This is actually a re-post of a guest post I did last year for one of my favorite fellow bloggers, Daddy Runs A Lot. With summer quickly approaching us it seemed fitting to put it back out there.

The town where I come from isn’t for everyone. It’s the coast of Maine but it’s not the little vacation town you might think of. The houses aren’t little cottages nestled in the trees along the water and the beaches sandy.
It’s here where the roads are quiet and rush hour consists of 10 pickup trucks headed to the old gas station on their way home from a day on the water.
The locals look nothing like anyone you’ve seen in a Hollywood movie. Here the boy I had a crush on in junior high is still wearing the same basketball t-shirt he wore under is gown at the high school graduation.
The mullet is alive and well in these parts. All forms of it. It peaks out from the backs of salty ball caps and gets combed into a perfect quaf for those hot dates down at the lobster pound.
It’s here where the women don’t care how much money the men make, all they care about is how loud the pickup truck is as it comes down the road. It’s prefered the engine be a diesel so as to produce the perfect rumble of a mating call.
Bottle redemption centers run by men with like Cupcake and Spiderman nestle up against local art galleries run by women with names like Kat and Misty. And the tourists flock here for these very reasons. They want their taste of redneck as they file into town one by one in their SUV’s and minivans.
Come July Chancey and Tansy from Connecticut are digging in the sand with “That bastard’s” son and “Man Hand’s” daughter. And like many summer people around here, Chancey ends up marrying “Man Hand’s” daughter and a whole new wave locals and tourists washes ashore.
My days as a kid were spent watching these little silver spooned children fall in love with the mullet clad locals. I hoped and prayed I too would fall in love with some kid from away and share in the glory of the confused families. Alas, that was not my fate in my home town. My path lead me to become one of the summer people instead. I now travel with my little mixed family from Connecticut all the way to Maine every summer and watch as my urbanized minions interact with the son of the local garage own and the daughter of the lady who drives the heating oil truck, and it makes me smile.
I may now call an entirely different state home now, but I still get to enjoy the uniqueness of the summertime interactions here in Maine. I don’t know if I myself will ever move back to the area but there is always hope my kids will one day fall in love with a local and find themselves raising a family here much like my parents did with me.