Grilled cheese at (gasp) the yacht club

I simply do not know how Maine residents could get through the winter if correspondents from publications such as Vogue magazine and the Boston Sunday Globe didn’t drop by each summer (when the roads are open) to show us the way.

Why, when Vogue’s Erin Flanagan Lazard first started coming to Maine islands (didn’t say which one), the residents actually wore “shredded khakis, pink Brooks Brothers shirts, and navy sheath dresses from Talbots.” Can you just imagine?

Before that Maine excursion, Lazard considered an island trip to be an excursion to the Hamptons.

The best thing about the other Maine island residents is that they eventually accepted Lazard’s sarongs from St. Barts and her Pucci clothes at the lunch table. Open-minded people, these Maine islanders. “Maine is where the yacht club [that should narrow the location down] serves plain old grilled cheese sandwiches.” Can you imagine?

You learn something new every day, even reading Vogue. Why, the “biggest summer event” in these parts is the Maine Antiques Festival on the Union Fairgrounds. Here, you can find an antique wedding dress or a Tiffany ball clock “that you thought existed only in Kentshire.” I never knew. I won’t miss that event this year, as long as it doesn’t run opposite the oxen-pulling contests.

Island meals are made possible, Vogue tells us, by buying local from those quaint fishermen and by flying in needed lamb chops and filets from New York butchers. But beware. “When you are hundreds of miles away from the city, any hint of formality disappears.”

I am telling you, the next time I go down to Fitzpatrick’s on the Camden waterfront for my Reuben sandwich, I am wearing Prada all the way. I think Fitz will be impressed.

By contrast, Doreen Vigue was positively lowbrow in her Boston Globe report on a weekend visit to the wilds of Maine, Camden and Rockport. (At least Vigue told us where she went.)

But she was equally shocked to find something such as Andy Warhol drawings at some place as quaint as Rockland’s Farnsworth Art Museum. “Warhols in Rockland. I’ll be darned,” Vigue exclaimed. (Wait until she sees the Hoppers).

The Globe, like its big sister The New York Times, insists on calling that Maine island off Lincolnville as “Isleboro” instead of what is printed in the town report as Islesboro. Don’t they have copy editors in Boston and New York? I know we are only backwoods hicks, but we can spell either Boston and New York, as well as Wytopitlock. The Globe made that mistake again about 10 times in the Sunday piece.

Vigue stayed at (and loved) A Little Dream, one of the ghetto of high-priced B&Bs which line Camden’s Route 1. She dined at French & Brawn, had cocktails at Cappy’s in Camden, then had the great good sense to head to Rockland for the Cafe Miranda and the “quirky” offerings of chef Kerry Altiero. As the Miranda menu states, “We do not serve the foods of cowards.”

While I love the Miranda (former site of the Owls Club), I hate good stories about the place. You can hardly get in the door now. No more publicity, please.

Vigue closed her weekend visit with side trips to Owls Head and up Mount Battie, then to Red’s Eats in Wiscasset for the legendary lobster rolls.

No word on whether she wore Pucci.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.