LEWISTON – If OSHA hadn’t stepped in, Jason Jackson would have spent Wednesday afternoon painting a room someplace, not skating in Kennedy Park’s concrete bowls.

Thanks, OSHA.

Jackson was one of a handful of people not working Wednesday afternoon, soaking up the sun and ridiculously unseasonably warm temperatures.

A private painting subcontractor by trade, Jackson, 22, of Greene, was working this week. But then OSHA notified him that he’d let his workplace insurance lapse. He’d have to come up with $3,000 to get the policy back in place.

“I’m borrowing that money from some friends, but that’s taking a couple of days to set up,” Jackson said. “So, I figured I’ll spend the time skating. I love skating.”

Nearby, Pat Gurney, 29, and Danielle Spencer, 19, watched Gurney’s son Zion navigate the skate park course. Both do telephone sales work for Great Falls Marketing most days, but Gurney said he’s massaged his schedule to let him take every Wednesday off.

Zion, a third-grader at Auburn’s Walton School, gets out of school at 11:30 a.m. on most Wednesdays. So they come to the park and skate together.

“It’s pretty much the only time we get to spend together during the week,” Gurney said. “It’s a good time to just devote a little attention to him.”

Zion agrees. It’s a great skate park – but he doesn’t like the location.

“That’s why I bring him here on Wednesdays,” Gurney said. “There’s fewer people, and, you know. It can get a little rough around here at other times.”

Up the hill and back toward the center of the park, Daniel Giusti, 27, and Jennifer Costello, 25, were kissing each other goodbye. Giusti had just finished his shift stripping floors in Wilton. Before that, he was doing construction cleanup in Bath.

He got back home at noon, and didn’t to have to be back at work until Thursday afternoon.

But Costello said Kennedy Park is where she spends most afternoons.

“I live off of him,” she said. “He’s the father of my baby.”

She watched Giusti walk away toward his lunch, chatting with Vincent Turner, 36, while her children and their friends ran around the Kennedy Park playground. Turner, who gets Social Security payments for a medical condition, said it beats working.

“If I wasn’t here, I guess I’d just be sitting at home watching TV,” he said.

Farther up in the park, Justin Beliveau, 19, was taking his red-tailed boa snake Tia for an afternoon walk. Hot and dry is Tia’s kind of weather. Beliveau said he tries to make the trek every afternoon.

“She likes to get out, and it’s perfect for her when it’s warm like this,” he said. “And people like to see her.”

Beliveau gets disability payments for mental retardation, but attends a training program every morning and works cleaning Friendly’s every night. The training teaches him how to live on his own.

His friend Jolynn Kennedy, 20, usually accompanies Beliveau and Tia, pushing her “babies” in a carriage draped in blankets. She lifted the blankets to reveal two blinking chihuahuah dogs, Mobile and Munchkin, shivering in the heat. They don’t walk, she explained, but need to get out of the house. That’s why she needs the carriage.

Beliveau’s mom, Diane Beliveau gets Social Security payments, too. She spends most mornings baby-sitting for friends but welcomes a daily break to walk the park with her son and his friend.

Elsewhere, Herb Jones, 60, and Theresa Foster, 55, are finishing their lunch. Jones said he retired for days like this. He’s worked at shoe factories and saw mills during his working life has some money saved up. He does odd jobs now and again.

“I get money coming in here, there and everywhere,” Jones said.

Foster retired from a Waterville bakery a year ago, after cataracts ruined her sight. She has back problems to, and takes disability payments from the state.

A nearby roofer, who didn’t want to be identified or photographed, said it was too hot to do anything but sit.

“I should be up on a roof, but I’m self employed so I can take any day off if I want,” he said. “It’s too hot to be on a roof today.”