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PORTLAND – Nearly 50 years have passed since two Yale students created “Bert and I” and ushered in a golden age of Maine humor, but the “set her again” story that they helped popularize still resonates with audiences today.
It’s often told with variations and embellishments that extend its length to 10 or 15 minutes, but the gist of the tale is simple:
A lobsterman’s wife – in some versions his mother-in-law – falls overboard from his boat in rough seas and her body washes up on shore weeks later with a dozen lobsters attached. In discussing disposition of the remains, a fellow fisherman says that in view of the high price of lobster and the poor state of the economy, he’d “set her again.”
The story no doubt originated along the Maine coast, but where, when and by whom is anyone’s guess. To Tim Sample, the most successful Maine humorist and one who gained a national audience through the “Postcards from Maine” segment of CBS’ “Sunday Morning,” it is part of the oral tradition carried on by storytellers.
Incorporating the requisite colloquialisms and dialect, Sample has made good use of the story during a 30-year career.
So, too, has John McDonald, a Maine storyteller who includes it in his book, “A Moose and a Lobster Walk Into a Bar,” now in its sixth printing.
As increased mobility and the influence of television whittle away at America’s regional distinctions, Maine – along with sections of the South – is among a handful of places with a critical mass of humorists and storytellers to carry on the comic tradition and style that make them unique.
A historic moment came in 1957 when Marshall Dodge and Robert Bryan recorded the Maine stories that they practiced in their dormitory in New Haven, Conn. Neither was from Maine, but they had a keen ear for dialect and Dodge had a knack for making sound effects that enhanced their stories.
“They made this on a lark, just for fun,” said Sample, who performed with Dodge before his death in a hit-and-run accident while bicycling in Hawaii in 1982.
Dodge and Bryan, who later became an Episcopal priest, made 50 copies of their “Bert and I” record for their friends, then made another 50, and then 100 more. “It took on a life of its own, and gradually they realized they had something there.”
Its phenomenal success spawned follow-up records by Dodge and Bryan, along with records by a handful of imitators.
Sample, who grew up in Boothbay Harbor, went on to develop a hybrid of yarn spinning and comedy that he terms “Down East standup.”
“It’s more topical and more reactive to current events but it never digresses tremendously from the cadence, structure and basic orientation of the classic storytelling,” he said.
Although born in Providence, R.I., McDonald was exposed to old-time storytellers in Tenants Harbor, where his family spent summers, and in Cherryfield, where he lived after moving to Maine to pursue a career in journalism.
The roots of Maine’s brand of dry humor are the fishing villages along the coast and the lumber camps in the state’s northern forest. Tales passed from one generation to the next offered a distraction from what Sample calls “some of the most dangerous, difficult, back-breaking work imaginable.”
A recurrent theme is the country bumpkin who always seems to get the best of the sophisticated urbanite, usually from Massachusetts, deflating his ego and puncturing his pomposity.
Take, for example, the visitor who pulls up in his shiny BMW and shouts to the fellow in front of the general store, “How do you get to Bangor?” His reply: “My father takes me.”
Or this old chestnut: “Have you lived here all your life?” Answer: “Not yet.”
“What they’re saying is, ‘You didn’t ask me the right question,” said McDonald, who views the jokes as poking gentle fun at tourists who “come here during the best time of the year, gum up the roads, fill up the restaurants and expect people to work for them for next to nothing, mowing their grass and painting their boats.”
Sample, 55, puts on about 75 shows a year and is perhaps unique in being able to draw his sole livelihood from his craft. Like others in the profession, he supplements his performances with books, audio and video tapes, and CDs and DVDs.
McDonald, 61, has worked at newspapers and radio stations and now hosts a weekend talk show on WGAN radio in Portland.
Among older humorists, Kendall Morse worked as a boat captain and harbormaster, Joe Perham, known for his outhouse jokes, was a high school English teacher, and Robert Skoglund, aka “The Humble Farmer,” wrote newspaper columns.
Their routines are far different from those of Bob Marley, a Maine-born comedian who hit it big nationally with appearances on Letterman and Leno, movie roles and a busy schedule of shows around the country. He sprinkles a few Maine references when he performs in his home state, as he did during a string of six sold-out shows in Portland over the Christmas holiday, but drops that material before out-of-state audiences.
His brand of comedy, he said, comes at a different pace.
“On the ‘Tonight’ show, they want a laugh every 20 seconds. A Maine humorist might take four minutes to get the first laugh,” he said.
Maine humor is presented most often at theaters, festivals and professional gatherings, not comedy clubs or bars. Humorists steer clear of off-color language and say they avoid performing in venues where liquor flows because their material demands an audience’s close attention.
“You have to have more than a teaspoonful of brains to understand Maine humor,” said Morse, 71, who has been forced to give up performing due to poor health.
But Perham, 71, and Skoglund, who just turned 70, still take the stage, entertaining audiences that range from farmers to pharmacists.
Skoglund also has a weekly show on Maine Public Radio during which his stories are interspersed with swing-era jazz.
Another popular humorist is Gary Crocker, whose day job often places him at the Maine State House. Crocker, 58, is legislative liaison for the Maine Community College System.
There is even a performer who resurrects the stories that Bryan and Dodge made famous. Minnesota native Allen Wicken, a physical therapist from Rangeley, retells and promotes the classic “Bert and I” stories “to kind of keep that flame alive.”
Maine’s storytelling tradition seems to be almost exclusively male, and it’s hard to find any women in the ranks of Maine humorists. The one who perhaps comes closest is Susan Poulin, creator of “Ida: Woman Who Runs With the Moose.”
“It’s a boys club, absolutely,” said Poulin, whose one-woman shows draw from her theater background rather than storytelling and seek to create a fictitious community like Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegone in Minnesota.
With the aging of Maine’s most renowned humorists, some wonder whether a fresh crop will emerge to carry on the tradition.
But some humorists didn’t get into the game until they were well into middle age, a pattern that may reflect the need for storytellers to gain some life experience before they walk onto the stage for the first time.
“I don’t think I ever told a joke until I was 45 or so,” said Perham, who retired from teaching at 50 to devote more time to his humor.
Skoglund, who started at 47, is also a late bloomer. “I don’t think you can do it until you have the scars of life,” he said.
On the Net:
Maine Humor: http:///www.mainehumor.com
Tim Sample: http:///www.timsample.com
Susan Poulin: http:///www.poolyle.com
Bert and I: http:///www.bertandi.net
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