Fear cripples, robs, distracts your life.
But when you live in an area that is not knee deep in it. The shift to tend to other details that are more important, having greater reward happens. Like getting the winter wood in to stay warm. Canning and preserving for the root cellar stash into the winter foodstuff cache.
Fixing the roof leak around vent pipe on the Maine home.
That would be a pretty hard DIY procedure once fresh, fluffy snow piles up around it. When old man winter neck reins the weather channel. Settles in for a few months around the end, beginning neighborhood of the calendar.
So in Maine life skills are not self defense to protect against bad actors, shady characters. Survival is banking your home to make it easier to heat.
Taking care of the ceiling over head, the drafts around the windows and doors. The basics of survival not fight or flight fear engagement with concern about do or die. Your personal safety is not the first consideration. Or thought of at all in Maine.
Making sure harvest of the bounty of the garden produce is stocked away to draw from around meal time.
For the sit down, count your blessings, pass the peas please. Around the supper table of the Maine house you are proud to call home. That is a work in progress. Will never be really done or complete in your lifetime. In the pay as you go, take your time with the hammer, nails, paint brush.
Sharing what you have and helping others in the strong local connection. That is part of small town living in Maine. Take what you need, leave the rest for others. It’s always about others. Not number one moi.
Pinching pennies and Maine simple living in gentile poverty.
Getting more from less. And not everything tied to the almighty dollar. Lots of bartering attached to the transactions of goods and services. No dead presidents exchanges from the bank roll.
But living in personal fear.
Sheer terror and always thinking the worst is about to happen. That is lives in the shadows. Lurking around that next corner. That is not Maine. Rural, simpler living in the 4th lowest crime state is not living in fear or feeling scared. It is all about being prepared in battling the elements not people.
Had a continuing education course at this year’s state of Maine REALTOR’S convention at the Samoset Resort. The headline about safety in real estate. I thought it was going to be more about practical applications of the day to day watch yourself around property listings.
Like, when you visit a bank foreclosure which are not the norm in the 46th lowest state for them, but that has knee deep water in the wet basement.
Maybe when the power is on, you should as the real estate agent or broker think twice, thrice.
About stepping off whatever cellar step the water from the spring thaw has climbed to during the inspection with buyer or appraiser.
Electrical safety around the rising ground water.
Things like the laundry basket, picnic coolers, luggage, pieces of firewood floating.
Bobbing in an eerie way and everything looking very out of place as you think about plugging in that sub pump but not being fatally shocked in the process. As you fish for the cord end to slide into the electrical socket if the juice is on.
Or thinking about the sleeping pit bull in the last bedroom down the long, dark, narrow hallway of an older mobile home. The one with the nameplate “Vagabond” above the trailer hitch.
Where one bedroom you suspect the tenant has a meth lab percolating. That is the kind of personal safety issues I think about as a rural Maine real estate broker. Tour guiding with a buyer for the looksie, the once over kick the tires. And figure out the whatta you think?
Stepping through a rotten neglected deck board. Or keeping customers away from the railing around the structure that is loose as a goose. Gonna cause a buyer, one of their kids to take a Peter Pan off into the lupines, burdocks surrounding it.
Falling into a septic cesspool depression out in the front yard. Or driving up a steep grade around a Maine lake for a showing or listing when there is a skim of black ice.
Not much sand handy for traction in and out. And you gun it to keep from sliding sideways. Keep moving with enough speed for momentum. To avoid the upsy daisy at the Maine lake. The oh oh. Up and over, down a very steep bank heading to the drink. Coming to rest down into an evergreen, all natural vegetation parking spot. A completely camo color protected gully.
In a Maine farm barn watching for exposed nails and being careful where you plant the loafers. It’s on your mind out in the farmstead yard.
To avoid scraping your leg on farm equipment angle iron sharp edges. Hitting your shin walking by a parked pickup with the trailer ball and hitch lining up just so. As you squeeze around the implements parked in the Maine farm machine shed.
Those are the property dangers to be eagle eye as you wander. Out and about in rural Maine property as it’s peddler. As the dealer in the matchmaking that brings buyer and seller together at the property listing.
But never where I live worrying being hit in the noggin. Robbed, your car hi-jacked. All in a split second as you bend over fiddling with a lock box code.
The door is open. We don’t mess with house door locks. Keys left in the ignition of all the vehicles too. Help yourself. Walk right in, sit right down. Baby let your hair hang down is how the song goes right?
Entertaining thoughts that you will be taken out with a baseball bat don’t surface in the gray lobes.
Not thinking during an open house property tour that while you are in the kitchen talking about granite and quartz counter tops.
The other half of the Bonnie and Clyde “buyers” tag team is wrestling with the Monet on the wall. To pry it off. Looting, shoveling jewelry into a black nylon sack to lower out the window. For the drop, hit and run. You watch too many movies or have lived in crime riddled areas too long.
Triple locked doors, cars secured with alarms, clubs to disable them.
You don’t see that in Maine. A car thief looking for a Porsche, something exotic, heads to Martha’s at Cape Cod. More high end, lower mileage late model beauties await the drive it like you stole it routine. For the NASCAR slick five finger discount. Before chopping it up and the evaporation of parts.
Got the three credits for the Maine real estate license renewal.
But the having a text on your phone to hit send when you meet up with bad characters. The calling the office and asking for the “red file” to be sent to your email account or phone.
As a secret signal that you are being held hostage or directly in harm’s way. Send help SOS, May Day.
Like someone pushed the silent alarm under the teller station like you and I have seen in movies. Letting the network of people on your personal safety list all know where you are every minute of the real estate day. As you move with special phone apps to catch the loss of signal. When the blip goes off radar sweeps. Save your money, stop worrying. Move to Maine.
In most Maine homes, the treasure is not store bought and sought by a thief to fence it.
Pawn shops don’t have a big market for the personal valuables of a true Mainer. The plaster of paris snow white hand prints of a tiny child or a dead animal from a memorable hunt. That hang on the wall.
The old black and whites images in crooked frames. A little out of focus photos from yesteryear. With old cars, big smiles, family dogs, cats or horses included. Round the capture under glass in the 5×7, 8×10 snap shot. Kodak moments collected, because time goes by.
The SUV with enough miles on it to get to the moon and start the trip back in the tin can.
Who would travel this far north to help yourself to that? The sentimental value wasted on anyone else that has no connection to the events, the people attending them. What is valuable is not store bought but home made.
Whew, you made it to Maine. Life in Little Rock, Arkansas, any high crime population center is a whole lot different than in rural Maine.
I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker
207.532.6573 | info@mooersrealty.com |
MOOERS REALTY 69 North Street Houlton ME 04730