July/August 1988

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Does your commercial broker have other fish to fry?

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inding a commercial broker that is just a broker is getting tougher and tougher.

Because brokers these days iilso buv, sell, lease, develop and syndicate their own properties. So, whose business comes first? Yours or theirs? h’s a fair question.

It’s a question vou'1! never have to ask G&S Commercial Brokers. They’re just brokers, and proud of it. They devote all their time and energy to you. the client. You'll never have to wonder whose business comes first, because selling your property is their only business.

Call Roger or Charlie Gendron, or Dan or Chris Smith, and discover the advantages of a full-service broker that is just a broker. Together, they probably know more buyers than tiny other commercial brokerage in Maine. Together, they have all the knowledge needed to secure top dollar, favorable financing and a sure sale.

Can vou really afford to work with a commercial broker with other fish to fry?

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C 0 M M E R C I A L ♦ B R 0 K E R 5

One Union Street Portland. Maine 04101 (207) 773-1000

PORTLAND Editor Art Director Managing Editor Advertising Director Advertising Real Estate Office Manager Calendar Pictures Interns

SPECIAL — MAINE SOUL

MONTHLY

FEATURES

Colin Sargent

8 Maine Soul: Portland’s Own Hairspray.

The Dave Astor Show.

By Derek Nelson.

Nancy D. Sargent Jonathan White Bobbi L. Goodman Sam Greene Sandy Joel Jeanne McGovern Sally White Rhonda Farnham Andrew Knowles Kelley Buckley Sandra Scibelli

Contributing Editors John Taylor Derek Nelson Kendall Merriam Henry Paper David Swartzentruber Dan Domench Anthony Pearson Dennis Gilbert Charlie Brown J. P. Standish Grantland Rice

Publishers: Nancy and Colin Sargent.

Portland Monthly is published by Portland Monthly, Inc., 578 Congress Street, Portland, ME 04101. All correspondence should be addressed to 578 Congress Street, Portland, ME 04101.

Advertising O ffice: 578 Congress Street, Port¬

16 Maine Soul: Little Armenia.

By Jack C. Barnes.

20 Maine Soul: The Kennebunk River Indians.

By Colin Sargent.

34 Maine Soul: LIFE: The Early Expeditions.

By Colin Sargent.

37 Maine Soul: The Beans Of Portland, Maine.

By Andrea Ronning.

39 Maine Soul: Maine Soul Food:

By Beatrice Comas.

44 Maine Soul: Erebus: The Building That Smuggled The 1960s To Portland.

By Andrea Ronning.

46 The Waterfront: Safe Harbors.

47 The Waterfront: Up Against The Wall: Portland's Original Seawall.

By Jonathan White.

land, ME 04101 (207) 775-4339.

Subscriptions: In the U.S. and Canada, $20 for 1 year, $32 for 2 years, $40 for 3 years.

June/July 1988, Vol. 3, No. 5, copyright 1988 by Portland Monthly, Inc. All rights reserved.

Portland Monthly is mailed at second-class pending mail rates in Portland, ME 04101. (ISSN: 0887-5340). Opinions expressed in articles are those of authors and do not represent editorial positions of Portland Monthly. Letters to the editor are welcome and will be treated as unconditionally assigned for publication and copyright purposes and as subject to Portland Monthly’s unrestricted right to edit and comment editorially. Nothing in this issue may be reprinted in whole or in part without written permission from the publishers. Postmaster: Send address changes to: 578 Congress Street, Portland, Maine 04101. Return postage must accompany all manuscripts and photographs submitted if they are to be returned, and no responsibility can be assumed for unsolicited materials.

Portland Monthly is published 10 times annually by Portland Monthly, Inc., 578 Congress

DEPARTMENTS 2Letter From The Editor.

3 Showing: Our Guide To Maine’s Performing Arts And Entertainment.

24 New Fiction: Something To Do With You.

By Dan Domench.

26 The Arts: Works In Progress.

By J.P. Standish.

33 Restaurant Review: One City Center’s Thai Gardens.

By Dennis Gilbert.

48 Real Estate Classifieds: 54 Real Estate: Has Anybody Seen Tom Selleck?

By Jonathan White.

56 Flash.

Street, Portland, ME 04101, in February, March, April, May, June, July, September, October, November, and December.-

ON THE COVER: "Portland Harbor," copyright 1988 by Jonathan White.

PORTLAND MONTHLY

1

FROM THE EDITOR MAINE SOUL JUNK FOOD

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COTCH COOKIIiS! There was never anything like them.

They were in a class by themselves," says Jean Dyer, 65, of Chebeague Island about the fabled Cushman Scotch Cookies now staging an incredible, underground comeback in sentimental ovens all over the state.

For the secret Scotch Cookie recipe and other gastronomic delights peculiar to Maine, see our MAINE SOUL FOOD story on page 57.

"Years ago, when I was growing up — oh, around 50 years ago, easy — we had a Cushman truck that belonged' to Chebeague Island and made deliveries.

It was black and white, a panel truck," Jean says. " Course, I was a Depression kid. We didn’t even need milk to go with them ... Growing up, it was just enough to have them."

When Cushman Cookies disappeared in the early 1970s. just before the regicide of King Cole (1 carry a blazing torch for moribund Maine munchies, yes!), "Everyone was trying to figure how they were done," says Jean Dyer. "So I wrote to the Harris Company, and in a short time got a nice letter with the Scotch Cookie formula. You’ll have to reduce it to kitchen proportions,’ the letter said.

So with the help of my son’s calculator, I arrived at the recipe" that’s now creating a minor sensation in the Chebeague Island Cooking.

Scotch Cookies. That’s the feeling this whole issue has brought us while trying to conjure up the recipe of Maine’s naivete. Maine Soul, whipped up fondly from a forgotten formula and delivered personally, to you, right to your door. Here’s a whole box of authentic Maine Soul. Take a bite.

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PORTLAND MONTHLY

LETTERS

SHOWING

Munjoy Hill Observed

Theater

To The Editor: Thanks ever and ever again for the April cover story ("Neighborhood Newspapers,” by Vicki Adams). The praises continue to come.

Luck and Success.

Brenda S. Humphrey Portland

Works In Progress To The Editor: Thanks for the attention. But if it isn’t too much trouble, I’d appreciate your correcting something.

I’m not writing a novel called The Book of Job. Somebody else already wrote that one. I’m writing The Book of Heaven.

Mike Kimball Coopers Mills

Catman Of Long Island To The Editor: While traveling through some of the islands in Casco Bay this past summer, I happened to meet someone I’d like to nominate as one of your ten most intriguing people in Maine. Michael Kilgore, of Long Island, is a fisherman/lobsterman who does not qualify as an "old salt” because he’s too young, yet he displayed an obvious great knowledge of, and love for, the Portland area — his family has been there for generations — during the brief time we talked. He is known locally as "The Cat Man of Long Island," according to others, because he currently houses 35 cats as well as feeding dozens of others at the local dump. He's a quiet person, but he’s certainly "intriguing" — and to me represents the very best of Maine.

I happened to see your magazine when when I mentioned to an acquaintance that I’d recently visited Maine.

Linda Goldberg Plainfield, Vermont

Acadia Repertory Theatre. P.O. Box 106, Mt. Desert

Islond. In its 16th summer season, the theatre presents the comedy. Play It Again. Sam. by Woody Allen, from July 1 to 10. A mystery by Charles Marowitz, Sherlock's Last Case, follows July 12 to July 24 From July 26 to August 7, the theatre performs Noel Coward's Fallen Angels. Wilbur Braun's melodrama, He Ain't Done Right By Nell, entertains audiences from August 23 to 28. And the final week. August 23 to 28, is designated Repertory Week, a repeat of the summer's favorite show. On bad weather days, there also will be a rainy-day children's theatre program at 115 p.m., call the theatre for information. Regular performances run from Tuesday through Sunday at 8:40 p.m. Tickets cost from $8 to $10 with special rates for seniors, students, and groups. 244-7260 The Camden Shakespeare Company. Bok Amphi¬

theater, Camden. The season opens with a special performance by the New Black Eagle Jazz Band at 7 30 p.m. on July 3. The theatrical season starts July 6 with Shakespeare's classic battle of the sexes. The Taming of the Shrew. Next, the Norwegian folk drama by Ibsen, Peer Gynt. opens July 14 Audiences on July 19 will enjoy a concert by Momma Tongue. July 28 is the beginning date for The Inspector General, the comic play by Gogol about a freeloading beggar in a Russian town.

Theater performances are in repertory, so call 2368011 for exact dates

C 1 O T H I E R S Corner of Middle &. Market Sts., Portland. 773-3906.

New Surry Theater. Surry Opera Barn. Morgan's Bay Road. Surry The theater opens its season with the comedy Luv on July 1 and 2 Next, it's The Glass Menagerie on July 8 and 9 July 15 and 16, the theater company brings Man of La Mancha to the stage. Finally, on July 21 and 22. they will present Peace Child — the story of how world children reach the President of the United States and the General Secretary of the U S S R 's Communist Parly with their urgent concerns for peace Curtain rises at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are from $8 to $10. 667-2629 Oqunquit Playhouse. Oaunauit. The playhouse's 56th season debuts with My One and Only, the Tony Award winning musical by George and Ira Gershwin, from June 27 to July 9. From July 11 to July 16. audiences will see Return Engagements, a new comedy by Bernard Slade Beehive, the OffBroadway hit with songs, dances, and styles of the 1960s. plays July 18 to July 23. From July 25 to August 6. audiences can laugh to La Cage Aux Folles. I'm Not Rappaport, the comedy awarded

a Tony as Best Play of 1986. will be performed from August 8 to August 13. The selection from August 15 to August 20 has not been announced The season closes with Desert Song, starring Susan Powell, Miss America 1981. and Ron Raines of the New York City Opera Company Desert Song runs August 22 to September 3. Performances are Monday through Saturday evenings at 8 40. MatiContinued on pa^c 4

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PORTLAND MONTHLY 3

SHOWING

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tal. Ticket prices range from $5 to $2. Continuing the season. House of Blue Leaves, a comedy, runs from July 7 to July 10. Plays are performed on Thursday. Friday, and Saturday at 8 p.m. Matinees play each Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets cost from $4 to $2.

Call 764-0311, extension 352 for reservations.

Portsmouth Academy of Performing Arts. 855 Islington Street. Portsmouth. New Hampshire.

Opening the season, a free June 22 preview only for senior citizens: As You Like It. Performances, which run until July 10. are at 8 p.m. with Sunday matinees at 3 p.m. Tickets cost from $10 to $12. On Saturday evenings after the play, tickets also admit the audience to the Seacoast Cabaret, a performance of singing, dancing, and monologues staged at the academy. Outside admission to the cabaret is $5. At 9 p.m. on July 21. the cabaret switches to a parody of Little Shop of Horrors, called Little Shop of Lobsters The academy also presents A Midsummer Night's Dream on Tuesdays. July 12.19.26. and August 2 in Prescott Park as part of the Prescott Park Art Festival. These free performances start after dusk around 8 p.m. Call 603-436-0584 or 603-436-2848

Waterville Summer Music Theater. Waterville Opera House. Castonguay Square. Waterville. No, No Nanette opens the summer season on June 28 and plays through July 10. Next. Over Here! plays from July 12 until July 24. Sugar Babies will be performed from July 26 until August 7. Performances on Tuesday through Saturday begin at 8 p.m.

Wednesday and Sunday matinees are at 2 p.m.

Call 872-2707.

MENAGERIE EXPRESS, LTD.

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Pioneer Playhouse. Wieden Auditorium. University of Maine. Presque Isle. Beginning June 10 and ending June 19. the playhouse presents Palisades Park, a musical revue and sequel to At the Hospi¬

ley Lakes Regional School. Rangeley. The theater group presents the musical Shenandoah on July 14. 15. and 16 at 8 p.m. 864-3446

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nees ate Wednesday and Thursday at 2:45 p.m. All tickets priced at $15. Call 646-5511 starting June 27

Highlanders Community Theater Group. Range-

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Continued from page 2

18 Glenwood Avenue Portland, Maine 04103

The Lakewood Theater, six miles north of Skowhegan on Route 201. Woody Allen's comedy. Don't Drink the Water, begins the season from June 23 through July 2. On the dramatic side, the theater performs The Bad Seed from July 7 through July 16.

Next, from July 21 until July 30. audiences will see Lily, the Felon's Daughter, a melodrama with music. The last play of the season. Night Watch. runs from August 4 through August 13. Curtains rise on Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. Tickets at the box office cost $7. There are no reserved seats.

474-7176 The Big Apple Circus. Payson Park. Portland This one-ring European-style circus provides an intimate experience to circus levers of all ages. The farthest seat from the ring is 40 feet away The Continued on page 6

4

PORTLAND MONTHLY

The Place We Call Home.

■L From the Green Mountains of Vermont For over a’ hundred years New Englanders HE to the shoals of Nantucket Watch Hill to have relied on us for their communications Madawaska New England is our home. needs And we’ve done our best to never let And were working hard to make it even them down. Because were more than just better. By offering the best phone service your phone company were your neighbors.

W around. And special rates at special times to M help you keep close to family and friends We’re the one' for you New England.

LET US SHOW YOU THE BEAUTIFUL POTENTIAL OF YOUR HOME The kitchen. Some people say they live there. That it’s the most important room in the house.

At Windham Millwork, we know how to treat your kitchen with the respect it deserves. With fine kitchen cabinetry in a dazzling variety of colors, designs and styles. From traditional to the most contemporary new looks from the West Coast . . . and the world.

SHOWING Continued from page 4

circus will be in town from August 2 to 7. Tickets range from $7 toS13 with a $2 discount to children under 12. Call 772-8630.

Music Arcady Music Festival The festival, under artistic direction of Masanobu Ikemlya. enriches Maine audiences with weekly classical programs from July 24 to August 31. Concerts can be heard Mondays on Mt. Desert Island. Tuesdays in Bangor, and Wednesdays in Dover-Foxcroft. Further Sunday concerts include: July 24 in Bingham; July 31.

August 21 and 31 on Mount Desert Island; and August 7 in Belfast. The Gala Cranberry Benefit Concert is on August 14 on Great Cranberry Island.

From July 24 to 27. the program will be Schubert with the Arcady Chamber Players from the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and the Trout Quintet. From July 31 to August 3. the program includes Julius Baker playing flute. Kenneth Cooper on harpsichord, and soprano Josephine Mongiardo For ticket or program information, write to Arcady Music Society. Box 780. Bar Harbor.

Maine 04609 288-3151

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Portland Richie Havens performs again before Portland audiences on June 12. On June 17 and 18. Papa John Creach and his Band ploy at Raoul's Freddie Fender and His Band will enter tain audiences on June 22. Dave Mallett performs on June 25. Ray Block is due to perform on June 30.

Aficionados of jazz will enjoy Tiger's Baku on July 8 and 9 775-2494

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6 PORTLAND MONTHLY

The Tree. 45 Danforth Street. Portland On June 16.

The Tree brings up two New Wave bands from Boston: Nuts and Crosses and Miss Bliss Tailor Made, a full eight-piece R&B Motown-type revue, visits the club on June 17 and 18. On June 21. a New Wave band from Boston. The Titanics. will entertain the audience. The Gargoyles with Bebe Buell will play on June 24. Next, on June 24. Scruffy the Cat will appear at The Tree Sleepy La Beef will entertain audiences on July 8. More groups to be announced. 774-1441 Horsefeathers. 193 Middle Street. Portland. This restaurant cum nightclub has a lot of entertainment on line for June and July. On June 15. the Rick Roy Duo. June 16. Opposite Directions, and June 17 and 18. the Robin Lane Duo Sunday is the day for "Jazz in the Afternoon" at 4:30 p.m.. with the Kim Sessions Quartet appearing on June 19 Tom Plrozzali will appear on June 21; A.T. McHugh on June 22; Who Knows on June 23, and Private Drive will appear on June 24 and 25. Jazz on Sunday.

