THE NOTION OF COMMUNITY
Part one of a two-part series
By Laurie Meunier Graves
In the United States, there’s a belief that the hinterlands are the
province, both spiritual and actual, of the hardy individual. This lone
person neither wants nor needs help from anyone and is self-sufficient,
resourceful, and tough. This person has often managed by sheer perseverance
and grit to overcome the worst kind of obstacles—poverty, abuse,
illness—without any kind of assistance. Just thinking about this person
brings tears to the eyes of certain politicians and anecdotes to their lips.
Yes, they say, this is what America is all about, and these politicians say
it with such fervor that they are able to convince many people that this is
the absolute truth.
As it happens, there is some truth to this mythos of the individual in the
hinterlands. People in the hinterlands tend to be handier than their urban
counterparts and would never dream of paying for services that are taken for
granted in the suburbs. Once, when visiting friends in New Jersey, I
remember how astonished I was to discover that they had actually paid
someone to paint the inside of their house. I didn’t say anything, of
course, but I did wonder about them. What was the matter with them? They
were both perfectly healthy. Why couldn’t they paint their own walls?
In the hinterlands of central Maine, people paint and repair and use quite a
lot of duct tape. They can fix their own houses, thank you, and it should
come as no surprise that the local Home Depot (yes, it exists even in the
hinterlands) does a brisk business. When it comes to the small things in
life, Mainers are loath to ask for help.
Yet along with this independence, there is also the notion of community. Not
long ago, a local family lost their home in a fire. They escaped with their
lives but not much else. Soon, calls were made, posters were put up, and
there was a public supper in the grade school. The food was donated, and all
the money went to the family. So many people came that by the end of the
evening the baked beans were nearly gone, and the volunteers had to scrape
the bottom of the pans.
Similar things happen when members of the community become ill and can’t
afford health care. Again, there are public suppers and donation jars in all
the stores in town. People give even when they don’t know the person; they
do so out of a sense of compassion and sympathy. Someone in the community
needs their help. That is enough.
However, as with most things in life, there is a flip side to the generosity
of Mainers, and at times, they can be astonishingly stingy. Nowhere is this
more apparent than at the legendary town meetings, quite often held in
March, which is without doubt the ugliest month in Maine. The snow is hard,
dirty, and gray, and it matches the mood of the Mainers as they settle into
the small, uncomfortable chairs. Hours are spent debating the budget, and
nothing escapes notice, not even the proposal to pave a half-mile dirt road
on the edge of town. In the end, there are fierce arguments as well as hurt
feelings, and budgets are sometimes trimmed in ways that they should never
be trimmed. This, of course, varies from town to town, but schools often
suffer because of these budget cuts. Classes are dropped, teachers are
laid-off, and leaking roofs are not repaired.
When this happens, the struggle between the individual and the community is
all too apparent. The notion of community is temporarily pushed aside and is
replaced by a debate that never fails to stir angry feelings. That is, how
high should taxes be? Some people recognize that good schools are essential
to the community and know that we all must chip in to support them. Others
want good schools but don’t want their taxes to increase. And still others
believe that the budget should be slashed and the schools should just make
do. Usually some kind of compromise is reached, but the debate goes on year
after year.
It is a debate that transcends the hinterlands and spreads across our
country. It extends not only to schools but also to all manner of services.
Who should receive aid? Who should not? Who deserves tax cuts? Who does not?
This brings us back to the lone individuals who need and want no help, who
are extolled by politicians, raised to near-mythic proportions, and used as
shining examples to both inspire and bully us. But in truth, do they really
exist? Where are these individuals who have sprung fully formed like Athena
from Zeus’s head? More importantly, how do these individuals square with
community, which most of us long for in various degrees?
For hints and answers to these questions, in the next essay, which will
appear in Wolf Moon Press in January, we will turn to northern Maine and to Aroostook County during the Great Depression.
PART TWO: THE NOTION OF COMMUNITY
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