Education of a Boy - Shoot First Laugh Later
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Once upon a time I was a 12 year old boy. I lived in a lovely little town in Maine built around a lake, a few miles outside the state capital. For those of you who are still map proficient, find the junction of routes 41 and 17, and you will find yourself smack in the center of my lovely little town. I am told it was amongst the richest not-on-the-coast little towns in the state. It is true that a significant part of the population was from away – a mini colony of outta statahs, most of whom performed some professional functions for the state or for parasitic industries supported by the state. There were natives too, but they generally kept a healthy distance as small town natives do, quarantining themselves from the away contagion.
My family was from away, but we weren’t outta statahs, so we existed in a bit of a neutral zone of acceptance. We were less suspicious to the regular people than the outta statahs, while to the outtah statahs were less horrifying than the actual natives. My family came from a place 20 or 30 miles away that was a step down economically, but essentially identical socially. At least it was a place the natives had heard of and could turn their noses up at, which – counter intuitively – lent them some comfort in having us in their midst. People like having people around they can feel a little superior towards.
On the other hand, we were only there because we had been adopted into the Household, through some chance college connections, of the local lords. True, honest to god locals who owned The Factory. Being attached to the local nobility gave my family and me certain privileges, which included absolute immunity from the rule of law and allowances for a certain restrained sense of minor grandeur.
It was the late 70’s. We were into the ERA, women not shaving their arm pits and smoking either Virginia Slims or Mores; we were into tennis, brunch, loose leaf teas for all moods and occasions, natural foods, exotic alcoholic concoctions like home-made sangria and Kahlua sombreros; we subscribed to fruit-of-the-month clubs and had bentwood spiral staircases instead of regular stairs, and wood stoves. We had packs of free roaming dogs and lived in a modest but architecturally modern house built for us on the Lord’s Grounds – tastefully hidden from Lord’s view, but very much part of the Manor.
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