June 26. features Ray DeMarco and Street Level Swing On June 28. Curt Bissett will play; on June 29 and 30 the Julie Dougherty Duo; and on July 1 and 2, Kelley and McCarthy will entertain audiences. The club is happy to present on July 3 the Joe McGovern Quartet, with well-known Herb Pomroy playing trumpet. On July 5. it’s Tim Bishop. July 6, Ricky Pratt; July 7. the Tom Plrozzali Duo;and July

SHOWING 8-9. The Tone Boys Jazz on Sunday. July 10. will feature the East End Quartet July 12 patrons will see Rick Watson at Horsefeathers; July 13. Arthur Webster; July 14. Doug and Leah; and July 15 and 16 Even Steven On July 17. Charlie Toor and The Bartett Blue Devils will bring their swing style to Horsefeathers for a Sunday of jazz. July 19. Doug Klegg. July 20. A.T. McHugh. July 21. Who Knows On July 22 and 23. the Robin Lane Duo entertains.

On July 24. the Hank Dempsey Trio kicks in. Club favorite Tom Pirozzali arrives on July 26. On July 27 and 28. it's the Julie Dougherty Duo On July 29 and 30: Kim Gurshin and Dick Ray On July 31, patrons will enjoy the melodious sounds of the Melissa Hamilton Quartet No cover charge.

773-3501 State O’ Maine. Route 1. Freeport. Sister restaurant to Horsefeathers, the S.O.M. will continue the tradition of jazz on Sundays. July 3 audiences will see the Melissa Hamilton Duo at the club and July 10 the Ruthie Rlstiche Duo Gary Wittner will play on July 17. and with Charlie Toor Duo on July 24 On July 31: the Tony Gaboury Duo Other solo entertainment on Friday and Saturday nights as well.

Call 865-4005 for more information.

Given Auditorium. Colby College. Waterville. Pianist Anthony DiBonaventura will play at 7:30 p.m. on July 11. 872-3386 Gould Music Shell. Colby College. Waterville Al Corey's Big Band Bash will thrill lovers of Big Band music at 6 p.m. 872-3000 Heritage Music Festival, on the Common. Rochester. New Hampshire. Scheduled performers include Harvey Reid, nationally known guitarist and aufoharpist. The Ashby Scots Highland Bagpipe Band. French-Canadian singer Lucie Therrien, and renowned fiddler Marcel Robidas Other performers include a popular country-western band.

Carmen Country and the Drifters; an a cappella.

The Moonbeams, singer Bill Cormier, and with songs from their soon-to-be-released album of children's songs. Brownie Macintosh and Rhoda Butler. Admission to the festival, planned for August 20. is free. Call Bruce May at 603-332-8474.

Bangor Opera House. Bangor On July 31. listeners will hear the Stars of Sound, the Tactical Air Command's band, in a concert open to the public.

More brass, but a different kind. Ars Antigua Trio, and A Touch of Brass Quintet precede them at 8 p.m. on June 17. Maine's own Dave Mallett brings folk music at 7:30 p.m. on June 24. On June 25. the Opera House sponsors a fiddling contest hosted by Tim Farrell 947-0200 Machias Bay Chamber Concerts. Center Street Congregational Church. Machias. Concerts begin at 8 p.m. on July 5 and continue every Tuesday until August 2. Tickets cost from $4 to $6.

255-3889 Old Time Fiddlers Contest. Rangeley Inn Green.

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PORTLAND MONTHLY 7

Falmouth High School, Class of 196k Dave Astor interviews John LaPlan ffar right). "When report cards Cair* out. Dat e had to know what you got,” says former show regular Pat Archambault. Ue still calls every once int while to see how I ant"

BY DEREK NELSON

IN THE BEGINNING, there were clunky chrome-laden cars, white socks, pageboy hairdos, the wet look, nerd specs, and skirts below the knees. It was a pre-bikini, Tri-Hi-Y dream. At the end, there was a triple-wide, paisley, go-go-booted swoon. In between was the Dave Astor Show.

It ended its spirited run on Maine television almost 20 years ago, but residents still have vivid reruns playing in their memories.

"Ooooh!” a former Portland High cheerleader squeals at the mention of Dave Astor. "I remember ■■ that show! It was real exciting!” She recalls the host as a large man with a bald M 0V head. "Oh, golly, he was very friendly, and he really liked doing things with the Av kids,” she says. Fred Nutter, a WCSH newscaster working in radio then, remembers the show vividly.

"It was teevee at its live, local best,” he says.

"Three-quarters of the people in Portland now be* tween 30 and 4(j either watched it or were participants.” I Mainers remember the show as clearly as the Prom and the Homecoming Game. If there is anyone who doesn’t ^^RnuliilllllB grin at the memory, he hasn’t surfaced.

Jack Dexter (Cape Elizabeth High, ’61) earned $1.25 an hour as floor manager for Channel 6 back then. He watched the show even before that. "That’s where you saw all the good-looking girls,” he recalls. Dexter is now president of the Maine Chamber of Commerce and Industry. | From our vantage point in these high-tech times, the notion of a homegrown television show in the late 1950s sounds quaint. The Dave Astor Show exceeded expectations. | "It was a lot of things to a lot of people, a lot of razzledazzle.” The show raised thousands of dollars for charities such as cerebral palsy centers and high school bands. Five Miss Maines in a row were regulars. The show and its host received a multitude of awards from churches, high schools, even the American Legion, the Maine State Highway Safety Commission, and the state legislature. Governor John Reed credited his I960 appearance on the show, dancing and mingling with the TV teenagers, with winning him reelection.

Astor once hauled a tape of his show to a station in Miami and asked for an evaluation. "They figured, 'Here’s this hayseed from Portland,”’ Astor recalls. But the manager watched a little, then called his entire staff in. "He wanted them to see what you could do at a small, local station,” Astor says. "I didn’t get out of there for two-and-a-half hours.”

DAVE ASTOR ^^SHOW

Continued

8

PORTLAND MONTHLY

Photos courtesy Pat Archambault. WCSH

10

PORTLAND MON 1 ml i

Even during periods of uneasy glasnost, such as the annual Deering-Portland pregame show, a popular WCSH advertising saying maintained, "When Dave’s on, the cash register’s ringing."

Following page: Astor and friends stroll down India Street circa 1962 for a show at Jordan’s Meats. Ellen Warren, of Kennebunk (second from right), became a Miss Maine, going on to become one of 10 Miss America finalists.

The Dave Astor Show was not a slice of average life. It was the slice with the most frosting on it. The show offered a super-groomed expression of high school spirit.

Drawing teens from Waterville to southern Maine, from North Conway, New Hampshire and even Vermont, Dave Astor showcased a different school or theme each week. For the platoons of kids who grinned and cheered and gyrated on the show, the chance to appear was a highlight of the school year. Some had never ridden an elevator. Invariably, all would dress up. "We’d see new shoes, new suits, new dresses,” Astor remembers.

The kids sat on bleachers, a standard part of the controlled informality on the sixth-floor set at the old WCSH studio in the Congress Square Hotel. Some of them would lip-synch a popular song, there’d be a couple of production-type dance numbers, even live ads. The cast included some regulars. "To be a regular, you had to pass certain criteria,” Astor explains. "You had to have talent, a look, but the final choice was up to the school principal.

Grades were important, too. If you went down in a subject, you were dismissed. You could get a D and play football, but you couldn’t get a D and be on my show.”

So the delinquents and dropouts, the hoodlums and smart alecks were banished. So what? They probably had the show pegged as the corniest concoction in the Free World, anyway. Every Saturday, 40 weeks a year, the show was a subtie background for the endless struggle between realism and idealism. The latter won by several touchdowns every time.

Astor figures he and his wife, Esta, hosted 5,000 participants at their home during those years.

"We always had supper,” he says.

"Two things with Dave — you had to eat and laugh a lot.” The house had a huge game room, where the kids would sign their names on the wall.

Pat Archambault, sales service director at WCSH, was a regular from her sophomore through senior years. "It was exciting, sure,” she recalls. "It was a great chance to meet students from other schools, and that wasn’t easy PORTLAND MONTHLY

11

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back then.” Archambault specialized in doing commercials, Benoit’s in particular. The show’s other sponsors included a veritable commercial buffet: Coca-Cola, Jordan’s Meats, Circus Time Potato Chips, a bakery. "We ate it all,” Archambault says.

Traditionally, Astor raised local eyebrows by inviting the football teams and cheerleaders from both Portland and Deering high schools over to his house at the same time — on the Saturday preceding the supercharged Thanksgiving gridiron clash between the schools.

The two groups were in the Montague-Capulet league of rivalries back then. No rumbles ensued.

Why Dave Astor? Why this avuncular antithesis to Dick Clark?

Why this former Marine whose full-time business (which Astor maintained during the show’s run and to which he returned after it ended) was operating an automobile service center? It certainly wasn’t rock ’n’ roll music that lured Astor to television. "People were the big thing with me,” he says.

Astor’s goal was to "make people feel good. I believed that if you could take the problems of the world off of everyone’s shoulders for an hour — that was success.”

"Astor was very people-oriented, a good front man,” WCSH newscaster Clif Reynolds recalls. "He demanded a lot from the kids and he got what he was after, but he gave a lot back.”

"We had a really good time,” doing the show, Jack Dexter says.

"There was some horseplay, but when Dave said go to work, we

did. It was a very happy crowd.”

Astor referred to the show as "a happy little island.”

Only the competitors were unhappy. "We beat anything that was against us,” Astor says. Did it really trounce the competition on other local stations? "I don’t think there was any competition,” Reynolds says evenly.

Astor began his show in 1956 on Channel 13. In 1963, it moved to Channel 6. The show was so wellestablished that the late 1960s lapped against its foundations like a calm Casco tide. Didn’t anyone with long hair sneak on during the Summer of Love? A large sideburn, perhaps a nascent moustache?

Nope.

"The show was on during some tough times,” Astor says. "It never changed. It was something people could be proud of. I was going to end the show after 10 years, and I called my son Ken, at Colby College, to tell him. I thought he’d be glad, but he said not to stop. Ken said he thought the show helped hold things together. 'You show things the way they should be,’ he told me."

The Dave Astor Show finally wilted on June 26, 1971. "I was a grandfather,” Astor says. "My kids had gotten married while I was doing the show. The last broadcast was a tearjerker” — complete with reminiscences, old clips, and farewell hugs.

The Astors since have moved to Falmouth, leaving behind the wall the kids signed like a page of a giant yearbook.

Astor remains, in Dexter’s

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Demand for a Dave Astor Show reunion could increase thanks to the popularity of the movie Hairspray, directed by John Waters (above), which recreates an almost identical dance show in Baltimore during the 1950s.

words, "very, very well-known in greater Portland.” He sees Astor a couple of times a year; Astor still calls him Jackie, a nickname that only Dexter’s grandmother ever used.

The other alumni are ubiquitous.

An editor for Gannett who used to model clothes. A local lawyer. The owner of a company that manufactures sleds. If Portland ever needs an event, the city could do worse than hold a Dave Astor Show reunion. They could have a lipsynch contest.

"We’ve had many, many requests to do a [televised] reunion,” observes the 68-year-old Astor, who has spent the past year recovering from a hip replacement.

"Dave helped an awful lot of kids through the years." notes Pat Archambault, seated far right in this 1964 photo. Also in the picture, seated (left to right): Gail Snow. Scarborough; Donna Pierce. Falmouth; Jackie McCurdy. Portland; Pam Johnson. Portland. Standing (left to right): Roger McKinny, Cape Elizabeth; Dottie Jensen. Deering; Jim Bishop. Falmouth; Kathy Baker, Cape Elizabeth; and Willie Steward. Deering.

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"I got a letter from a station manager last week. But I’m not sure if it would work. When we had someone on the show, he was 16 or 17 years old, all-American looking, and now he is bald and fat.”

Best to leave the time capsule buried.

During the show’s run, Astor recalls, "we never realized just how important it was. We didn’t realize we were part of history.” No doubt he’s earned his hyperbolic pride.

"There was nothing that could ever touch it or ever will,” he says.

The Dave Astor Show is safe now, a bright Portland memory, a dream of what we’d like our teenage memories to be.

Derek Nelson writes for Washingtonian, Ford Times, The Cousteau Society, MD, and the Smithsonian Institution's Air and Space magazine.

Little Armenia

BY JACK BARNES

T

Armeniaixt " Temple o . 1$20AFro r Selma tlas ^erunlan. SeTfeojPgrseglan, and' polmMalconl Daughter is'actress/comedi Andrea Martin, a 1983 Emmy c dinner who rose to prominence regular on SCTV.

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PboHn courtet) Anthony P Mezoun

MERCIAN, Charles (Yeghoian), Krekorian, Kochian, Manoogian, Mezoian, Mougalian, Serunian — all have been familiar names to Portland residents for nearly a century. Members of these families have distinguished themselves as merchants, lawyers, politicians, writers, and athletes.

Besides having names with identical endings that are soothing to the ear when pronounced correctly, these families share a mutual, inexorable pride in being Armenian.

Portland’s Armenians are descended from a heritage reaching back to approximately 600 B.C. They can lay claim to being members of one of the oldest Christian churches in the world — the Gregorian church, established in 303 A.D. Unfortunately, they also share a camaraderie rooted in bitter, unforgettable memories of the terrible religious pogroms in Turkey during the 1890s and early 1900s. Armenians will never forget when the faltering Ottoman Empire, beginning under Sultan Abdul-Ul-Hamid, issued special orders to exterminate all Armenians within Turkish borders. In 1915 alone, more than 1.5 million Armenians — men, women, and children — were massacred.

Another half million were sold into harems in Mesopotamia (Iraq) and beyond. If the Jews have had their diasporas, so have the Armenians. Every Armenian who escaped to America left behind a trail of acrid tears linking three continents.

In 1896, the first Armenians to arrive in Portland were in the family of Garabed Charles (who changed his name from Yeghoian).

With ominous clouds of death suspended over the Armenian community in Istanbul (then Constantinople), Tezegul Charles gathered up her son Harry and her nephew John and fled to safety in the Russian Embassy, where she was joined by her seaman husband Garabed. Along with other refugee Armenians, the Charles family finally reached France. In Marseilles, the Charles family took shelter in a barn and paraded through the streets, hoping to attract the attention of philanthro-

pists able and willing to help them.

Word of the Charles family’s desperate plight reached Frances E. Willard, secretary of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (W.C.T.U.) and a founder of the International Council of Women.

Willard was visiting her friend, Lady Somerset, in England. With the help of the Salvation Army, the two women were able to transport the Charles family to Great Britain, where each member was given the choice of remaining or going to America. Tezegul Charles found English water unsuitable for baking good Armenian bread.

So, it was off to the New World for the Charles family.

Frances Willard determined the immigrants’ ultimate destination — Portland. They were met at Union Station by Mrs. Willard Stevens of the local W.C.T.U., and the family was settled on Munjoy Hill. Not long afterward, Tezegul gave birth to a second son, William —the first Armenian child born in Maine.

In the ensuing years, other Armenians followed the path of the Charles family. Many single young men came to America to escape service in the Turkish army.

Often, those who could not escape preferred to be shot rather than serve under the Turkish flag during World War I. Once here, many joined the American military.

In many cases, weddings were set up for male immigrants by friends or relatives who provided photographs of eligible young Armenian women in Turkey, Russia, or countries where Armenian families had fled. If a young man was willing, a marriage was arranged, with the bride-to-be taking passage to the United States.

Most Armenians who arrived in Portland had been well-respected artisans and merchants in Turkey.

As soon as they saved enough money, many new arrivals entered into some sort of white-collar business. By 1904, 20-year-old John Charles opened Maine’s first Armenian grocery store. (His son Arthur, now semiretired, heads the Coupon Redemption Center for Portland grocery stores. Arthur Charles also served as a state senator and sat on the Board of City Commissions with Ralph Amergian, former chairman of the Port¬

land City Council.)

In 1920, John Mezoian, father of writer and educator Anthony P. Mezoian of South Portland (author of The Armenian People of Portland, Maine), purchased the George Combs bakery at 191 Oxford Street. Much to the delight of his Armenian compatriots, as well as local Greeks and Syrians, he baked real Armenian bread and roasted whole iambs stuffed with bulgar pilaf. For other Portlanders, Mezoian quickly learned the art of making hermit cookies, rolls filled with real whipped cream, and other Maine favorites. On Saturdays, he baked pots of beans in a huge oven.

