them I do know. But the ones I don’t I will in no time if I just wave. Show an interest, acknowledge they are there.

    I see you, you see me Dick and Jane simple.

    They wave back, we begin to figure out who they are. In small town Maine, we feel like any of the folks are friends, family the longer you spend time here. It’s called friendly, neighborly. We don’t carry full charged tasers with the safety off. No locking our Maine house doors, camps. No worrying about personal safety in the 4th lowest crime state of Maine.

    The vehicles sit in the yard with keys in the ignition. Maybe that sounds dumb to you. Maybe you don’t live where things are like life should be. Maine, get here quick as you can.

    You will love the rock bound Maine coasts and sampling the food of the deep from lobsters, clams, baked potatoes, local fresh blue berry pie.

    But you will enjoy the people even more. The community spirit and how everyone is friendly, waves, gets along for the most part is contagious. That taste stays in your mouth, is easy to swallow and warm up to if where you live now the feeling is missing, dead.

    We have to get along. There are only 11 of us per square mile in Northern Maine’s Aroostook County. Similiar situation in the other fifiteen counties. We rely on each other in smaller towns. If we did not, what makes the area special would be lost. The pitch in and work together would be missing and it would become dog eat dog, every man for himself. Maine is home grown not store bought. Home made always trumps something off the shelf any day.

    I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
    207.532.6573
    info@mooersrealty.com

  • Maine Small Town Living…Wearing More Hats, Feeling More Connected, Needed.

    Local Soap Box Derby Racing Is Big In Houlton Maine, 66 Volunteers Make The Nation's Largest Event Happen.
    Local Soap Box Derby Racing Is Big In Houlton Maine, 66 Volunteers Make The Nation’s Largest Event Happen.

    In small Maine towns, you quickly learn there is nothing stronger than the heart of a volunteer.

    Everyone has roles to play. The area in Maine they hang those many hats they wear is better off, richer, fuller for local volunteers and their day in, day out efforts. The most important hats in Maine are the jobs, roles you take on with your family…like little league coaching, soap box derby racing, being a sunday school teacher. Kids learn from the entire villiage in Maine. There is a connection and everyone feels a sense of belonging, that they are needed. Because they are.

    Many of the service club civic work a local Mainer does, takes on is because in smaller areas, if they did not, it might not get done. Fewer people in Maine..just over a million folks mean grab a tool, hone a skill and take on a job the area folks need you to assume, sign on to. Less people, heck eleven people per square mile in Northern Maine, Aroostook County translates to just enough to have a game thinking. Like when you live in the country in rural Maine and only so many houses in the few miles around your home, so back yard baseball contests with the local kids means hunt, stratch, beg, plead sometimes to fill a skeleton roster.

    You’re all there is situation in Maine but a sense of pride that you have a needed role you volunteered to. Lots of them. Serving on local town government boards, helping to shape the future direction, development of the town in Maine you call home. I make my living “selling” Maine and have for thirty years as a Maine real estate broker. But the blogs we write here, around the internet, the videos we shoot, edit and post about the listings, the local community events are not just part of my job. I am a personal fan of Maine. You reading this blog must be too. Once you get all Maine offers, how sincere and caring, hard working the local people are, you find your real home, niche, place under the sun. I am not just a promoter of Maine. I sincerely enjoy living here, promoting it and way I can.

    In Maine, our local bands, parades, state hosting of music, sporting events are home grown, not store bought. Our financial resources are limited, our creative efforts to get an event off the ground are off the charts to track. There is nothing stronger than the heart of a Maine volunteer.

    Often a kid benefiting from the experience is all that is needed to get the program, event, annual tradition off the ground in a small Maine town.

    Sometimes the drive is simply knowing when you were young, growing up in a small town other older members of the town put their shoulder in to this, this and this event. Pick yours and assume the position when you enter adulthood. You feel needed in small Maine towns, connected, aware of the other folks who live here. Why? because you are. What would your area where you live suffer from, lose if you were not there to do this, this and this?

    This blog helps get the word out about how we roll in Maine. We work, don’t feel entitled to any free lunch.

    Our hearts are strong, designed, shaped, taught to get involved on a strong local level. That’s why I live in Maine.

    Ask me how you can get a taste of Maine, or to relocate, retire, get to raise a family here. It’s one of my favorite subjects, hobbies, hats I wear. Here is an video example of a couple living in the Maine woods of Masardis..to give you a taste of being in the woods of Aroostook County..full time on a the Aroostook River.

    I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers
    Call 207.532.6573
    Email info@mooersrealty.com