You gotta know the territory

“First Salesman: Ya can talk, ya can talk, ya can bicker, ya can talk, ya can bicker, bicker, bicker, ya can talk, ya can talk, ya can talk, talk, talk, talk, bicker, bicker, bicker, ya can talk all ya want but it’s different than it was.

“Charlie: No it ain’t, no it ain’t, but you gotta know the territory.”

– from “The Music Man”

Certainly, you remember “The Music Man,” Meredith Willson’s story of a con man coming to River City, selling the locals on a way to rescue their youth. Robert

Preston was terrifically energetic in the movie version as Professor Harold Hill, “just a bang beat, bellringing, big haul, great go, neck-or-nothing, rip roarin’, every time a bull’s eye salesman.”

That’s from the opening song, called “Rock Island,” in which another salesman asks, “What’s the fellow’s line?”

The reply: “He’s a fake, and he doesn’t know the territory!”

I don’t know whether The Music Man would be written today. The show was full of fun and romance, and revealed where it was going as soon as Marian the librarian was pointed out to Professor Hill. There may not be enough darkness about it for today’s tastes, but it comes to mind at the end of a long stretch of morose news about Maine’s decline – good jobs leaving, young people leaving, hope going on holiday. Where’s an ebullient Music Man when you need him?

When slot machines pay out, bells ring, lights flash, but there’s no “76 Trombones,” which is a shame because it’s a song that makes just about anyone smile. The song’s equivalent, though, must be the clinking of coins spilling out of the machine, because if Maine has a boy’s band of its own over which to get excited, it is gambling, with Professor Hill played this time by Shawn Scott, the man who brought racinos to Maine and in the process became the biggest bang beat, bell ringing thing to happen here in years.

Maine’s had five separate racino votes – Bangor, statewide, Scarborough, Saco, Westbrook. There have been multiple deals, side deals, secret deals, handshake deals and cross deals. Double deals and development. Lawsuits and legerdemain. The Attorney General investigated; experts have given expert testimony to Maine’s Harness Racing Commission. The governor got involved and so did a former governor. A half dozen local lawyers have stood up for the right of free enterprise and are all representing Mr. Scott at only their customary fees. And a dash of three-card-monte confusion: The only group out-cheering anti-racino CasinosNo! at racino’s defeat this week in Saco and Westbrook was Mr. Scott’s pro-racino group Capital Seven, which just lost its competition. And this is before the Legislature gets a chance to turn this into a spectacle, if not a musical.

What does it say about Maine that a single person with money and a fairly modest idea can spin this state like a roulette wheel until it’s hard to know which side anyone stands on? I think it says, Ya got trouble, right here in River City, and that starts with T and that rhymes with P and that stands for poor.

Gambling persuades people to suspend judgment long enough to enjoy themselves as they lose money. It is sometimes a happy and sometimes not-so-happy illusion. The state encourages it in a small way with the lottery; the city of Bangor is pleased to do it in a larger way, hungry for its small share of slot-machine revenue handed over willingly from people who cannot afford to lose it. This isn’t just Bangor, of course. A majority of voters in November wanted Maine in on a cut of this deal. Now, with so much new information about the arrangement and the man who helped write it, some have changed their minds, as if they were surprised to discover that the promoter of the gambling illusion would also possess other illusions.

Harold Hill, of course, knew this territory as well as he knew the territory of desire in River City, Iowa. He knew that people want more for their children, though it didn’t have to be protection from the concocted trouble of pool; it could be the trouble from a lack of opportunity, the trouble of desperation. And he knew that, in the right territory, he would ultimately have to deliver the goods – musical instruments and uniforms, bringing River City together in a way it hadn’t expected. Think of the trouble that would come if he didn’t:

I say, first, medicinal wine from

a teaspoon, then beer from a bottle

And the next thing you know your son is playin’

for money in a pinchback suit

And listenin’ to some big out-o’-town jasper

hear him tell about horserace gamblin’

Not a wholesome trottin’ race, no,

but a race where they set down right on the horse.

That’s trouble, all right. Though he has known it well enough to get this far, whether Mr. Scott really knows the territory and, more, whether he delivers goods and shows that Maine is River City and not just another gullible town along the way will be seen in the next few weeks. Maybe it would help if he sang.

Todd Benoit is the BDN editorial page editor.