By the 1920s, about 65 Armenian families lived in Portland. The area between Cumberland Avenue and Lancaster Street was known as "Little Armenia.” An Armenian school was opened so children would not forget their native language.

The focal point of Armenian social activity was a coffee house and restaurant established in the early 1920s in the basement of a large three-story residence at 168 Lancaster Street. Here, men gathered as they had in the old country (women were never allowed), sipped thick Turkish coffee, and played games such as backgammon, pinochle, poker, and gin rummy — all the while wistfully discussing the day of an independent Armenia and revenge against the Turks. Here, in the mornings, single men ate breakfast, often consisting of scrambled eggs and lamb chops. While the workers ate, their lunch pails were filled with sandwiches made from bread baked at Mezoian's.

It is said that once a lonely Turk wandered into the Coffee House, of all places, presumably in quest of kindred spirits. Because all the Armenians spoke Turkish (when they had to) and he likely was innocent of the carnage wreaked by his countrymen, the lonely Turk apparently was lulled into a state of euphoria. Later, his body was discovered on the basement floor.

There were no witnesses, of Continued on page 19

PORTLAND MONTHLY 17

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Cousins Hainan and Peter Goulasarian and George Tevanian on the stoop of the Armenian Grocery Store, Lancaster Street, 1917.

course, and the crime was never solved.

The close-knit Armenian community organized an Armenian Red Cross, a Revolutionary Federation, enjoyed picnics and outings to places such as Peaks Island, and for the most part married within their ethnic culture group.

After World War II, the more affluent Armenians began moving to suburbia, and the young generation often broke with tradition and married outside their ethnic community. Robert Mougalian, whose uncle Aram Mougalian ran the Oriental Rug Shop on Baxter Boulevard for many years, married a German lady, Ruth Mougalian, and moved to a spacious horse farm in Buxton. He could not forget his legacy, however, and now runs a first-class Oriental carpet shop at his farm. In true Armenian tradition, Mougalian’s sons work with him.

Susan Charles Nelson, greatgranddaughter of Garabed Charles, the pioneer of Portland’s Armenian community, lives in Saco and says, ”1 am married to a Dane, and we have lots of good ArmenianDanish children.”

Her brother, Herbert "Skip” Charles, learned to swim and water ski at his grandparents’ summer home in East Sebago. In 1962, he became the North American Junior Water Ski Champion and later the youngest Senior American Water Ski Judge ever selected. After college, Skip returned as a teacher and swim coach to Deering High School, where he had been an outstanding athlete and student. His tragic death in 1968 was a terrible shock to everyone who knew and loved him, but, as his sister Susan

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PORTLAND MONTHLY

19

I

F YOU LIVE in Nova Scotia, you steer a Novi, right? A boat designed exclusively to handle the ice-cold waters from Yarmouth to Halifax.

• And if you live in Kennebunkport, f Maine, you quickly learn that a f S boat has been designed for those // waters as well — the blue green : # swells off Gooch’s Beach and the y Colony Hotel. It’s a 21-foot sloop u that’s stylishly outlined into the / original blueprint of Kennebunk। port soul. An elegant wooden boat designed in 1929 by master naval architect John G. Alden:

Dr. Hugh Auchinchloss and his son, Hugh Jr., sold their two Indians, A UK andAUKWARD, for $100 each in late 1940.

The Grandeman sisters, Mary and Marion, winners of so many races, tired of sailing MANDY in an empty river while the boys were away in uniform.

And the war changed even the names of the boats, Number 5, for instance, metamorphosing from the socialite SMOOTHIE to the drab-green WORRY BIRD when

THE KENNEBUNK RIVER INDIANS

They were created for the smart set of Vice President George Bush’s early childhood — the young members of the Kennebunk River Club who raced in them, ’giggled on’ in them, socialized in them, and then lost track of them when World War II broke out and sent their owners into the immediate chainsmoking adulthood of the European and Pacific theatres in destroyers, bombers, and carriers, never to return.

BY COLIN SARGENT Marshall Sargent came back and bought her in 1945.

Stored and forgotten, yet symbolic of Kennebunkport’s native grace and style, the legendary Kennebunk River Indians — Design #398 by fabled naval architect John G. Alden exclusively for waters surrounding the Kennebunk River Club (13 boats) and Nantucket Yacht Glub(22Jboats) j/* •— disappeared into barns,'fields/

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Continued from page 21

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Until recently. Thanks primarily to the efforts of Kennebunkport sentimentalists John Rinaldi, Dr. Lyman Page, Abbott Pendergast, Dick Pickering, and Booth Chick, as many as 14 of the centerboard 21-footers have been restored in the last two decades and reunited to race together once again beyond the mouth of the Kennebunk River. And the enthusiasm, which admittedly hit a peak between 1974 and 1982, is still there in force. As Dr. Lyman Page puts it, the Indians "represent the acme of aesthetics in boat design. What captures the eye — the long boom with its large mainsail overhanging the transom, the whale-like contour of the boat’s deck and sheer — are doomed by nautical mathematics to historical significance only. Understanding of Bernoulli’s Principle and its role in making sailboats go has led to the huge jib and vestigial main, a race of sailboats that look like specimens from a geologic aviary — designs that evolution tried and found wanting. Unfortunately, the New Look in boats is rendered evolutionally viable by the Formula, designed by various yacht racing organizations to ensure that no winning boat will ever look pretty. Thus the Indians are cur¬

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22

PORTLAND MONTHLY

rently run by anachronists. But they are a very contentious band of anachronists and love to challenge each other."

In the 1930s, designer Alden (1884-1962) turned his gorgeously anachronistic designs into high art.

The master yacht builder, with offices on 131 State Street, Boston, is ranked with Nathanael G. Herreshoff, Olin J. Stephens II, and Philip L. Rhodes in the history of

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1934 photo of the Indians at the Kennebunk River Club, taken from the old Indian Canoe Landing. Photo by Edward H. Sargent.

The Fleet In The Kennebunk River: #1 Seafarer #2 Say When (now in Oregon) *3 Bobs (now Vivace) #4 Auk #5 Smoothie (renamed Worry Bird.

Fascination?, Whimbrel, and now Eagle, after a restoration by Mark Tuller) #6 Sandpiper #6N Tenaya (K’Port via Nantucket Yacht Club) *7 Craigert (later Boreas) #8 M. D. (now Sweet Sioux, awaiting repairs behind Arundel Shipyard) *9 Penguin, later Adamantus *10 Awkward (now Jacataqua) #11 Heiress (now Scherzo) #12 Mandy (naw in Nantucket) #13 Never existed #14 Giggle On (the former Walker/Bush boat, now Redskin) #14N Firewater (via Nantucket Yacht Club) #19 Natanis (via Nantucket Yacht Club)

yacht design, all excelling in the creation of swank yachts for "Cottage Society" patrons. Alden first surfaced in 1902 in the design stu¬

dio of Edward Burgess, where the self-assured young draftsman didn’t mix well with the owner’s also-talented son, W. Starling Burgess, who would later design the wondrous J-sloop Ranger, the America’s Cup Defender built by Bath Iron Works in 1930. Ranger is, in many ways, hammered from the same high-style set of obsolete wooden curves that created the Nantucket Indians.

Put another way, the Ranger and the Indians hit the water like Grace Kelley slipping into an evening gown, while modern yacht design is going the way of Brigitte Nielsen.

In any case, ushered out of the Burgess firm by an anxious W. Starling Burgess, Alden next entered the office of B. B. Crowninshield, which specialized in Gloucester schooners, before starting his own design team. Handsome and medium built, with a silver crewcut, he rose to fame after World War I as one of the country’s most innovative yacht designers and had many larger orders on the boards when the Indians first saw the light of day, mostly constructed by George L. Chaisson of Swampscott, Massachusetts, between 1929 and 1931. Twenty-one feet, two inches

The Rockport Apprenticeshop

PO Box 539Y, Sea Street Rockport, Maine 04856 207-236-6071 Established 1982 • Lance R. Lee, Director

Personals Classifieds Deadline: 15th of each month. 2 months prior to publication, as in August 15th for October Rates: $1.65 per wd. (15wd minimum). PO box no. and phone no count as 2 wds; abbreviations and zip as 1 wd Box Service $15 DISPLAY ADS $80 per inch TEXT OF YOUR AD

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Name Date Address City Zip Send check to: PORTLAND MONTHLY. 578 Congress St.. Portland. ME 04101

Continued on page 36

PORTLAND MONTHLY 23

SHOWING

THE ARTS

Continued from page 7 Portland City Hall. 389 Congress Street. Portland On July 7. The Paul Winter Consort, in a show arranged by the Portland Performing Arts Center, will delight audiences dt 8 p.m. Call the Performing Arts Center at 774-0465 for tickets. Bonnie Raitt belts out her tunes on August 4 at 8 p.m. Call Ticketron at 775-3458.

Schoonerfare. Rangeley Lakes Regional School.

Rangeley. This group of hearty folksingers plays at 7 30 p.m. on July 2. Tickets cost $8. 864-3446 Cumberland County Civic Center 1 Civic Center Square. Portland. James Taylor mellows out audiences ct the Center at 8 p.m.. July 23. Call 1-800-382-8080 or 775-3458.

Rockport Opera House. Rockport On June 17,

guitarist and singer Cheryl Wheeler and her Band perform at 7:30 p.m. On August 13. the Opera House hosts An Evening with Tim Sample at 8 p.m

Call 354-8929 The Bay Chamber Concerts, which includes The Vermeer Quartet and two or three other musicians, entertains audiences at the opera house on July 7.14.21.22.28. and 29 Tickets are $10 for adults and $6 tor students Surry Opera Company. Surry Opera Barn. Mor gan's Bay Road. Surry This unique opera company presents Aida on July 3. The Magic Flute on July 10.

Fidelio on July 17. and Boris Godunov on July 24.

All performances begin at 6:30 p.m.. and tickets range from $8 to $10 667-2629 Boothbay Elementary School. Boothbay On July

16. humorist Tim Sample lays out some road kill for the town of Boothbay at 8 p.m. 354-8928 The Ladd Center. Wayne Schoonerfare plays here on July 29 685-4504 Lady of Peace Church. Boothbay On July 15 and 29. the Cormorant Chamber Players play at 8 p.m.

633-2680 Hancock County Auditorium Ellsworth There are tentative plans at the auditorium to bring West African musician Mamma Tongue to the stage on July 1 On June 18. audienceswill hear Robin Williamson. a Welsh bard and storyteller, sing traditional songs Noel Paul Stookey of Peter. Paul and Many fame, sings at the auditorium on July 23. On July 30. folksinger G reg Brown of "The Prairie Home Companion" show performs. Tentative plans include bringing bluesman John Hammond to the stage on July 22 For tickets, call 667-8919.

Paul Bunyan Park in front of the Bangor Auditorium Civic Center. Bangor The park hosts Bangor Band Concerts at 7 p.m. on June 21. as well as July 5. 12. 19. and 26. Call the Bangor Parks and Recreation Department at 942-9000.

Continued on page 32

24 PORTLAND MONTHLY

New Fiction

Something To Do With You

S

BY DAN DOMENCH

HE’LL OPEN up in a minute. She likes to have the coffee done before she unlocks the door. Cuts down on the unnecessary conversation if the coffee’s ready before she opens the door. She’s not one for talking.

You’re out here fairly regular lately. I’ve been watching you and got something to say. You’ll listen to an old man, I can tell. Turn down that radio just a hair more. I like it in the background, so you can barely hear the voices. It fills up a certain kind of space in the air, doesn't it? Sounds almost like people close by.

I don’t usually get out of my truck and walk over to someone’s car window and start in. It took me a lot of nerve to do this, but 1 feel 1 have to do it. I've thought about you a lot.

Know what I been up to? I’ve been walking the docks. It’s high tide and 1 like the way the water hits the wood. I can think better when I hear that noise. I can feel young when I walk the docks. I could put myself in your position.

Listen, summer was long enough. People are getting ready for fall. They slow down. They look up at the sky and they smile, nervous. They don’t admit it, but fall is a relief. This is my point. This is what I’m coming to.

Some people drive around this town. Say at night. Late. Like now. Certain of us know who we are. Can’t sleep. Park outside the diner here, or other places. Radio on low. Waiting for the waitress to unlock. The drunks come and go. I don’t count on them. They follow no pattern. But you, you represent something. Seasonal. A change. I’ve been around. I’m not making something out of nothing.

You’re young. It’s hard to see the big picture. You’re waiting outside a cafe, fall, 4 a.m., and it’s your life. You might imagine alone this has never happened to anyone else. That’s why I walked up to your car window. I got a method for talking.

It’s hard for you to hear me. You got that impatient look. I was handsome once, too. I had thick blonde hair. And I was a sailor. Women love sailors. I had my emotions, too. Which is what I’m saying.

This is a port town. Always was, will be. Each one in the world has its own seasons. Riding a ship into any strange bay I could taste in the air the excitement, or the sadness, or the danger. I could feel the feeling of the people living on the water. I either went with the atmosphere or I fought it.

Tried to do it my way. This has something to do with you.

I was on a freighter, into Havana for sugar. I was angry at the Captain.

He was crazy, impossible to work with. So I was furious and wanted to take it out on the liquor and the women. Before we docked, I smelled the sorrow in the air. The fear. I should have stayed on board, but I wanted what I wanted. I walked into a dirty bar and the beer tasted sour. Soldiers with rifles appeared. They said it was a revolution. They ordered me back to my ship. I wanted to stay with the sour beer and there was a woman. I called them bastards. I fought them, and they beat me. They tied me to the bumper of a truck and dragged me by my feet back to the boat. The Captain refused to put down the gangway. I knew I was dying. The soldiers fired at

THE ARTS the freighter, and the Captain sailed without me. I cried as he pulled away. I cried for my life. They left me tied to the pier. That night, a French Captain sent his men to rescue me. He took me on board, took me home. When I saw my wife again, I stared and stared at her. I was afraid to touch her. She was like a dream to me. I loved her very much. Never ignore the feelings in the air. You can’t hold on to a season.

She’s opening the door. I’ll finish what I’m saying. Think of the first warm night of spring. People driving around with their arms out the car windows. People calling out to each other on the street. When that first warm night arrives, it's already been coming for a long time. This parking lot fills up with cars I don’t recognize. These are the new couples. Out here, waiting with me, talking to each other like their lives depended on it.

You might’ve even been in one of those cars this spring. I don’t recall your face, but I don’t try to remember them. It’s a temporary thing. It passes. The couples go on to other things. Then after a time, fall’s coming and there’s one or two guys like you. New faces, but getting regular. Winter’s almost settled in.

What I think you got is a broken heart. Don’t get mad. It’s me, too. I’m one. All these guys too waiting. They’re not here only for the coffee and the cigarettes. Night gets too quiet. We wait together. For me, and these other guys, what the hell’s the difference? You’re still new. You can’t keep summer alive, but there’s another kind of mood coming, in the cold nights, it builds up. It takes awhile to get here. Pay attention to it. I can feel it on the way. New faces will be out here soon. People hugging together in the biting wind. But you do what you want. I know you’re hearing me, Mr. Broken Heart.

You want to hit me? I’d fall down, that’s all. I wanted to die before she did, my wife. Got taken away in an ambulance. Red lights, siren, the whole thing. She won.

I’m going inside. You should go home. In the morning get up early, go somewhere. Talk to people. When you're old you can take my place, parked out here, radio on low. I’ve told you too much already. Do what you want. If 1 was you, in the morning I’d go to the beach, someplace where people like to walk and listen to the waves. There’s probably someone there who thinks like you. Talk to strangers. Stay in daylight.__ Continued from page 19

says, "He contributed an awful lot to society in a very short lifetime.”

Today, more than 200 Armenian families reside in the Portland area. But there is no longer a Coffee House nor an Armenian school. Gone is the subtle clattering of men playing backgammon.

No longer heard are the joyous, sometimes plaintive, lute-like notes plucked from an oud —music intricate as the patterns in a handwoven carpet. Vanished are the tantalizing aromas of roast lamb sprinkled with herbs and spices at Boghesian’s Restaurant and fresh bread baking at Mezoian’s.

