I’ve always been drawn to living dramatically. OK, I’m a drama queen.

My dream as a young boy was to own an old refurbished Spanish galleon.

I remember seeing one listed for sale in Galveston, Texas. I thought it would be great fun to live on a Spanish galleon replica. Not to sail, you understand. I have a dread fear of deep water. I would just like to float out there and wave to envious vacationers as they paddle by in those silly kayaks.

As a young actor living in cold-water walk-ups in the Bronx, I daydreamed of living in one of those 87-floor skyscraper apartments. That wouldn’t have been possible, of course, as I have a dread fear of heights and an even deeper fear of elevators.

When we finally had the money to buy our first home in Los Angeles, it was a splendid stucco, red tile-roofed home with an avocado tree, a sunken rose garden and a wine cellar.

I ignored the back lawn littered with avocados rotting on the ground and the occasional L.A. brown rat coming down from the palm trees to munch on them.

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The wine cellar was just a walk-in closet sharing space with the water heater.

The money we saved in making a great deal was soon absorbed by dealing with termites.

But it was a great house in a marvelous neighborhood full of current history. After all, our neighbor down the street was H.R. Haldeman, of Watergate fame. We were never invited to his house. He was in jail when we moved in, and when he came home, he kept the blinds drawn.

After the 1983 earthquake, She fancied the idea of moving here. I subscribed to Down East and other Maine-ish magazines and was stunned by the possibilities of embracing the genes of my seafaring Irish ancestors.

Poring over the magazines and books, I was captivated by Searsport’s Captain William McGilvery House and the Skolfield-Whittier House in Brunswick.

I fancied myself standing of an evening on the widow’s walk overlooking the sea, pipe clenched between my teeth, captain’s sea cap set against the wind. Be still my heart. I found one listed in York, Maine.

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“Kay, where is York?”

“Where upscale dentists, lawyers and neurosurgeons live.”

I checked the prices. We had a few thousand left over from the avocado ranch I had destroyed. The house in York went for $3,790,000.

There was a slightly cheaper number in York that would fit my dreams of sea captaining.

Deep water dock with splendid sunsets.

$1,500,000, it said.

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I got out the AAA map and covered Biddeford, Mount Desert, South Bristol and Winthrop, discovering that in each locale, my neighbors would be upscale dentists, lawyers, neurosurgeons and, oh yes, artists — not the kind who live in attics and mix their own paint, but the kind who travel to Paris a lot to see their own exhibitions.

We explored countrysides. We were shown a very nice old historic mansion on a river somewhere on the way to Bangor.

“One of Maine’s first milk inspectors was born here,” the dealer said.

I should tell you that the river was dry on the day we visited.

“It’s a creek, really,” the dealer said, “but it’ll come back after a couple of years of good rain.”

The front veranda was so ancient and scary, we decided not to go in, so we peered through the 1876-style windows.

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“Those are diamond pane windows, very popular in the 1870s.”

I tried one.

“Do they open?”

“On occasion,” he whispered with an accompanying smile. Maine humor.

What we need now, I’m thinking, seriously, is a winter location. I think I found one in the real estate section of “This Week” magazine. It’s a big old Southern Kentucky bluegrass mansion, Riverview Estates, $2,800,000, spiral staircase with red carpeting.

I told her, “I could wear plum-colored waistcoats, and you could come down the curved staircase in one of those antebellum gowns.”

“It’s Kentucky” she said, looking up from her book. “Mitch McConnell would be your senator.”

Oh well, only one more month to leaf-peeping season and two more to snow.

J.P.Devine is a writer in Waterville.


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