Maine Tee

a state where to fit in, you need to (1) live in a trailer, (2) own 3+ of each: trucks, ATVs, snowmobiles and guns, (3) wear the combo mullet/greasy baseball cap/Wal*Mart insulated flannel/ sweatpants/ boots, (4) know and enjoy moxie and oxy, and (5) have a not-so-remote resemblance to what should be an unrelated cousin. Your career options are (1) collecting carts from the parking lots of grocery stores in freezing rain at night without reflective jackets, (2) stuffin' lobster rolls in McD, (3) sort empty stinking bottles in a redemption center (in ME there's a 5c dep on cans/bottles that you then turn in for cash, and some poor soul has to sort them by vendor in rancid containers; normally you can turn them in for beer right there, as most places double-up as beer/wine shacks to perpetuate the cycle); for the college- educated the option is to work for a call center calling on delinquent credit card deadbeats. Maine consistently ranks at the bottom, along with Louisiana and Mississippi in stats such as teenage pregnancy, smoking rates, educational spending, literacy, income, unemployment, small business climate, energy costs and the like. That said, the people for the most part are down-to-eart, generally nice and helpful, and a little provincial. The state is really two different states: southern maine, which is quickly becoming a Boston suburb while yet in denial about sprawl, traffic jams, crime and related issues, and north/east, generally starting from Lewiston/Auburn up; rural, some farming/forestry/lobstering/welfare, claiming to be the real Maine. It is a part of the state where going out-of-state generally means an overnight trip, sometimes to a strip club in near the border in Quebec, or a bar in New Brunswick, Canada, where the drinking age is 18. Maine a state of striking natural beauty, both along the coast (the farther northeast you go, the better and wilder it is), as well as the mountains in the west, the lakes are nice, too. The natives along the coast are getting squeezed by out-of-staters buying up oceanfront properties as vacaton homes and thus driving the values/taxes up.