The splendid vestiges of a motherland carried on daily in Portland’s Little Armenia are history.

There is, however, an Armenian Cultural Society, which sponsors Armenian dances twice a year at the Italian Heritage Club. The society is open to the public, and its proceeds go for purposes such

as providing the Portland Public Library with audiovisual equipment, records, books, and paintings displaying Armenian culture.

Today’s world moves at a faster pace than when Portland’s Armenian community was at its peak in the 1920s and 1930s. Like their countrymen in other towns and cities, new generations of Portland Armenians have been absorbed into mainstream America. But one thing is predictable: Inevitably, the day comes when every ArmenianAmerican discovers his or her heritage and feels the pride and fellowship of being part of a rich Mideast culture.

COYOTE LOVE PRESS announces

BLUSH by

Colin Sargent

with drawings by

Camille Cole

48 pages of pure poetry for S7.95 Available from the publisher, 294 Spring Street, Portland, Maine 04102, or at line bookstores throughout New England

Jack Barnes teaches at Bonny Eagle High School and the University of Southern Maine. An educator for 40 years, Barnes has had articles published in Down East, Maine Life, the Christian Science Monitor, and numerous other publications.

PORTLAND MONTHLY 25

THE ARTS

BOOK REVIEWS Letourneau’s Used Auto Parts

By Carolyn Chute Houghton-Mifflin, 1988 $16.95

Carolyn Chute’s readers might have a surprise waiting for them in her new novel, Letourneau's Used Auto Parts. All those readers who bought The Beans of Egypt, Maine have been waiting to see if she could equal or top it. They had quite a time reading about the "real Maine” and rolling around in the sex and violence that went on in those trailers and shacks. The "professional class” readers, as the author calls them, could read the Beans, and think they knew something about the lives of Maine poor, without getting their hands dirty.

Well, friends, in her new novel, Chute tackles problems head on, and I rush to celebrate her work.

This is another book about the poor, working-class people of Egypt, Maine; how they love their families, how they live from day to day, how they can't afford good housing, and how they are developed, planned, taxed, zoned out of the way with pain inflicted, families broken up, and spirits broken.

These are people trying to provide for their families against heavy odds. The mythic center of the novel is the seldom-seen Big Lucien Letourneau, who runs the wrecking yard. Letourneau has turned his property into "Miracle City,” a collection of shacks and trailers housing lovers, ex-wives, friends, and newcomers with nowhere else to live. "In Lucien’s eyes, everything is dear, everything is a miracle."

His son Norman says, "All 1 want is a regular life. I’m not the fast money type ... Can’t keep up with them yupppies these days.”

Lucien’s nephew Severin can’t pay the rent. His wife has purchased him a new jacket, but it symbolizes something else to him. "I can’t do Continued on page 31

26 PORTLAND MONTHLY

W 0 R K S IN PROGRESS

his own prolificness. "I'm not slowing down; the tempo just seems to increase,’’ the 60-year-old artist observes with a chuckle.

BYJ.P. STANDISH

William Carpenter

Jack l^rsen

Jack Lenor Larsen

Jack Lenor Larsen is the premier textile artist in the United States.

Retrospectives of his work have been featured in major museums including the Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C., Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and the Louvre in Paris. 'Tve had more such shows than any craftsman in America, I think,” Larsen says. "Certainly more than any weaver and more internationally.”

Starting in 1952, Larsen lent his driving force to the Haystack School of Crafts on Deer Isle, where he taught weaving and later chaired the board of directors. Now satisfied that Haystack is on firm footing, he’s working on new projects: 1) supervising creation of the largest silk collection in history; 2) serving as curator for five exhibitions; 3) chairing the board of the American Crafts Council; 4) writing a book on international furnishings; and 5) building a house in East Hampton with the intention of one day turning it into a museum.

When Larsen enumerates his current interests, he seems surprised at

Well-known poet William Carpenter is writing a novel about a young college woman, a radical feminist on Cape Cod. Carpenter says he enjoys the switch to fiction: "Unlike poetry, where the narrator is always an analogue of yourself, the characters in fiction can always be about someone else.” A man who enjoys talking to people, Carpenter says he also likes the opportunity to write novels for a general audience. His new work also lets him explore social problems such as AIDS. Currently dean of faculty at the College of the Atlantic, Carpenter spent this winter teaching newswriting to students in India.

Alan Bray

An artist who received his master of Fine Arts in painting from the Villa Schifanoia in Florence, Sangerville’s Alan Bray paints nature scenes that have been called "disturbing and menacing.” Bray would disagree with those descriptions.

"What’s perceived as menacing is Continued on page 31

THE ARTS

BOOK REVIEWS

Continued from page 26

indicative of how far we are from nature,” he says. For inspiration, Bray explains, "I spend a lot of time in the woods, not doing art, just spending time in the woods. I have a deep concern for the state of the land.” Bray has translated that concern into a socially conscious focus by injecting Maine’s changing landscape into his paintings.

Bray recently had a piece of work accepted for the Maine Coast Artists’ Show in Rockport. This year, 1,400 artists submitted their work, but only 90 were chosen to be displayed. Bray plans to return to Florence next year.

Frederick Lynch

Continued from page 26

Portland artist Frederick Lynch is busily preparing for an exhibit at Barridoff Galleries this September.

The Massachusetts native continues to develop imagery using abstract and figurative elements on compressed board. Although his work is not considered traditional, Lynch has been well recived in Portland for the past 11 years. Good examples of his work are on permanent display at the Portland Public Library on the 47-foot orange wall as you enter the building.

Alan Bray

An example of hou artist Frederick Lynch's paintings pull the eye inward via abstract elements.

Grace Paley

Grace Paley, a native New Yorker well-known for short fiction such as Later the Same Day, has recently published a book of poetry at Granite Press in Maine.

Described by Philip Roth as having "an understanding of loneliness, lust, selfishness, and fatigue that is splendidly comic and unladylike,” Paley calls herself a combative pacifist and cooperative anarchist: "I am a pacifist, but I believe in taking strong actions. I’m not a passivist. I don’t see pacifism as a mild position, but a strong one.”

Leaning Forward, by Grace Paley, aiailable for $8.95 from Granite Press, Box 7, Penobscot, Mame 04476, and at bookstores throughout Maine.

nothing with it on. I can’t check the oil in the truck. I can't even lean against the truck. While I got that jacket on I can’t eat nothing or pat a big dog. What if 1 spill lighter fluid on it? Or beer? What if 1 bleed?”

The professional class moves in, gentrifies the land (and the literature), splits up families, and forces the poor further and further out of the picture into desperation.

"You never see the people from out of state who bought it ... well ... you don’t see them close up.’

'Phantom people!’ says Mrs. Bean with a giggle.

'Peckerheads.’ Crowe Bovey says.”

Poor Crowe, whose house burns down with his family in it in the first chapter, keeps getting pushed harder and harder by the codes enforcement officer.

Will the good-hearted inmigrants serving on planning commissions like this book? "Code man says it’s the new thing they passed ... last election. It reads, You can’t do this, you can’t do that.

Enough rules to choke a horse. It the new way Mon Oncle says.

Everything has to look nice. Can’t look dumpy, he says. Dumpy ain’t allowed ... unless it was dumpy before the new rules. If it’s dumpy and new, they give Mon Oncle stiff fines. All the towns are going this new way nowadays ... What some of these do dee do dah yuppies in this town need is a few rounds from a good Winchester right between the eyes.”

Eventually they get around to hanging the codes officer in effigy, doused in gasoline for added drama. This is a violent book. We are confronted with the violent consequences of the "New Maine” lifestyle. The verbal violence is directed outward, but the physical violence is kept in, close to home.

It remains within the family: children are beaten; wives are beaten, harassed, and impregnated; hopes are dashed, homes ruined; men die by their own hands.

Continued on page 32

PORTLAND MONTHLY 31

THE ARTS

SHOWING Continued from page 24

Galleries The Anne Weber Gallery. Boy Point Road. George¬

town. June 19 opens an outdoor sculpture show featuring Anne Arnold. Duncan Hewitt. Lyn LIsberger, James Plerse. Michael Shaughnessey.

Monty Smith, and Carolyn Treat, scheduled to

end July 17. Through to September 11. an indoors show of ceramics by Paul Heroux and photography by Rose Marasco. Two painters. William Manning and Gregory Welsh, will be featured

from July 20 to August 14. Gallery hours are Wednesday to Sunday 1 to 5.

Continued from page 31

Richard says, "'In the old days, somebody tried to take your home, you’d put one of these inside their head.' He holds one of the shells toward the light. 'But nowadays...’

He sighs.

Nowadays when they come to make you go, you take a shell like this one here...’ He rolls it between his fingers, ’...and you put it in your own head.’”

In the course of the book, people lose their homes and find new ones, people change partners, babies are born, deaths occur.

Gallery SIxty-Elght. 68 Maine Street. Belfast. Horn

June 10 to July 3. the gallery features Robert Brooks. Gilbert Cass, and Alan Crichton The

works of Berenice Abbott. Daphne Cummings, and

BOOK REVIEWS

Marjorie Moore will be on display from July 8 to

August 2. 338-1558 Good Hands Studio and Harbor Square Gallery.

Harbor Square. Camden. Works by watercolorist Jo Spiller Hours are from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and 7 p.m.

to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and from 12 noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. 236-8700 Greenhut Galleries. 146 Middle Street, Portland.

Showing original artwork by Nina Jerome, Nimo Robinson, Brida Holmquist. Will Bqmet, through June. July. Oils and gouaches by Jane Dahmen, opening July 7-28. 772-2693.

Franclska Needham GaMery. Water Street. Dama¬

riscotta. The gallery has a special tenth-anniversary exhibit through June 30 featuring Nancy Comynz and guest artists. From July 1 to August 20.

there will be a special water exhibit with fish. Guest artists Include Suzanne Phillips. Nancy Glassman.

Ed Gamble, Fred Scherer, Deanne Woodward, Cicely Aikman. Steve Lindsay. Lise Becu. and Franclska Needham. Also featured will be Brita Holmquist. Ben Mlldwolf. Jehan Shahly, John Ireland Collins. David Parker, Janet Beerlts. Joan Beauregard. Frances Hodsdon. and Gerald Samuels.

Wiscasset Bay Gallery. Water Street. Wiscasset.

The gallery shows recent acquisitions of American paintings through July 8. and an annual exhibition of Maine watercolors from July 9 to August 12.

Hours are Monday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.. closed Wednesdays. 882-7682 Caldbeck Gallery. 12 Elm Street. Rockland.

Through July 9: a show by artists Michael Reece and John Wlssemann. Paintings by Anne Ayvallotls and photography by Richard Norton featured

from July 12 to August 6. with an opening reception on July 13 from 6 to 8 p.m. Call 594-5935.

32 PORTLAND MONTHLY

Eashion and Surrealism

By Richard Martin Rizzoli, 1988 S45

One of the more unsettling premises to emerge from reading Fashion and Surrealism is that fashion is art, or worse, that art is fashion. Although art always has determined, in part, what people wear (along with economics, religion, and the weather), the 1930s and 1940s saw an astonishing synthesis of the frivolous (haute couture) and the profound (Art with a capital A). Like the lyrics of a 'meaningful’ pop song conscripted into the service of mass advertising, surrealism — that artistic godchild of psychology and personal awareness, found its fullest expression on the backs of expensively dressed FVs (fashion victims).

Richard Martin, wearing hats of both fine arts and fashion (he is editor of Arts Magazine and also a director of the Fashion Institute in New York), is able and willing to treat both surrealism and fashion as serious artistic expressions.

Martin is thorough and articulate, even scholarly in his exploration and analysis of what amounted to a symbiotic affair that glided from gallery to runway, from studio to atelier. As he identifies each of the many faces and

Crowe eventually sells his guns for money to buy a home of his own (not his killing guns, his quiet guns, his babies, his fortune). Big Lucien Letourneau eventually does appear in the book.

"On Monday morning the code man finds the camp in the woods occupied. He has had it 'up to here’ with Mr. Letourneau. You can trust Big Lucien Letourneau about as far as you can throw him, he tells the people back at Town Hail with a sigh.”

—Gary Lawless forms of both surrealistic art and fashionable attire, it becomes intriguingly apparent that the merging of real and unreal (that standard definition of the art of Dali or Magritte) applies as much to what we wear as to what we frame.

Appropriately enough, each chapter heading posits two compatible opposites, such as "Metaphor and Metamorphosis,” "Natural and Unnatural Worlds," and "Bodies and Parts.” In "Doyenne and Dandy,” a section dealing with two of the era’s most brilliant participants, an apt distinction is made between artist and designer. Paradoxically, the designer turns out to be Salvador Dali; Elsa Schiaparelli, with her inspired flights of fancy and facade, gives us far more artistry and creative energy. Dali’s painting eventually became extravagant and commercial; the 'official' surrealists disavowed him while the art intelligentsia adored Elsa. She drew much from surrealist symbolism, and her designs provoked the mind as well as the eye.

Martin, while quoting Schiaparelli, does, however, dramatize that ultimate measure of value traditionally awarded art but denied fashion. Schiaparelli wrote that dress designing was an unsatisfying art because "as soon as the dress is born it has already become a thing of the past ... More often it becomes an indifferent object, or even a pitiful caricature of what you wanted it to be — a dream, an expression.”

—Frederick Lynch

THE ARTS R E S T A U R A N T REVIEW One City Center’s Outstanding New...

Thai Gardens

As a method, the balance of spicy red and cool green is common to the cuisines of many tropical and subtropical climates, such as the use of jalapenos and avocados in certain Mexican dishes. But here, the balance is more sophisticated and the effect more dramatic.

While spicy foods help counteract heat and humidity, in their best

or roast duck. Moreover, the cuisine embodies a broad range of influences, including those of India, China, and the nations to the south and east. The green and red curries, the noodle dishes, and the seafood selection in particular allude to their interregional roots through the use of pineapple, coconut, ginger, and cashews in

BY DENNIS GILBERT

C

ONSIDER the cucumber: snapped off the vine and seasoned simply with salt, pepper, and cider vinegar, it manifests, like no other raw vegetable, the flavor and fragrance of long, warm New England summer days. Living in a region where the fresh-produce season is all too brief, we more frequently enjoy cucumbers straight from the jar, where they have been left for months in a pickle until not much more of their character is retained than the crunch. In certain other cuisines, notably that practiced at Thai Gardens in One City Center, this gourd-cousin is treated quite differently.

The most striking characteristic of the cookery at Thai Gardens is that the spicy dishes are both very hot and very cool, in some cases literally cool as a cucumber. The Shrimp Susee, for example, makes use of cucumber slices, fresh tomatoes, and lemon leaves to counterbalance a fiery red curry. While these elements of burning and chilling define the outer edges of flavor, at the center rest delicately stir-fried shrimp in a creamy sauce further enriched with coconut milk. In approximate sequence, the dish unfolds like this: first the shock of chilies, then the succulence of shrimp in their buttery sauce, the sweetness of tomatoes, the zest of lemon leaves, and the cool, simple, subtle bitterness of the cucumbers.

Thai Gardens, in One City Center, already possibly the finest Oriental restaurant in the state.

forms they also enhance flavors by initially stimulating the taste buds.

The sting of chili pepper is not intended to numb the palate but to open it up so it receives the sparkling aftertastes of green herbs and fresh vegetables. Thai Gardens’ Laab is a stir-fry of ground pork (or chicken or beef) and roasted sweet rice which, our waiter warned us, was extraordinarily spicy. But the sharp tang of lemon leaves and the bright flavor of fresh mint, as well as the contrast of cooked onions with scallions and the neutral dry-and-oily character of peanuts, gave the dish a complexity that simultaneously eclipsed and complemented the primary impact of the spice.

The menu at Thai Gardens is by no means limited to spicy dishes, however, but sufficiently diverse to suggest a cuisine where both an abundance of foods and a variety of styles converge. Like many FarEastern restaurants, a substantial number of the dishes are offered with a choice of primary ingredient. The meats-with-vegetables dishes and the curries are available with chicken, pork, beef, shrimp,

combination with spinach, basil leaves, string beans, eggplant, and corn.

