Back in the 1970’s, inspired by my newly created, rock free sandy beachfront, I submitted an application for a new house permit to the newly established Land Use Regulation Commission.  I hired a contractor to move the existing cabin to one of my back lots on the Bemis Road.  The total cost of moving, including land clearing, new gravel driveway, and setting the cabin on pads, was $500.   (Just like today’s prices, right?)  I was ready to go!   LURC, however, had other ideas. Unlike the reasonable and competent agents with whom I have worked in the past few years, many of their early employees can only be described as obstructionists and zealots.  My initial application was denied, due to poor soil conditions, and LURC’s unwillingness to recognize alternative septic systems.  One of them suggested that I install a sealed privy toilet, the “Clivus Multrum,” which used no water, and deposited the waste in a tank below.  This would require periodic clean out of the composted material, which, the company boasted, “could then be used for fertilizer.”   There would be a vent pipe from the toilet through the roof, and there would “usually” be “no odor,”  unless a downdraft occurred. It was an outhouse inside one’s bathroom.   “Hey, Honey, could you go down and clean out the privy tank?   It’s getting kind of full!    Just spread it around on the raspberry patch.”      Riiiiiight!  This unit may have been a great idea for an off-the-grid, remote cabin; but in a high end lakefront home?  I don’t think so.  Can you imagine trying to sell an expensive home that was equipped with one?
The LURC guy told me that they were looking into alternative systems, but it could be a year or more before any might be approved.  At the same time, Shelton Noyes was fighting with them over much more far reaching issues, advising me to wait it out.   I was disgusted.  I was also extremely busy with real estate and construction in Massachusetts, so I turned my attention away from Rangeley. Eventually, I learned that LURC had been pressured to begrudgingly approve some alternative septic disposal systems, so I spent yet more money on site engineering, and applied again.  I finally received a building permit in May of 1975, requiring me to install a very complicated, unattractive,  and expensive system.  It wasn’t much of a victory, but would sure beat cleaning out that “odorless waste” from the indoor outhouse.  Nevertheless, the whole process  had left a bad taste in my mouth, and I scrapped the idea.  I didn’t spend much, if any, time in Rangeley for many years thereafter.  As described in a previous column, I turned my attentions to Kennebunkport.
I still made occasional trips to Rangeley, staying in touch with Shelton, and a terrific person named Katherine Moura, a broker in his office.   I was just looking at a letter from Shelton, dated September, 1982, in which he suggested that I keep my shore lots, but allow him to sell my interior lots.  They had increased significantly in value, and since I had no forseeable use for them, I agreed to sell.   A few years earlier,  I bought an oceanfront house in Kennebunkport, which had been damaged by the infamous Blizzard of ’78.  Among other damage, the storm tore the wooden oceanside deck right off the house, depositing it in the nearby marshes, remarkably intact.  I hired a local old-timer and contractor to retrieve the deck, and re-attach it to the house, which he did.  I’ll never forget his comment, delivered in the finest “Bert and I” dialect, when he completed the job:  “Ayuh, if you want to sit in the front row, you’ve gotta pay for that ticket!”  Well, I was now in the front row, having nice dinners at the Whistling Oyster in Ogunquit, and such, and Rangeley was on the back burner.
Then came the first of two big mistakes, which I regret to this day.  A neighbor on Stephens road had long been pestering me to sell him one of my three shore lots.  LURC had since made it impossible to build on less than 200 feet, but he wanted to buy 100 feet for access to that beautiful beach that Tubby had created.  He said that similar, but buildable, lots were selling for around $100K, so he was willing to pay $50K.  I wasn’t impressed, and told him so. In short order, he upped the offer to $100K, with no contingencies, and I took it, in August, 1989.  After all, I still had 200 feet of superb beachfront, facing due west over the widest part of Mooselookmeguntic.
That same year, I had been asked to inspect some oceanfront property in Nova Scotia for a friend of mine. I flew to Halifax in the early spring, and was completely astounded by both the quality of the real estate offerings, and their ridiculously low prices. The parcel I was asked to inspect was less than an hour from Halifax (a city with much similarity to Portland), and consisted of about 700 acres with ONE MILE of sandy beach oceanfront.  Asking price, $600K CAN, or about $400K US.  One couldn’t buy 100 feet of rocky southern Maine oceanfront at that time, for that price, let alone one mile of beach!  While my friend didn’t buy it (another blunder),  I became entranced with Nova Scotia, and later bought two properties there.  One was Kaulbach Island, an 80 acre farmstead in Mahone Bay, just
off the quaint resort town of Chester, and not far from the infamous Oak Island, of the long running TV series about the quest for pirate gold believed buried there.  Then I bought a harborfront lot in Chester- to build a dock and have boat access to the island.  I remember paying five dollars for a federal government permit to build a permanent deep water wharf.  Even 1989, that would have been impossible to do in coastal Maine, or just about anywhere else on the eastern seaboard!  Life was great; however, really, really bad times were on the horizon.

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