Thursday, June 20, 2002

Cape’s original summer center

Published in the Current

When Barbara Steele and her husband Bob were buying a house in Cape Cottage 50 years ago, they first visited the site on Woodcrest Road by the direct route from Oakhurst Road. The second time, they came up through the Cape Cottage Woods area and got thoroughly lost.

“We couldn’t find the house we’d bought,” Steele remembered. Even now, once past the stone pillars next to St. Albans Church, it’s not easy to find a route through the twisty roads of Cape Cottage. Fortunately, she found it and hasn’t lived anywhere else since.

“The night we moved here, we stayed at the old Cape Cottage Hotel,” Steele said. A fixture of the neighborhood then was the foghorn at Fort Williams.

“The big thrill was the foghorn,” Steele said, remembering its “mournful sound.” But after a time, it became part of the normal life near Fort Williams. “We heard it when it stopped,” Steele said.

The fort’s horn was eventually discontinued, making the nearest horn the one at Two Lights, which can’t be heard at Steele’s home.

The area around the fort used to be the center of Cape when it was a town of mostly summer homes. The police and fire station were there. The Cape Cottage Hotel and the Casino were big draws to the area, as well as the trolley park, at the end of the trolley line leaving South Portland.

The Cape Cottage neighborhood was on one side of the fort area – now a much visited park and home to Portland Head Light — and Delano Park was on the other.

The casino is now a nursery school. Some of the older homes in Delano Park have been torn down.

But kids still skate on the pond in Fort Williams, and the Cape Cottage beach remains a beautiful crescent with big cottages and blue water, very much the “movie set” Steele recalls.

Still making memories
In Cape Cottage, the beach association hired neighborhood girls as lifeguards, who also taught kids to swim in the protected cove. Adults weren’t so brave, Steele remembered.

“If you walked in, you couldn’t feel your feet. It was freezing,” Steele said. “But the kids didn’t mind a bit.”

Steele also remembered the two stores on Shore Road, Chaput’s and Armstrong’s. The latter, now the Cape Cottage Branch post office, “carried everything,” Steele said.

Her kids went to Cottage Farm School, a building on Cottage Farms Road that is now apartments. “It was just like a private school,” Steele said.

But despite the nearness, they had to take a bus. Back then, Oakhurst Road didn’t go through to Mitchell Road.

“There used to be nothing beyond our driveway,” Steele said.

Kids were a big part of the neighborhoods, and still are.

“It’s a great neighborhood. There are a lot of kids, and good people,” said Martha MacKay. She is, with her husband, secretary of the Cape Cottage Beach Association.

“The kids sort of travel in a gang in the streets,” MacKay said.

“It is just as popular now with young people as it was 50 years ago,” Steele said. “It’s a neighborhood feel.”

On sunny days after school, the roads ring with the shouts of children. The neighborhood still gathers for beach clean-ups and an early summer party and ends the summer with a lobster bake in August.

The beach association is a big reason for the popularity of the neighborhood, and the beach itself is reason to stay. It sits, a sliver of soft sand, in a quiet cove with views of Portland Harbor and Fort Gorges.

“You find a lot of times that people move into the neighborhood and they don’t leave,” MacKay said.

“We thought we were moving to the ends of the Earth, absolutely the end,” Steele said of her first impressions of Cape Elizabeth. But, after two weeks, “we thought we’d never leave,” she said.

They didn’t. Her husband turned down three job transfers so the family could stay in the area. Steele herself also found work in the area, selling real estate for several years before taking a job at the high school, where she was secretary to three principals over 20 years.

Postmaster Ann Burke, known as “Annie B” to her customers, also hasn’t left. In September, she will have spent 58 years working at the Cape Cottage Branch post office on Shore Road.

The office itself is 100 years old, and contains mementos of post office-box holders and neighborhood characters, including a lampshade decorated with stamps by Joan Benoit Samuelson, who grew up on Wood Road.

Some of those whose pictures and artwork hang in the little post office are dead, and others have moved to Piper Shores, Burke said. “It’s sad for me, but it’s nice for them,” she added.

Burke, a spunky, sprightly woman, lives her job: Her home is only feet from her desk. Everything she points to has a story, and she is more than happy to share them. She remembers a neighborhood boy who came back after he turned 30, and Burke was able to tell him which family he was from, though she didn’t know the boy’s name. Now he lives out of state, but sends Burke photos of his children.

