My personal parking spot at Hannaford was taken. Don’t look at me like that! If you live here year-round, tell me you don’t always park in the same spot every time. It’s a habit with us old people ... so we can find our car when we come out. It’s right there … in our spot. 

But there was my spot ... occupied.   

Somebody from New Jersey was in it.   

That’s a regular occurrence at this time of year.  I swear I need to get the management to crochet a doily with my name on it and post it on my spot, so the People From Away (PFAs) won’t take it. 

So, while I was looking for another, I got to thinking about my friend, Mike Beane (God rest his soul). Around the summer solstice, he used to look at me and say, "Summer people...", and then pause for effect and finish "...Summer not."  It doesn't make as much sense reading it as it does if you say it out loud. 

And there it was, in a joke, our special relationship with PFAs. 

We spend eight months wishing people would spend money around here, then four months complaining because they do. 

In January we complain cause there’s no restaurants open, and in July we’re insistent that we don’t go to the restaurants cause they’re too busy. 

Every summer we complain about the traffic on Townsend Avenue. Mind you, we’re complaining about the traffic on a one-way street with no traffic light until you’re almost out of town. 

By the way, we don’t need a calendar to know when summer starts. We know it when the Southport Bridge is backed up, the Hannaford lot is full, we have to eat breakfast out before 8 or we won’t get it at all, and we saw three cars in a row, one right after another, from Rhode Island, New York, and Massachusetts.  And suddenly, it’s summer. 

Now the PFAs have their own foibles, too. They think they’re almost locals because they’ve been coming here since the summer of 1988. Well, around here, that’s pretty much just a start. 

Truth be told, Boothbay, Boothbay Harbor, and Southport wouldn’t be themselves without Summer People. 

They need us, and whether we like to believe it or not, we need them. Both groups each spend four months pretending the other group isn’t driving us just a little crazy. And somehow it works. 

Then Labor Day comes. We wave goodbye ... complain that business has slowed ... enjoy having the roads to ourselves ... and don’t admit, even to ourselves, that we secretly hope they’ll all come back next June. 

And I get my parking spot back.