Living In A Small Maine Town, What's It Like?

Living in a small Maine town, what’s it like?

Maine is a handful of cities and over 450 small towns, plantations, unorganized areas. More open space and wildlife, less people and no billboards.

There is no shortage of opinions on anything these days. Where you should be living is one of those hot topics. Strong opinions and often the pros and cons are deeply personal.

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This blog post is to spell out the what to expect without the sharp barbs or any resentments about small Maine town life.

For starters, who best to describe living in a small Maine town then someone who lives there full time.

Not a scathing report based on never set foot in Maine, never ever been there but I’ve heard blah blah blah. Or and here-say from one or two not so happy campers where the complaint experience might be legit or their own short comings caused.

So small town living in Maine, anywhere has a garden variety list of differences compared to a populated setting.

Small towns are fewer cars and traffic, more unspoiled outdoors. You experience lower crime, less pollution, friendlier first name basis living but not everything at your fingertips.

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The “gotta have and don’t want” list changes in your life no matter where you hang your hat.

Quality of life, healthier simple living is attractive but as parts wear out, medical centers come into the consideration of where you should live.

Too expensive to live somewhere causes moves, relocations to Maine.

Or you can not afford to retire where you are now can make you go online to do a Maine real estate search. If you live now in a not so great place to raise a family, the pack up the moving truck maneuver is on many folk’s radar these days. Or over population, high taxes, crime and temperatures can cause the pull the plug to want to live off grid in a Maine homestead with land.

So Maine small town, what it is like?

A Toby Keith song but all the time? Everybody thinks my tractor is sexy Kenny Chesney like? I’ve blogged about 4000 population towns in Maine and it is all relative.

How small is the size you are examining for a Maine town?

If the town is 100 people, you might have a church or two, maybe a small convenience gas station outlet nearby to tide you over. Until the trip to a larger population center that can support a Dollar General or maybe a small Piggly Wiggly or Yankee Grocery food store.

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Small town living in Maine can make you think of out west in the farm belt.

Or a small coal mining community where farming or mining is pretty much all your have. Healthy Maine small communities are diversified and don’t have all their eggs in one economic basket.

Farming, woodwork, fishing, tourism for the sportsmen, families on camping trips are all big. So is transportation because unfold the map. See all those miles that separate small Maine towns from large population centers? That’s a big 10-4 on trucking in and out the goods we need and what we grow or create heading the other direction.

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So the life in a small Maine town.

You hear about a fire in your home town from a neighbor who posted a photo or two on social media. Or someone down at the service station or in the aisles of Walmart mentions did you hear about it?

If you are two or three degrees separation from the person in the news or making it, you hear through the family grapevine.

If you are not from the small Maine town originally, you will hear some negatives about never being accepted. Or feeling like a true local native of the Maine small town.

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But if you volunteer, join a local club, church or school event, you will make new friends. If you are not always complaining about back in Jersey or wherever you lived last or grew up on how they do it better.

You are valuable if you are a worker, an asset to a small Maine town.

If you have a positive attitude and hopefully a sense of humor, that is a plus when moving to a small Maine town.

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If you are from a sprawling urban area with million of people, it is hard to get your head wrapped about a small Maine town population of under 1000. Lake resort communities in Maine that swell and then go back to small numbers as the “snowbirds” head to the sunny south or southwest.

Long distances to travel for goods or services are part of the drawbacks to small Maine town life.

But access to Interstate 95 makes the travel pretty easy when no traffic and designed for moving 75 miles an hour or faster.

But because we are parked a little further up the pike, the surroundings become less traveled and more unspoiled all natural. Look up, see the stars on a walk at night? Hear the crickets and Maine lake loons in the moonlight? You can not duplicate that in a city setting.

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So what are you after, what are your expectations and how did you grow up and was it a good experience or not.

You want more of what you like, less of what you do not and a change in zip code is driven by expectations. If they are met, you stay and pitch in to add to the local community in Maine.

Our job in the Me In Maine blog is to introduce the many corners of Vacationland to the readers. Some who grew up here and appreciate what we have in small town Maine living. Others who long for it because it sounds so delicious but so foreign to where they live now. I love living in a small Maine town and think you will too!