Some things, like the stamped lampshade, have been made specifically for display in the office. Others, especially the obituaries cut out of local papers, represent people who are no longer Burke’s regulars.

“Everything seems to have a meaning here,” Burke said.

She remembers how things have changed, too, from the trolley tracks in front of the building to the kids at the bus stop across the street. “It’s mostly now older people,” Burke said. “I miss those kids.”

“I couldn’t have a better job,” Burke said. She has 81 mailboxes to tend, three cats, a large number of plants, and does it all with a smile.

“My body grew old but my mind didn’t,” Burke said. “I think I’m very fortunate to be here this long.”

The things she misses the most? It’s the same answer Steele had. “I liked that old foghorn,” Burke said. “I never got over that old-fashioned sound.”

Fort’s legacy
Before the foghorn left, the fort was once a neighborhood, though people who lived there expected to leave when called elsewhere for military service. And its location at the “end of the Earth” made it a perfect place for artillery positioned to defend the port of Portland.

One of the most notable homes was Goddard Mansion, built in 1858 by Col. John Goddard, an officer of the First Maine Cavalry before the Civil War. He had owned the Cape Cottage Hotel since 1835.

Built in the Italianate style in native stone, the mansion, called Grove Hall by its first owner, was designed by architect Charles Alexander of Portland, and was one of the first truly noteworthy houses along the Cape Elizabeth shore.

Bought by the U.S. Army in 1898, it housed enlisted men, non-commissioned officers and their families at different times. It fell into disrepair after the fort was decommissioned.

The interior was burned in a training fire for the Cape Elizabeth Fire Department March 11, 1981, and the building is now preserved as a ruin.

The fort was purchased by the town in 1964, a year after it was decommissioned by the Army, but was not designated a park until 1979.

“That was the smartest thing the town ever did was buy that fort,” Steele said.

Now the park is an often-visited area of the coastline, and has been seen, from time to time, as a possible revenue source for the town. The problem is the government stipulated when it sold the park that Cape residents would have to pay the same fee as everybody else to get in, so the town has never charged.

Park outside the park
Just south of Fort Williams Park is Delano Park, a privately owned planned community created in 1885, and expanded to the south in 1895.

Bob Shuman lives in the first house ever built in the park, the home his great-grandfather, George Morse, put up in 1886.

“This is a place that has been in my family since it was built,” Shuman said. Morse painted nature scenes around Delano Park and Cape Elizabeth, many of which still hang in Shuman’s home.

In the 15 years Shuman has lived in the house, he can think of two people who took jobs in other areas of the country and moved away. The rest have stayed until they have to leave, he said.

“What’s unique about the park is its location,” Shuman said. It is eight minutes from downtown Portland, but very rural. Cape Cottage has a similar feel, though the roads are wider.

It is a quiet spot with reasonably large lots and a slow turnover.

“The personality of the place changes with time,” Shuman said.

The cycle takes a while to complete, typically starting with a young family buying from an older owner who inherited the property from parents or grandparents, retired to Delano Park, and is now too old to live independently.

Shuman’s two sons and their families are interested in his house, which he said is like “living in a museum.”

“It’s always been in the family, which means it’s never been cleaned out,” he said. In his house, Shuman has found the notice for his great-grandfather to report to the Army for the Civil War and a letter excusing him from service, noting the request of his mother.

The park is rich in history, most visibly in the distance garages are from houses. Most started as stables and were best kept apart from the home. And owning a home designed by John Calvin Stevens is something of a neighborhood status symbol.

Also of importance are ocean views, which are great for some residents, but can cause traffic problems, even on the roads, which are not public ways.

“Whenever we have a storm and the surf is up, people want to see the waves,” Shuman said. Residents, however, are welcome to drive and walk the paths and roads, which they pay to have plowed, resurfaced and maintained. Two areas in the park are preserved as greenspace, and though they technically could be sold, they are more than likely protected wetlands, Shuman said.

Both parks have streams running through them, and while that may sound nice, in the height of summer, some residents might wish them away.

“The mosquitoes are just wild,” Shuman said.

All the same, he thinks it’s a good place for people of all ages to live.

Mark Feenstra agrees. Feenstra, president of the Delano Park Neighborhood Association, has lived in the park for three years.

“It’s hard to go on vacation,” Feenstra said. He feels like he lives on vacation, he said. One of his favorite things to do is something the early park residents also enjoyed: early morning fishing for striper off the rocks.

