To the editor:
After recently hearing of how happy we are all in Caribou, it reminded me of a story.
“A potato farmer had old pig and he raised this pig with the intentions of a profitable slaughter late in the fall that would set him up nice for Christmas spending, unfortunately by mid fall the pork belly prices had fallen drastically, to the point that he would have made just pennies on the dollar. So during one early morning coffee meeting with his cattle ranching neighbor at the property line fence he proceeded to explain his problem.
“Well, the cattle rancher listened to what the farmer had to say, then went on to explain how the cattle pricing was through the roof and proceeded to brag of his pending profits. The farmer finished up his coffee, said good bye and while walking back to the barn he had an epiphany: “I’ll paint my pig black and I will pass it off as a black angus cow and I will then make more than I originally would have made selling it for what it was, a pig.
“Well the day of the big sale came and went and the farmer did not sell his ‘angus cow.’
“The following morning at the old property line fence the farmer was lamenting over the fact that it did not sell and now the pork bellies pricing had all but dropped through the floor and he couldn’t even recover his cost to break even and he was now known as a shyster.”
The moral of the story folks is that no matter what color you choose to paint your pig, it’s still a pig! If you want the “angus” cut of life, speak the truth, acknowledge and fix the problems and “raise an angus cow.” And with that being said I offer the following for your digestion.
The 10 worst places to live in Maine as presented by RoadSnacks.net. “After analyzing 50 of the state’s most populous cities (over 5,000 citizens) we came up with the 10 worst places to live in Maine”:
1.Skowhegan
2. Augusta
3. Paris
4. Caribou
5. Presque Isle
6. Waterboro
7. Waterville
8. Old Town
9. Lewiston
10. Sanford
“Yikes! Augusta! The capital city? Before you freak out and tell us these places might not be so bad, you should know that the data doesn’t lie. It just means that according to data (which doesn’t measure things like beauty, friendly people, or the number of LL Bean stores), there are far better options in the state for making a place home.”
“Sure, Caribou is beautiful, but science doesn’t measure beauty. It measures facts and the fact is Caribou has some serious issues. The unemployment rate here is 8.7 percent, which is the second highest in the state. And the median price of a house is under $100,000.”
It is hard to get a local economy going when you look at those numbers.
