We all want spring so badly. We exchange one ass ache for another. Snow and cold for black flies and mosquitoes. Read this and while trying to make sense of it, sing the words to the sound of music. For you damned critics, I didn’t compose all the stanzas and choruses as they were performed in the musical – ppppppffffffffffffffffftttttttttttttttttttt!!!!!!!

The hills are alive with sound of mosquitoes

Their wings beat so fast, you can hear them scream

I go to the hills cause I am so stupid

With my deep woods off I still bleed.

My ankles they itch they crawl up my pants

God knows what they’re looking for.

Then one bites my arm and one sucks my neck

But I love the outdoors.

I spread some more fly dope all over my skin

They say it won’t hurt you

But I doubt they care

My blood’s getting low so I better go now

Before I lose my mind!

With the talk of spring in the air, I am reminded as we all are each day we drive around, about potholes. With the rattling of my pea brain each time I hit a hole in which I wonder if there is a bottom, I recall a short little ditty I heard one time a long time ago. I guess one of the reasons I remember it is because it describes most of us Mainers quite accurately.

After reading it and you still think it doesn’t apply to you, run out into the middle of U.S. Route 2 the next time a semi tractor trailer comes by and do us all a favor. Or just go back to Taxachussets. It goes something like this:

One day I went out the door and I walked down the street.

I saw a big hole in the street and I fell into it.

The next day, I went out the same door and walked down the same street.

I saw the same hole and I tried to go around it.

I fell into it.

The next day, I went out the same door and walked down the same street.

I saw the same hole and I tried to jump over it.

I fell into it.

The next day, I went out the same door and took a different street.

Mainard True

The smell of spring is in the air in Maine – the stench of the decomposed mud that begins to show up everywhere. Soon the floorboards of your car will turn black from the stuff as will the kitchen floor. Everyone’s driveways become impassible and rutted with deep tire marks.

The snow is melting fast and turning black from the winter’s sand and salt, car oil and whatever else the plows may have unearthed during the seemingly endless winter. The litter stored all season long in the snow banks collects on the surface of the melting snow and soon the banks will be gone and the piles of sand, silt, oil, grease, paper, hubcaps, lost hats and mittens, perhaps a missing ski pole or two and maybe even a dead cat are left laying beside the road.

Spring is a beautiful time in Maine – WHAT ARE YOU CRAZY?? The only thing good about it is the snow is melting. The air stinks and driving down the road makes you feel like you are visiting the local landfill – once known as the town dump.

The weather teases you with one or perhaps two days of sunny and comparatively warm temperatures followed by 18 inches of wet, sticky snow. Ah, yes! Spring is a lovely time of year in Maine.

Mainers have, over the years, come up with names for some of these events. Somehow I guess it eases the pain of reality and gives a bit of an explanation as to why these things happen. One name given to a March snowstorm is “Sap Snow”. Some dumb son-of-a-bitch actually believed that a little snow late in March would make the sap run better. Then there is “Poor man’s fertilizer”. Could this be true? If there actually was some soil nutrients in the spring snow that falls, can this be healthy for humans? Why spread manure anymore?

As the sun creeps ever higher in the sky, the snow continues to rapidly disappear. If Mainers are lucky, a good “poor man’s fertilizer” will cover the ground again – maybe in early April and this will make the dark green grass grow really fast and thick. And if you are lucky it will grow fast enough and cover up all the garbage collected over the winter so you won’t have to clean none of it up. You’ll be ready for next winter – after all, it’s just around the corner.

I’m sure most of you have heard all the latest “you might be a Mainer if” little anecdotes but let’s throw out a few of them if nothing more than just a refresher.

You might be a Mainer if the butterfly on the side of your trailer has only one wing left on it.

You might be a Mainer if you have more school buses in your back yard AND all the other family members live in them.

You might be a Mainer if the siding of choice on your house is Tyvek and there are 6 snowmobiles sitting in the front yard.

You might be a Mainer if it is hard to tell which vehicles on the front lawn run and which ones don’t.

You might be a Mainer if your driveway is made of canvas from the paper mill.

You might be a Mainer if your truck sits out in the weather and your snowmobile are in a heated garage.

You might be a Mainer if you wear long underwear year round.

You might be a Mainer if you only get one channel on the TV and radio and have never heard of cable TV.

You might be a Mainer if your farm animals ride up front with you in the pick-up truck.

You might be a Mainer if the bed of your pick-up truck is coated with a permanent layer of chain saw oil.

You might be a Mainer if the lawnmower is still sitting in the front yard where it stopped running with grass and weeds growing up all around it.

Marcel went to school one day and when he got to his math class the teacher called on him to solve a math problem. She asked Marcel the following question: “If there were three birds sitting on a telephone wire and two of them flew away, how many birds would be left?”

