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.~~". aloe "There's No Hidin' Place Down There."

ByJohn Taylor

IVEYEARSof cross-country travel have convinced me that the Maine plates which adorn my car possess the magical properties of a safe-conduct pass. WhereverI go,they assure meof awelcome, no matter how remote my wanderings. What accounts for this apparent partiality toward Maine?Tenyearsago two British journalists, Edmund Fawcett and Tony Thomas, asserted in The American Condition that " ...America has always been of two minds about New Englanders, balancing their supposed Yankee virtues of thrift, artless integrity, hard work, and understatement against their supposed hypocrisy and skepticism and aloofness, as caught in the jest that Yankees believe in the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, and the neighborhood of Boston."

As a New Englander, Massachusetts born, I accept these strictures, though with more composure than contrition. For as a motorist I can testify that the comments prompted by an aging Toyota from Maine tend toward the indulgent and jocular. Perhaps the reason is that many folks here in the Landof Enchantment seem abit vague as to the exact whereabouts of Vacationland. Few have been there and I seldom encounter anyone with plans to go,despite the longings Isometimes hearexpressed. Theirdisinclination to make the trip is no surprise considering the distances involved. It is easy to forget, while living the hermetic life Down East, just how far away our continental Far East can be. From Albuquerque, for example, a drive of more than 2300 miles gets you no further than Boston-a dismal anticlimax if travel ever led to one-and yet the morning after you still face another day on the road. Better to settle for a weekend in the Rockies nearby.

Sowhat do Americans think of when they think of Maine, if not of the flaws in New England Character?Lobsters, of course, and nowadays the official postcard of George Bush,enveloped as usual in heavy fog while out for a stroll on Moot Point. But surely the cult of Maine, stayed by adherents nationwide, feeds on something more substantial? The possibility invites speculation.

I contemplate the mussel-bound coast of Maine not only from the perspective of years-my acquaintance, which dates from the early 1930s,includes winters spent in Rockport, Southwest Harbor, Brooksville, Portland, and Blue Hill-but also from the temporary vantage point of New Mexico where the recession has forced me off the road. I have known the Southwest for more than twenty years and once lived in "The City Different" which is Chamber-of-CommerceSpeak for Santa Fe. In those relaxed days Santa Fe was laid-back, local bohemian rather than cosmopolitan hi~h-desert chic, and not yet what it has since become, namely, the ul-

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timate western stockyard teeming with hustlers and moneyed Californians. But let me layoff The City Different. It is in Albuquerque this past year where I have noticed how often New Mexico reminds me of Maine.

At a glance these two regions might appear to have so little in common as to render comparisons pointless from the outset. Consider these basic disparities. It is not simply that the state of New Mexico is bigger than all of New England-it is almost twice as big, or nearly four times the size of Maine. Whereas New Mexicans, all 1.5million of them, outnumber Mainers by some 300,000,population density in Maine is nearly three times greater. Arithmetically, that is, if not actually on the ground, you would find three Mainers in Maine for everyNew Mexican in New Mexico if you were to count them square mile by square mile.

Numbers can, of course, misrepresent the tenor of everyday life wherever territories arevastand inhabitants few-the joys of traffic congestion are well known to central New Mexico, regardless of what a head count might suggest. Yet difference in scale, both human and geographical, is a fact, and this fact seems to encompass most of the other discontinuities 'the traveler encounters when shuttling between East and West. There is far more West than anyone has yet found a use for, and indeed much of it remains empty.

It took a Cole Porter, Eastern sophisticate and celebrated composer of Broadway musicals, to turn all this emptiness to account-and dependable instinct told him not to bother with field work beyond the Hudson. Songs,after all, spring from fantasy, not from close acquaintance with the tedium we call "the real world." Musically Porter's exaltation of the West may have been one of his lesser efforts, but commercially it must have made him a bundle during the late war years and after when Bing Crosby, Roy Rogers, the Andrews Sisters, and just about everyone else on the air began to croon and chorus "Don't Fence Me In." Popular was scarcely the word for this universal favorite.

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Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above, Don't fence me in. Let me ride thru the wide-open country that I love, Don't fence me in. Let me be by myself in the evening breeze, Listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees Send me off forever, but I ask you, please, Don't fence me in. Just turn me loose, Let me straddle myoid saddle underneath the Western Skies. On my cayuse, Let me wander over yonder till I see the mountain rise. etc. etc. Don't fence me in.

