Here’s what it sounds like: “What? Are you going off again?“
Some, of good heart and shamelessly positive attitude, will explain that such an observant custom arises from an islander’s historic and legitimate need to know who is available in case of fire. With none but ourselves to hope for as first responders, island inhabitants really do care who is around to help should the boat spring a leak. That makes it all sound very above-board. Actually, we’re mostly just busybodies.
“If I lived here, I’d never leave.” We hear that a lot. The weary vacationer in serious need of a few days away from the office feels this way, as does the visitor who revels in the music of the waves. Sometimes it is the sensible perspective of the older native who doesn’t have an automobile on the mainland and for whom even a routine shopping trip is a logistical runaround and a big headache. Alternatively, you could just have an outstanding warrant for your arrest.
If-and some of you have heard this analogy before-you happen to live in, say, Warren, and you have reason to slip over the border into Thomaston to accomplish some bit of business, your friends don’t assemble at the town line and rib you about leaving Warren “again“. We do that here. Boarding the plane at the Matinicus airstrip is an almost absurdly public act. If you appear there with piles of luggage, it is evident that you are going for quite some time. Rumors could start about the stability of your marriage or the mechanical aptitude of your boat engine. If you travel with no baggage or freight whatsoever, you are behaving very strangely and gentle inquiries might be made as to your welfare, as it must be that you are going to see a doctor or a lawyer. If you carry a real suitcase, everybody will know that you are going to Florida (nobody over the age of about nine takes a real suitcase just to go to Rockland). More common is the so-called “island luggage,” those ubiquitous large plastic trash bags, which may contain anything from empty beer cans, bait-reeking laundry, or a pile of greasy engine parts wrapped in rags to a wedding dress or a valuable work of art. Old five-gallon plastic oil buckets filled with tools mean real work will happen on the other side of the water; this somehow legitimizes the trip. Hunting rifles, dress-up clothes, guitars, the starter motor off the boat, or your sick cat being loaded onto the airplane (and this done by any random person who happens to be hanging around the airstrip waiting for the UPS) describe the purpose of your travels, and questions from the peanut gallery are fair game. Privacy is out of the question.
My husband Paul and I will be going to Florida for a few days in January to celebrate an 80th birthday; I think I’ll put a five-gallon bucket full of wrenches aboard the airplane (instead of a suitcase) just to mess with the system.