Early Bird

Here in the Greater Boothbay Region of Midcoast Maine, there’s a tradition I’ve not seen elsewhere (actually, quite a few, but that’s another story). Saturday is “Early Bird”. At 6 am, the people of the town show up downtown in pajamas and bathrobes and shop. Yup, they shop. Prices are cheap, and usually the earlier, the bigger discount. When we went two years ago, one shop was selling gift certificates worth $100 the next August for $50 in November. Obviously they needed the money in November and could afford the giveaway in August. That being said, the store actually shut down. Oh well.

Anyway, two years ago when Liz and I first went, we had a bad moment halfway to town worrying that we’d been pranked, but sure enough, bright and early on a Saturday morning, the sidewalks were packed with PJ clad people with shopping bags. We stopped in at the favored watering hole around nine for Bloodies and Benedicts. Hanging at the bar in PJs. Is this a great place, or what?

While I’m bragging on the Greater Boothbay Region, we have a problem with the price of lobster collapsing. Apparently the economy and the closure of some large lobster processors in Canada and Iceland resulted in plunging lobster prices like I can remember from the seventies. Getting as little as $1.90 a pound at the dock with fuel at $4.00 a gallon had many of the townsfolk in a world of hurt. This being Boothbay, and this being Maine, the community organized a big lobster sale; five bucks each, cooked or live. It was to start at 9am at the High School and go all day.

Well, the line started forming at 7:30am and by 1:00pm there were no lobsters left. Seven thousand lobsters sold and they could have sold thousands more. This in a town with a year round population of about three thousand. Mainers really come together to help each other out, and it’s going to be a hell of a lot easier living out a depression in Maine than in most parts.

Thanks to all in Boothbay for letting us join this sweet and gracious community we’ve come to love so well.