Check out our B&B web page.

+

This is a rough draft of Rants for your Maine Private Radio show for April 20, 2014

+

1 When some people fix something it falls apart again within a week. You might be married to one of these people and know exactly who I’m talking about. But there are other masters of the tool chest who are able to make minor adjustments that last forever in their homes. Their secret is called the temporary repair. When they put something up, they don’t intend for it to last. But, nothing lasts like a temporary repair. Hang a door with nails on one hinge --- just so it’ll hang there good enough until you can find some screws to do the job right, and it will be swinging contentedly there the day you die. If you’d put screws in the hinges --- if you’d done the job right, the door wouldn’t have fit, and the screws would have worked themselves out and you would have lived with a door that stuck for years until it fell off and dropped on the dog. Knock down a wall in your kitchen and put up some good solid sheetrock. Do a good job. The cat will claw it down before you ever get around to paint it. But, put a piece of plastic in your smashed out car window --- just to keep the wind out until you can get over to the junkyard to buy a window to fix it right, and that plastic will be there the day you park the old clunker out in the back yard and use the door as a target. If you really want something that will hang in there forever, the rule to remember in Maine is that nothing lasts like a temporary repair.

+

2. From time to time some reporter from the Boston Globe will call me and ask, “What’s the difference between you people on the coast of Maine and the other folks who live 40 or 50 miles up country?” And I’ll tell him about the Boston man who retired and moved way up to Livermore Falls. He said that he liked it there because the mill had shut down and the only people in town were over 80. He chuckled and said that he didn’t have to worry about a 80 year old man messing with his wife. And that is the primary difference between Livermore Falls and Camden.

+

3. Boston, New York and Hartford people very often laugh at those of us who live on the Maine coast, but they wouldn't be able to earn a living up here. It's too different from anything they've ever experienced. Think of the difference: here in Maine when you come back to work on Monday morning, all of your tools and supplies are still there.

+

4. You might have read that six Washington County men were arrested in a burglary case. In the same paper we read that six men were arrested for similar crimes in the Portland area. What has happened to the rugged individualism that we used to boast of here in Maine? Are corporate executives the only people left with the courage to go out and steal on their own?

+

5. A young man seeking enlightenment once travelled far away to a distant land and climbed a tall mountain where a wise old man reputedly dispensed wisdom while perched on a goatskin at the mouth of a cave. Upon finding the guru, the young man asked if he would tell him how to live a full and happy life. The sage said, “If you want to truly appreciate 29 days of every month for the rest of your life, spend that one other day as a volunteer aide for a kindergarten teacher.

+

6. And it came to pass that a newspaper reporter came to our home to collect information for a story on me. As you might expect, I tried to conceal the truth as much as I could but as you know I’ve never had any practice trying to conceal the truth so I’m not very good at it. He asked me if he could talk to some of my radio friends --- you know, to get an unbiased opinion from you that he could print in the newspaper. He asked me for your telephone number. But when I looked in my computer, all I had for many of my most articulate but faceless radio friends was an email address. Unless they are in business, most people don’t extend to friends the courtesy of appending their mailing address and telephone number to the bottom of each email. So I emailed a few select friends, and said, “Luckily for you I didn’t have your phone number because a newspaper reporter wanted to get the dirt on me from you.” I got a few nice letters back to forward to him. Here is one of the more poetic replies which came from Matthew in Kennebunkport. "The Humble Farmer is many, many things: wise, eccentric, witty, provincial, and worldly. Skoglund's show is filled with simple beauty, and like a dew-speckled spider web, its wonder cannot be understood through analysis. As with Howard Kosell, Humble tells it like it is. Except of course, for when he tells it like it isn't. Skoglund's taste in music is impeccable. Clear Channel and other faceless national radio monoliths could take their cues from Humble and play a little more Jengo Reinhardt, with a little less Brittany Spears. In essence, Humble's show is real, and original. Humble himself is a real, original person, not a "personality." Shows like Skoglund's may be a dying breed, and we would all do well to appreciate such treasures while they are with us." Dying breed? Was that a nice thing to say? At my age I’m doing more dying than breeding.

+

7. A year or two ago on July 7th I was running my furnace because it was so cold in the house I couldn’t type at the computer. I started out with a hot drink but --- get serious --- when it is 51 degrees outside and rainy with a wind blowing, just putting on a wooly hat and a snowmobile suit inside the house won’t do the job for an old man who is barely putting out life signs. I live in the part of the world where, when it comes to temperature, records are constantly being broken. Interestingly enough, the coast of Maine never breaks any records when it comes to heat.

+

8. Monhegan is an island which is 10 or so miles off the coast of St. George, Maine where I live. Unless the weather has been very, very cold, one goes down to Monhegan in a boat. The Monhegan boat is the Laura B, and when I creep aboard the Laura B to go down to Monhegan I go back aft in the cabin and put some blankets on the seat and lie down and try to sleep. I did this for years without realizing why I did this. But, the last time I went down to Monhegan I saw two young boys trying to sleep on the boat. And I remembered that around 60 years ago when I was in the Coast Guard, the only thing I wanted to do on the ship was “hit the rack” which is another way of saying drop in my tracks and get some sleep. Habits cultivated when one is young die hard. Are you an old sailor? Do you find that even after 60 years every time you get on a boat you still have an uncontrollable urge to hit the rack?

+

9. Monhegan is a small island off the coast of Maine and there are a dozen or so trucks on Monhegan that are used to haul luggage from the boat up to one of the several hotels or cottages for summer visitors. One does not register a motor vehicle on Monhegan because there are no state roads out there. But, as I said, there are several pickup truck workhorses and on one of them I once saw a bumper sticker that said, “Save a shirt. Eat your lobster naked.”

+