“I’m usually the only one down there fishing,” he said.

But he is seeing some transitions now.

“It’s becoming more of a family neighborhood,” Feenstra said. Three families are just moving in with three children each. And one house was recently purchased for over $800,000, only to be torn down for another house to be built in its place.

“We’re getting a lot of tear-downs in there,” Feenstra said.

House values are on the rise, and two private beaches don’t keep them any lower.

“The prices have just gone right through the roof,” Feenstra said.

Shuman echoes his concerns. “I’m right on the water and scared to death of revaluation,” Shuman said. His property tax bill has quadrupled in 15 years.

“If they do double the valuation, the handwriting is on the wall,” Shuman said.

Still, “it’s a great place to live,” Shuman said, and most residents wouldn’t live anyplace else.

Boat stolen from Prouts Yacht Club

Published in the Current

For the first time in more than 20 years, a boat has been stolen from the Prouts Neck Yacht Club.

On June 6, a custom-built wood-and-fiberglass sailboat, 15 feet long, was parked on its trailer at the yacht club. Between then and June 11, the boat, a Doughdish with a white hull, named “Heartthrob,” was stolen.

It is worth about $17,000, police said.

The owner is from Pennsylvania, according to Scarborough police, and summers in Prouts Neck.

Bill Harding manufactures the boats in southern Massachusetts. In 1972 he started building them out of fiberglass after a 1914 design by Nathaniel Herreshoff.

Herreshoff built the boats out of wood between 1914 and 1943.

The first customers were people summering on Cape Cod who bought them for their children to sail in the breezy, choppy Buzzard’s Bay. But, Harding said, “the boat turned out to be beloved by all ages in the family.”

And though he has made 475 of the ballasted-keel boats, one has never been stolen before, he said. “This is the first I’ve ever heard of that,” Harding said.

Dead whale turns up again

Published in the Current

A dead humpback whale continues to visit local beaches and is posing a challenge for marine biologists trying to find a place for it to decompose naturally.

The whale, first found on Richmond Island June 7 and nine days later on Old Orchard Beach, was to be towed out to sea a second time after it washed ashore again on Scarborough Beach June 18.

When first located on Richmond Island, the whale had been dead for about five days. It was tied down to rocks in Mussel Cove for further study on June 8.

An examination of the 32-foot juvenile whale could not determine the cause of death, according to Greg Jakush, president of the Marine Animal Lifeline.

The Cape Elizabeth Water Extrication Team took Jakush and another Lifeline biologist out to the whale and managed to tie the corpse to a large rock on the island, to prevent it from floating away.

The location of the whale, on sharp, slippery rocks in Mussel Cove, made the prospect of cutting open the corpse a hazardous one, Jakush said, so the scientists decided not to. After about 24 hours, tissue samples from a dead whale are almost useless, he said.

The whale was left there, Jakush said, to decompose. He and others expected the whale to stay put, but with storms and high winds over the weekend, the whale moved to Old Orchard Beach. It was towed out to Three Tree Ledge, beyond Stratton Island, June 16, and slit open in the hope that it would sink in about 100 feet of water.

But instead, the wind and current washed it back to the mainland, where it arrived in some rocks at the extreme northern end of Scarborough Beach.

“It’s just caught in the currents around Southern Maine,” Jakush said.

Towing it would be futile without a large trawler, he said, which could take the carcass “very far” offshore. Rather than do that, Jakush said the whale will be towed out to an uninhabited island or ledge and tied down to reduce the likelihood that it will wash ashore again.

Despite the large number of incidents involving this whale, Jakush said it was the first large whale the Lifeline has responded to this year. He said there may be others out there unreported. “There are a lot of hidden coves and islands,” he said.

Jakush said there was no cause for alarm or concern about the rate of whale deaths this year. He said the Center for Coastal Studies had untangled a similar whale from fishing gear off Camp Ellis on June 3, and Center staff believe the dead whale is the same animal.

Jakush said a cause of death is still undetermined, and stressed that the impact of the entanglement is unknown. “It could have been the cause (of death). It may not have been,” he said.

Thursday, June 13, 2002

Police keep Cape safe on graduation weekend

Published in the Current

It’s the Friday before high school graduation in Cape Elizabeth, and Sgt. Kevin Kennedy is sitting in a cruiser at Kettle Cove with his lights off. He turns on his radar and waits.

