When it comes to the columns I write for this space each week, it’s the same thing. You’d never know that two readers reading the same column can come up with such different responses. But I suppose that’s what makes life worth reading about in the first place.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy getting reader emails each week and reading comments and critiques. And I don’t mind saying that I’ve gotten my share of letters and cards since this column began. You may be interested in knowing that every communication ever sent to me here has been carefully filed away in a specially designed, carefully crafted, hermetically sealed cardboard box that sits right here beside my desk. Then again, maybe you’re not interested in knowing things like that. As you may also know, each week at the end of this column (space permitting) my address here at Storyteller Central is given, so that you can get in touch with me.

All that having been said, I want to tell you about the response I got from my column a while back. It was the column about how things in Maine are changing. Specifically, I wrote of how we’ve gone from a place where you never had to lock your doors and protect your private property (even in tourist season) to the present state of affairs where people go driving around the state stealing things like snow plows and shovels.

Not more than a few days after the column ran, I checked my email and found two emails sitting right there, one from Cambridge and one from Monmouth. Those two writers differed from each other by about 180 degrees, in response to that particular column. Anita from Monmouth began by saying that she loved my column and read it every week. She continued:

“Your article this week about taking what isn’t yours made me laugh. We’ve been having a problem with a small ditch that we’ve been filling over the years with rocks from our fields. Three times now we have had cars or trucks back right up to the ditch to help themselves to all the rocks. It’s like they don’t have a clue that maybe they were put there for a reason. With our suggestion that they put them back, they move on. The Good Lord willing, we’ll fill that ditch some day – if people will leave our rocks alone.” Not only did Anita agree with me wholeheartedly about how private property isn’t as safe as it used to be, she also provided a startling example. And I don’t know about you, but when a pile of rocks in a ditch can’t be left unlocked anymore, what is our beautiful state coming to? Not that this excuses anybody, Anita, but I have noticed a lot of beautiful stonewalls around Monmouth, lately.

Feeling pretty good about myself, I then opened the email from Dianne in Cambridge. She read the same column but managed to come up with an altogether different view. She began: “Generally, I enjoy your column, but this one about nailing things down really got me. How do you think we recycle things here in Maine? Ask any Mainer about some of his favorite lawn pieces and chances are you’ll find he ‘appropriated’ them at one time or other. Isn’t there enough to complain about; enough to share, without you adding another straw to the camel’s back? Don’t stir up the hornet’s nest, huh?”

Thanks for the mixed metaphor, Dianne. How about stirring up the hornet’s nest with a straw from the camel’s back?

Now that column may not have solved the problem of people going around snitching things, but I sure got people like Anita and Dianne thinking about the problem. And, truth be told, that’s all I set out to do in the first place.

John McDonald is the author of five books on Maine, including “John McDonald’s Maine Trivia: A User’s Guide to Useless Information.” Contact him at mainestoryteller@yahoo.com.