You Princes of Maine
One of the things I enjoy about when Gary and Oswaldo come to visit us, as they have the past few days, is that there is a ritual we go through every evening to find a good movie that everyone will enjoy. For some reason, what is a challenging situation (meaning the selection of an agreeable movie to watch) for just Kim and me, seems never to be difficult for the four of us. I have several theories about why that is, but its not worth it to postulate since in my eyes, Kim is perfect and no amount of ambivalence about movie choices would ever change that view. But for some reason, we are always coming up with great movies that Gary has never seen and we feel he must, so its always a pleasure to introduce him to those films. Last night we watched Harrison Ford and Annette Benning in Regarding Henry about the not so distant trip of one ruthless litigator to a mentally challenged husband and father. It was an inspirational movie about goodness and kindness triumphing over sophistication and aggression. Tonight’s movie came to mind as we worked our way around the Prime menus and I stumbled across the word cider for some reason. That led to the one movie I’ve ever seen with the word cider in the title, The Cider House Rules.
The Cider House Rules takes place at an orphanage and an apple farm in the inland part of the state of Maine. I know about the inland part of the state of Maine, specifically the south-central part of the state, specifically that part of the state that is northeast of Sebago Lake and southwest of the twin cities of Lewiston/Auburn. It is one of the more backward parts of the state and, indeed, of the country. When I lived there in the mid-1960’s, Maine was ranked 49th in the United States in terms of the quality of public education. I’ve tried to verify that statistic, but its a hard historical find, even with Google. I don’t really need verification since I attended public school there for two years from 7th grade through 8th grade. Those are formative years in anyone’s life and they were eye-opening years for this young man. That part of Maine is easily as backward as the most remote holler in Kentucky Hillbilly country. People don’t always realize it, but the Appalachian Mountains are not restricted to the plateaus in Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia. They start as far south as Georgia and go well up into Maine and eventually Newfoundland. The Appalachian Trail itself goes well up to the northern reaches of Maine. And the people of central Maine are not the picturesque lobstermen of Boothbay Harbor or the gentrified folk of Mount Desert Island. They are simple and often toothless and their idea of landscaping is to have two derelict cars, one for the front lawn and one for the back.
The movie does little to disguise the true nature of the back-woods ways of central Maine. Nowhere does this reality show itself more than at the orphanage of St. Clouds, Maine, where the resident obstetrician/pediatrician and illicit abortionist trains his favorite orphan to replace him as a doctor. The unusual title of the movie speaks to the notion that people who do not live in “the cider house” should not be making the rules for those living “in the cider house”. It is a complex story with issues of abortion, incest, disability, addiction, and forbidden and unrequited love. Few movies can handle all of that and still drive home important lessons about navigating those complex waters.
Every one of those issues was in evidence in my middle school experience in Poland Elementary School and many of them were acted out on or near school grounds and in full view or knowledge of the otherwise innocent children who had the pleasure of attending. I sometimes wonder what ever became of some of my classmates, but alas, I have lost touch. In the movie, Michael Caine, who plays the orphanage’s physician, bids good night to the children in the dormitory by saying, “Good night you princes of Maine, you Kings of New England”. Well, every one of those classmates of mine were princes of Maine from what I could tell, so my guess is that most of them are still somewhere in central Maine.
During 8th grade, we had the typical class trip for the graduates. No surprise that the chosen trip was to take the class on a bus ride to Boston to watch the Boston Red Sox play baseball in Fenway Park. I assure you that every one of those students was an avid Red Sox fan and this was a trip of a lifetime for them. In fact, even though Poland was only thirty miles from the New Hampshire border to the west, this was the first time all but three of us had ever been outside the confines of the state of Maine. I had moved to Maine from Wisconsin and before that Costa Rica. When we left Maine in 1968, we headed to our next posting in Rome, Italy. I was clearly an anomaly on that class trip and cannot call myself a prince of Maine.
I learned many things during my three years in Maine. In addition to learning about how bad public education can be if done badly by subpar teachers, I learned the outdoorsy sports of Skiing, gold, tennis and canoeing. As an example of the educational standards, there was only one class of each 7th and 8th graders. That meant that my sister, Barbara, who is eighteen months my senior, had to be in the same classroom as I was (we had always been in separate classrooms in Wisconsin). I was a strong student for the most part and Barbara was more interested in more social pursuits. I would normally score better on tests and our relative strengths were well understood by all in the class. So imagine my sister and my mutual mortification when one day our teacher (a man dressed way too much like a Blues Brother) announced openly to the class that we had an interesting reversal of fortune in that on that particular quiz, my sister had Scored better than I had. He clearly had no clue that he had played into both of our worst nightmares. He was amused, as was the class.
But, as they say, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and I certainly think Maine helped make me stronger. Tobey Maguire sponged up all the life lessons at the orphanage and the cider house and he came away stronger. I spent two years at a local public school and a year at a prototypical New England prep school (Hebron Academy) that used many of Michael Caine’s methods. After a young life of good grades, my prep school teachers and masters made sure I learned that I was not as good as I thought I was. They put me through JV football practice running wind prints to make sure I also understood that I was not as strong as I thought I was either. But then they built me back up in the Spring semester to make sure I would return (which I didn’t do). It is a time-honored method of making princes of Maine I guess.