Marcel thought a moment and then answered, “None!”

His teacher being somewhat surprised at Marcel’s response asked him how he came up with that answer. Marcel’s reply was quick, simple and to the point, “I’ve watched birds sitting on telephone lines everyday and when one flies away they all fly away!”

The teacher not wanting to hurt Marcel’s feelings said, “Well, Marcel, the correct answer would be one but I do like the way you think.”

A couple of days passed and Marcel returned to his math class and this time he posed a similar question to his teacher that he felt required some higher level thinking. He asked his teacher, “If there are two women sitting on a park bench and both are eating an ice cream cone and one is sucking on hers while the other is licking, which woman do you think is married?”

Not really knowing the proper way to respond to such a question and not wanting to embarrass herself, she played along with Marcel and answered the question with, “I would have to say the one that is sucking her ice cream cone.”

Marcel smiled broadly and then told his teacher, “The correct answer is the one with the wedding band on her finger but I do like the way you think!”

Most of us admire the moose. When full grown, it is the largest animal found in North America. Our fascination comes partly from the fact that the moose is an odd looking character and because of that many cartoonists have tried to capture the oddity in their sketches, drawings and animations.

To some, the moose is a challenge. Some want to get close to the moose to see it better and perhaps to photograph but to the mighty hunter of the moose, there is no bigger challenge than to call the big bull moose to you so that you can shoot one.

So begins the story of Vernon and Walter who set out on a quest to call the moose. Prior to the official opening of moose season, Vernon and Walter constructed themselves a nice tree stand that would easily accommodate two mighty hunters.

On the first day, the two climbed up into the tree stand, got themselves comfortable and began to practice their calls. At first Walter used his hands and his mouth to try to mimic the call of a cow moose in hopes of luring the giant bull from the forest. After hours, nothing seemed to be working. Vernon brought out his contraption he built one snowy day last winter that he guaranteed would call the moose – no luck either. Finally, they resorted to the electronic call Vernon had secretly bought at the Kittery Trading Post – just in case.

Right up until sundown the two men called constantly and without arousing even a bird. The next morning they went out bright and early and repeated the first days performance. The third day was no different.

Upon returning to hunting camp after the third day, Walter suggested they go into town and buy a cow moose costume and see if they could lure a bull moose with that. Reluctantly Vernon agree and they headed to town.

The following morning both men climbed into the costume – Vernon was the moose’s front and Walter was the hind end. They located a clearing not too far from their tree stand and began to prance around doing their best to act like a cow moose – however that was.

After about an hour, Vernon heard a noise and peered out through the small slit in the front of the costume. He could see a very large bull moose charging full speed and coming directly at the two men.

“What’s going on?” yelled Walter. “Is there a bull moose coming? I’ll jump out of the costume and shoot him if there is!”

“Yeah, there’s a giant bull coming right at us but we don’t have time to get out of the costume and get our guns,” cried Vernon.

“What are we going to do?” ask Walter nervously.

Vernon thought quickly and said to Walter, “I’m going to bend forward and pretend I’m eating grass. I think you better brace yourself!”

I can’t help it! I’m not sure if my obsession is with how hard I laugh, my outright disgust, or the simple fact that I don’t understand how stupid people can be. I guess this is the reason that we can never be bored watching and studying people.

Of course I was watching the news again when the latest headline slapped my up side the head. It’s getting so the only reason I watch the news anymore is to see this sort of high intelligence being displayed by the so-called educated leaders of our society.

The headline says that a daycare center in a neighboring town is operated in the home of the owner – who is married to a man who is overtly active in and founder of a local neo-Nazi hate group. Parents of the children attending the center have expressed concerns as have some of the local citizenry. Gee, ya think??

The local television studio found and interviewed one of the men who sits on the board that approves licenses for such daycare centers and asked him why they would give a license to a center that would be operated out of the home of a known neo-Nazi hate monger?

The individual said that the board considered that aspect when deliberating the results of a pending license and they didn’t really think that this would have any effect on the operation of a safe and secure child’s daycare center.

Whoa! And for a minute there I thought we was going to have a discrimination lawsuit on our hands. The poor man has his rights you know.

It’s kind of like thinking that if you go swimming in water you won’t get wet. We as Americans, suffer from the O.J. Simpson Syndrome (OJSS – also referred to as Oh, Jesus). We say anything to justify the end result and we have convinced ourselves through self-deceit that it is right. It’s called lying you knuckleheads!! What? You think it’s not lying if you tell yourself?

I was always told by my parents, coaches, teachers or whomever that “Practice makes perfect”. In other words, if you expose yourself to certain things, like playing a piano, throwing a baseball, reading books, etc. all the time, you will get better at it. Some people even become obsessed with certain things and that is all that they do or know anything about.

