Why do retirees move to Maine?

[Orchidflower]

Oh yeah...how I get that one. I raised my son from 4 there, and he is one of those "Hell, yes! I'm from Texas" people. Sigh...what's a mother to do? They get them when they are young down there and brainwash away...haha! Oh well...could be worse, I suppose.

 

[mexmeme]

Were you there AFTER oil crashed and people were losing their jobs? Did you NOT see all the bumper stickers to the effect of "Welcome to Texas. Now you have seen it, GO HOME!" or "Go home, Snowbird" and other similar "welcoming" slogans? If not, you were in your house and insulated just too much.
I even had a supposed minister go off about how much Yankees came to Houston and ruined her little town. Again, if you never had any experience like that after the oil crash where people were losing jobs and companies were folding, you were just too, too insulated in your little world.
Even my son--in first grade--had fellow pupils look mortified when he said he was from Chicago originally. First grade! Where did they learn that, I wonder..
I have the feeling you were there in the early 1980's when Houston loved everyone, things were going well and everybody was making money hand over fist. NOT the situation around 1984 and on.
Or all your "friends" had Yankee roots somewhere is another possibility.

We were there from 1983 to 1988 and we lost 1/2 of our house's value. My husband worked for a gas pipeline company with offices in the Milam building who closed their Houston office and we were sent back to the regional offices. It was hard to move to Joliet Ill. and have to pay more than twice what we sold the other house for. That was not the question. The people I met and interacted with were for the most part natives and gracious and welcoming. I knew people from all over Houston Via the golfing community. I had no children then, so can not comment on the actions of children who brought their parent's prejudices to school with them. Adults hopefully were not so stupid as to let their prejudices show. Sometimes "yankees" act like "YANKEES". Enough said. We were from Indiana. I too didn't care for the years I lived in Joliet. After 5 years in Houston I had a "yall come back, hear." I got made fun of all the time at the bank in Joliet from customers and employees of the bank too, so worked to get rid of my "southern" sayings. YMMV as they say.

 

[friar1610]

I retired to the next best place after Maine - Vermont. Yes, the taxes are high, there are too many left leaning folks for my taste (I'm a pretty middle of the road Independent) and the winters can be long and cold. But I'm a native New Englander who spent 28 years in the Navy, all but 3 years outside of New England. (The 3 NE years were in Maine.) I never felt completely comfortable outside of NE. We ended up in VT about 3 years ago after we decided that we had to leave Maryland or we would end up staying there for the rest of lives. (MD is a fine place and I really like Baltimore but the hot summers there are, to me, worse than the cold winters here.)

My wife and I like to snowshoe, X-C ski, paddle, hike, eat well, avoid traffic, go to plays and concerts, visit big cities, etc. We have all of that in Vermont. (Montreal is only 2 hours away from us - that's the big city to which I refer.) I can see there may come a time when we will want to be less rural with less land to worry about, but for the moment this is a great place for us. And, if we want to get away in the winter, they allow you to leave for Florida and othr such places; we just haven't felt the need yet.

And the only reason Maine is better than VT is that it has an ocean. But since we couldn't have afforded oceanfront property, it probably doesn't matter. And Lake Champlain is very close to us.

 

[kat]

I agree!

I just purchased a camp and land in rural VT. I use it as a getaway place right now. I think my spot in a city in upstate NY is a perfect ER place, but I have the best of both worlds with a place of my own in the rural mountains of VT.

 

[BunsGettingFirm]

Lets add Texas to that list of places where you are an outsider unless you grew up there. And, God forbid you are a Yankee, as you will be most unappreciated (to put it kindly).
And I was a Yankee from Chicago, so , when I got there, I talked fast like they do in Chicago. They hated me for it, and I knew it; so, I had to really work on slowing down my speech patterns when I was in a social situation. Ironically, fast speech and Chicago ways didn't seem to affect my selling at all. How do I know? Cause I was always #1 in any office (this is before I went into biz for myself). Go figure?
But socially was being a Yankee from Chicago a negative? You bet it was in Houston.
Also, where I grew up in Illinois on the Iowa border where I am staying now, I talk to gals in the locker room who have been here a few years only saying how hard it is to penetrate and gain some friends here. They like the area, but tell me they can't get any friends. I can see why as this is a post-industrial area that now has little in and out traffic, so everyone here almost grew up here. Me, I feel comfortable and like I fit in. Why? I have no idea unless it is because the area is familiar with me from my youth. But I do hear it here from new transplants over and over.
I think this goes on alot more than we think. California, NYC, Chicago, D.C. are areas I have spent time in and never felt like an outsider. Why? They have so much movement in and out that they are so much more sophisticated and cosmopolitan than most areas.
Just an opinion, and not saying I am right.
I know one thing: if I ever move back to a metro in Texas, I am telling them I am from Houston. Period. Saying you are from Chicago or any place up North rates you as an a**hole there. And anyone who has not picked up on that and lives in Texas is either blind or fooling themself.

You should give Toronto a try. It's not perfect, but it's the city I feel most perfectly at home in North America. Montreal's not half bad. I don't feel that every driver is out to own the road. I can ride my bike and actual have people give me a bit of room.

 

[ls99]

Why retire in Maine/Vermont/NH ? Grumpy old men need company?

I used to spent fair amount of time in Vermont, late fall winter. Considered the area for retiring, but, DW would not hear of it.

Short story: As I often was in my travels, long before GPS, lost. Great to be lost, never know what you find. In Vermont this time. Saw a man working along his fence line. Stopped and asked, 'scuse me, can you tell me how to get to Bennington? He stopped, looked at me and said: yes. After an interminable long time of silence, I said, OK would you? Then he he did.

Oh, and in Middlebury Vermont, was in a college bar, trying to make time with a young lady, said something to tick her off. She blew me off with, But I am a professor of French. Oh well.

This too was a long time time ago, great memories fro the rocking chair.