Everything at Thai Gardens is well-conceived and professionally prepared. A number of first-rate dishes include the pork & shrimp spring rolls with saman noodles and the Tom Kha Kai, an eloquently simple milk & chicken soup. But perhaps the most unusual characteristic of this menu is the absence of sameness in flavor — plaguing restaurants that lean too heavily on standard sauces and employ them across the board. At Thai Gardens, each dish seems to have its own voice because the balance of spice, herb, and vegetable allows each ingredient — even the lowly cucumber — to speak for itself.

Dennis Gilbert has worked as a chef in many restaurants in Maine, including The Vinyard, and written for many New England magazines, including Yankee. He has also worked on the Time/Life "Great Meals in Minutes" series as a contributing writer for the French Provincial cuisine chapters.

PORTLAND MONTHLY 33

LIFE

The Early Expeditions

BY COLIN SARGENT

W F YOU’RE searching for the soul of Maine, all you need is a I telephone. You see, LIFE magazine discovered the Soul of Maine in ■ 1948, way up on Penobscot Bay, yanked him out of spiritus mundi, I and dressed him up in woolen ski pants, hand-knitted scarf, and mittens when he was just five years old —green eyes in black & white screen printing — for the front cover of their February 2 issue.

Bobby Lofman, Maine schoolboy ... LIFE Home With A Maine Schoolboy ... on a leisurely adventure through the snowy countryside, with frequent pauses to explore the wonders of winter along the road...

Whew!

Lofman?

In Rockville, Maine, the number is 1-338-5377, if you need further assistance, please stay on the line and a directory assistance operator will help you.

A tiny shiver of electrokinetic energy grips my shoulders, weakens me.

I’m afraid, anxious about this call, because it is all too easy to get caught up in the momentary significance: Does the Soul of Maine still live in Maine, or is this a summer residence? He’s 45, 46 years old now, frozen in time until this second. Does he still gas up at Esso stations? Is he still blond and pure, the mythic Maine of yesteryear before I was born? Does he watch "LA Law”? Pristine, innocent, answering on the other end of the phone, the word made flesh?

Soul.

Two-twelve p.m. on a sunny Maine Thursday.

Two rings...

Am I calling a lobster shack or a cellular telephone?

Five rings...

Eight rings...

Evidently, the Soul of Maine doesn’t have an answering machine, a preliminary relief at least. But these ubi sunt curiosities rise in me like a wave, frozen, searching after the naive Maine still alive up in Penobscot Bay, in Rockville (pop. 90 when LIFE first trekked up there).

The stars are out now.

It’s 8:30 p.m. Will the Soul of Maine consent to an interview? In a way, I hope not. How could I meet this guy, puncture the mystery? I love Maine, and he’s the last bit left of undiscovered Maine. Untouched. Why not make it the ultimate understatement, NOT call him, and let Maine’s bearded journalistic community drool all over him in follow-up stories for the out-of-staters; they make a career of it, don’t they? After a while, they could coach him to talk like humorist Tim Sample.

Absolutely pure.

Real before real was cool.

34 PORTLAND MONTHLY

I drive our to the beach and hear the waves crash against the suspended decades.

The sparkles glisten below Cassiopeia.

The danger of ruining what you’re searching for...

Look — you’ve got his phone number — you call him.

A

LL RIGHT, all right, 1 know the story could have ended there, should have ended there, but DON’T CALL THAT NUMBER! It’s the Soul of Maine’s uncle’s number. (To protect the innocent, we’ve changed the number even as you read. If you dial it, you’ll get the meat department at the Lincolnville Shop 'n Save.)

The Soul’s Uncle is a nice guy.

"No,” he says, "he’s my brother’s son, and he lives in California now.”

Black resignation stones me on the back of the head.

Oh no.

The telephone is slimy, heavy, a dead cusk in my hand.

The Soul of Maine has moved to California?

"He’s lived in California for three or four years now. I think he’s a kind of small contractor, on his own. I haven’t seen him for a couple of years,” smiles the elderly voice of Uncle Soul.

Of Maine, that is.

"He came here with his wife and two sons a couple years ago. Stayed a few days. Had to go back.”

I think of the Soul of Maine in his new habitat — the image grotesquely transmogrified in Claymation — sunglasses, color, a suntanned voice, the birch trees of his black and white Maine childhood long behind him.

No snow to meander in. No cobalt-blue Penobscot Bay...

The Soul of Maine’s uncle gives me Soul’s mother’s number in Union.

It’s busy.

But when I break through, she’s delightful, funny — a good omen — and after carefully turning the matter over a few times, like a strawberry confection, she gives me his number.

"The least you can do is give him a call, I guess,” she laughs.

"He’s in the construction business, you know. When he gets home at night, he’s pretty tired. But I don’t think he'll slam the phone down on the receiver.”

I’m calling him right now One Evening in Maine, rehearsing elementary profundities so the first question won’t be so, oh, you know: "I was just fascinated about catching up with you now because Maine is changing so much, and... what brought you out there?” I ask the five-year-old snow boy who’s 15 years older than I am.

"Well, we came out to California in 1953. My mom’s sister was out here, and ’course I was 10, 11 years old at the time.”

And when, I ask the faraway Soul of Maine, is the last time anyone mentioned the LIFE story to you?

"Hmmm. Gee. It’s been years.

It’s been years. Years and years.

Years.”

His voice carries a California twang, strangely whittled with Maine cadence and diction. Charm?

Sure, ingenuous and real, like Woody on "Cheers.”

But very far away. A figure in the distance, green eyes at the end of an electromagnetic media pier.

It was a long time ago, but does the LIFE story have any personal significance for you now?

"Just memories. You know. My uncle worked for Black Star publications in New York. He knew Kosti Ruohomaa, the photographer. Kosti got this brilliant idea when he was on the farm (in Penobscot Bay), visiting.

He set up all the pictures, shot them, and then Black Star sold the story to LIFE. Kosti was an artist with a camera.”

Alla God’s chillun got Strings!

How tall are you?

"Six foot.”

What color are your eyes?

"Green.”

Did you go to high school in Maine?

"I was in Rockville at the oneroom schoolhouse through fifth grade. I graduated from Hoover High in Glendale, California. (His parents stayed in California until 1970 when they returned to Maine.)

Any military service?

"No,” says Bobby Lofman.

Any identifying scars or birthmarks? Have you ever been in any grave danger in the intervening years, like a car accident?

"No.” Any school after Glendale?

"Some night classes. I’m in business for myself, in general construction. I enjoy it. I kept excelling in it, and I’m in it to stay.

I make a good living at it.”

What don’t you miss about Maine? I ask him finally, despairing of any blueberry sentimentality.

"It’s a tough state for the majority of people, majority of young people, that is, nowadays to make a living. I will say that.

There’s more opportunity in some other states.

"Remember, I wouldn’t have been in LIFE magazine at all if it hadn’t been for Kosti Ruohomaa.

It was all his doing. But you know the dog in the pictures? He really did lie in the aisle at school, every day. It was so long ago. Years. I happened to be at the right place at the right time.”

You’ve grown up, changed.

What parts of Maine should never be changed?

"I haven’t really given it too much thought. Compared to California, houses back in Rockville are uniquely the same as when I was a kid. Strange. I was there four years ago. It rocks the memory more, you know. If you left California for any amount of time and returned, you’d get lost.

So much would change. Streets.

Maine’s grown, yes, but I’m glad the population hasn’t come in real strong, because it’s a beautiful state. Driving up from Logan Airport, it was easy to find my way back there, without a map. A pleasure.”

I think of Ronald Colman, haunted for years in a wild-eyed search to find his way back through the Himalayas, clawing through the high winds until finally turning that magic snow corner and rediscovering Shangri La. Not this dude. He’s alive, friendly, incurious, frank, uncinematic. Like all of Maine, he refuses to remain a child; he has edged to the back of LIFE’S Maine Christmas card, stolen behind an evergreen, and disappeared. ■ PORTLAND MONTHLY 35

STYLE Continued from page 23

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36 PORTLAND MONTHLY

of classic glamour, the Indians originally cost $750 each, carried 222 feet of square sale, and were featured in the January 1929 issue of Yachting magazine. With a moderately fine entrance and not even the suggestion of a keel, the jib-headed society knockabouts have cedar plankings and decks and oak ribs that render them, as Sterling ("Tad”) Dow III, one of the winningest Indian skippers in the early 1980s who was lost recently to cancer, often observed, "graceful from any angle.”

Nineteen-seventy-four was the watershed year for the return of the Indians, crystallized by Peg Hendrick’s fine feature story in the York County Coast Star on June 19- By then, Hendrick had traced even the missing boat, Number 2, "Say When,” all the way to Oregon, "where new owner Mel Winter still sails her on the Columbia River on the lake formed by the McNarv Dam.” Dr. Page, an experienced San Francisco Bay sailor, discovered AWKWARD, the former Auchinchloss boat, in a barn in Higgins Beach, Scarborough. With Booth Chick overseeing her return to the river and mast-stepping, Dr. Page recalls, "She went right to the bottom in 10 minutes once she was lowered. Booth was silent for a second, then just shook his head and said, "I’ve never seen one go down that fast.” Days passed with the Indian still underwater. "Then, I was driving to what is now The Breakwater restaurant in the evening, and I remember looking casually over at Chick’s Marina, screeching the brakes, and shouting 'It’s afloat!’” Renaming her JACATAQUA, Page went on to win many races against the Indian fleet.

Also mentioned were the continuing exploits of John Rinaldi, who spirited several pristine Indians like NATANIS, No. 19, from the Nantucket Yacht Club to join the Maine fleet.

For revenge, at last report the Nantucket Yacht Club was truculently holding onto the former Kennebunk River Club Indian #12, originally the MANDY raced by the Grandeman sisters. —

O

N A SOFT summer evening, depending on which way the wind blew, we’d either screw up our noses and say, "You can smell the mill,” or we’d inhale gratefully and say, ”Ah... you can smell B&M.” It was an aroma of spices and molasses — heavy and warm, tangy and meaty — redolent of Saturday nights, family dinners, and steamy kitchen windows. Back when Fridays still meant fish for supper, Saturdays meant "The Dave Astor Show” on TV and beans, hot dogs, and brown bread.

The smell of baking beans is unique to Portland, an aroma you’d be hard pressed to find anywhere else in the country.

Burnham & Morrill Brick Oven Baked Beans sits at One Beanpot Circle — on the water to the right as you head north out of town on 1-295 — but the company didn't begin with beans. When the canning firm of Rumery & Burnham, which fulfilled government contracts during the Civil War, dissolved in 1865, Burnham took up with Charles Morrill and began canning corn. With a plant in South Paris, "Paris Sugar Corn" was sold nationally. Recognized even in an international market, the new firm received awards from as far away as France. Burnham and Morrill also packed meats and shellfish, came up with a forerunner of canned tuna called "Fish Flakes," and soon had plants all over Maine and in Canada.

The plant at One Beanpot Circle, built in 1913, attests to B&M’s flexibility and endurance.

The company changed with the times and adjusted to the demands and constraints of the market through two world wars. Corn and

B&M Brick Oven

Baked Beans Baked For 7 Hours

The Beans Of Portland, Maine

BY ANDREA RONNING fish flakes (along with countless other products) gave way to beans and brown bread.

When Charles Morrill died in 1901, his son George took over and bought out the Burnhams. Charles Morrill II took charge in 1934, and his sons Charles and George served next.

History has it that the Pilgrims invented baked beans. Cooking wasn’t allowed on the Sabbath, so Pilgrim women made up a pot of beans and kept them on the fire right through to Sunday. B&M started selling brick-oven baked beans in 1927, around the same time the Friends Brothers Company of Massachusetts did. Friends sued B&M and lost when B&M Trawlers off loading fish into the top of the 'Tish House” al the B&M plant in 1919. Today connected to the main B&M bidding by a throughway, the ’Tish House" houses maintenance supplies.

produced an old B&M family recipe that established proof of originality.

I never knew a kid who liked baked beans, and brown bread was about as enticing as stale, rye bread pudding, but my mother loved beans and made them the way her mother had.

Inevitably, on Friday nights, there it sat: a huge bowl of white kidneys, little red eyes staring, soaking in water. The next morning they went into a pot to be cooked with salt pork, mustard, and molasses. I’d be watching "Youth Cavalcade" or "Lost in Space” when the summons came.

"I’m not hungry," I’d yell. A sigh, a pause, and then, "At least come eat a hot dog.”

When Mom went to work, the beans came out of a can — like the brown bread had — and that can came from B&M... nothing less would do. Occasionally, though, I found relief with pea beans. Little, light brown, and sturdy, they tasted best smothered with catsup. I loved catsup.

Back to B&M. Enter the William Underwood Company of Massachusetts ... yes, those red devils with pitchforks. One of the nation's oldest canning companies, they began preserving foods in Boston in 1822 and had developed new methods of sterilization. In 1962, B&M offered stock publicly, and Underwood acquired B&M in 1964. By then, B&M had bought Bessey Foods (jams, jellies, and juices) and had opened a plant to pack beans in California. Underwood owned Friends, and in 1974 they moved its operation to Portland, making B&M the premier canner of baked beans.

There are a lot of beans on the supermarket shelf, but most are Continued on page ^8

Continued from page 37

steamed. Baking implies the presence of dry heat at work in an oven for seven hours. It takes time and costs money, but aficionados will tell you it’s worth it.

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Freeport has always had Beans, Now there’s Radicchio & Belgian Endive...

LA

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SERVING FROM 11:30 TIL VERY LATE SOUTH OF THE VILLAGE. FREEPORT 86S-4006

Tragedy strikes indiscriminately, like lightning, but when it happens to the wealthy it attracts attention.

Charles S. Morrill III was shot four times with a .38 Smith & Wesson at his home in November 1987.

Described as a gentleman farmer who’d inherited his wealth from his mother, Morrill resigned from B&M when Underwood took over.

James H. Savage, Sr., was arraigned on a charge of murder. A trial date has not been set at press time. Morrill and Savage were members of a bluegrass band called the Shiloh Mountain Boys.

Today, B&M — a division of Pet Foods — is owned by IC Industries, which bought out Underwood in 1982. B&M has come a long way from its origins, but its reputation rests firmly on New England perspicacity and know-how.

In these health-conscious, highprotein, low-cholesterol days, could beans be ripe for a surge in popularity? Regional food is the latest haute cuisine. After Cajun, with pan-blackened everything, catfish, and okra, why not beans?

B&M has all kinds: yellow-eye, red kidney, barbecue, even vegetarian. Why not a catalogue with gift boxes offering a gourmet selection to be sent to transplanted New Englanders all over the country, just like those cheeses?

How about live baked beans, packed in ice?

Beans have a history, they’re imbued with tradition, and they’re unique, our very own Portland product. And, they’ve been around a long, long time, a certifiable Portland soul food. Burnham & Morrill is one company that definitely amounts to more than a hill of beans.

Andrea Ronning directs "Sports Over¬

time” on WCSH-TV along with news broadcasts. She describes herself as a "writer who went to school in South Portland, where I didn't know Bob Elliot." As a director, she "once waved to Robin Leach and got a glimpse of Tony Curtis.”

_■ 38 PORTLAND MONTHLY

FOOD

S

BY BEATRICE H. COMAS

O YOU like Maine Clam Chowder, not "Rhode Island” and certainly not "Manhattan”? When you order clam chowder, you are really ladling into history. The first clam chowder was invented by Breton sailors shipwrecked on the Maine coast. The sailors gathered all the ship’s stores they could salvage, including crackers, salt pork, and potatoes, and threw them into an iron pot called a "chaudiere.”

Then, clams dug up from the beach were thrown into the pot. Thus was born the felicitous mix of Maine clams and potatoes.

If you crave clams in a different guise, you can’t go more native than to rush to one of clam shacks dotting the coast from York Beach to Bar Harbor, many with cutesy names like "El’s,” "The Clam Shack,” or "The Clam Shell.”

These deep-fried mollusks won’t have time to cool between the plastic box and your mouth if they are prepared as they should be.

This same type of eatery doubtless offers clam cakes, another Maine treat that too often proves disappointing. A heavy clam cake is not pleasant eating.

Everyone knows there’s nothing sweeter than wild Maine blueberries. Those little berries are world famous and much in demand in Japan, which is developing a penchant for Maine blueberry muffins.

