How to Cook a Moose by Kate Christensen Read Free Book Online Page A

on small country roads through woods and tiny towns and farmland, past lakes and rivers, down from the mountains to the coast. Almost the only businesses we pass are old, unique—the Mediocre Deli, Kate’s Bait and Tackle, an old 1950s diner in a brightly painted saltbox house, Smiling Hill Farm (which has a sign advertising Ice Cream Lunch). Even the gas stations look homey and singular. Thereare almost no chains except Dunkin’ Donuts, few fast-food franchises or signs of the present-day corporate ubiquity.
    Driving into the city itself is a continuation of this cozy, time-warp landscape. When we first moved to Portland, it felt permanently 1987 here, in a good way. One discreet Starbucks tucked in the old brick downtown and the superstores hidden down on Marginal Way—Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods—were almost the only indications of this new millennium. All the other coffee shops, bars, and restaurants, all the businesses, were what used to be known as mom-and-pop—run by the actual people who owned them.
    The people likewise looked as if they’d been airlifted in a time ship from 1987. Almost everyone smoked. Skateboards and dreadlocks and piercings abounded, and almost everyone under forty-five was heavily tattooed. Men wore plain denim jeans and plaid shirts, sweatshirts, jean jackets, leather jackets, and Nikes. Women wore leggings, denim skirts, vintage dresses with boots. In the bars, there was a sense of unforced, easy warmth; people here all seemed to know one another. When someone came in, he or she was greeted by one or more of the big, friendly groups gathered hugger-mugger around small tables.
    It struck me right away as the kind of place that sneaks up on you. Or maybe it’s a self-selecting town where the people who move here all seem to really want to be here; I’ve never heard any resident say a negative thing about Portland. It’s all passionately understated joy with an undertone that says, “We get it.” If you’re not Portland’s type, it lets you move on down the road without a twinge. If you are its type, it gets its hooks in you so gently, so gradually, you don’t know it until you find yourself as happy here as everyone else.
    But it took a while for me, used to big-city attitudes and rapid-fire competitive one-upmanship and in-your-face, nosy, hotheaded aggression, to understand the dark, wry, wacky sense of humor andthe fierce but quiet work ethic of Mainers that is somehow never puritanical or self-righteous, as well as the lack of judgment, the mind-your-own-business attitude, and the fierce pride of place.
    In 2011, the social posturing and intense, self-conscious attitudes of my old stomping ground, North Brooklyn, had not yet found their way this far north—not even close—and I hoped they never would, despite the fact that, as soon as we moved here, we were barraged by people telling us that “Portland is already over, it’s too late, it’s being ruined by hipsterization” . . . To which I could only say, you’ve never lived in North Brooklyn. But of course, places change. And Portland is catching on as a place people want to visit, and even move to. (The fact that I’m contributing to the trend has not escaped my notice.)
    But so far, Portland is a haven from all that for me. In fact, having lived in both places, I have the strong impression and suspicion that hipster culture was borrowed from the north by early adopters who imported it to the urbanized south—from Alaska to Seattle, from Maine down to Brooklyn. That’s the only explanation I can understand for all the current coastal-urban facial hair and plaid shirts and artisanal charcuterie and small-batch beer and hand-crafted jerky and flash-pickled ramps, fiddleheads, scapes . . . hipsters’ yearning for authenticity and a return to the old ways is reflected in their imitation of the people who actually do wear those clothes and