As if on cue, about 20 cars form a line snaking down the road, past Kennedy’s car, through the parking lot and back out again. Each car has a teen-ager at the wheel, and some have a number of passengers.

The Current decided to ride along with Cape police last Friday to see how they handled graduation weekend.

With graduation looming, some teens were celebrating. Police were out patrolling to make sure the festivities remained safe.

The three officers on duty were Kennedy (from 3 p.m. to 7 a.m.), Officer Allen Westberry (from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m.), and Officer James Starnes (from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m.). The Current spent most of the night with Kennedy.

Kennedy starts with a look around his cruiser, making sure everything’s in place and working, from the road flares and reflective vest in the trunk to the radar detector and video-recording system on his dashboard.

Driving out of the station, Kennedy’s first stop is Kettle Cove, which he will visit several times during the night.

The Cape Elizabeth Water Extrication Team is leaving from the cove to shuttle two biologists out to Richmond Island to tie down a dead whale, so it will be there in the morning.

The scientists want to learn how it died and take tissue samples to keep tabs on the whale population in the Gulf of Maine.

He gets called back to the station to take an accident report for something that happened the day before, and then returns to the cove. On this occasion, he saw the procession of cars come by.

Kennedy expressed surprise at the number of students, but lets them go by. He keeps an eye on the radar, though, hoping someone will come flying down the road. After the cars all leave, he waits some more, and a few return to check whether the police car is still there. It is.

Then he meets up with a state park ranger about to go off duty. The ranger is surprised, too, at the number of cars that just went by. Kennedy decides to come back later in the evening.

Leaving Kettle Cove, Kennedy heads down Route 77 onto Bowery Beach Road and turns into Charles E. Jordan Road, leading to the Sprague estate, Ram Island Farm.

“Let’s go down here, and make sure everything is quiet,” Kennedy said. The road, he said is a frequent spot for joggers and cyclists, but is lightly traveled. A person who gets hurt might have to wait some time for help.

As he goes by, Kennedy eyes the parking lot at Jordan Hall, on the corner of Bowery Beach Road. Sometimes cars are broken into there, because thieves know people are walking or running on nearby roads and are unlikely to return in time to witness a crime.

Finding nothing but an elderly couple out for a drive, Kennedy heads back toward the center of town on Fowler Road. He’s trying to cover ground but in a way that doesn’t fit any pattern from night to night.

“I try to make sure I go through every neighborhood on each shift,” Kennedy said.

But by varying his schedule and patrol route, he makes sure criminals can’t be certain they’ll be safe.

At the corner of Fenway Road, Kennedy turns off Fowler Road and heads to the end of the cul-de-sac to see if anyone is parked there. It is a common parking area for kids heading out to party on the shore of Great Pond.

At the corner of Fenway, he notices that the street sign is missing. Not just the sign with the name of the street, but the entire pole has been removed. He calls it in and heads to nearby Susan Road to make sure the sign is on that corner. It is.

Still making his way down Fowler Road toward the center of town, Kennedy notices a truck going the other way. It is pulling a trailer that has no lights. He turns around and tries to catch up, but reaches the corner of Bowery Beach Road before deciding to give up the chase. He figures the truck has turned off or pulled into a driveway.

Kennedy makes a third effort to head to the center of town, but it is not to be. Dispatcher John Swinehart calls on the radio, reporting that someone has just called the police station to complain about unknown vehicles and people heading down to the beach near Richmond Terrace, a private road near Crescent Beach.

Swinehart also alerts Westberry, patrolling the north side of town that night. Westberry heads down to help out if anything happens, and to provide another set of eyes.

Pulling into Richmond, Kennedy notices a sedan with three girls in it, but they are leaving the area, so he isn’t concerned. Moving down the road a bit, he stops and gets out to check a car parked beside the road.

There’s nothing suspicious inside, so he moves on and leaves the area, having found nothing.

Kennedy heads over to Kettle Cove again and parks with his lights off farther into the lot. He gets out to check on a couple from Rhode Island who are parked there. They’re fine and have just finished a walk on the beach with their dog.

Some more cars come down into the cove and loop through the parking lot when they see Kennedy’s car there. After the traffic subsides, he drives back over to Richmond Terrace, where Westberry has made a traffic stop.