Blueberry Cake may be even older, and one of the best desserts

Best Sausages In The World...

In Good Mame Food, hiding behind his niece's — author Marjorie Mosser’s — culinary expertise, Kenneth Roberts bellows, as is his wont, another revelatory pronouncement: "...in Auburn, Maine, there is a packing house that makes sausages — little sausages — that 1 believe to be without peer.

"I'm as sure as I am of anything that those little Auburn sausages are more delicious and made of vastly better materials than the little Munich sausages whose reputation (has) spread all over the world ... "Penley's little link sausages is the name, made by the E. W. Penley Company of Auburn, Maine; and this encomium has been neither solicited nor paid for ... The sole reason for this enthusiastic mention of Penley's sausages is my belief that they are the best in the world...”

But surprise, Kenneth! Your little darlings, it seems, were being made all the while/or Penley's by The E. W. Mailhot Co. of Lewiston/Auburn, as closer research might have shown you, according to a proud Roger Mailhot, owner. Assuredly delicious, the selfsame sausages "we provided to E. W. Penley for over 30 years —the 1940s through the 1960s," says Mailhot.

"We're under our own label now," Mailhot continues, and are indeed worth a tasty try.

ever made is a steamed blueberry pudding with vanilla or lemon sauce.

Maine is as good a place as any to search for authentic strawberry shortcake. The June Bon Appetit Magazine printed a letter from a woman asking if there is an official description of this dessert. She had been served a hard roll topped with a dab of vanilla ice cream and a spoonful of berry topping. "Does this sound right to you?" she asked. I hope no such monstrosity would ever be offered a visitor to the Pine Tree State. Strawberry Shortcake has been around since Continued on page 41

PORTLAND MONTHLY 39

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the 1800s, and Maine cooks are still baking it, not with spongecake shells and aerosol whip, but with "short” biscuit dough which has a tender, crumbly texture.

Many food items we crave on returning to Maine might not appeal to other returnees, and could even seem peculiar. A friend of mine, a Maine native living in California, always carries fresh Maine crab meat, Jordan’s hot dogs, B&M baked beans, Nissen’s doughnuts, and Amato’s Italian sandwiches on her return flights.

An Italian sandwich is a relative of the grinder, the submarine, the Po’ Boy, the hoagy, the hero, the torpedo ... and while variations of this Italian-American sandwich are endless, the original local Italian sandwich was a small Italian loaf, split lengthwise, and filled — in layers down the length of the roll — with sliced ham and/or salami, cheese, tomatoes, onions, green pepper strips, and pieces or halves of ripe oily olives. A shake of salt and a drizzle of olive oil completed it. It was next rolled in waxed paper, then cut in two if requested.

There is quite a knack to the slicing and layering.

In 1985, the average American ate two doughnuts a day, and nowhere has this invention of Dutch Pilgrims, called olie Koeken or oil cakes, been more appreciated than in our native state. The doughnut’s hole was created by a Maine sea captain named Gregory, whose mother often baked for the ship’s crew. One of her specialties was a fried cake. She was afraid that all the dough would not bake, so she put a nut in the center of each dough cake. Because of the nuts, she called her creation "doughnut.” Nuts were expensive and difficult to obtain, so the next time her son was in port, he had a tinsmith make up a circular cutter with a small hole in the center.

Hence, a doughnut with a hole.

Maine’s place in the Doughnut Hall of Pame has been secured by another Maine resident, Stella Young (now of Old Orchard Beach), who was the original Doughnut Girl of World War I. As a Salvation Army lassie, she introduced a taste of home to American doughboys serving in France.

A Maine plain doughnut is not overly sweet and has a subtle taste

of nutmeg, making it an excellent accompaniment to morning beverages. Every farm pantry had its doughnut crock, and an empty one made an irate husband.

You who read this may take me to task for omitting some of your favorities, but to include them all would be akin to writing a cookbook. No, I have not forgotten Maine corn chowder, rhubarb pie, Macintosh apples, sweet cider, maple syrup, smelts, mackerel ... nor have I forgotten there is much more to the history of Maine food than the recipes offered here. A small book entitled Maine Coastal Cooking contains Downeast recipes dating from 1664. Because Maine has long been lobster country, a large section of this book pertains to them. Remembering that the letter "s” appears as "f,” here are directions To keep Lobfters a quarter of a year very good: "Take them being boild as aforefaid wrap them in courfe rags having been fteeped in brine and bury them in a cellar in fome fea-fand pretty deep.” It gives one a sense of continuity to read that a Colonial woman with her cookbook beside her read how to fry, stew, boil, stuff, broil, and bake these crustaceans in much the same way as they are prepared today. There is one difference; they were so plentiful that hosts apologized to their guests for serving them.

“A little out of the wav and was out oj the ordinary.”

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Summer Jazz at Sugarloaf WITH THE BERKLEE college of music

Continued on page 12

‘Secret’ Scotch Cookie Recipe 1 % cups sugar 1 cup shortening '/i cup molasses 1 egg 3 'A cups flour 1 teaspoon salt 2 % teaspoons soda 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1 teaspoon mace V* cup milk “Cream sugar, shortening, molasses and egg Sift dry ingredients and beat in. along with the milk.

Drop by tablespoonsful onto greased sheets Press down lightly with floured glass Bake, but do not overbake" Submitted by Jean Dyer Note: This recipe comes courtesy of the Chebeague Island Parents Association and appears in Chebeague Island Cooking. an outstanding guide to ancient Maine cuisine and available when you send $8. to Sheila Putnam. Box 135. Chebeague Island. Maine 04017.

Continued on page 42

/

The best in jazz. traditional to contem* porary, featuring musicians from the legendary Berklee College of Music, Boston. Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon performances in the western mountain* of Maine.

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PORTLAND MONTHLY 41

Restaurants Restaurants are listed as a courtesy in this section as space allows. To guarantee inclusion of your listing for the next year, call Portland Monthly Classifieds, 578 Congress Street, Portland, Maine 04101. (207) 775-4339.

Alberta's. 21 Pleasant Street, Portland. Also 27A Forest Avenue, Portland. All the selections from Alberta's ever-changing menu are cooked to order over their mesquite charcoal grill. Steaks, seafood, and butterflied leg of lamb are accompanied by homemade soups, breads, and desserts, including "Death by Chocolate.” Lunch, dinner, Sunday brunch. Major credit cards. 774-5408.

The Blue Moon. 425 Fore Street, Portland. Portland's new jazz club restaurant features le jazz hot nightly as well as an entertaining dinner menu. A strong addition to Portland's nightlife. 871-0663.

Boone's. Custom House Wharf, Portland. They've been serving an extraordinary range of seafood since 1898. Portland memorabilia and antiques are displayed in the heavy-beamed dining room, and there are nightly specials in addition to the extensive menu. Lunch and dinner daily, all major credit cards. 774-5725.

Channel Crossing. 23 Front Street, South Portland. An elegant restaurant with an elegant view of Portland from its perch on the water. Teriyaki sirloin is a favorite, as is "Fresh Catch," the very freshest fish available each day.

Lunch and dinner. Sunday brunch, major credit cards.

799-5552.

Dock Fore. 556 Fore Street, Portland. Daily specials in this cozy Old Port setting include burgers, quiches, soups, chowders, fresh fish, steamers, and mussels. Lunch and dinner. 772-8619.

The Madd Apple Cafe. 23 Forest Avenue, Portland. An intimate American bistro located in the Portland Performing Arts Center. Offering a changing menu; specialties include Carolina Chopped Pork BBQ, Shrimp Remoulade, tournedos Marchand du Vin, and Bananas Foster. Lunch and dinner. Major credit cards. 774-9698.

Moose Crossing Dinnerhouse. (Coastal U.S. Route 1, Falmouth (3 miles north of Portland, minutes to L.L.Bean). Relaxed cabin atmosphere. Featuring fresh Maine seafood, aged Iowa beef; mesquite grilling.

Teriyaki steak and grilled salmon, as well as "House Favorites." Lounge opens at 4 p.m. daily. Serving dinner at 5 p.m. Children's menu available. Visa, Mastercard, and American Express accepted. Reservations available for parties of 5 or more. 781-4771.

7 At Bal i 7 ah If. 4 3 i Fore Street, Portland Relaxed bistro beneath the Old Port Bakehouse offers diverse European cooking veal. fish, tournedos, homemade chowders, soups, and stews, including bouillabaisse, are available, as well as fresh breads and pastries from upstairs Local artists exhibit occasionally Major credit cards 775-OW3. (a t< Alu a yi. 47 Middle Street, Portland One of Por-

tland s newest restaurants Features strong, ambitious menu and a romantic atmosphere. 77 4 9 399

Tony Roma’s — A Place For Ribs. 671 Main Street,South Portland (U.S. 1 at Exit 7 extension). A restaurant of casual decor, genuine cordiality, and reasonable prices, serving its famous Baby Back Ribs, judged Number One Ribs in America at the 1987 National Rib-off. Other menu items include fish, steak, barbecued shrimp on a skewer, andonion rings served in a loaf. Daily luncheon specials. Takeout menu available. Open 7 days a week, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. MC, Visa, Amex 761-4211.

Thai Garden 1 City Center, Portland. This outstanding new restaurant has risen immediately to the top of Portland's distinguished list of Oriental restaurants.

Original, exciting tastes, including Thai beer, in a sophisticated setting 772-1118.

42 PORTLAND MONTHLY

Continued from page 41

Chebeague Island Cooking on Scotch Cookies: "These were favorite cookies to all who remember Harold Todd's Cushman's Bakery wagon. Chebeague cooks longed for the secret formula, but it was Jean Dyer who took the initiative to contact the Harris Baking Company who had bought Cushman's and along with it. the Scotch Cookie recipe."

RECIPES

Maine-Style Fish Chowder % lb. salt pork, diced 2 onions, diced 4 cups raw potatoes 1 to 2 cups fish stock or water 2 pounds haddock, cod, or cusk fillets 1 teaspoon salt teaspoon pepper 2 to 3 cups milk 2 12-ounce cans evaporated milk Fry the salt pork until golden. Remove and reserve. Cook onions in the fat from the salt pork, until translucent, but do not brown. Add potatoes, stock, or water. Place fish on top of potatoes and add seasonings. Cover. Bring to a boil and simmer until potatoes are tender and fish flakes easily.

Add the whole milk and evdporated milk. Heat through but do not boil. When stirring, try to avoid breaking the fish, which should remain in small chunks. Scatter "pork scraps" across the top and dot chowder with butter, if desired. Serves 6.

Dandelion Greens 4 quarts freshly picked ddndelion greens % lb. fat salt pork 8 small potatoes Salt to taste Wash and remove all grit from dandelions.

Remove discolored or broken outer leaves without breaking plants apart. Wash three times in lukewarm water, sloshing plants up and down so dirt will settle before lifting greens out.

In a lorge kettle bring 1 % quarts of water to a boil. When it reaches a rolling boil, put greens in and ddd salt pork cut Into 16-inch cubes. Cover kettle and let contents simmer gently for 116 hours.

During last half hour, add peeled whole potatoes.

To serve, lift greens, shaking off liquid, dnd lay them in a serving bowl. Place potatoes on top and spoon out salt pork for garnish. Serve the vinegar, if desired. Serves 4

Creamed Finnan Haddie 1 16 pounds finnan haddie Milk and water to cover 4 tablespoons flour 7 tablespoons margarine 3 cups milk Salt and pepper to taste 4 medium cooked potatoes, diced 2 hard-cooked egges. sliced 4 slices bread, cubed 3 tablespoons margarine Soak the finnan haddie for 30 minutes in half water, half milk to cover. Bring to a boil over low heat for 15 minutes. Drain, cool, and flake fish. In a saucepan blend flour and the 7 tablespoons

margarine to make a paste. Cook over low hear and gradually add the milk dnd seasonings. Add fish, potatoes, and eggs. Pour into a lorge casserole. Cube the bread and saute in the 3 tablespoons of margarine. Place on top of the casserole and bake at 350 degrees F. for 25 to 30 minutes.

Serves 6.

Ed Muskie’s Clam Cakes 2 cups fresh chopped clams 2 eggs, beaten 16 cup clam juice 16 cup cracker crumbs 2 tablespoons flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 1 teaspoon salt % teaspoon pepper 1 teaspoon sugar Remove gastric glands from clams and chop.

Drain, reserving the clam water or juice. Combine eggs and juice. Roll crackers and measure 16 cup crumbs into a bowl. Mix and sift flour, baking powder, salt, pepper, and sugar over the crumbs.

Add egg-clam juice mixture and stir in the clams.

Let stand for a few minutes for crumbs to absorb the liquids. If needed, add more juice. Drop by large spoonfuls into frying pan of hot fat. Cook until golden brown on each side. Serve immedidtely. Serves 4.

Genuine Strawberry Shortcake 2 quarts fresh strawberries Sugar to taste 2 cups all-purpose flour 4 teaspoons baking powder 16 teaspoon salt 1 16 tablespoons sugar 1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon butter or margarine % cup milk 1 cup heavy cream, whipped Rinse, hull, and slice strawberries. Toss with sugar and set dside. Sift dry ingredients together twice.

Cut in 16 cup butter. Add milk.gradudlly until dough is easy to handle. Turn onto a lightly floured board dnd pat gently. Roll out to %-inch thicknesses and make 12 3-inch rounds. Melt 1 tablespoon butter. Arrange 6 rounds on a greased baking sheet and brush with butter. Top each biscuit with another biscuit. Bake in preheated 450degree F. oven for 12 minutes, or until topsare light brown. Remove from oven, ond split biscuits.

Spoon some berries over bottom half. Cover with top half, more berries, and whipped credm. Serve immediately. Serves 6.

Maine Blueberry Cake 1/3 cup butter 1 cup sugar 2 eggs 16 cup sour milk 2 scant cups flour 1 teaspoon soda 1 teaspoon nutmeg 1 teaspoon salt 1 16 cups fresh blueberries, floured Cream butter and sugar together. Add eggs and beat well. Add sour milk. Sift flour, soda, nutmeg, and Sdlt and ddd to egg mixture. Blend dt low speed until well-mixed. Add blueberries. Pour batter into a 9 x 9-lnch cake pan and bake In a 350-degree F. oven about 50 minutes or until done.

Plain Downeast Doughnuts 3 tablespoons melted butter 1 % cups sugar 2 eggs 1 cup buttermilk 4 cups flour 3 teaspoons baking powder H teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon nutmeg 13 teaspoon cinnamon

DISCOVER IT Some of our guests say our 75-ft. staircase to the water is the ultimate in exercise; others just say it's the best place to sit and watch the wildlife in the bay.

Combine first four Ingredients and beat until light. Sift dry Ingredients and add to buttermilk mixture, stirring well. Refrigerate for several hours or overnight. Pour onto floured board and knead until smooth. Roll M-Inch thick and cut out with doughnut cutter. Fry at 380-degrees F. on thermometer. Tum once. Makes 36 doughnuts.

Come decide tor yourself why we're the Island's best-kept secret.

Downeast Clam Pie 3 Maine potatoes 1 quart clams 4 ounces salt pork 1 small onion 1 tablespoon flour Pie crust for two-cnjst pie (9 inch)

The Bay Ledge Inn & Spa 1385 Sand Point Rd. Bar Harbor, Me. 04609

Boll potatoes In their skins until almost tender.

Peel and cube. Wash and grind clams, saving Juice and some bellies. Cube salt pork and cook slowly until golden brown. Add chopped onion.

Stir In flour, then potatoes and clams. Mix ingredients. Pour Into pie shell in 9-lnch pie plate. Put top crust on. Seal and bake In 425-degree F. oven for 20 minutes. Lower oven heat to 350-degrees F. and bake another 25 minutes.

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A Masterpiece In Maine

' 'Eider Duck ’ ’ by J J. A udubon from the Inn By The Sea Collection

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ocated on beautiful Crescent Beach, the Inn By The Sea is a celebration of the elegance and style of a bygone era.

