Tim Sample backs ‘Native Mainer’ plates

AUGUSTA – Harold Clough has an idea for another way to distinguish between native Mainers and those “from away.”

The state representative enlisted the help of Maine humorist Tim Sample on Tuesday to promote his bill, which would create specialty plates available only to those who can prove the “Native Mainer” claim made on them.

Under the Scarborough Republican’s bill, people would have to pay an extra $20 for the plates for the first year and $15 in subsequent years. The fees would help raise money for the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

“For folks like me it drives us nuts to have somebody say, ‘Aren’t you really from Massachusetts?”‘ Sample said.

He said having such a plate – which would picture a chickadee and the state’s shape and read “Native Mainer” in place of “Vacationland” at the bottom – would relieve him of the burden of carrying around his birth certificate “and flapping it out at every supermarket counter. … It would eliminate any doubt.”

While Sample said there’s nothing wrong with “being from away,” he made sure to mention for the record that he was born in Fort Fairfield in Aroostook County.

He said that some people have the mistaken idea that decades spent in the state can make someone a native Mainer.

“It don’t work that way,” Sample said.

“If your parents were in a speeding car heading for the state of Maine and you were born in the back seat 100 yards short of the Maine sign, and you lived here for 99 years and you passed away here, I guarantee the local paper would have an article headlined, ‘Out-of-stater dies in Maine.’ “