Yet well before the yodeling cowboysof stage,screen,and radio began to ride off into Porter's redemptive sunset,entire regions of the Westhad already changed-indeed had been changed-' beyond the imaginings of the most apprehensivesentimentalist. "Don't Fence Me In" was much more than a hit parade smash. It was a reaffirmation of thefaithstill embraced by millions, an expression of the 'abiding American insistence that somehow the West would remain a sanctuary where anyone so minded could escapefrom Easternconstraints into condidtions of inherent and absolute personal freedom. Evidently, this hope persistedandmayoncehave been contagious, for even decades after Porter's hallucination had been forgotten, our British observers,

Fawcettand Thomas,would postulate thesurvivalof a"freedom-lovingWest" in contrast to a stale,"bureaucratized

East."

he falsity of this alleged distinction, as viewed from New Mexico and from Albuquerque especi~ly, is obvious to anyone familiat\.vith Maine. For all the ..'

differences between them in scale, climate, landscape, and cultural heritage, Maine and New Mexico have shared a common fate. Both are regions of sparse population and magnetic natural beauty which year after year attract newcomers from away.Thesetransplants,like countless ex-urban Americans before them, believe that the fountainhead of personal freedom lies beyond city limits, that only small-town or quasi-rural life will set them free.

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New Mexico, which until fifty years ago offered transplants the freedom theyexpectedtheWestto provide, has since achieved near total negation of the pastoral hope. On offer instead is bureaucracy triumphant, and secret bureaucracy at that. No one really planned it thatway,nor is theoutcome all bad-life in NewMexicocanstill be quite pleasant, given the climate and scenery,eventhough no one escapes, at least not altogether, the rare fragrance of an overripe bureaucracy. "Whut's thet you say,pardner, yippee ti-yi git along little dogies-and don't fenceyou inyippeeyayyippeeyay?But blazin' saddles,what elseis therefor a bureaucrat to do?" The bureaucracy that dominates

New Mexico is chiefly federal, though stateand local governmentcontribute much to the total effect.Asthe primary regional setti~g for all this official activity, Albuquerque may be ideal.

Historically, this low-rise smudge on the landscape never really prospered as a railhead, industrial center, distribution point, or communications hub. Somehowin theWesternmanner it managed to flourish instead as one vast provincial suburb without the leasttraceof acity anywherein sightor the inclination to build one. . Bureaucrats take to such surroundings, and indeed Albuquerque was once known as "little Washington," headquarters town for 38 branch offices of federal agencies. Bureaucracyremains the most popular game in town, mainly because of the ManhattanProjectwhich did more than anything else before or since to put New Mexico on the map. This enterprise, it will be recalled, produced the first atomic bomb and thus established the technical basis for the nuclear arms program which continues in operation to the presentday.

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SantaFeandSandiainAlbuquerque 60 miles to thesouth,do mostof thework, and simply by virtue of their size and cosmic importance set the (mono)tone for the region. Though both labs have begun to compete for peace-dividend contracts in the private sector, they carry on as before with their classified research, and in advertising for staff they caution potential applicants that

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477 CONGRESS ST. PORTLAND, MAINE 04101 only the straight arrow who sports "an active Q clearance" will be considered.Somuch for themythof personal freedom in the once wide-open West. However indispensable nuclear weapons may have been-and may again become-the securitysystemwhich of necessity enshrouds them constitutes a fundamental break with longcherished American preconceptions of what the West is supposed to be. Had Cole Porterbeen told of what was afoot in New Mexico, he might have written

Oh, grant me clearance, cozy clearance Under mushroom clouds above, Then fence me in. ..

but in retrospect it seemsunlikely. No wartime audience would have been amused.

pervasive as it would have to be if it were dedicated to the design and manufacture of hydrogen bombs. By local standardsBathIron Works might pass for being the mother of all naval shipyards, but relocate BIW on the acreage occupied by one of those national laboratories anditwould take satellite photography to detect the intrusion, even with the Portland drydock thrown in. Mainehasmuch tobethankful fornot least for the merciful nonappearance of the yodeling lobsterman. And yet when I recall some of the transplants I once knew and the reasonstheywould givefor their flight to the promised land, my reservations about Maine as an alternative to city life come backto mewith interest.Too many transplants seemed to think themselves and their rustic retreats imperilled, as if paradise regained might be -lostsoon again unless they took special precautions. I remember a. do-it-yourself house builder in Lincoln Countywho volunteered thatoncehehadthebasic structure standing he would ring his .property with a moat andstock it with piranhas. Thus would his pursuers, phantoms all without adoubt, beheld atbay.I laughed asonemustwhen the host attempts a joke, but it soon became clear that even if his antipersonnel aquarium were to·remain imaginary, his bedrock misanthropy was all too real. A menu featuring moat-fresh intruder might seem extravagant,even to a piranha-all you can eat everyThursday night: wicked good and no preservativesadded-yet other transplants of my acquaintance sharedthewould-be fishfarmer'sforebodings, at least to somedegree. This gangplank mentality, which is common among new arrivals everywhere as ~'< they.crossover into the land of milk andho'ii'ey-this unearnedxenophopia troubles me less than kneejerk incantation of the anti-urban creed. Although Thomas Jefferson hoped that we would endure as a republic of independent yeoman farmers, we have in fact been an urban people throughout mostof our history, and urban we are likely to remain.

