Ruth went to college in Maine. Over spring break, she headed home to New Hampshire and invited a couple of friends from school to visit, since they lived too far away from Maine to be able to go to their own homes. She gave them directions, but they failed to appear at the appointed time. Around 10 p.m. she got a call. The friends were lost. They couldn’t even find Port Smith on a map.
Ruth lived in Portsmouth.
In a related story, Tony from Dunbarton and his wife were in the back of a plane on a vacation trip. A man in a suit with a distinct military look about him – buff, burly, close-cropped hair – sat near them. “I bet he’s the air marshal,” Tony whispered to his wife.
Tony then struck up a conversation with the fellow, who turned out to be not too chatty. “We’re from New Hampshire,” Tony told the man. “Where are you from?”
“I’m from New Hampshire, too,” the man said.
“Whereabouts?”
“Ports - mouth.”
Busted.
Who knew Portsmouth was so hard to pronounce? And what about that river that separates, New Hampshire and Maine at Portsmouth: The Piss-cah-TAH-qua, as the tourists pronounce it.
Or, my husband just remembered this story from his friend Marty, a Vista volunteer in Fort Kent, Maine, years ago. The people from away asked the way to Press-cue Is-lee. (That’s Presque Isle to some of us.)
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