John Mahoney

The Maniacs of Maine

AURORA, MAINE | "What in hell did that sign say?"

That was the general reaction from our traveling troupe as we whipped down the Airline highway through Maine on Sunday.

"You can make a Whore from a Housewife"

Art turned the car around and we headed back East. Sure enough, that's what it said. And more.

"from a Housewife,But not a Housewife,from a Whore."

Bad use of commas.

The sign was neatly painted in white letters on both sides of a four by eight sheet of waferboard. It was placed on the roadside to advise all traffic coming in both directions.

It was in front of a mobile home. Next to the mobile home was a black car. The windshield of the car was stove in. Smashed. Wrecked by some blunt object, like a boulder or a sledgehammer or a baseball bat. There was a sign on the windshield, but we couldn't read it.

I made a photograph and we mosey on. Speculation ran wild. Beatings, rape, murder, betrayal…juicy stuff on sunny day in boring Maine after nearly 2300 miles of driving.

We stopped at a busy store/gas station down the road a few miles for an ice-cream break. I asked the young woman what the story about the sign was. It hadn't been there when we passed two weeks earlier.

She didn't know anything about it. It wasn't there the previous day.

But she did know that the fellow who lived in the mobile home had "beaten up his woman" a few days earlier. Marked up her face, too. She knew that because, "working in this place", you get to know everything about everybody.

Remember Grace Metalious' novel Peyton Place? Ayuuuh…

I showed her the photograph on my digital camera. She was some taken aback. So was the young man behind the counter. The grandmother behind him was shocked.

We thanked them for their ice cream and they were probably glad to see us go.

We soon came upon a neat white sign painted on a roadside rock facing: "Missy M. is a whore."

Art read the rock slander to us as we sped by.

And then another. And another.

Our villain had been a busy boy. Talk about "The Beans of Egypt, Maine."

And that, it seems to us, is one more reason why some people in Maine are called Maniacs.

Lunch at the splendid (despite the initial $35 overcharge) Iron Kettle in Skowhegan, and we roll into Fool's Hollow about six o'clock, weary and ready for some fresh tomatoes, cukes, and bed after two weeks and 2300 miles on the road.

And that's all he wrote.

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