Maine’s Only Gold-Standard Humorist Calling It Quits After Half Century of Homespun Satire

The Maine native who made a cottage industry out of poking fun at downeasters is about to have the last laugh – on us.

Now 74, humorist legend Tim Sample is preparing to step from the stage for good, with his final performance set for June.

Sample, who, yes, was actually born in Maine – Fort Fairfield – started telling jokes in the sixth grade.

That was his first paying gig. Seriously.

“The kids threw coins at me,” Sample told NewsCenter Maine’s Rob Caldwell, veteran host of the station’s news magazine, “207.”

Sample explained that his knack for humor way back in elementary school set the tone for a lifelong entertainment career.

By his mid-20s, he was a singer-songwriter opening for folk icons like Noel Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul and Mary.

But Stookey saw something deeper. “He told me, ‘Ditch the guitar, just talk,’” Sample said. “Turns out, my guitar was about as useful at a comedy show as a screen door on a submarine.”

Sample swapped ballads for yarns about his rural trailer-park neighbors “next door – four miles down the road” and “folks who don’t even suspect nothin’.”

By the late 1970s, with Stookey’s $5,000 backing and liner notes from pseudo-Maine humorist Marshall Dodge, Sample’s debut album cemented him as the Pine Tree State’s premier funnyman.

His career, he admits, “had no master plan – just like trying to navigate Route 1 in July.”

With his CBS Sunday Morning features of “Postcards from Maine,” Sample’s folksy charm made him a household name nationally.

His first nationally televised segment “was, naturally, an analysis of Maine humor,” according to author Brian Kevin.

Kevin, who wrote the seminal piece on Sample for Down East magazine, says that “he is the only Maine humorist with widespread name recognition.”

“I’m known as the guy from Maine,” Sample says. “People come up to me in airports and say, ‘Aren’t you the guy from Maine?’ and I say, ‘There’s a couple other guys up there too.’”

Caldwell used Sample’s popularity to help launch the very first “207” show in 2003.

“We wanted a guest on that show who would bring star power,” Caldwell says.

Sample’s magic is his authenticity.

He can laugh at Mainers because he’s truly one of them, born and bred.

That’s why they love laughing along with him.

If you were born outside the state and then moved here with your parents from away, such as Caldwell did from Connecticut, you can only dream you understand Maine and Sample’s satire.

Even if you were born here while your Canadian mother and father were visiting Old Orchard Beach, you’re no Mainer.

(As the Maine adage goes, just because a cat has her kittens in the oven doesn’t mean they’re biscuits.)

Sample’s final performance “will be where it all began, in Boothbay Harbor,” the Boothbay Harbor Opera House said in announcing the June 26th show.

Boothbay was where he spent most of his youth, learning some of his best nuanced humor from the local lobstermen while he was working as a dock hand.

They taught him well. The beauty of it is they didn’t realize they were funny to listen to.

After half a century performing as an adult what he learned as a kid in the harbor, Sample is now ready to trade show business for cross-country motorcycle rides and drawing sessions with his six-year-old granddaughter.

“Retirement doesn’t mean I’ll stop telling stories,” he said. “Just means I won’t charge $20 a head for you to hear ’em.”