Not too many people disagree with that analogy but when you apply that same theory to, let’s say, violence, it holds no water. If my parents made me sit down to a piano every day for 4 hours each day for several years, I would more than likely know how to play the piano. If they took me out into the streets for 4 hours each day for several years and showed me how to shoot people with a gun, more than likely I would know how to kill.

Why doesn’t this theory work both ways? And to follow that up, I guess if we don’t think that constant exposure to sexually explicit material can have an effect on our children then I guess constant exposure to a neo-Nazi shouldn’t be anything to concern ourselves with.

Virgil came in the front door the other day from doing the chores and he no sooner got his cow-pooped boots over the stoop when Florena told him to go fix the outhouse.

“They ain’t nuthin wrong with the outhouse. I was in it this morning,” said Virgil.

“You just go on out to the outhouse and fix it, now!” yelled Florena.

So Virgil put on his coat and headed for the the outhouse. When he got inside he looked around a bit and then yelled back at the house, “They ain’t nuthin wrong with this outhouse, Florena!”

“You got to stick your head down inside the hole!” Florena yelled.

“I ain’t stickin my head in the outhouse hole,” Virgil replied.

“Just stick your head in the damned whole and you’ll see what the problem is,” she demanded.

Reluctantly and slowly, Virgil stuck his head down into the hole and looked around but he saw nothing. When he attempted to bring his head up out of the hole, his beard got stuck in the crack of one of the boards. “Florena, come help get me outta this damned hole! My beard is stuck in the crack!” Virgil yelled.

“Now you know what’s wrong with the outhouse!” she yelled back.

Why is it that many of our funniest stories and jokes come from the antics or made up antics of animals?

Yesterday I went with my wife and friends to the Florida Strawberry Festival in Plant City, Florida and Gregg and I were poking around some of the tents and exhibits and found ourselves smack dab in the middle of the hens and roosters – not the millions of white-hairs roaming about freely in the state of Florida this time of year. They were the real thing and we both got chuckling about some of the roosters that were crowing every so often.

There was one big ole boy there that could have passed for a turkey and when he crowed it was in bass, while across the crowded floor, I could hear another much smaller rooster cackling in soprano.

When we returned to Gregg’s father’s home and settled down for a good helping of strawberry shortcake, we began reminiscing the days events and telling of some of the odd looking and sounding hens and roosters we had seen.

As is Maine tradition, the men had gathered in the living room while the women huddled up in the kitchen, so we began an nonstop barrage of rooster jokes, followed by horse stories and a few pig tales to add some spice.

Sitting around the room was three older men who have some of the greatest minds when it comes to jokes and story telling – Milt Inman, Sayward Lamb and Joe Perham. Gregg and I were the junior storytellers but we could hold our own. We roared constantly as each story was told and some of the stories were repeats but you know a good story teller can tell the same story several times and change it up enough with names and descriptions that it’s worth hearing one more time.

Anyway, it is always a good time to tell funny animal stories and it’s great that we still have people who can find humor in animals and recognize it and pass it on. I know the animals don’t mind us laughing at them and there is sure to not be any lawsuits because we are insulting animals – at least not for a while anyways.

On the second day of February each year Punxatawny Phil emerges from his hole, by being yanked out by some dude dressed in tails and a top hat. If he sees his shadow he gets scared and returns to his hole for another 6 weeks of winter. If he don’t see his shadow he knows it will be an early spring and he makes a couple of calls on his cell phone and awakens the whackos of the world to let them know that it is time to venture into the world and annoy as many people as they can.

Oh, this is no myth. It’s proven fact. My wife and I were in the hospitality business for a number of years and that is where we learned about March and the weirdos. As soon as March 1st showed on the calendar, it was time to brace for the unusual.

The groundhog calls his friends – they are closely related as well – and tells them spring will be coming soon. With this, they stick their heads out the front door to test for themselves and within seconds the not well oiled gears in their brains big to creak and groan.

The thinking is this. With spring coming, everyone must be as anxious as they and as a result everything is free. This was the case in the motel business. A conversation with a half man half groundhog would go something like this. “Hi, how much are your rooms for one night?” My reply might be, “Fifty dollars plus lodging tax.” Greedily the subterranean would respond, “This is March. You don’t have any business anymore because the groundhog told me and therefore you are supposed to give your rooms away now.” To which I would respond, “@&%$#%R& and there’s the door!” “Ok, if I take the room, is it okay if I set up my 638 candles and chant with my fifteen brothers and sisters for 72 hours straight and get a late check out?”

But it’s not just money issues with the burrowers. Being holed up for a few months causes the brain to do odd things. Look at politicians. They go into the capital building and sometimes never come out until they are ready to die – about 70 years later. While in there, all semblance of normalcy disappears. It’s the same with the groundhogs. Natural light depravation can be catastrophic – you’ll start acting like a politician.