![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/colin08.jpg\" "\\"colin08\\"")
<\/a>I love Thursdays. You can see the weekend ahead through your windshield. The world is at your doorstep. Thursday is that hush before the curtain rises. The starter\u2019s gun is up. Ready, set?<\/p>\nCome to think of it, that\u2019s why I love May, too.<\/p>\n
Dylan Thomas has a line that reminds me of May, when the season is young, when we all quicken. With our \u201cred veins full of money,\u201d we \u201cadvance as long as forever is.\u201d<\/p>\n
How are you going to spend this summer?<\/p>\n
With May as our window seat, there\u2019s so much ahead of us to decide. Not surprisingly, I recommend \u2018magazining\u2019\u2013spreading your dreams across a glass coffee table, clipping advertisements, discovering the best pre-season deals\u2013because the first blast of summer is a very private holiday I need to swear you to secrecy about.<\/p>\n
Every May, between the 15th and Memorial Day weekend, we Mainers conduct a private vacation just for ourselves, where we sample all of the state\u2019s attractions before the tourists. It\u2019s called the Fakecation. Don\u2019t pass it on.<\/p>\n
Like responsible taste testers, we just want to make sure the lobster thermidor isn\u2019t poisoned before the King and Queen have a crack at it. So, hey, we take the first bite. Someone has to do it, right?<\/p>\n
We check out the Red\u2019s Dairy Freeze in South Portland since the fire (how Maine-like, for us to snoop around\u2013I know someone who\u2019s been out there five times already).<\/p>\n
We slip into Petite Jacqueline to see what all the talk\u2019s about and share a Belgian blossom orange just as the buds on the trees go green outside the big windows. We try the amazing onion soup and close our eyes in pleasure, almost traveling with the flavor. We try the poireaux\u2013braised leeks with espelette vinaigrette\u2013and break into a grin.<\/p>\n
A friend chimes in, \u201cMy favorite time to go to Bar Harbor is May 15, when all the shops have just opened up, when it\u2019s still too cold for tourists to come, when, okay, you don\u2019t have to wait to use the bocce ball courts outside Lompoc Caf\u00e9.\u201d<\/p>\n
In this space, insert your fantasy.<\/p>\n
During these covert operations, those of us who wouldn\u2019t be caught dead in the lines at the Lobster Shack in Cape Elizabeth on the 4th of July put our parkas on (seriously) and race out to the big Atlantic to buy our first lobster rolls, so delicious we all feel like millionaires. \u201cMainers love to come in early,\u201d says Phil Mullin at the Lobster Shack. \u201cIt\u2019s like they know something.\u201d<\/p>\n
We do\u2026May. As in, before is the new after.<\/p>\n
We might even dress like tourists while conducting these Fakecations. We don yachting caps that would embarrass Jerry Lewis and ride the Casco Bay Lines ferries. (Um, no we don\u2019t.) But at least we think of doing that. We sit on the window seat of doing that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
May 2011 I love Thursdays. You can see the weekend ahead through your windshield. The world is at your doorstep. Thursday is that hush before the curtain rises. The starter\u2019s gun is up. Ready, set? Come to think of it, that\u2019s why I love May, too. Dylan Thomas has a line that reminds me of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":247,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[47],"class_list":["post-4159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editor","tag-may-2011"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4159"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8170,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4159\/revisions\/8170"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}