Humorist looks at buzz around black fly group ‘Postcards from Maine’ segment filmed at Machias headquarters

MACHIAS – Tim Sample nodded in agreement Thursday as he picked up the tiny Blackfly Bowling Alley at the headquarters of the Maine Blackfly Breeders Association in Machias.

“Well, that’s right,” said the Maine humorist. “If you want black flies to stay in an area, you have to provide them with recreation.”

Sample and a production crew from “CBS Sunday Morning” were at Woodwind Gallery on Route 1 to film a segment of Sample’s “Postcards from Maine.”

The gallery is the headquarters of the Blackfly Breeders Association, and owner Holly Garner-Jackson explained the group’s efforts to increase the supply of the small bloodsuckers and keep them happy by providing housing and leisure-time activities.

Displayed on a main table were all the makings of a black fly village, from trailers to condominium housing to a combination bait shop and sushi bar.

“This is classic Maine,” Sample said during an interview between visits to black fly highlights in Washington County. “We take all of the various difficulties in life – potholes, mud season, hard winters – and turn them into humor.”

The Maine Blackfly Breeders Association was founded by Peter Clarkson Crolius of Marshfield, who included his position as chairman emeritus in the obituary he wrote shortly before he died in 1994.

Now boasting 100 members nationwide, MBBA has its own Web site, an annual convention in Machias on Feb. 29 or 30 of each year, and an array of black fly products.

Sample said he feels as if he has 20-year roots with black fly humor in Maine.

In the summer of 1981, Sample said, he and Maine humorist Marshall Dodge were onstage at the theater in Monmouth when they were called back for a second encore.

“We had one encore prepared, but we didn’t have a second,” Sample said. “I can remember crouching down behind the scenery, wondering what we were going to do.”

The two decided to wing it with Dodge posing questions to Sample on his plans for the summer. Sample said he began reeling off highlights such as the Egg Festival in Pittsfield – an actual summer event – and then decided he’d create one.

“I said I was going to the Maine Blackfly Festival in Rangeley,” Sample said. “Marshall was a genius. He began asking me more questions and I made up the Blackfly Queen contest with all the contestants standing on the back of a flatbed truck.”

The black fly festival became one of Sample’s most popular routines, and he included it in his book “Saturday Night at Moody’s Diner.” The story of the festival was chosen as one of two humorous articles in “Maine Speaks,” an anthology of Maine writers, he said.

Sample said he’s just signed another two-year contract with CBS and has been thinking about his initial conversation with Charles Kuralt when Kuralt first asked him to do the show.

“I said I’d be honored to represent Maine on national television, but I wasn’t going to do lighthouses and lobster boats,” Sample said. “People around the country have no idea of how fascinating and diverse Maine is. I said I wanted to share the real Maine with people.”

On Thursday, he did just that. The crew visited area gift shops, such as the Sow’s Ear, and perused black fly memorabilia, interviewed people on the streets, met MBBA’s “Queen Dottie” at the Bluebird Ranch Family Restaurant and traveled to see a black fly village in Whiting.

Sample said the “Postcards from Maine” segment on the Maine Blackfly Breeders Association will air at the end of June or early July.

“We’ve had so much fun with this,” he said. “I have the perfect job. People get pleasure from it and I have a wonderful time.”