July 7, 2008--Monday's In Maine: Lobsta (sic) Rolls

Sharon said, when you get to Maine, be sure to look for those hidden-away lobster shacks. You’ll find them in most harbors in unexpected places. Not the fancy versions for tourists passing through or just there for a weekend, but the places the locals go to during the summer. To get away from the tourists.

That turned out to be good advice since this was the first time we were taking up residence in Maine, albeit for just three weeks, but we certainly didn’t want to either act like or look like tourists. In fact, even before settling in in the house we rented on Clark Island, not far from Thomaston, we drove around looking for the place the locals were likely to go to in the morning for coffee, a place not far from the lobster boats in the Thomaston and Rockland harbors which opened at 6:00 a.m., a sure sign, even though we would not be up and out at anything like that hour, that there we would be not be mixed in with the latte and cappuccino set.

We did in fact find what we thought was such a breakfast place but wouldn’t you know it that when we went there at 8:00 a.m. the next morning we wound up sitting at a table right next to Brian Lamb, C-SPAN’s founder and host of “Booknotes.” So instead of listening in on how the lobsters were running this summer (if this is the correct way to put it), I couldn’t resist pushing my way into his conversation about the future of books. What, he was wondering, would be their fate now that Amazon has come out with Kindle, its version of an online electronic book.

I thought I was being quite clever when I said Kindle might be a convenience when traveling in that you wouldn’t have to schlep along a bag of books (though I didn’t use schlep with Brain—I was trying to blend in) without real books how would it be to take a nap with a Kindle on your chest. His wife quipped that the battery would run out. A bookbinder friend of his said that without walls of books insulating one’s house heating bills up here would double.

So you see, we quickly have found a version of a place for us to fit into. Until I meet some real fishermen, Brian Lamb will just have to do.

But back to the advice Sharon gave us: how to find the freshest, most authentically prepared and served lobsters.

It seems this will turn out not to be so difficult. This whole coast is of course lined with rock-bound bays and coves and harbors. It is Maine after all and that’s what the coast of Maine is all about. No such fishing harbors, no Maine. And yes situated in literally every one of them there are lobster shacks and places called Fishermen’s Co-Ops where local lobstermen bring their catch and I presume the women members of their families boil them up and serve them on paper plates on weather-battered picnic tables. They do include melted butter for dipping the delectable meat but no nutcrackers to shatter the shells. In their place, we discovered by observing a couple of regulars at the next table at Millers, they provide a rock. A hunk of Maine granite to smash the claws.

With the lobster juice dripping out of our mouths and through the seams in the cobbled-together table and onto our pants, who cares? It doesn’t get any better than this. And the sunset over Norton Island quickly wipes out memories of the endless eight-hour drive from New York.

* * *

By the next day we quickly noticed that travelers who want the true Maine experience, the culinary part of which of course centers around lobsters, do not have to look far. Yes, getting off the main roads, such as they are, leads one to Millers here on Clark Island or Cod’s End on the wharf in Tenants Harbor or the Dip Net in Port Clyde, but if while inching your way up Route 1, the same one that passes near us down south in Delray Beach, Florida, you can get your lobster, usually in the form of lobster rolls, almost anywhere and in the most unexpected places.

For example, in almost any convenience store. Or, no kidding, in the place where you have your hair done. For that matter, the sign at a nearby wine shop advertises a good deal on Maine wines, there are quite a few wineries here, and also for $11.95 lobster rolls. And if you are willing to shell out $4,19 for regular gas at the local Exxon station, you can get lobsta (sic) rolls there for only $10.99.

As a kid I always wondered why on its license plates the state of Idaho emblazoned Famous Potatoes. That is until I finally got there. Or why Florida, the Sunshine State, had an orange on its. But now, after just three days here, I know about the Vacationland state and why on its a lobster is so prominently embossed.