Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Can't get there from here

Album mocked Maine ways

By Jerry Harkavy THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

PORTLAND, Maine— Some of the classic lines that define Maine humor emerged 50 years ago, on a record made by two Yale University students in a dormitory room.

Uttered in exaggerated Down East accents, the exchanges between Marshall Dodge and Robert Bryan on the “Bert and I” album inspired generations of storytellers both in-state and beyond, including the likes of Garrison Keillor of Lake Wobegone fame.

Some of Dodge and Bryan’s bone-dry punch lines remain familiar even today.


Summer tourist to Mainer: “Which way to Millinocket?” After considering and then rejecting a few possible routes, the native concludes, “Come to think of it, you can’t get there from here.”

Then there’s the day 85-year-old Arnold Bunker “from Bailey Island way” appears in court. Asked if he’d lived there all his life, he replies: “Not yet.”

Maine’s Islandport Press has marked the 50th anniversary of “Bert and I” by putting out a CD that features 34 stories compiled from Dodge and Bryan’s four albums, a concert appearance by Dodge and a public television special.

Though neither was from Maine, Dodge and Bryan were familiar with the state and its people and had a keen ear for dialect, along with a knack for low-tech sound effects. Their first recording, made in their dorm room at Yale University, featured a wastebasket as an echo chamber.

They made 50 copies for friends and family members, then pressed 50 more.

Dodge died in 1982 in a hit-and-run crash while bicycling in Hawaii.

Bryan, a divinity student who went on to be ordained as an Episcopal priest, is a bush pilot, at 77, with the Quebec Labrador Foundation, a nonprofit he founded nearly 50 years ago.

http://www.telegram.com/article/20081111/NEWS/811110501

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