GK: [0:00:00] Let’s see. [inaudible] the sound of the restaurant. I’ll have you say your first and last name and just tell me where we are so that we know why there’s –

 

DP: David Paine. We’re at Jordan’s Restaurant, 80 Cottage Street, Bar Harbor, Maine.

 

GK: David, can you tell me a little bit about your history here?

 

DP: I was born in Texas. My family’s been here for generations. I moved back here when I was one. My dad was in the service in Texas. I went to school here. I went to high school here. I went to college in Bangor, at Husson College after high school, came back to Bar Harbor, and worked at several different restaurants until I came here at Jordan’s in 1976.

 

GK: Wow. What was it like here when you were growing up?

 

DP: [0:01:01] When I was growing up, the fire had been in 1947. I was born in 1945, so the town was going through a transition period from losing a lot of wealthy people’s homes that they did not rebuild. The town had a lot of land, but they didn’t have many people to support the town, so there was a transition from the wealthier people who came and stayed just summers to vacation-type people that were coming to vacation. That started probably in the ’50s, got going better in the ’60s, but there was a lot of people trying to get people to come here for a lot of years. Now fifty years later, we got so many people coming here that we have some people saying we have too many. It’s been a transition.

 

GK: Right. So if I understand what you’re saying, the wealthy homeowners lost their homes, so they weren’t summering?

 

DP: [0:02:15] They lost their homes, and they did not rebuild them. Some of them rebuilt in Northeast Harbor. Some of them were older people anyway and just didn’t come back. But many of the homes that – many of the motels – in fact, most of the motels coming into town, like The Wonder View [Inn] up on the hill there, those were summer homes; those were the homes the wealthy people. The fire took many of them, and so they were rebuilt as motels or hotels.

 

GK: Wow. Do you remember when people started to come? When it was more of a vacation? Was it a big change?

 

DP: I think it was a big change, yeah. It was a big – at one time in Bar Harbor, there were five automobile dealerships, five or six grocery stores, all supported by more wealthy people; like the Ford family would buy lots of Fords, and that transition took some time, but pretty soon, the Bluenose came into existence then in 1955, and that was a boat that went from Bar Harbor to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, and that began the transition period, I think, in 1955.

 

GK: [0:03:54] You were just a little kid. What did you do? What were you doing for fun around town?

 

DP: [laughter] I caddied at the golf course. Other than school – I mean, when I was in school, I played sports and baseball and basketball and golf. But in the summertime, I lived by the Kebo Valley Golf Course, and so I spent my summers caddying for many of the wealthy people that were still here.

 

GK: Wow. When were you born, just so I [inaudible]?

 

DP: 1945.

 

GK: Right. So the fire happened, and there were still – but there were always people in Northeast and Southwest Harbor too, living, and they would come to Bar Harbor for –?

 

DP: They would come to Bar Harbor to play golf. You’re talking about wealthy people?

 

GK: Yes, yes.

 

DP: They would come to – many of the people from Northeast Harbor – their golf course in Northeast Harbor – part of it was closed during the war, and so it didn’t open until a few years later. They would come to Bar Harbor to play golf at our golf course. Our golf course was a private golf course until 1959, and then it became a public golf course. As the more wealthy people died or couldn’t support it, they opened it up to townspeople.

 

GK: [0:05:25] Right. At that time, did you feel – was there a wealth gap between townspeople and the people who owned the mansions? Was there always sort of a –?

 

DP: There was certainly a wealth gap, but as far as I can see, as far as I know, the people that were wealthy people hired a lot of people. The overwhelming majority were great people. They treated everybody fairly, and it was okay.

 

GK: I think I heard once – someone told me that there was a chambermaid retirement fund back in the old, old days. It was probably the ’30s or ’40s.