The Inn’s spacious suites and cottages offer luxury not available on the Maine Coast until now... all are exquisitely furnished with one or two bedrooms, living room, balcony or porch overlooking the bay, and fully stocked kitchen and bar. Other features include the marble entry way and lobby, extensive original

J.J. Audubon art collection, belvedere library tower overlooking the Atlantic, 24-hour concierge, and private guest-only dining room. Outside you will find formal flower gardens, original sculpture and fountains, English gazebo, tea garden, croquet court, heated pool and jacuzzi, rolling lawns, tennis, and much more. The Inn By the Sea is quite simply, the best.

For more information call (207) 799-3134.

Inn By The Sea, Suite A, Cape Elizabeth, Maine 04107

PORTLAND MONTHLY

43

erebus Portland’s Haight-Ashbury

I

BY ANDREA RONNING

WAS 14 in 1968. That was the year I first discovered the new-age counterculture right here in Portland. The year I first walked into Erebus.

Erebus incarnated the atmosphere of the times. Smuggling the 1960s direct to Portland, it was a Happening — a doorway into the psychedelic world of incense, water pipes, black lights, and love beads.

Erebus was an avant-garde boutique heralding the arrival of America’s latest trends in fashion and lifestyle. It was also the crest of a wave marking the start of the Old Port’s resurrection.

In 1967, 19 buildings lined Cent ter Street. Today, only eight ’ remain. Fifty-two Center Street < (the Thomas Gill House) was vacant before Herbert Gideon opened Erebus, but its rich history dates back to 1869- In 1868, three wooden buildings existed on the site, all the property of Thomas Gill: his grocery store, his home, and a dwelling occupied by nine Irish families. When a fire broke out in a nearby stable, all three burned to the ground. A single house, built of brick, replaced them.

Gill, a native of Galway, Ireland, died of fever at the age of 56 in 1875, when his property went to his children. The house changed hands twice. Then, in 1908, it became the Fraternity House: "a community center offering without the distinction of sex, sect, or age, a place of pleasant resort and a means of self-improvement at little or no expense.” Its sponsor, Portland Fraternity (formed in 1870), conducted a free evening school for 25 years until the city opened its own free school. Fraternity House had an art school, a music school, game rooms, and a drama club. Area residents used the building for plays, parties, dances, and as headquarters for more than 30 adult and juvenile organizations.

Following World War II came the migration to the suburbs. With a car in every driveway, Portland’s trolleys and trains disappeared. By I960, the Old Port neighborhood had lost a quarter of its population.

Many buildings stood vacant and neglected or were used only commercially. It was the rough part of town, and Dad made sure we locked our car doors whenever we drove through.

Then, the 1961 demolition of Union Station awakened people to the threat of urban renewal plans which called for the leveling of old city buildings. The restoration movement slowly grew until, in 1977, the Old Port Association and Greater Portland Landmarks were formed.

Herbert Gideon, with Erebus, was a pioneer of the Old Port resurgence. The Jamaican native started Erebus as a retail store on Congress Street in 1967, but soon decided to move to larger quarters closer to the waterfront he’d roamed as a child. "Back then, there was no Exchange Street as we know it today,” Gideon says.

"No stores, just boarded-up buildings. I turned up Center Street and saw the Fraternity House all boarded up with a little sign in the window saying 'Contact Center Parking Corporation.’ I had the feeling that it was a fortuitous discovery.”

What Gideon didn’t know then was that the building had been condemned and scheduled to be torn down to make room for four parking spaces.

Gideon leased the building for $100 a month and began renovating.

"A 40-pound dog walking on the second floor would rattle windows downstairs,” he recalls. "We reposted the floors, which were collapsing, with Douglas firs and timbers. The first floor was a basketball court/auditorium; the second floor had a lot of rooms; the third floor housed a toy library; and the fourth floor was a reading area. There were showers in the basement. We made our retail store on the first two floors and later the third.”

By 1971, Erebus was well established. Like the Fraternity House, it was founded on high ideals... the

humanistic vision of the times.

Gideon promoted free rock concerts, community workshops, and a celebration of Earth Day. Erebus’s bookstore, later called the Great Works Bookstore, offering publications for "the mind, the body, the earth, and the spirit,” became the Book Co-op in 1974, sharing space with the Good Day Market across Center Street. Subjects included astrology, handicrafts, ecology, natural foods, metaphysics, and mysticism.

Sound familiar?

But fashion marches on. The new and unique become old and outdated. The Erebus Float Shop (waterbeds) opened in 1979 when Erebus became the Tijger Trading Company. But the transition from imports to New Wave and Punk clothing never caught on in a big way around here. Sunshine Surplus & Salvage, another Gideon offshoot across the street from Erebus, sold vintage clothing in 1975, but a year later, it, too, was gone.

In April 1982, Erebus went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. At auction in May 1984, Pritham Singh paid $190,000 for the parcel of land including the Thomas Gill House. Now converted to office space, 52 Center Street is listed with Mark Stimson Associates for $550,000.

Erebus is history, but The Tree Cafe, Gideon’s latest venture, offers live music. The club’s walls are draped with fabric, and secondlevel alcoves create a treehouse effect. There’s room to dance.

Seriously.

The Old Port resurrection that Erebus helped usher in has never slowed down. Buildings keep popping up like mushrooms in a damp cellar. But alongside staggering economic development we still hear from those voices who would preserve that which is valuable from the past. From the Age of Aquarius to the Age of NeoEnlightenment... from New Age to New Age, again.

Andrea Ronning, who directs "Sports

Overtime" as well as news broadcasts at WCSH-TV, has also written for Twilight Zone Magazine.

PORTLAND MONTHLY

45

THE WATERFRONT

SAFE

HARBORS

Taking advantage of Maine’s cool summer breezes by docking off Portland’s waterfront often involves planning ahead of time — as long as six years at DiMillo’s Marina (773-7632). Permanent public dockage at DiMillo’s is limited; demand for this popular marina far outreaches the marina's 130-slip capacity. In turn, DiMillo’s offers access for boaters wishing to dock for a few hours or overnight during the summer months. “People can't just come in during the summertime and expect to dock,” reports a DiMillo’s staff member. If one is lucky enough to locate a spot, fees for docking run $1 per foot up to 49 feet and $1.50 for each additional foot beyond 49. Otherwise, “they can try another dock or head up to Falmouth 10 miles away and hope for the best.”

Another choice is Channel Crossing Marine (767-4729). Channel Crossing charges permanent guests $45 per foot for the April 15-October 15 season and offers 130 wet-berth slips. Availability for transients — overnight dockers — is limited by great demand and only 300 feet of dock space. The charge is just 50 cents per foot until late June and $1 per foot during the busy July and August months. Additional space becomes available for transients when permanent summer renters “go out cruising,” vacating their slips temporarily. Channel Crossing's seasonal fee includes fuel, water, and electricity; the marina’s staff offers navigational and safety seminars. Similarly, Port Harbor Marine (767-3254) provides separate docking for public transients. Costs are $1 per foot per day; the staff will accommodate boats on a “first come, first serve basis” when there is room.

For sailors interested in landing at one of the Casco Bay islands, the accepted practice for public access to docks is relatively uniform. Docking is free; however, visits should be kept short as the stay usually is restricted to 30 minutes. This time limit is not strictly enforced, and if one wishes to explore an island or enjoy a leisurely lobster lunch, one need only ask as island police officer for permission. Lengthy visits are discouraged, however, because dock space is limited. Cliff Island has two small floats, and the dock at Long Island measures 10' by 30'. An unlucky visitor who overstays his welcome could well find himself with a parking ticket. After two tickets, your boat will be towed. If you find an island float full, a Long Island worker suggests, “Ride around, have a beer, and wait for a spot.”

Whether you’re is interested in mainland or island docking, here’s some common advice; plan ahead, be patient, and remember — the Maine coast is undeniably worth the wait.

46 PORTLAND MONTHLY

THE WATERFRONT Back When Commercial Street Was The Atlantic Ocean

Up Against The Wall

BY JONATHAN WHITE

T

HE NEXT time you enjoy a meal or music in the Old Port Tavern, remember — somewhere in the time-space dimension of Portland before 1852 — you’re sitting in the ocean, where seagoing vessels once docked.

That same wall, against which musicians perform, is Portland’s original seawall. It runs beneath Pore Street almost to the MillionDollar Bridge, where you can see the seawall towering up from a vacant lot at the intersection of Park and Commercial Streets.

From colonial days through the clipper ship era, Fore Street was Portland's waterfront. The first street to be cobblestoned, Fore Street followed the bank of the Fore River. From it bristled the wharves where trading vessels anchored. Along this narrow thoroughfare trudged teams of horses and oxen hauling loads of logs and lumber, barrels, masts, hides, and wool to merchant ships off-loading finished merchandise and raw materials. Foreign seamen jostled with black stevedores, downeast drovers, and frock-coated Yankee merchants beneath a nautical lacework of masts and spars. Alongside mercantile houses were slopshops selling seamen’s clothes, sailor boarding houses, and taverns.

Then, Portland entered a financial slump in the 1840s. City merchants determined that a railroad connecting Portland with Canada and the grain growing west would be just the thing to compete economically with other coastal cities.

As a result, the Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railroad (more popularly called Grand Trunk Railroad) was completed in 1853; the tracks run from India Street all the way to Montreal.

In preparation for the railroad bed, at a cost of S80,000, the wharves and tidewater of Portland’s waterfront were filled in and a new business thoroughfare constructed to give the railroad direct access to the docks. Thus, in 1852, Commercial Street first saw the light of day — 5,993 feet long and

100 feet wide, with 26 feet in the center reserved for railroad tracks.

Nothing was the same again: The rails and Portland’s new waterfront ushered in an era of tremendous commercial activity in the latter 19th century. And Fore Street, once splashed by the Atlantic and the site of Portland’s mercantile hubbub, began to house the city’s miscellaneous, secondary trade.

Jonathan White, managing editor of Portland Monthly, has written for The National Geographic Society, Doan Past, and numerous newspapers and magazines on the East Coast. An award-winning photographer, he lives on the Eastern Promenade.

PORTLAND MONTHLY

47

CLASSIFIEDS SOMETHING SPECIAL

Camden Hills Real Estate 39 High St, Camden Me 04843 207 236 8876 207-236 2)00 Linda Moleobacker

In-Town Village Home With Separate Income Apartment

IN KENNEBUNKPORT A vibrant new life-style awaits you at PORT COMMONS. This 240square-foot condominium unit offers an exciting open interior, warm wood accents, handsome original stained glass windows and 2 1 /2 story cathedral ceilings. Originally a church, the architects showed wonderful ingenuity by creating 3 luxurious units which masterfully blend the original features with fine, new appointments, such as a gourmet kitchen, open balcony and jacuzzi-enhoused masterbath.

Charming 3 bedroom, 1 1/2 bath home with enclosed porch, woodwork of yesteryear and set on large lot. S155,OOO.

Call Helen to see when the next Open House is scheduled at this fascinating 3-bedroom, 2 1/2 bath home which is just a short walk to $318,000.

LAND WATER VIEWS LAND APPLETON — approx. 13 acres on the river CAMDEN — 2.8 acres Lily Pond Front LINCOLNVILLE — 11/2 acres bold ocean front ROCKPORT — approx. 2 acres Bay and Island views ROCKPORT — approx. 90 acres Lake frontage. Subdividable.

Soils tested.

(207) 967-548)

P.O. Box 31

Route 9

$22,000 150.000 $210,000 $69,500 $700,000

Kennebunkport, Maine 04046

BUILT TO LAST and updated to preserve its turn-of-the-century charms, this exquisite Victorian offers five bedrooms, two baths, and a lovely second-floor sunporch, plus formal living and dining room and library.

On ten acres, near Farmington, LISTING 4446 is offered at $150,000.

AROOSTOOK COUNTY Turn-of-the-century Victorian residence.

Original metal ceilings, elaborate woodwork & fixtures. Over 3,000 square feet of living space, including 6 bedrooms.

First time offered for sale outside original family. Good potential for a unique restaurant, a bed & breakfast & other exciting possibilities. $75,000.

TATE

48 PORTLAND MONTHLY

504 Main Street Madawaska, ME 04756 207-728-6300

SANDY RIVER REALTY

Rts 2 & 4, PO Box 230 Farmington, Maine 04938 (207) 778-6333

MT. DESERT ISLAND SHOREFRONT COTTAGE Long Pond shorefront cottage with over 19 hillside acres of wooded privacy and over 500' of shorefrontage offering views of Acadia National Park and Mansell mountain. Accessed via the Beech Hill Mountain Road, this spectacular 5-bedroom, 2-bath cottage has been extensively renovated to include hardwood floors, pine walls, beautiful granite fireplace, insulation, new doors and windows, cedar siding, cedarshakeshingled roof, new decks, new well, improved driveway and much more! Price: $700,000. Exclusive listings shown to qualified buyers by appointment only.

F.. PAT FOSTER real estate Multiple Listing Broker • "Acadia Pines Rentals" Somesville Carriage House MOUNT DESERT. MAINE 04660 TEL 207-244-9251

CLASSIFIEDS DIPPER COVE POINT, ORR'S ISLAND A planned unit development with 3 lots still available at $1 20,000 each.

Amenities include clubhouse, dock, common water system. and 2 tennis courts. Forty-five minutes to Portland.

Penobscot Bay Tenants Harbor Approximately 1% acres of land located on Harts Neck. This property was illustrated in one of the first editions of The Country of the Pointed Firs. Enjoy open-ocean views from this heavily wooded lot with 200 feet of bold ocean frontage. Newly surveyed and soil tested, good road and lots of privacy.

Offered at: $250,000.

RON HALL REAL ESTATE P.O. Box 301 Tenants Harbor, ME Telephone: 372-6340 Office 372-6780 Residence Member of the Mid-Coast Multiple Listing Service

STOVER'S POINT, SOUTH HARPSWELL Beautiful deepwater lot with cottage.

Located on Merriconeag Sound with easterly view of Orr'sBailey Island cribstone bridge. $165,000.

STOVER'S POINT. SOUTH HARPSWELL RR 1, Box 173. South Harpswell, Maine 04079 207-833-5994

PORTLAND MONTHLY 49

About Islesboro...

Sparkling, ground-up renovation of 1860's classic, 13plus acres with 1460* on a lovely tidal creek offering views to West Penobscot Bay, $375,000.

Just three miles out to sea by a refreshing state ferry boat ride from Lincolnville Beach is a private resort island. Down East Magazine called Islesboro and the Dark Harbor area "One of America’s most exclusive summer resorts." Although a prestigious area, Islesboro is one of the friendliest communities in Maine. Fast becoming a yearround hideaway, the Island contains a wellblended mixture of turn-of-the-century wealth and elegance and 19th century farmhouses.

From our land mark lighthouse at the ferry landing to our finest inns to our miles of unspoiled, rugged coastline, we invite your inspection of this rare community today. We would like to tell you more about our properties, which are situated in the middle of some of the world’s best sailing grounds, our reasonable tax rate, and how modern zoning regulations and our geographic isolation will preserve our way of life well into the future.

Dark Harbqn I^Agency^^ Immaculate Dark Harbor Victorian run as a successful B&BInn. 5 BR, three baths. Completely redecorated and furnished with many fine antiques. $298,000

207-734-8819 or 207-734-6441 P.O. Box 39-PM Islesboro, Me. 04848 Diane L. Rolerson, REALTOR

Three-bedroom waterfront home, fully furnished, including 3 boats! $298,000

Ocean Views! Distant easterly views from this 4-5 bedroom classic island home. Original wide pine floors, new heating system, much structural restoration completed. $125,000.

Set in seclusion. Immaculate year-round home on 7.1 acres with 944’ of bold ocean frontage on East Shore Drive, Dark Harbor. $595,000.

Ryder’s Cove Ocean Front Retreat. 3 bedroom, summer cottage. $350,000.

Waterfront 7.13 acres with 257’of tidal frontage in Ryder’s Cove. $119,000.

Five Acre Lots Located 2 miles from Boothbay Harbor, this prestigious waterfront community features tennis courts, walking trails and tasteful protective covenants.

OVERLOOK A Quality Waterfront Community By

Red Farm Partners

50

PORTLAND MONTHLY

For Further Information call

Barter & Associates Real Estate (207) 563-1800

ELEGANT. ENGROSSING. FUN. That’s Portland, Maine.