Indeed, some historians discount the frontier of song and story, holding insteadthatthesettlementof thiscountry was largely a matter of outward

here, then, should the fugitive from urbanAmerica turnthese days for relief from a senseof constraint? Maine still strikes me as an intelligible choice, which is not to rule out by implication the many other regions of the Northeast I happen not to know. It is rather that the Maine I do happen to know continues to beckon with theapparent promise of independence,at leastof a certain kind. My impression gained from travel is that for manyAmericans Maine carries the same symbolic freight. What do they think of when they think of Maine?There is no way I can prove my speculations valid, but I trust them nevertheless: the cult of Maine which has a following coast to coast arises from the popular notion that for reasons seldom articulated freedom-however defined-can be most fully realized Down East.Fortunately,and perhapssurprisingly in view of trends to the contrary, this durable myth continues to havesome basis in fact.

Comparedwith NewMexico, Mai~e appearsfavored,if only in havingbeen spared a great deal. Whereas New Mexico has remained a ward of the federal government ever since this hapless province was annexed nearly 150years ago, the Stateof Maine has had a history of independence and at least partial self-sufficiency. Though the federal presence in Maine is economically important, asit is elsewhere, it is neither controlling nor all-

migration from cities to smaller towns.

In Maine as in other peripheral regions there is scarcely a transplant who is wholly free of debt to urban America, whether for upbringing, education, Or success in the workaday world. Yet many transplants excuse themselvesfrom anydiscernible sense of indebtedness,the betterto scorn the cities whence they came.Somewould haveusbelievethattheirremovalto the periphery is standing proof of superior wisdom. Born again indeed. Here is a sample farewell drawn from an article published in mid-1989.Theauthor was aprpminent magazineeditor in the Big Apple before he retired to Maine: "I am one of the disenchanted city dwellers who managedto freehimself. It must have been fun to live in New Yorkonce,andperhapsit will beagain, but I was one of the statistically significant number of NewYorkers for whom the bright dream never really camealive....Thereallysadthing about leavingNewYorkwasthattherewas no sadnessconnected with it."

tatistical significance-now that must be a sensation eminently worth experiencing, a thrill so keen, it might be thought, as to reconcile the closet rusticator to life in thecity, evenwhen sentenced to NewYork without parole. But no, our statistic-as hechosestostylehimselfwould not hang in. What, then, we are bound toask,could dislodge astatistic from thecity in which hehadachieved significance?

Suppose, for a moment, that some other statistic told us that,yes,he had gone off to live in California for 20 years, but that, no, he had never enjoyed the venture. Would we not wonder why? And suppose we later learned from some other source that he had spent his entire sojourn in the Golden West as a Hollywood extra whose fate it was to lavish his talents on marginal films that were never released. Would we not think the truncated version of his story misleading, that the chapter he had chosen to suppress might have affected our understanding of his distaste for California?

Something about the magazine article in question prompted me to consult Whos Who and there it was: our statistic turns out to be more significant than I had imagined. For overthedecadeshehadrun up ascore of no fewer than four divorces, at least threeof them transactedwhile living in thecity.Yetnowhere in his article does he acknowledge that a) it was the city thathadmadethisYoungManfrom the Provinces; or concede that b) his domestic travails might possibly have colored his view of city life. One New York divorce was quite enough for me. Repeated divorce, whether in New York or the Garden of Eden, might be expected to drive anyoneinto the hills, or even to seekasylum within the four walls of Maine.

So I wonder about our statistic and his dismissal of the city that had laid before him the opportunities essential to a successful career in the glossy magazines. Evidently, this good fortune was not good enough, for he complains that the "bright dream," on which he expected the city to deliver, never "came alive." Whose dream? Dream of what? Where was it written that there was to be a dream, "bright" or otherwise? Did this dream differ in anyimportant respect from adolescent fantasy,and if sohow?Hedoes not say. He merely records his disappointment which of coursewasnoneof his doing. It is the city, as is usual in our antiurban culture, that gets blamed. New York deserves better, and so does Maine.

There may come a day when Congress declares Maine to be our first NationalTransplantRefuge-at theconsecration ceremonies it will be explained thatconspicuous successwith wildlife had encouraged officials to broaden the scope of their operations. But before the feds take over, as they have long since throughout much of the West, permit me a suggestion or two.

Transplants could do themselves and everyoneelse afavorby accepting that for better or worse some of us are misfits, temperamentally unsuited to big city life and equally, perhaps,.to bureaucratic regimentation; that the decision to abandon theeffort to adapt is intrinsically neither good nor bad, neither wise nor unwise; that freedom of movement is one of the greatest blessings this country provides; that the exercise of this freedom requires nojustification andthereforeought not toberepresentedasevidenceof superiority, practical or moral; that mere recoil from the city does not by itself establish a sound basis for a new life anywhere else; that anti-social and xenophobic feelings, though natural and indeed human in apprentice fugitives, are nevertheless worth a sustained effort tooutgrow; that prophecy, as the Chinese are fond of saying, is verydifficult, especially with respectto the future; and that for this reason, the simple, not to say simple-minded, act of moving away from the city is unlikely to be the final answer to anything.

In short, no plan for this earthly journey can be entirely proolfoof, even if you arm yourself with Maine plates.