What is happening, going on in a small Maine town is pretty easy to follow.

Because small rural living in a lower population concentration. A state like Maine means intimate, connected, extra special is how we roll. You don’t wait until the news sources catch a headline in your small rural Maine town. It is spread through the grapevine. You get the film at eleven from the source, a brother in law or one of their parents. Heck you are probably related if you dig a little, look a tad deeper.

Developments learned as they happen each day hoisted up in the manual pump barber shop chair.

Or aired hollering a little louder over the blow dryer at the hair twister’s salon. While getting a new doo for you for the office Christmas party down at the Grange hall, the Elk’s lodge or snow sled club house. We all circulate day and night in the same small tight circles in small Maine towns.

The journalism articles on the close to home channel gathered at the local feed store too. While getting a work out. Loading multiple fifty, hundred pound sacks of feed grain. Into the open waiting pickup with the lowered tailgate backed up snug to the loading dock.

For special delivery, another reverse workout for what is waiting. Some glad to see you on the return flight back to your patch of dirt. Where filling the barns, pastures, windbreak hovels contain the critters. That missed you big time during your absence in town. Especially at meal time feeding, watering, socializing.

The hobby or working farm in Maine where you eek out a good honest living.

More and more following an organic field to table philosophy discipline. To know with certainty where the food you place on the table came from today. What it is you actually dine on. Having no doubts it is the one hundred and ten percent healthiest, most wholesome, nutritious for yourself, loved ones.

You are rich, blessed, like royalty. Because you are the lord of your manner, CEO of the level to rolling. The land around your humble but paid for, never to be truly completed work in progress shelter. Lucky and you know it clap your hands. Inside and out well done not medium rare. Joyful, frugal and in tune with your surroundings has moved in.

When you get to live in Maine. Up here in the right hand corner on the Canadian border. Along the craggy, sea salt air rock bound ocean front. Maybe the vast wilderness wooded sections that wear “T this, R that” designations. Not real town names. Whatever you are parked by, wherever you call home turf in Maine.

Where money is not the end all important. Maine, where stepping up and working hard to find more deep down inside you is the carrot. What every one of us marches to when the feet swing out of bed, hit the cold hardwood floor. We rub away what the Sand Man left as a parting gift of deep seeded sleep. To focus on the daily agenda ahead of us all in another day in small town Maine.

Self sufficient simple living frees up the dependency on costly artificial crutches that make you an urban junkie.

Those nasty retail merchandizing habits, safety crime concerns. The high cost out of the wallet and peeled, tearing a gaping hole out of your hide. Squeezing, robbing your daily blur called existence.

The good stuff you were raised on if born in Maine, spent a childhood gleaning. Raised by the village. Not just Mom and Dad, the grandparents, older siblings.

Veering away, avoiding the stuff warned about that used to be vices. Like the Doobie Brothers harmonized on vinyl circular tune grooves that is now a lamented habit. When eight out of ten folks used to live on country spreads. But now the number has flip flopped one hundred and eighty degrees the other way. Everything in the World, across the land is not so peachy keen and most of us are lab rat jammed in a city setting. Thinking we have to in meeting, exceeding our “career salary objectives” I think is the politely correct terminology.

News, genuine concern not gossip follow up stories in small Maine towns talked about after the church service.

Sampling coffee cake and tea, coffee or fruit punch for the kids in the audience. What’s happening as it does learned about in the bleachers of a local sporting event. Shared when someone visits and sits a spell to chew the fat on the open front Maine home porch. Now social media just adds to the speed of thought ease to stay connected.

Or the news still delivered the old fashioned return the favor way. When someone who cares brings back something borrowed. Along with the excess of hidden treasures home made tasty. Not found on a store shelf. That just left the oven. Where the cook carrying it gingerly scales, slowly climbs up the back steps.

Who just happened to make a second batch still fresh and warm with just you in mind.

Because you think alike. Tag them back for the joy it gives the creator. Not just the receiving end of the covered casserole dish, sliding top brownie tin, towel wrapped cinnamon rolls in the bread basket they remember you especially enjoy.

When the shoe is on the other foot it is not dropped or forgotten. Nothing gets lost in the strong connection that only builds with the joys and struggles in life of a small Maine town.

When you know the people in the story, it adds a lot of rich background. Not just a name, you have experience with the folks you work on community projects with in small Maine towns. Or down at the hardware store. Get the essentials from at the Mom and Pop small business they run.

You know their strengths, weaknesses, talents other family members.

Are glad they are in the ranks head counted by the Census people with wearing badges, carrying clipboards. They accept your good, bad and ugly traits too.

But the big thing in small Maine towns is we all know we need each other in the small crowd. The one needed to keep the small rural burg or village securing its spot on the road map.

To make it survive, hopefully grow.

Last a life time. Creating a source of pride for all the population that connects the dots, paint by number the landscape. To call make it a colorful home, where they hang their hat over the hill and dale.

In small Maine towns you feel the joy, experience the sorrow. Whichever way the local winds blow from inside, outside the town boundaries. The fine kettle of fish, state of affairs of each unique day. All shared with a small group. Of community members more deeply involved, personally responsible, committed to do their part for the greater good.

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