Tourists and Other Stupid People

I don’t really care much for idiots. Now, I’m not talking about someone who is ignorant because they haven’t been exposed to something, or someone who maybe doesn’t get it, but is at least giving it a try; what I’m talking about are the people who are so numb they not only don’t know anything, they don’t even suspect anything.
And amazingly many of them end up here in Maine either as tourists or new residents, who have “discovered” us. How they discovered us, when we knew we were already here is a bit beyond me, but maybe I’m stupid too. Anyway, the question has often occurred to me as to how these people got jobs that provided them enough money to get here, and how they found there way here in the first place.
Case in point, the stupidest newcomer of the summer of 2009. It is noon at the Harpswell Anchor newspaper office. It is always that time of the day when they drive into our yard to either buy something, which is good, or to ask for free stuff, which isn’t. They have all day, for God sake, why the stroke of noon when we are a mouthful into our deserved sandwich? A Subaru, good giveaway that the driver is probably and elderly woman, pulls into the parking lot, and a gray haired lady gets out, comes into the office, opens her purse and puts two letters on the table. As we stare in wonderment, she asks, “Aren’t you the Post Office?” When we respond in the negative, she replies, “Well, I saw a flag and a sign, so I figured you were.” Now our sign says, “Anchor Publishing,” which I guess where she came from was close. We then gave her directions, and when she left, I added, the building has a sign in front of it that says “Post Office.” Damn, and you know she probably had a college degree.
When I retired from state servitude, I was asked by a local commercial fisherman, a long time friend, if I would manage his wharf. That entailed weighing up crates of lobsters, filling and salting barrels of bait, and dealing with the occasional tourist who wanted the experience of buying “fresh” lobster. Inevitably, as I pulled a crate of live, flapping lobsters from the water, I would be asked, “Are those fresh?” Duh. “No,” I would reply, “They’re very well behaved.” This was usually greeted with the same expression, you’d get off a board fence.
The business was called “Dick’s Crabs & Lobsters.” One day an out of state car pulled up, a man got out and said, “Are you Dick?” “No,” I replied. “Well,” he said, “I’m a good friend of Dick and his boy, what’s his name,” and he always gives me lobsters at half price.” Yeah, really. “Well,” I replied, “When What’s His Name comes in, ask him.”
Most of the dumb questions involved crabs, and gave me the opportunity for great answers. Two identically attired gentlemen, one afternoon, asked “Where can we get crabs?” Huh, read the sign? “The toilet seat at the bus station is supposed to be a good place,” was my answer. The other common question was, “Do you have crabs?” “My response being, “Not since I used that soap the doctor gave me.”
One morning as I came up from the float, I found an elderly man and his wife in the bait shack going through the pockets of the pants and jackets the guys left to change into when they came back from a day’s fishing. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I just want to see what they carry with them?” was his innocent reply. “Could I go to your house and go through your stuff?” I asked.
“Of course not.”
“Then get the hell off this wharf, do not buy lobsters here, do not pass Go.”
We Mainers aren’t unfriendly, we just don’t like being seen as a giant, open air, petting zoo.