McDonald’s tome is Maine defined

THE MAINE DICTIONARY, by John McDonald, illustrated by Peter Wallace; Covered Bridge Press, 106 pages, paperback $12.95.

In Maine, the greenhorn summer tourist is the one who, hopelessly lost, asks a native for directions and actually trusts the Mainer’s directions and his inevitable parting assurance, “Cahn’t miss it.” The veteran tourist is the one who may be ust as hopelessly lost, but understands going into the conversation that “Cahn’t miss it” roughly translates into “Ain’t no way in hell you’ll ever find the place, mistah.”

Had the greenhorn stopped by a Maine bookstore to buy “The Maine Dictionary” before piloting his Winnebago off U.S. Route 1 and into the outback, he’d have been up to speed on this basic fact of life.

“Directions Down East” also can include phrases like, ‘At where the old Nelson place used to stand you take a right. Or maybe a left. Don’t hold me to the details,”‘ McDonald explains in his glossary of Maine expressions designed to help the first-timer negotiate his passage through our neck of the woods. “Or, ‘On your left you’ll come to the Hupper place – big white house with green trim, big red bahn out back, blue Chevy in the front yahd, a few hosses grazing in a pasture right theah next to the house. Once you see it, you don’t pay no attention to it – you keep goin’ right on by.”‘

Every so often, in advance of the annual parade of “summer complaints” from New Jersey and beyond, some publisher will get the bright idea to publish a glossary of the Maine version of the English language. The theory here is that if the cover features a couple of old codgers trading “ayuhs” the tourists will scarf them up something fierce. Truth be known, such anthologies tend to tickle the locals as well as the tourists, and sales figures would undoubtedly show that as many are purchased by the native to send to friends living in exile out of state as are bought by flatlanders just passing through.

McDonald – who (full disclosure here) once worked as a reporter for this newspaper – has followed in the footsteps of Gerald Lewis of Woolwich, who compiled the immensely popular “How To Talk Yankee” 20-plus years ago. A newspaper columnist, Portland radio talk show host and professional storyteller specializing in Yankee humor, McDonald takes the loquacious approach to defining the genre. His definitions, many comically illustrated by his co-conspirator, Wallace, are interspersed among some wicked good Down East-flavored anecdotes. The result is a reference book for the shelf of anyone who would write about a Mainer’s version of the language.

Even when McDonald comes a cropper on his geography – mistakenly placing Saint John, New Brunswick, rather than St. Stephen across the St. Croix River from “Cah-liss,” – his definitions produce smiles of recognition. “Cah-liss,” he explains, is “a town on the U.S.-Canadian border in Washington County across the river from Saint John, New Brunswick. We don’t know how many out-a-statahs have stopped on Route 1 somewhere around Ellsworth and asked someone – “Is this the road to Cah-LAY?” and were greeted with a blank stare. You want to ask for Cah-liss, or don’t bother asking.”

To nitpick, the book seems to be devoted entirely to the idioms of coastal Maine to the exclusion of the equally distinct flavor of Maine speech to be found deeper inland. But that’s certainly understandable for a man who began absorbing the words and phrases of Tenants Hahbah more than 50 years ago.

You write what you know. And by the Lord Harry, McDonald – like Gerald Lewis before him – surely knows Yankee-speak. Comin’ and goin’.