Coming down Richmond Terrace, Kennedy finds himself following a car with a broken taillight. The car pulls into a driveway just in front of where Westberry has stopped a car, in the middle of the one-lane road.

Getting out, Kennedy looks over at the car he has been behind and eyes the license plate’s registration sticker.

“He expired back in March. This is a good one,” Kennedy said.

The driver is a 17-year-old male, and Kennedy asks him to get out of the car. Kennedy searches the car, coming up with several cigarettes and a six-pack of beer.

While Kennedy and Westberry are talking to the driver, a few teens walk by, heading toward the beach. The officers ask what they’re up to, and they say they’re just leaving a friend’s house. When pressed, though, they are unable to name the friend or say what they were doing.

“We were coming to see what was going on over here,” one kid admitted.

“Nothing’s going on. Goodbye,” Kennedy replied.

The driver Westberry stopped was originally just stopped for trespassing, as Richmond Terrace is a private road. It turns out, though, that she has had her license for only 86 days, four days shy of the day she is allowed to have passengers. But there are two other teens in her car.

A search of that car turns up a partially-full bottle of rum and two water bottles also containing rum.

The driver steps out of the car, and one of her passengers, who has had his license long enough to drive passengers, takes the wheel.

The officers and teens are tied up at the scene for about 45 minutes with car searches, license checks and paperwork. The blue strobes on Westberry’s car, and spotlights from both patrol cars illuminate the neighborhood.

But even after three-quarters of an hour, the stop is not done.

Police Chief Neil Williams wants his officers to contact parents when kids are caught with alcohol.

Kennedy follows the car he stopped, with the broken taillight, to the teen’s home.

The boy goes in to wake up his parents, but nobody is home. Kennedy knocks a couple of times, radios dispatch for the phone number, and calls on a cellphone he carries in his car.

There is no answer, so Kennedy gives the kid his business card and asks him to tell his parents to call the police station the next day.

The officers meet back at the police station to do the rest of the paperwork for each complaint, and to photograph the items they have confiscated.

Starnes comes on duty and reports what he has seen on his way to the station.

“They’re massing at Cumby,” he said. Teens are gathering in their cars. Kennedy and Starnes take just a few seconds to decide what spots they’ll pay special attention to for the rest of the night.

The two will continue to follow the teens around town, fitting in the required checks on all businesses in town through the rest of the night.

Firefighters to get pay increase

Published in the Current

The Scarborough Town Council intends to review the pay scale for the town’s firefighters over the summer, and may make further increases in firefighters’ pay in August.

Currently volunteer firefighters are paid $9.27 per hour to respond to fire calls. There are also firefighters and emergency medical technicians who work day shifts in the town’s fire stations, who get paid the same hourly rate.

While planning for the 2002-2003 budget this past spring, Thurlow requested a change in pay rates, with a top hourly wage at $11.50 per hour for all firefighters. After conversations with Town Manager Ron Owens and members of the Town Council, the pay increase was scaled back to $10 per hour, Thurlow said, but with the understanding that there would be a review of pay scales before the next budget cycle.

As part of his budget planning this y e a r, Fire Chief Michael Thurlow discovered that the town’s on-call and per-diem firefighters were being paid somewhat less than those in other towns. Further, private-sector jobs in construction and other skilled work, common side jobs for firefighters, pay substantially more than firefighting, Thurlow said.

“We’re all kind of vying for the same pool” of prospective employees, Thurlow said. Some firefighters have left the department, seeking more money in other departments or other lines of work,” he said.

“The council didn’t feel we had all the information to give the full request,” said Councilor Patrick O’Reilly. In his role as chair of the finance committee, O’Reilly would conduct any meetings reviewing firefighter pay.

“In preparation for that, I’m looking at more than just the base rate,” Thurlow said. As part of his initial budget proposal, he called neighboring fire departments to find out about their rates of pay.

He is now also looking at whether—and how much—those departments, with whom Scarborough competes for per-diem staff, pay for length of time served with the department, level of certification or rank in the department.

Thurlow said he has a draft proposal in the works, and is trying now to figure out what budgetary effect there would be to implement it. That means, Thurlow said, he has to look at each member of the fire, rescue and fire police squads to see where they would fall on a sliding scale of pay.

Thurlow plans to present his proposal to the Town Council’s finance committee in August. Potential outcomes could include a raise in the next budget process, or modification of pay rates in the current fiscal year, Owens said.