Last
night I sat on the phone with a friend who gave me places to type
into Google Earth. I read off some street names, pull up pictures
and this helped him trip down memory lane. The places he named off
very few know about and in the real sense represent frontier towns.
Happy
Valley, Labrador , Argentia Island New Foundland, Renazzo Italy are a
few of the very out of the way points he'd want me to find. After describing a Renazzo building he says,
“Oh Wow! You can see that building? It's where my cousin Luca grew
up in! Damn...it's still there!”
These
tiny hamlets had a population of under five hundred when he visited
them. After forty years or more, the community may have have doubled
in size. He also mentioned the strange nature these small towns have. There are disturbing locals, the rampart alcoholism,
drug use and the incest he found common throughout the world in these
tiny locales.
One
of the creepiest towns he visited was here in the USA. Eastport,
Maine. It's the last fishing village along the coastline of Maine
before you cross into the border of Canada. As of today, it may have
1,000 people now.
Eastport,
along with St Andrews in Canada, which is just over the border, both
celebrate the 4th Of July and Canadian independence with a
week long party. Each year too, the US Navy will send a
representative ship to dock in Eastport in commemoration of this.
The Navy bridge staff will meet with the local politicians and invite
the public to tour some parts of the ship. After the formalities
are taken care of, the ship's personnel can get some time off to
party with the locals. This is what my naval friend told me what
he saw in Eastport.
Along
the wharf of that town, he saw about six to eight Passamaquoddy
Indians
circled around a blackened 55 gallon steel drum, filling it with
wood, garbage and whatnot, then setting it aflame. Not too long
after that, theses Indians were passing a large bottle firewater
amongst them. He said they looked pretty rough looking and greasy
due to probably not showering in days. He was told the Indians and
locals don't mix too well together and to stay away from them as much
as possible. My friend made the stereotypical quip that these drunk
Indians eventually started whooping it up and singing.
The
whites on that peninsula looked like your typical Americans, but were
either stoned to the gourd of showed the scars of years of drinking.
I mentioned to him how can someone drink that much for so many
years. “You can't Ron, but they can. Think about it. What is there
to do when your stuck out here, 100's of miles from the nearest
decent city?” “All these small towns do is eat, drink, do drugs
and try to fuck one another...and that means your sister or cousin is
fair game too...there just isn't enough other,
different people. It's an island all to itself!”
At
a formal dinner aboard the ship where they invited the local
politicians, some of the better off families, he was asked by the Lt
Commander and Captain if he noticed all the people in town had nearly
the same last name.
“B.
so far, I've counted five family names...have you noticed this?”
B
answers..”Yes, and did u notice they're all flaxen blondes with the
blue eyes? Think about it, five family names to about 600 people in
this port.”
B
goes on to tell me these same families have been mixing the same
genes with one another for over 100 years.
The
other point he brought up, and it's not specific to Eastport, were
the strange personalities you run across in small towns. He had met
this woman who was one of the local dealers of pot there and went for
a ride with her and her brother to get stoned. This was when they
didn't drug test bridge officers or the enlisted on Navy ships back
then. She pulled the car into some wooded grove away from everyone,
lit up a few joints and they passed them between each other. After
the stone began to take effect, he tells me the brother in the back
seat started to moan and groan, shake his head back and forth all the
while rubbing his crotch. The sister said..”Oh don't worry about
him, he always does this when he gets high...been doing that since he
was thirteen.”
“Perhaps
we should get back to town.” B suggested and getting a bit worried.
“Ron,
he creeped me out, but what was even weirder was his
own sister dismissing what he was doing.”
He
went on. “Ah, I should not have been surprised, you find this stuff
in every small town no matter where you are in this world.”
“It's
no wonder Stephen King managed to come up with so many bizarre people
in his novels, he lived with them! He's writing from direct
experience!” This may be very true!
B
told me a lot of these people tend to stay in their home towns, or
the kids try to flee and start a new life but end up coming back.
Not too many reach escape velocity.
“Alot
of these small towns, you grow up in them, get a shitty education,
have no real other skills besides fishing and even lousier skills
when it comes to dealing socially with other people elsewhere as you
have NO experience with different people. It's no wonder why they
can't compete with others in the city and come running back.”
I've
seen some small, quaint fishing villages on the New England coast,
but I never then thought of weird factor that may be in each one.
Then again, I've never been to outpost towns in Labrador or Greenland
nor lived with them and learned of their apparent strange homelife
either.
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