Half of iconic Bert & I duo dies 60 years after recording

Portland, Maine — Bob Bryan, one half of the comedy duo Bert and I, which had fun at the expense of Maine Yankees and popularized the immortal punchline, “You can’t get there from here,” has died at his home in Quebec. He was 87.

Bryan and the late Marshall Dodge created punch lines in a dormitory room at Yale University, and their 1958 album was the first of several that shaped the state’s humor and image.

Uttered in exaggerated Down East accents, the jokes have withstood the test of time, including the one about the tourist who befuddled a Mainer by asking for directions. The native concludes with a famous punchline: “Come to think of it, you can’t get there from here.”

Bryan, who died Wednesday in Sherbrooke, was a native of Long Island, N.Y., who picked up the local vernacular during summers spent on a lake near Ellsworth, Maine.

The stories, often involving a fancy-pants tourist and a laconic Mainer who gets the last word, set the stage for regional humorists who followed.

“They didn’t write from scratch all of these stories. They adapted them. A lot of them were off color, from lumber camps or fishing wharfs. They’d rewrite them. They took them to the next level,” said Dean Lunt from Islandport Press, which sells the “Bert and I” albums.

Humorist and storyteller Garrison Keillor recalled playing cuts of the “Bert and I” albums during his early stints as a morning disc jockey.