In the late summer of 1984, we arrived in Maine. I didn’t have a job, as I still had Hollywood money, and my girls were both in college.
I was bored. My startling good looks and big city charm weren’t in demand in this old mill town, and I needed something to do.
As a former stand up comic, television actor and columnist, my talents just weren’t in demand.
So I spent the days swatting mosquitoes and gnats, the nights listening to crickets. But She was happy here, and that made me happy.
Luckily, She had great street cred and knew everyone. One of those friends suggested I volunteer in the summer programs at Colby. I did.
While laying in the grass on that old campus, sipping a Dr Pepper, I was stung by a huge bee. I hadn’t seen a bee in years, and I panicked.
Down the path came a 5-foot-4 ex-Marine drill sergeant named Patricia Gorman. She gently slapped my face and growled, “Snap out of it, movie star, you ain’t gonna die today.” She gave me a pill, and I survived.
Like everyone else in this tiny town, Pat knew who I was. Calmly, she explained that I wasn’t in “Oz” anymore, and that this wasn’t Kansas.
Pat had a drill sergeant’s mouth, and I fell in love with her. She’s gone now, and I miss her, but were she here, she’d tell you how true this is.
Pat got me a job with something called “Special Programs,” where I was given lots of boring tasks, which I managed to mess up. So the officials put me in a job I could handle. Tour guide. Wow!
Colby, at that time, featured a summer of special programs for doctors and others in the medical profession, mostly men, who had wives and kids with nothing to do all day.
I was given a large un-air conditioned van to drive and a list of local “sights” to show my customers.
If you remember Waterville in the early ’80s, before the Lockwood started serving lunch, you can imagine my problem.
I knew that if I didn’t get creative, I’d be back on my porch. I had to come up with some fun sites and fast.
So, I got creative. I showed up on the first day in a blue blazer and white pants, and loaded eight wives and children aboard. As we floated down Main Street, they sat quietly, fanning themselves and wishing they were in a cool movie house.
Show time! “Over there, see that bank?” I shouted. “ In 1932, Bonnie and Clyde robbed that bank.”
Eyes snapped open, except for one lady in dark aviator glasses who kept taking notes.
As we passed a run down motel, I shouted
“Over there at that motel, Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert filmed ‘It Happened One Night.’”
You could count the gasps. I was electric.
I pointed out a brick building, any brick building, and told them that Johnny Carson was born there, that Dylan and Madonna had slept there.
When we passed the old Manor restaurant, I even convinced them that David O’Selznick filmed the pillared front for Tara, in “Gone With the Wind” there.
By the second day of that week, my touring career came to an end. The silent lady in aviator glasses at the back of the bus had complained to the front office, and I had to turn in my blue badge.
As Rudy Giuliani famously said, “It was fun while it lasted.”
J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
