Monday, August 25, 2008

Maine Locks and Crime.

  We're in Maine and back in Texas we have people watching the house and the studios.  Armed people.  People with phones, flashlights, keys, guns, backup, et, et.  The mail is going into a locked box.
  Up here, in your Maine, or at least in your Surry, backwoods, Blue Hill kind of Maine, these people don't even have a key for their front door.  NOTHING is locked.  Sailboats, houses, cars, businesses, garages....nothing locked up.  We spent the night on a beach in a campground where the tents are set up in May and taken down in September, left full of chairs, bedding, pads, cooking gear, got into an expensive boat and motored over to the anchorage at East Blue Hill, left the boat tied to a float, got in an unlocked Toyota truck and went to a handbuilt unlocked  mansion full of top-end stuff.  No crime, no thought of crime.  They just don't worry about it.
  The redhead and I had a sit down and discussed how much the fear and perception of criminals altered our behavior back in Texas.  Maybe I am reacting to shadows and phantoms.  Maybe I could have come to Maine for a week and left the door unlocked, not safeted the guns, alerted the neighbors, battened down the business.  Maybe.
  Or maybe I would return to a gun-free house and a business stripped down to the bare floor.
  This crime thing, it costs.  I don't mind the money half as much as the worry about it. 

1 comment:

d smith kaich jones said...

You are laboring under the assumption that I'M not leaving your door unlocked. :)

The ever-wonderful you-know-who leaves HIS front door unlocked (he's been broken into a couple of times, but they never try the front door; they break in through the garage), he leaves the keys & his wallet in his car with the windows down. It's a state of mind. He laughs at my worries.