Replicas of Christopher Columbus’s ships arrived in Portland Harbor this week. The Nina, the Pinta, and the Edmund Fitzgerald offered an authentic glimpse into the past (according to the Sarah Palin Institute for Revisionist History) by sending a landing party ashore to claim Maine in the name of Spain. Or Italy. Or one of those debt-plagued places.

In a moving recreation of Columbus’s original first encounter with North American natives, there was an exchange of gifts, with the locals giving up all their wealth and the crew giving local women venereal diseases.

Oops, sorry, the Palin Institute informs me that that never happened. According to her research, the intrepid explorers gave the people they encountered penicillin and iPads. Also, they warned them the British were coming.

Then, they loaded the Nina, the Pinta, and the Titanic with Maine potatoes and set off to introduce famine-starved Europe to a new concept:

Obesity.

Because a new study by the Sarah Palin School of Spud Research at Harvard University has determined that the reason everyone in this country is too fat is because they eat too many chips and fries. It seems that these food products – of which the average American eats 117 pounds per year – cause our blood-sugar levels to shoot up. As a result our pancreases (pancreai?) become alarmed and leap out of our bodies shouting, “The British are coming! The British are coming!” This results in a precipitous decline in blood sugar, which alerts our bodies that we’re even hungrier than we were before we ate that large box of Pier Fries, so we order another helping, this time with a side of fried dough and a large soda.

By the time we stagger home, we’re bigger than the Nina, the Pinta, and the Andrea Doria combined. As a result, we’re denied berthing in our beds and are forced to sleep with the natives, thereby spreading venereal diseases.

All this distressing news about potatoes (not to mention the venereal-disease thing) comes at an inopportune time, just when the potato was poised to regain a prominent role in the National School Lunch and Breakfast Program. The federal government is considering dropping spuds from the list of approved foods, such as ketchup, because they’re not healthy enough. But Maine’s congressional delegation (motto: We’re A Congressional Delegation. From Maine) has been fighting that move using scientific facts obtained from the Sarah Palin Center for Scientific Facts and Stuff.

They say it isn’t the potato itself that’s unhealthy, it’s that the people who eat them tend to be suffering from venereal diseases they caught from European tourists who seduced them by buying them all the chips and fries they could eat.

All of which goes a long way toward explaining the low life expectancy in Washington County. According to a reputable study by the University of Washington’s Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation and the Sarah Palin Home for Wacky Statistics, men in Washington County have the shortest life spans of any in the state, and woman there don’t live much longer. In fact, some species of May fly, specks of antimatter, and stretches of nice weather in June stick around longer.

Experts attribute this not only to potatoes, but also to Washington County residents’ traditional lack of exercise, lack of money, lack of health care, and an abundance of pox-infected sailors from visiting ships like the Nina, the Pinta, and the Lusitania.

One thing you can say in Washington County’s favor is that nobody up there charges you to use the restrooms. That’s because the place is so poor that no one could afford the fee. If it cost a quarter or half a buck to use the pissoir, they’d all hold it until they could get across the nearest county line. Which might result in Hancock County being hit by severe flooding.

But it’s a different story in York County. There’s plenty of money from tourists (“Hello, lovely lady, I am an exotic European sailor from the famous ship the Pinta”), wealthy summer folks, and people who escaped from Boston (“I moved here as soon as I heard that Sarah Palin had warned the British that the British were coming”), and everyone lives to be two hundred years old. That’s probably because they’ve never had to strain their bladders when they couldn’t afford to take a whiz.

Take Old Orchard Beach, for example. Not only are there facilities in every restaurant, hotel, and bar, but the town maintains public restrooms that anyone can use for free. Even European sailors.

That may not always be the case, however. Over the past two years, the town has paid $52,000 to repair damage done by vandals (yes, the very same Euro-thugs who sacked Rome). To combat that problem, the Town Council this week considered a plan to impose fees of twenty-five to fifty cents on those who just can’t hold it. After considerable debate, councilors finally voted unanimously to go out for Pier Fries.

“My kidneys were fine,” said one OOB official, “but my pancreas was killing me.”

As for the pee fee, the Council decided to wait and reassess the situation after the tourist season ends. “We didn’t want to change the rules,” the official added, “while the Nina, the Pinta, and the Bismarck are in town.”

Meanwhile, in Oxford County (motto: Longer Life Span Than Washington County, Fewer Restrooms You Have To Pay For Than York County), the selectmen in the town of Greenwood have put an end to efforts to rename Alcohol Mary Road. 

As previously noted in this space, some former residents of the rural byway wanted to do away with that name because it referred to a bootlegger who used to live there and because it tended to attract European sailors. But the current homeowners rallied, arguing that Alcohol Mary was a self-reliant small business owner struggling under the burden of heavy-handed government regulation of the sort Gov. Paul LePage has sworn to lift.

Also, according to the Sarah Palin Foundation for Historical Research, Alcohol Mary helped Paul Revere on his famous ride by directing him to safety when the British tried to arrest him for reckless horse riding.

“Quick, Paul,” Mary cried, “jump aboard the Nina, the Pinta, or the Millennium Falcon and escape.

“Just don’t have sex with anybody. Take it from me, it’s not worth it.”

Al Diamon will be back in less time than it takes the average Washington County resident to live his or her entire life. In the meantime, he can be reached by email at aldiamon@herniahill.net.

The views expressed on this Web site are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily represent the views of Down East Enterprise or its employees.