Stupid Summer People

After having lived here for a few years now, I can safely say that there are two speeds at which everyone in rural Maine drives: either twenty miles per hour over the posted speed limit, or twenty miles per hour under. Here where we live, in Stephen King country, there are no local police doing traffic monitoring, not until you get into the larger towns. On the roads then, the only thing that tempers your speed is how safe you feel at whatever speed you are doing. For most of us, that means you’re doing about 65 miles an hour in the 45 zones (except at dawn and dusk, when deer are more likely to be wandering across the road; you don’t want to hit a deer going at any speed, but especially not 65 miles an hour). That’s what we locals do, anyway. During the summer months, when the tourists are all in the area (“summer people,” we call them), that’s when you encounter all the cars crawling along at 25 miles an hour, and you are trapped. All the roads out here are curved, lined with trees,…