They’ve all gone home

THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED
By Milt Gross

Well, it’s happened again. Summer has basically gone and they have all gone home. “They” are those relatives and friends who came to Maine to see how the poor relatives are doing. Or just tourists from wherever home was, the suburbs of Boston, or of New York City, or of Philadelphia.

The only question I have is why they want to go home to those suburbs. I used to know the answer. After we had taken a Pullman train to Boston and a local train to Augusta – back when you could take a train to Augusta – we would be at Great Aunt Amy’s farm for a week. It was during that week I would hear the passenger train heading south at night. When I heard it, I missed home, the up-to-date comfortable place we lived in suburban Philadelphia. In those days I understood why people wanted to return to the suburbs. I did.

After being in Maine about 20 years, we would sit in a restaurant parking lot in Belfast and watch those tourists. I better understood them then. Maine was a good vacation spot to visit, but home was home. Home was modern. Home was up to date. Home was what they were used to.

Home is where they were going.

Years later I realized I was home, in Maine.

No longer did I think or dream about those suburbs. I was home. This was where I lived. This was where we were raising our children. We were home.

I remember meeting an elderly man in Brooks one day, who told me that someday he was going to visit the United States. He didn’t seem to realize he lived in the U.S. He was home. I’ve never forgotten that man. He lived in Maine. He was home. He just didn’t realize it.

I lived in Maine. I, with our family, was home.

I once got to know a black ex-cop from New York. He left New York because he was tired of being mistrusted. If he ever raised his stick, his weapon, he was accused of being cruel. He was black. But he was not at home in his home.

He was home in Maine.

I’ve taken trips back to Pennsylvania, but finally realized those crowded suburbs were not home. They were crowded suburbs, where I didn’t belong. I even got lost there once, about five miles from where I had been raised.

Maine had become home.

I realize that Maine is my home. And I am probably seen by those traveling suburbanites as one of those funny strangers, who live in Maine.

Now I feel sorry for those tourists, who spent the final weekend of summer coming to Maine for some time off, and who now have to return to Suburbia for their daily life.

I am at home. At home in Maine.

Milt Gross can be reached for corrections, harassment, or other purposes at lesstraveledway@roadrunner.com.