Geezum*, what a city mouse!

Growing up on a small-ish island off the coast of Maine is a unique experience in many ways. One way in which islanders tend to be different from your average rural person is that we often do not get driver's licenses (or get them very late). Why? No need for cars on the island and difficulties with owning/parking cars on the mainland are 2 big reasons.
I got my license at age 24, because I was heading back to Chicago for graduate school and I had acquired a dog (making mass transit less feasible). Thus, I really developed my driving abilities on the huge highways and busy streets of Chicago.
Currently in Maine, I am staying with my cousin in a rural area about 20 minutes from Portland and about 30 minutes from my field site. Even though I am a bit closer to my research site than I would be if I stayed in Portland, I no longer have a highway route to get me where I want to go. This is a big problem for someone who, when it comes to driving, is a city mouse.
Maine has 2 actual highways, 95 and 295. In most of the state they are 4-lane highways (2 lanes in each direction) although they expanded the southern end(from the NH border to Portland), where 95 is the only highway, to 6-lanes. So, to get where I needed to go this morning. I had to drive down several rural routes. Remember, folks, Maine roads pre-date the homestead act, trains, cars, and all that other stuff that insures that roads in the Midwest mostly move either North-South or East-West. Instead, our roads run a lane in each direction with no shoulder. They curve and they rise and fall and wind their ways through town after ancient town.
My knuckles grew white as I tried to make sure that I kept the tires of my rental car in grooves other vehicles had already made in our fresh snow. On the way home I went 20 miles out of my way so that I could stay on highways and very major thoroughfares. What a wimp!

*Geezum (could also be spelled Jesum, I assume) is a nice Maine expression that used to be a staple of my repertoire of interjections. Today my waitress at the Bill Davis Luncheonette was talking about her problems with her daughter giving her lip. "Geezum, call it tough love, but I am not letting her get into trouble with those friends of hers." Is this lovely interjection widely used anywhere else in the world? Any of you non-Mainers out there ever let out an exasperated "Geezum?"