FARMINGTON — Watching traffic on the Wilton Road, Harold Cote sees some strange things, but it’s the waves and horn toots from motorists that keep him glued to his seat watching the busy road, also known as Routes 2 and 4 in West Farmington.
“I wave to everyone and many of them wave back,” he says. “If I miss one, they’ll toot their horn.”
Harold and his wife, Ginny, moved there this summer after their mobile home on Porter Hill Road burned three days before Christmas last year. Their loss of personal items and a Pekingese dog was heartbreaking for the couple who had moved into the home shortly before it burned on a snowy night.
Harold suffered a stroke in the mid-1990s and a heart attack and mini-stroke since the couple moved to West Farmington. He can’t count on the strength of his legs any longer and now walks with a long wooden stick.
The front deck on the house became a haven where he’d sit and watch traffic.
“I’ve got nothing else to do,” he said, although he often goes out of his way to help other people. “There’s nothing people like better, though, than a friendly wave.”
He’d just returned from giving a neighbor a ride Thursday morning. Like the waves he gives motorists, his good deeds come back to him,” he said. People were so good to the couple after the fire that he continues to thank them.
As the weather started to chill this fall, he moved his watch from the deck to his black Blazer parked mere feet from the busy four lanes. He plans to continue being there this winter.
Motorists coming into Farmington see the white-haired man’s smiling face, and wave. Cote was a chef who friends nicknamed “the colonel” because of his likeness to Col. Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame, he said.
He has seen accidents, motorists not stopping at the Oakes Street stop sign across from his home and moose meandering across the road with police stopping traffic to allow safe passage. Cote estimated about 90 percent of the drivers he sees are on their cell phones.
Perhaps the strangest site so far, he said, was when a young woman riding past raised her shirt and flashed her chest at him.
He listens to his scanner and uses his cell phone to call his wife in the apartment.
Both were raised in northern Maine. Cote cooked for 1,700 dorm students at the University of Maine in Orono before moving on to cook gourmet meals in restaurants in Boston and New York. They retired to Florida, but between watching for alligators in their driveway and the heat of the summers, Ginny wanted to move home, he said.
Harold Cote shares a friendly wave with motorists on the Wilton Road in Farmington on Thursday. Cote spends a good part of the day watching the busy traffic, while his wife, Ginny, keeps herself busy in their apartment.
Harold Cote shares a friendly wave with motorists on the Wilton Road
in Farmington on Thursday. Cote spends a good part of the day watching
the traffic, while his wife, Ginny, keeps herself busy in their
apartment.
Harold Cote shares a friendly wave with motorists on the Wilton Road
in Farmington on Thursday. Cote spends a good part of the day watching
the busy traffic, while his wife, Ginny, keeps herself busy in their
apartment.
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