(For the benefit of those who have never driven into Maine, one of the first things you see when you enter the state is a sign that boasts "Maine: The Way Life Should Be.")

Watching: The season premiere of Oz.

Listening: Planxty, The Well Below the Valley. Background courtesy of
Ace of Space

The Way Life Should Be?

This morning, the lead story in the online Maine newspaper I read, the Morning Sentinel, was a murder-suicide in the little town of Mercer. Mercer is the town to which my family moved from New Jersey 21 years ago. At the time, Mercer's population was about 500 people; I don't think it has increased by much in the succeeding two decades.

During our first two years in Mercer, there were three murders and one murder-suicide. I sat down with a calculator once and figured out that, statistically, I was more likely to be murdered in Mercer, Maine than in crime-ridden New Jersey.

In general, of course, Maine is a very safe place to live. My sisters don't lock their car doors; in fact, my mother doesn't even bother locking the door to her house when she goes out, even though she now lives in a much larger town.

But there is something about the more remote parts of Maine that's just plain spooky. I remember years ago when I was living in Portland, a friend and I drove to visit another friend who had moved to a Maine town pretty far out in the sticks. It was dusk, and we were out in the middle of nowhere, when Anne announced she had to pee.

"Can't you wait till we get there?" I asked.

"Another two hours? No, I can't. Pull over here, I'll run into the woods."

So we stopped, and Anne disappeared. And I waited. And waited. And waited while shadows deepened all around me and I sat there and wondered what was keeping her. I started imagining all kinds of evil things lurking in the woods: red-eyed, slathering, sharp-toothed predators or hatchet-wielding madmen. I locked the doors and waited some more.

After an ungodly long interval, Anne finally returned safe and sound. Of course, when we arrived at our destination, there was a hook hanging from the car door...oh, wait, wrong story. But you get the idea.

A few years ago I read Lauren Thatcher Ulrich's A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard. Martha Ballard was a Maine midwife who kept a diary from 1785 to 1812. In 1806 one of Martha Ballard's neighbors hacked up his wife and six children with an axe and then slit his own throat with a razor. No one could ever determine a reason for this horrifying act of bloody violence.

Sounds like something out of a Stephen King novel, doesn't it? Well, where do you think he gets his inspiration?

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