Some time ago I received a voice mail from Terry Jr. – our contractor, carpenter and all ‘round “build-it, fix-it, tear-it-down-and-haul-it-off guy” – who lives a few miles down the road from our camp in Washington County. Terry Jr. is in the process of taking over more and more of his dad’s (Terry Sr.) well established carpentry business up in our neck of the eastern Maine woods.

As far as I can tell, though young in years, the son is cut from the same bolt of cloth as the father. His work certainly bears a family resemblance to the old man’s: it’s simple, solid, functional stuff, featuring a common sense, form-follows-function design and a level of quality that reflects genuine pride in his work.

He’s also clearly adopted his dad’s dry, deadpan, Down East sense of humor.

One of the first projects Terry Sr. did for us after we purchased the camp was to build us a new dock and install it on our little patch of lakefront.

He and his adult sons, plus a youthful nephew or two, were on-hand to help with the “launching,” which involved floating the new dock a few hundred yards from the public landing to our property. As his makeshift crew poled and paddled the awkward structure along the shore, the scene resembled something out of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

It was a lovely early summer day with sun sparkling off the placid lake as the younger kids splashed around having a fine old adventure.

Terry Sr. stood on the bank directing the operation with a critical eye. When the dock was finally safely installed, one of the younger kids just couldn’t resist the urge to leap fully clothed into the lake. “Hey!” Terry Sr. hollered. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Chastened, the boy replied, “Well, I figured after all this work I deserved a swim.”

Terry’s deadpan response was “Who says you’ve done any work?”

Back here in the future I returned Terry Jr.’s call. He informed me that he was about halfway done with his current project so he’d need to get some more money to keep going. I took down the numbers and asked how the project (remodeling the bathroom) was coming along.

“Well,” he said in a monotone flat’s your palm, “when we tore off the wall paneling to get at the pipes the whole camp collapsed.”

I’ll admit that my brain waves hit a mental frost heave for a second or two. But, I bounced right back. Grinning into the phone I said, “Yeah, well, that’ll happen sometimes.”

“Ayuh,” Terry Jr. said. “It will.”

The brief exchange was classic “Down East deadpan.”

I was tickled, and also relieved that I was the one having this conversation with him rather than my wife. She’s a Minnesota girl not a native Mainer and even after more than 25 years in the Pine Tree State she’s still prone to fall straight into one of these home-grown Maine humor conversational booby traps when chatting with the locals.

I suppose the fact that I grew up with this sort of homespun local entertainment must have influenced my decision to pursue a career as a Maine humorist. I mean how many times did I overhear Brud Pierce (the hot dog king) breaking the sad news to some unwitting tourist that the Town Fathers had made a fateful decision regarding the famous footbridge across the inner harbor.

“Ayuh. They’ve finally decided they aren’t going to have it any longer,” Brud intoned morosely.

Just when the hapless patron was digging out her camera for one last snapshot of the landmark before it was torn down , Brud would grin and add (drum roll please) “Nope, they figure it’s long enough just as it is!”

About 20 years back I was down at Skip Cahill’s Tire on the Old Bath Road. I’d purchased a set of tires from one of the big national tire warehouse companies and Skip had mounted and balanced them for me.

It didn’t seem to bother him that I hadn’t purchased the tires from him so I went on my way without giving it any more thought. For some reason though, that set of tires seemed to be cursed.

I picked up a nail in one of them less than a week after Skip put them on my car. A few weeks later there was some “curb rash” on another, which necessitated replacement of yet another almost brand new tire.

Skip always got me right in and did the work promptly and professionally with nary a hint of editorial comment.

I can’t recall what the exact problem was with tire No. 3 but it happened just a week or two later and I wasn’t too happy to be making one more trip to Cahill’s and shelling out another hefty chunk of change to put things right.

As I stood by the fender watching Skip re-mount yet another of my “bargain” tires I grumbled, “Boy I’m just having the worst darned luck I’ve ever had with this set of tires.”

“Ayuh,” Skip said. “That’ll happen with these national chain store tires.”

The line was, of course, delivered without a hint of inflection, no remonstrance for my failure to shop locally, no subtle “I told you so.” Nope: just a good dose of good-for-what-ails-ya Down East deadpan, straight from the horse’s mouth.

By the way, if anybody tries to tell you that this sort of classic dry Yankee repartee is going out of style, I recommend the following response: “That depends on who you talk too.”

Tim Sample will be performing at the Boothbay Opera House, where he first appeared as a teenage rock 'n' star, on Thursday, June 28, at 7:30 p.m. For more information, call the Opera House 633-5159 or visit their website.