I stepped off the plane in California and was greeted with 109°F temperatures. Then after a teeth gritting, shirt sweating, ride down a congested and under construction Rt 101, someone pulled the plug on regional electrical power for a full 90 minutes – commencing at the exact moment I reached for the fan that is standing at the heat wave ready on my living room floor. I wished there had been some way to turn around, get back on the plane and head for the same location I had left earlier that morning.
“Home” is tough to define. I know it when I leave it, I know it when I can’t come back to it and I know when I feel as though I’m finally in it. I just can’t always define what elements combine to make up those various states. Two weeks ago, my wife and I traveled from Sunnyvale California to South Portland Maine and vicinity. We know people in Maine, we’ve spent some time there and we thought it might be better in a variety of ways than our current place of residence. Mostly we felt the west coast seemed dedicated to solving the problems of a few by sacrificing the rights and freedom of many. We like firearms, hunting and fishing. We like wooded areas away from urban and suburban sprawl. We like privacy. We like to be independent. California, on the other hand, seems to embrace the rights of vegetables, both human and plant forms, and any extremist views that are designed to make the average person seem weird, anti social and politically incorrect.
A few months ago, we decided to take advantage of a seller’s market, off load our home as a step toward relieving ourselves of an area obligation, and prepare for a move to some yet to be determined location. We listed the home for a few days, opened it up for bids, and within three hours it was gone at 10% above an already ridiculous asking price, in a cash transaction. Sounds great, unless you also have children who are trying to buy their first home, and need to raise $100,000 as a 20% down payment on a little fixer upper. I believe the area’s infrastructure is beginning to collapse. The immediate area has become so expensive to live in, and so heavily taxed, craft and basic service people have been driven out. Don’t even try to get passable repair work on a car, or modest construction on a home, or expect a lawn service to show up from one week to the next. Each day seems to mark the loss of yet another older single family dwelling, leaving a spot for some dormitory type accommodation for cooping young people, or a green, mirror windowed, monolith shrine to technology. Don’t worry about the punctuation, just breath or pause when you run into a comma.
So with most of our lives in storage lockers, kids all settled in their daily routines, we broke out the Atlas and started searching. Many areas that seemed attractive at first, eventually went by the wayside. We’d find very nice areas, that recently went full time with a local government and were busy recruiting every business and service we were trying to leave behind. Real estate agents have a very difficult time understanding “Cisco is building a 2500 employee factory right here, and a new train station will open us up to the city and rapid development…” can cause a rental car dash to the nearest airport. They just don’t understand that the message heard is, “We place no value on who we are, what our community represents, or how it came to be. We will sell out our residents, life style and peace of mind for any remote shot at a couple of bucks”.
As I indicated earlier, we finally settled on a visit to Portland, Maine. We knew they have had a long term exposure to technology companies, dating back to the old days of Fairchild Camera and Instrument. We also knew they had a moderate sales and income tax, but seemed to have learned to function within these levels of tax revenues. In comparison, New Hampshire without a sales tax or income tax has a very high property and capital gains tax structure, and local politicians are absolutely giddy with the potential of introducing both sales and income tax in the very near future. We felt these taxes, in aggregate, would be higher than the Maine structure.
The airport was easy. Off the plane, 5 minutes to get to the lower, and only other, level, a 30′ walk across from the terminal to the one of any of the major rental car agencies. No vans, no shuttles, no tramways to distant on/off-airport lots. People in the airport didn’t run us over, nobody attempted to steal our bags, the people at the rental counter were actually helpful and didn’t grunt at us. The rental car was 35% less than California and, of greatest importance, my wife was smiling. The rest of the trip was a learning experience.
Young couples, even with shaved heads, matching tattoos and small children can sit at an adjacent Sunday restaurant breakfast table, without spewing four letter words, without bumping into your table, and without picking on the waitress.
The town of Raymond is closed on Monday.
Real estate brokers in Maine can hustle you as quickly as California brokers, and perhaps with greater subtlety. Maine is a buyer beware state.
There are a lot of trees and many lakes in the state of Maine. I mean real trees and real lakes.
L.L. Bean is open 24 X 7 and it takes 15 minutes to get there from any location in the state.
There is a name for snotty and pretentious people in Maine. They are called tourists.
The Holiday Inn in Portland is a breeding ground for vampire tics and other yet to be named critters.
Some Maine acreage is no longer on the market.
A few months and some luck finding a builder should result in a new home for Real Guns.
As the man on local cable TV said during an interview relating to gun control, “We like guns, and the whole family hunts and participates in shooting sports”. When pressed further by the reporter about the “obvious dangers” of gun ownership the man replied, “I’m very sorry you feel that way. We just don’t shoot our police officers or rob our food stores here, and we don’t want to be forced to change our local lifestyle by people who choose to live in violent crime areas. This is the country.”
Thanks
Joe
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