If you see this bumper sticker on a Maine vehicle, please don't take offense. It's just a crusty Yankee way of trying to warn you of the consequences of being lured by a short, pleasant, stay in summer weather (after bug season) into moving here. Don't! We have winter every year, and it's not that short, wimpy, washed out approximation of winter that occurs in more southerly states. This is the real thing. It's long, and it's COLD!!! Our cars rust out. Our tempers get short, and by the end of a typical winter we are cranky enough to buy crusty, mildly insulting, bumper stickers. I'm actually a poor source of information on the rigors of winter. I like it. I see it as that blisfull season between tourist season and Blackfly season, but the effect on normal people is profound, so beware!

If you have visited Maine in the spring, you know that Maine grows two things in admirable abundance; trees, and biting insects. The insect part is the other reason kindly, socially responsible Maine people buy the "go home" bumper stickers. No kind-hearted Yankee likes to see new arrivals blundering around town with their eyes swollen shut from Blackfly bites looking for a store that sells Old Woodsman's Fly Dope. It's just "wicked pathetic" to use a local turn of phrase. (See Maine Sensitivity Training)

However, if you don't mind a long winter, and enjoy scratching a few insect bites to pass the time during those two, or three weeks in summer that we let the wood stoves cool down enough to paint 'em, ...... Welcome to Maine.

The names of towns in Maine can cause all manner of grief unless you know some basic rules. For some reason the early settlers of Maine would pick a name for a town, grow attached to it, then apply it liberally with slight variations to as many surrounding locals as possible.

The unwary or uninformed tourist looking for a town called "Unity" for example faces a bewildering set of choices like this: (examples extrapolated from several towns, and exaggerated only slightly) Unity, Unity Center, North Unity, East Unity, or any of several compass points, Unity Harbor, Unity Beach, Unity Village, Unity Mills, Unity Hill, Unity Cove, (there is no Cabot Cove incidentally). I think that rounds out the picture.

When asking directions to places in Maine just be careful of the colorful variations.

Don't be impressed. We're not like this all the time. All this summery urbane manner and exemplary good behavior ... it's all a sham! All the polite phrases, the colorful local dialects, and the gentle, self-abasing humor ...; it's Wickid silly, and ... 'Tain't real, yanno.

If we can shoot deer in deer season, can we unlimber old betsy in tourist season? 'Just kidding ... sort of. By the end of the summer we get awfully tired of stepping lively, and looking folksy and interesting, and quaint, and rustic, and uttering "downeast" witicisms, and all the other things that I can't think of right now that look good to people from Broken Hoe, NJ. Thankfully, the summer is short! Then we can go back to looking like slobs, driving like idiots, being impolite, and talking without using "wickid" as a modifier for every other noun.

By the end of September when you show up for the foliage color if you notice the lawns look a little shabby, our cars aren't washed, and some of us don't have our hair combed, just go ahead and turn your attention back to the beautiful fall colors. WE'RE relaxing! And don't worry. By next summer we'll be rested and as impressive as all-get-out. .......... OK, OK. We'll be wickid impressive.

In a state that depends heavily on the tourist trade, only a fool or worse would level criticism at the visitor element. In the interest of avoiding either of these two categories myself, I'll word this carefully, (and probably plant myself solidly in one, or the other, or both in spite of my effort).

We live near two of Maine's premier ski areas. In the winter an exercise of caution, and an awareness of skier psychology is called for on the part of locals to ensure survival on the surrounding roads.

I have watched skiers drive, noted the license plates, the glassy stare, and the steering wheel held in a white-knuckled death grip, and although I'm guessing on some of this, I've come up with the following scenario to explain what produces this sort of driver/skier/visitor.

Skier X is a 28 year old, white, type A male. He works frantically at some obscure high pressure, inscrutable, company-type job as a quasi-executive all Friday aiming to get out of work early from the moment he arrives in the morning. When he succeeds, and hits street-level Boston at half past two he is wired up to full screech, and Hell-bent for Sugarloaf, USA (Maine).

How these people make it out of that town alive is more than I can understand, but the volume of traffic displaying Mass. tags at 6 PM on our roads is eloquent testimony to the numbers of them who manage it.

Skier X hits the road. Just for laughs, his wife (also a type A, but with an attitude and an agenda) has strapped a time bomb to the back of his seat set to go off unless he can reach the deactivating altitude of the Sugarloaf condo parking lot in less than three hours time. You might recognize this as one of the things I'm guessing at, and you're right . I AM guessing, but some of the behavior I see would only be explained by something like this.

I'm reluctant to recount some of the things I've seen this crowd do, and in the interest of preserving the tourist trade, I'll refrain except to gently suggest that visitors exercise caution on Maine roads in winter from 4 to 10 PM Friday evenings, and the same hours Sundays or Mondays on Monday holidays.