July 17, 2008--William (Bill) Buckminster of Owls Head

Not far is Owls Head. No apostrophe. Just “Owls.” That’s what the Abenaki Indians called it. In their language of course. They could see an owl’s head etched into the granite that plunged into the bay.

We were up there the other day visiting the lighthouse but couldn’t see it at all. If there were any Indians nearby I guess we could have asked them; but the were driven out by the English settlers a couple hundred years ago. Pretty much all that remains of them are some pottery shards, arrowheads, and many place names. Most transliterations of what they named things. Like Piscataquis (Branch of the River) and Damariscotta (River of Little Fish). Also, a high-stakes casino on the Penobscot Reservation.

From walking up to the lighthouse, which offers stirring views back into Rockland Harbor, we had worked up an appetite. Rona remembered seeing a general store before the turnoff, right by the Owls Head post office, so we headed back there. We had been in this part of Maine long enough to suspect that they would have something good to eat.

Which they did. Lobster rolls of course but also hot soups and an assortment of sandwiches. And, if you ever find yourself there—which isn’t a bad idea at all—they have some fine homemade chocolate donuts. Needless to say we shared one with our coffee.

We sat with our food at a long communal table, something else we have come to expect to find at these places. This always makes for good conversation. That day we learned a lot about the local lobster industry. Not good at all. Though lobsters are plentiful in the Bay, like everywhere else the price of things was killing business. With marine gasoline well above $4.00 a gallon it costs at least $150 a day for a lobsterman to run his boat so he can work his traps. This pushes up the price to pound of their catch and since people who might be coming here for vacations are staying closer to home and folks in restaurants are watching their money--a lobster dinner at these inflated prices can easily add up to $50 a head, no one is feeling good or feeling optimistic. But still, around that table, no one was whining and the funny stories and gossip flowed as fast as the coffee refills.

One piece of gossip we picked up was about Bill Buckminster, who owns about eleven acres right opposite the general store and the “Garden Club” ladies who are hassling him again.

He’s about 91, we learned, and on every inch of his property, which is right along the main road that leads to the fancy part of town, he has for more than 60 years been piling up what those good ladies call “junk.” Lots of it. Not only do they claim it’s a fire hazard but, aesthetics aside, with property values also way down these women are complaining that his “mess” is not helping with that. Actually, quite the contrary—with about everything for sale, including some of their homes, who’s going to buy a place anywhere near his.

To work off the lobster rolls and donut, we thought to walk over to take a look for ourselves. It’s pretty much just across from the general store.

And yes it is a sight to behold. Perhaps even enough of a sight worth a drive over to see. “Lots” of junk, or stuff, is a vast understatement. “Mountains” would better describe what he has spent a lifetime gathering. A pile of discarded window frames at least ten feet high is right out there between two of his decaying buildings, on one of which over soon-to-be-fully caved-in entrance door is half-hanging a weathered Antiques sign. Is this evidence of his sense of humor? What looks like thousands of crumbling wooden lobster buoys forms another mountain. There is a huge pile of coiled copper wire. Another of varying lengths of discarded aluminum leaders and gutters. Still another hill of ruined metal lawn furniture. And a vast pile of broken clocks, all with missing hands so there no way to even intimate when all this began or ended. Assuming, at his advanced age, he has stopped whatever he did to amass all of this.

On all the many trees there were glaring NO TRESPASSING signs, but since no one seemed to be around and we didn’t hear any snarling dogs we did take a few tentative steps onto the property to get a closer look.

As in many rural places, Buckminster’s had a lineup of abandoned and rusting cars. From at least back to the early 1950s. And, not entirely surprising, all of the cars were filled with stuff, as we could see through the shattered windows were the barn and building with the Antiques sign. From wall to wall and floor to ceiling in the case of the buildings and from floorboards almost up to the roof in the case of the cars.

After twenty minutes or so, beginning to feel more respectful than trespassing, we started to calm down enough so that we were able to take a closer look at things. A sense of order began to make itself felt—not just clocks with other clocks and copper wire with copper wire, that was most evident—but first, especially within the cars, there appeared to be much more method than dismissive madness at work.

In an old Dodge Buckminster had placed—and “placed” seemed like the right way to think about this—were a series of layers of books and fabrics, stacked in a manner, tiered, so that, if he chose to, he would be able to find whatever it might be that he wanted to put his hands on. And gently on top of what we now thought to be a careful arrangement—again, “arrangement” seemed the right way to describe what we were observing, yes “observing,” was a dried sheaf of what looked like rye or oats.