That’s, Portland Monthly —

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RUSTICO, P.E.L, CANADA Grand Pere Point 120-Acre Bayfront Peninsula looted in Atlantic Canadas premier vacation spot, Prince Edward Island.

The province is renowned for its warm salt waters, fertile soils, abundance of sand beaches and spectacular scenery. These unique features combine to make P.E.l.'s waterfront properties one of the finest investments in the Northeast.

Pere Point extends out into Rustico Bay and is approved for a subdivision of 80 sites, each over 1 acre. The property offers breathtaking views of Rustico Bay, the national park’s sand dunes, Rustico Island, Rustico Harbor farmlands and the Gulf of St. Lawrence — truly some of the most spectacular scenery the island has to offer. Grand Pere Point overlooks the great dune lands of the national park’s north shore. The dune lands of P.E.L are like a strip cut from the mighty Sahara and set down between a storybook sea and neat lovely garden. All this plus an 18-hole golf course within 5 minutes’ walk of all lots.

PRIVATE FINANCING WATERVIEW SITES (each over 1 acre with beach access): $12,000$18,000 U.S. Terms: 10% down; balance over 7years at 11% interest.

WATERFRONT SITES (each over 1 acre): $30,000 U.S. Terms: 10% down; balance over 10 years at 11% interest.

VICTORIA WEST Prince Edward Island, Canada

KILDARE CAPES Prince Edward Island, Canada

Twenty nine-lot salt waterfront development, with 10 lots remaining, on a 50-acrv point on Egmont Bay. Sand beach, rich soils, and, as the photo indicates. fabulous scenery. We are selling two 1-acre sites for $30,000 U.S. Each property consists of one lot directly on the bay and a back lot in a beautiful hardwood setting.

2.5 acres of some of the finest sandbeach property in the Northeast. Offering sand dunes, woods and spectacular ocean scenery. This caliber of property is rarely available.

PRICE: $35,000 U.S. Owner-financing.

TERMS: 10% down; balance over 10 years at 11% interest.

TERMS: 10% down; balance over 10years at 11% interest.

Air Canada offers daily connections from New York and Boston — Eastern Express has daily flights from Portland, Me. via Halifax, N.S.

SOLOMON INC.

TEL. 902-436-7236 P.O. BOX 1497, SUMMERSIDE, P.E.L CANADA C1N 4K4

CLASSIFIEDS BLUE HILL Estate Site 5-plus Acres 428 Feet Blue Hill Bay Deep Water Shore Frontage Long Views - Good Solis Year Round Rte. 175 Road Front Quality. $375000

I WINTER HARBOR

Specializing In Residential Sales Land Development And Investment Properties

Timothy P. Flaherty, Broker Marie Flaherty, Associate Broker Michael Flaherty, Associate Broker Claire Garvey, Associate Broker Robyn Derrig, Associate Broker 189 Ocean Avenue, Portland (207)774-8585

■ Commercial Ocean Front 311 feet of combination gravelbeach and pink-ledge open ocean frontage. Old house and white-clapboard stable. Views of island lighthouse and Schoodic Point in Acodia National Park.

Walking distance to marina, restaurants. post office, supermarket and other conveniences.

Oceanside golf course and yacht club nearby at Grindstone Neck Zoned for general development $225,000

P.O Box 189.30 Main St.. Bridgton, ME 04009 (107)647-3311

Tjpwneast “AXprcago inc Broker of Record — Goodwin W. Wiseman P.O. Box 270, Bangor, Maine 04401 Telephone 207-947-4567

FRESH WATER

JACOB HAZEN HOUSE Located in North Bridgton, home of BRIDGTON ACADEMY, this income property is currently used as a residential inn for older people. Nine rooms each with bath, plus 2 efficiency apartments, kitchen, dining room, living rix>m.

Includes laundry business Additional 2,808 square feet not used. Five-zone gas hot water heat. 3 acres surveyed. $285,000

CATCH THE EXCITEMENT OF MID-COAST MAINE We have opportunities in:

Pretty and immaculate 2-bedroom. 1-bath seasonal cottage on Damariscotta Lake with 100' of lakefront. Also has bunkhouse and dock and is on a good yedr-round dccess fire road Faces South and West for beautiful sunsets. $132,500 Call 563-1023

SALT WATER

*Small Businesses *Marine Businesses *Land Development *Income Properties Come See Us for All your Commercial Real Estate Needs.

We Turn Dreams Into Reality!

(Call for our free opportunity bulletin)

Stroll to the village or down to the riverfront from this attractive 1800's Waldoboro cape. This old stagecoach stop features 3 bedrooms boasting their own warm personalities, large, bright living-room open to the formal dining area, a private den with picture window, and a fine country kitchen. $125,000 Call 832-6334

MM

Marilvn

M CIWN Real Estate

Bus Rt I, Damariscotta, Maine 04543 — Tel. 207 5/)3-]023 Main St., Waldoboro, Maine 04572 — Tel 207-832-6334 A Commitment to Excellence

M£LGDN COMMERCIAL PROPERTIES 207-563-1717

VineStreet, Damariscotta, Maine 04543

PORTLAND MONTHLY 53

CLASSIFIEDS

REAL ESTATE With Sightings All Over Washington County...

BELFAST — A charming older Cape in excellent repair in a quiet residential area overlooking Penobscot Bay. An excellent value in our growing area. $89,500.

207-338-2257 RFD1, Box 1328 Northport, Maine 04915

THE WALDOBORO MAINE-WAY

Early Nineteenth Century Tavern

Still with country charm for comfortable up to date living on one level or two. Excellent home business potential in 8 rooms, 2 baths with ample storage, attached garage, warm air heat, full insulation and 3 fireplaces. ALSO, 30x35 barn with small greenhouse and over 5 acres with long road frontage. 1159.500.

PAT &U.S.PARKER SPOFFORD, REALTORS Route One, Waldoboro, ME. 04572 TEL. 207-832-5270

Nine-room cape on over 4 acres offers excellent family living/entertaining. Large 16 x 20 country kitchen, formal dining room, living room, family room, 2.5 baths, three bedrooms plus master bedroom suite with 2 dressing rooms and sitting room (could be 5th bedroom), full walk-out basement and attached 2-car garage with overhead storage. Enjoy the privacy and beautiful sunsets from this home which is 1 mile from Sheepscot Village, yet offers easy access to Bath/Brunswick and Augusta/Gardiner. One hour from Portland. $239,000 Owner/Broker H. 586-5090 W. 563-5140

PERLEY REALTY

P.O. BOX 369 Damariscotta, ME 04543

54 PORTLAND MONTHLY

BY JONATHAN WHITE

A

FRONT-PAGE article in the Bangor Daily News has got to be true, right? If the Associated Press picks up the story, it’s got to be true, right? And if his publicist denies it, you know it’s true, right?

Well, maybe not.

Tom Selleck sightings are raging through Washington County. Everyone knows someone who’s spotted him.

Around Jonesboro and Englishman Bay, people swear Tom Selleck is driving around in his new Ford Bronco. Legend says he’s bought shorefront property off Look’s Point Road, on Mount Misery overlooking Mason Bay. From Kittery to Calais, female hearts fluctuate near the Richter dysfunction level.

In Peasely Corner, Whitneyville, and Machias, hearsay has scattered about the new resident. After all, a nice guy like Selleck, leading-man-next door, Clark Gable of the 1980s, would want to find a spot to escape rabid fans, well-wishers, and weirdos. What better place than half-a-world away from Hawaii?

For my first assignment at Portland Monthly, my editor handed me the AP clip and said, "Interview Tom Selleck.’’

Visions of cruising north along Route 1 in my sporty Honda CRX to meet Tom raced through my mind. I could picture myself and my new buddy sipping longnecks on the ledges, while I asked penetrating stuff against the sound of surf.

Cottage On Bedington Lake — Great Lot. Older Cottage, Sand Beach $17,600 Nicatous Lake — A big, deep, secluded lake. 3 lots available $2,500 Sand beach on two of the lots, priced per lot.

Amherst — 80 acres, wooded, home, 4 bedroom, horse barn $78,500 28 miles to Bangor Great Pond — 3 bedroom home, 1.5 acres, great views, 13 years old $59,900 short walk to the beach on Great Pond.

Pleasant River Lake — nice lake, electric & phone. 147' frontage $29,900 Graham Lake — 207' frontage, 5 acres, electric & phone $34,900

KNADUER REAL ESTATE REAL ESTATE BROKERS ROUTE #9 AURORA. MAINE 04408 (207) 584-3876

OChampion

CMmpan Corporation

REALESTATE Lure of Maine shorefront captures Magnum, P.l.

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This wasn’t going to be one of those, "Why did you come to Maine?” stories. I was going to get the answers to some burning questions: Is Higgins really Robin Masters? How well does Jane Seymour kiss? Can I have an autographed photo for my mother? When are you going to do another western?

(See, I am a Tom Selleck fan.

"Magnum” was my favorite show — I hated how CBS bumped it off and on the Wednesday night schedule this past season. And I loved those TV westerns Tom filmed.

You tell me how many actors can play a Louis L’Amour character convincingly now the Duke’s passed on.)

With high heart, 1 reached Tom’s publicist, Esme Chandlee, in Los Angeles, explaining that PortZand Monthly would like to interview her client.

"No, absolutely not,” Esme replied, quite graciously. "He’s on vacation. Tom’s just wrapped up "Magnum” and Three Men and a Baby, and he’s not giving any interviews to anyone until he finishes his next picture, which he starts in July.”

Aha, thinks I, Tom’s hiding out in Jonesboro. "Well, we’d like to do an interview with him at some point, at his convenience. He’s bought some land here in Maine and—” "No, he didn’t."

"Well, AP reported he had.”

"He hasn’t bought anything in Maine. The AP reported that?

That’s odd; they usually check with us.”

"He didn’t buy anything here?”

"Absolutely not. That rumor’s been surfacing all over the country ever since "Magnum” started eight years ago. We usually find that rumor starts with a real estate

company. Tom has a condo in LA and a house in Oahu and that’s it."

I know what you’re thinking.

After saying goodbye, I wondered, too. A little voice kept nagging me: 'Something fishy here.’ Maybe Esme was protecting her client’s privacy. Maybe Tom was sneaking around the nation secretly purchasing remote tracts. Maybe Tom hadn’t bought property near Jonesboro. Maybe I’d better find out.

Now, when I write my book about being a professional journalist, there’s going to be a chapter on verifying stories. Fact checking. I went to the source, the AP clip describing Selleck’s "elusive visit.”

AP said they picked up the story from the front page of The Bangor Daily News'.

I dialed that newspaper’s Machias bureau and asked to speak with the reporter who broke the story. Clayton Beal came on the line.

"Did you actually see Tom Selleck or view proof he bought property near Jonesboro?”

"Well, no,” Beal replied, falling back on an oldj-school cliche: "A reporter’s only as good as his sources. But he certainly was here. I got the information from several different sources, like the first selectman — Selleck stopped at his garage. Now, Selleck doesn’t live here; he doesn’t own a house, so he doesn’t have an address. He just bought some land and came through in his Bronco to see the property. He just wants to be left alone. He’s a big star, you know.”

"Do you think it could have been a look-alike?”

"Those people know who they saw; all we can go on is that people believe they saw Tom Selleck.”

"Did you check with the Registry of Deeds?”

"It takes time to get those things through the system up here,” Beal explained. "But we hope to come up with something concrete on it.”

Although 1 didn’t expect an answer over the telephone, my little voice told me to call the Washington County Registry of Deeds. I asked Sharon Strout, the court secretary, whether Tom Sel¬

leck owned property near Jonesboro.

"The story is that he has,” she said. "But we haven’t received any deeds in his name in the registry, and he hasn’t bought any land to the best of our knowledge.”

Maybe I could talk to someone who’d seen Tom. My next step was calling Woodward's Store, where Selleck allegedly stopped to chat with 17-year-old Ted Woodward.

1 spoke to an employee who requested anonymity (a lot of people around Jonesboro are real touchy about being quoted on this one). Did Tom Selleck stop there?

"I don’t know; 1 wasn’t working that day. A gentleman came in who’d bought some land. You hear so many rumors... 'I saw him, 1 shook hands with him.' 1 don’t know whether it was really him or a double.

"Mail for Tom Selleck has been coming to the Post Office and to the store. People think he’s living here.”

Next, I got owner Bill Woodward. Had he seen Tom Selleck?

"I couldn't say," Woodward answered. "I don’t know him. It was three or four Sunday mornings ago. He told my son he was moving into the area. We’ve been getting all kinds of junk mail. Newspapers and radio stations keep calling, too.”

"Could 1 talk with your son?”

"Look, we’ve got customers in the store and he’s busy.”

"Just for a minute.”

"Hey, Ted, do you want to talk to this guy?”

A muffled "No, Dad,” ended that conversation.

My next call was to Schoppee's Garage, where Tom supposedly drove his overheating Bronco, where I spoke to Selectman Keith Schoppee. "Did Tom Selleck stop there?”

"Yes, quite a while ago, a month.”

"Are you sure it was Tom Selleck?”

"Far as I know. I didn’t talk to him. Look, I don’t want to have anything to do with this,” Schoppee said as he hung up.

I dialed the Jonesboro Post Office. "We’re getting all kinds of PORTLAND MONTHLY 55

FLASH

choolgirls vie for the camera's eye before a laughing Dr John Knowles, member of the Portland Shinegawa Sister City Delegation visiting Japan.

a.

Roger Woodman, president of the Portland Museum of Art board of directors, announces the museum's new director: Barbara Shissler Nosanow, an assistant director at the Smithsonian Institution, who begins her new duties August 1.

mail for him," confirmed an employee who wished to remain unidentified. "We re sending back the mail with return addresses as fast as we get it.”

"Did you see Tom Selleck?”

"I never saw him,'but there’s rumors flying that he’s in Cutler, Machiasport, ali over the place.”

This whole thing was starting to sound like those supermarket checkout reports proclaiming Elvis alive and well in secluded upstate New York. Finally, I spoke with a Jonesboro source I’ll only identify as Ice Throat. This is real deep cover stuff, you understand.

"Ice Throat, could there be a Tom Selleck double driving around down east?"

Under physical threats if I ever reveal my source, Ice Throat answered hoarsely, "There’s a man who works for the (real estate firm) where Selleck supposedly bought the property, who does resemble him, but he’s a little shorter. He’s been driving around.”

I hurriedly placed another call to tell Esme Chandlee I believed her.

"This kind of thing happens to other celebrities, but it seems to happen to Tom more than anyone 56 PORTLAND MONTHLY

Hoisting toasts at the opening of the Bounty at Riverside (upper right), from left: Michael Sobolesk, Bill Matthews, Alice Mazurie, and Mark Deane, all of Erin, Inc., Bangor. Above, South Portland's new mayor, Sharon Benoit, elected in May.

else,” she pointed out. "There have been rumors that he’s been seen here or there overnight, that he’s engaged to the mayor’s daughter — and it’s always a Big Secret. We don’t mind look-alikes so long as they’re honest about who they really are. But some of these peo¬

Portlanders Bebe Buell, lead singer of The Gargoyles, and Michael DelleFemine, editor-in-chief of Cracked magazine. appearing in a Photo-comic" shot in Portland for Cracked's summer issue.

ple play on the image to stay overnight at bed & breakfasts and motels for free. We’ve had an immense amount of things like that happen, and it’s infuriating, not to mention illegal.

"The newspaper headlines always say he’s bought property somewhere. Current rumors have Tom buying properties in Connecticut, Florida, Gig Harbor up in Washington, Maine, on the Island of Maui, even France. Some reports had him driving up the coast out here in a red Ferrari —as if Torn would go around driving a red Ferrari.”

She laughed when informed Selleck reportedly steered a Ford Bronco through Jonesboro. "Tom drives a Porsche and a Jeep, and that’s it,” she said.

I know what you’re thinking.

Does he or does he not have a secret Maine getaway? Are we going to see a smiling Tom Selleck on a Jonesboro Chamber of Commerce brochure to attract muchneeded investors and jobs? Unfortunately, I don’t think so. I’ve got this little suspicion, you see, that Tom’s never set foot on Mount Misery.

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