I don’t live anywhere near Beech Hill in Rockport, Maine. I know you flatlanders think all Mainers must know each other, so everyone must have been everywhere else, but Maine is the same size as Ireland, and twice as likely to urge you to drunkenness, so there’s plenty of places I haven’t been.

A “flatlander” is someone that doesn’t live in Maine, if you’re wondering. If it makes you feel any better, Mainahs still call me a flatlander, too, because I’ve only lived here for six years or so. As far as Mainahs are concerned, I’m not frum round heah, and never will be. They try that flatlander shite on my wife, who casually mentions she looked everywhere for them in Maine in 1970 when she first lived here, but didn’t notice them about, and they leave her be. At least they don’t call us Massholes anymore. We’re not half bad for flatlanders, I tell you what, they’ll at least allow.

It would be worse if they called us straphangers. A straphanger is way, way down the totem pole of disrepute from a simple flatlander. A straphanger is an urban flatlander. They’re the worst. The last person from New Yawk City that Mainers could stand was E.B. White, I think. If you’re ever in Maine on a cold, dreary winter’s night, which you can enjoy in either early June or late September, and you’re huddled around the campfire while the locals wear flip-flops and jorts, ask them what they think about straphangers. Wait until they have four or five Lewiston Martinis in them. A Lewiston Martini is Allen’s Coffee Brandy mixed with milk. I think it’s called a Trailer Park Love Potion in some zip codes, but can’t testify to that with any surety, your honor. Of course more discerning palates imbibe Burnt Trailers, which is Moxie and Coffee Brandy. Moxie is Maine’s own brand of soda, which tastes like Socrates’ backwash. Don’t confuse a Burnt Trailer with a Welfare Mom, which is coffee brandy and Diet Moxie. It’s an entirely different vibe.

Anyway, if you were going to hunt straphangers anywhere in Maine, you’d drizzle Hoboken hobo urine on traps in and around Rockport. That’s the sort of Downeast place where whales on your pants won’t get you into any scrapes. Out west where I am, it’s all cowboy hats and feed caps, and everyone listens to country music. I’ve seen more stars and bars flags here in western Maine than I saw when I drove from South Carolina to Arizona. Western Mainahs like doin’ what they’re not supposeta. They don’t mean anything by it. They don’t really mean anything by anything as far as I can tell.

I can tell the video is from a part of Maine where the flatlanders haven’t been overfished yet. Beech Hill in Rockport is a Land Trust. Flatlanders and straphangers love that shite. There’s nothing and nobody in Maine. It’s completely empty and filled with trees, but you never know, I guess. The state is the size of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, and New Hampshire put together, and about a million and a quarter souls live here, but somehow a patch of grass and a house with a lawn on the roof needs a Land Trust to protect it from becoming a trailer park overnight.

Watching the video, I know the land trust straphangers are losing ground to the hicks without knowing it. The background music is banjos.