The larger yards then of abandoned ladders and cooking kettles and rubber tubing and baskets and steam irons and moldy books and keys and doctors’ satchels and grocery scales and broom heads and telephone receivers and wooden kegs and hat forms and garden shears and bicycle wheels and hubcaps and license plates and linked chains and iron stoves and harnesses and chair parts and croquet balls and toilet-bowl floats and birdhouses and electric fans and bricks and shotgun shells and tin stove pipes and sports trophies and flashlights and . . . all of this then suggested either a collector’s mania or an inner logic still unfathomable to us. Perhaps, always to be unfathomable.

Overwhelmed by these literally hundreds of thousands of pieces and what they might mean we did understand what the Garden Club ladies might be feeling about what their neighbor had done to their village—a driveby by a perspective home owner or tourist would undoubtedly cause most to press harder on the accelerator. But we also understood that we had visited an extraordinary collection— there could be no doubt that we had visited was a significant “collection”—and so we made our way back to the general store to see what we could learn.

The owner was eager to talk about him and the ladies. “Oh, he’s been doin’ that for years,” she said with a smile and affectionate wave of her hand, “No harm to anyone, far as I can see. I don’t know what all the fuss’s about. Those women always with their pants in a bunch. Why he’s been here, his family’s been here before theirs even got off the boat. Now, mind you, they’re good people. They just don’t understand him. To tell you the truth, neither do I. Most days, that is. I say live and let live. Isn’t that we’re s’possed to be about? I mean all this hollerin’ and shoutin’. I’m getting too old to want to listen to it any more. If we out here on the Head can’t figure how to live with each other and tolerate each other than I don’t know who can.”

But before we might misinterpret her, that she was feeling pessimistic about things, she quickly added, with an even more glowing smile, “But just ‘tween us, most of those ladies are still mad with him because back a few years some of them were sweet on him, but all he cared about were his things. But they’re really all right about him. I don’t think any of them would really like to see anything of his touched. They just like to make a little noise once in a while. No real harm in that. Basically we do get along fine. Pretty fine for the most part.

“And Bill did marry. His wife was a wonder. Died a few years back. Almost killed him. But he’s all right now. Battling cancer so they say, but he claims he’s fine. That’s him. He doesn’t do any collecting any more. Gave that up when Helen died. She’s buried right there up that little road right by Bill’s place. You should walk over if you didn’t and take a look. Right by a pond that the fellas in the firehouse next door tap into to fill up their pumper. Bill hates them doing that. Claims that pond’s on his property and what they’re doing is not nature’s way.”

She paused to think about that. “You did walk over there to take a look? Someth’ isn’t it? It makes me feel I live somewhere special. Don’t know exactly why I say that. But people who know about him do come by to visit. To look at what he’s accomplished. Even some famous people. Some artists and actors. Zero Mostel had a place near here and he used to come by to fool around with Bill. Always had a plastic water pistol with him which he stuck in Bill’s ribs and said ‘This is a stick up,’ as if Bill had anything worth stealing. And Andrew Wyeth bought some of his stuff. Maybe even used it in his paintings. I should ask him the next time he comes by. Yes he does. Most summers. Much nicer, I’ll tell you, than his son. That Jamie. But ‘nough said about that though.”

Customers were lining up so we let her go. But as we were about to leave she said, “You might want to take a look at that book.” She pointed to a small shelf below where she displayed the local newspapers. “It’s by some Boston woman who wrote it about Bill. People say it’s not bad. I need to get around to reading it one of these days. Who knows what she might be sayin’.” At that she laughed to herself.

* * *

We did get the book. It’s Owls Head (again no apostrophe) by a Cambridge-based artist, Rosamond Purcell, who befriended Buckminster and over twenty years bought things from him. Tens of thousands by her count, and in the book, a little disappointing to me, she spends most of her time writing about what he and his life’s work came to mean to her. And how she transmuted what she acquired from him into her own work, which is quite interesting.

She’s an excellent writer and the book is worth reading and pondering. It’s largely a meditation about the meaning and beauty of decay—Purcell has been called the “doyenne of decay.”

But I was hoping to learn even more than is there about him. No disrespect to her, but the owner of the general store got it right-- he’s the one who’s really special.