 

DP: I haven’t heard that but I do know that the summer people or wealthy people hired a lot of people, and they had retirement programs. The homes were so big here because they traveled from Philadelphia, New York, or Boston, and the transportation was the railroad. Some of this was before automobiles. They would go in across the bay, like Hancock over there, where the railroad came in, I believe, and then ferry across to Bar Harbor. They built the big homes so that they could have their maids and the chauffeurs – so there was room for everybody to stay, and they stayed for two or three months at a time because the transportation was lax.

 

GK: [0:07:09] Yeah, took so long. What were your parents doing for work? Your father was –?

 

DP: My father worked in the post office and eventually became the postmaster, and my mother was an RN, a [registered] nurse.

 

GK: Wow.

 

DP: After the fire, my family lost everything in the fire; our home burned and everything, but we had lots of love, and they both had good jobs, so they were covered.

 

GK: Did they rebuild on the same piece of land?

 

DP: Same spot.

 

GK: Wow. The fire is this thing that – it’s kind of amazing. It shaped the town in a way, it seems. It had a big effect.

 

DP: Well, it changed the town. It changed the town from being a three-month town to being eventually now our season here – a vacation season for people is stretched out to, I would say, six months. Before that, it was probably three months that the more wealthier people came and stayed.

 

GK: [0:08:12] What would happen in the winter?

 

DP: When I was in high school, I can remember going to school Labor Day, around Labor Day, and then walking downtown from the high school, which is just a short walk, and people would be boarding up their businesses. They would have plywood, and they would be shutting them down. There were a few places that stayed open, but there were many that, come Labor Day, would just board up the buildings.

 

GK: Wow. Were there people fishing? Was the waterfront? What was the waterfront like then, do you remember?

 

DP: Yeah. The waterfront was fishing. There are always – my dad had friends that were lobstermen, and we would go and talk to them. There was fishing, lobster fishing. There was haddock around. There was scallops. There was shrimp. Those things are gone now. There’s no shrimping. They do open the scallop season for a short time, but it used to be open a long time. There was even some ground fishing around here, but that’s gone too.

 

GK: [0:09:38] Yeah. Were there still the same big hotels or anything on the water in those days? What was it like down there? No.

 

DP: No. Some of the big hotels were built on – well, one of them is built on what used to be a town dump, and another one is built on what used to be a coal yard, a wood and coal yard, where they sold coal. That was right next to the Bar Harbor Club. That was a parallel universe there, where you had the Bar Harbor Club on one side, where there was a nice lawn, well-kept. Next door, you had a coal yard. Then, next door to that, you had what used to be a street with a town dump on it, really.

 

GK: [0:10:40] Wow. [laughter]

 

DP: But now it’s all cleaned, and it’s beautiful. When it was first built, some of the changes that were there I didn’t think that I liked, but as I began to watch people down there and watch how happy they were – tourists that would come, they were well dressed, they had money in their pocket, they were having a good time. I began to realize that maybe that change was really good.

 

GK: When did you start to feel that it was good? Was that when you were younger too, or are you talking more recently?

 

DP: I’m talking more recently about the bigger hotels that were built down on the waterfront. Those are big places, and they’re owned by one company. But the man that did it had a vision, and he used to sit at my counter and talk about it. He asked me what I thought of the new motel where Paddy’s is. When it was first built, I told him I didn’t like it. He said, “Well, if you’re standing still, you’re going behind.” So a couple of years later, I was walking down by there in the early evening in the summertime, and it was a nice evening. There was a young lady playing music out at Paddy’s, and I watched all the people having a good time around there, and I thought, “I think I’m wrong.”  I wrote him a letter and told him how nice it was. He came to see me, and it was nice.

 

GK: [0:12:22] When he was talking about it in your restaurant, you were not sure? You thought you didn’t –? Wasn’t something you wanted?

 

DP: I liked the first one. I liked the Harborside with the stone building. I like that. That looks more New England to me. I thought the other one looked more Florida to me. So I told him that. But now it fits in. It’s nice now.

 

GK: Yeah. So in your lifetime, there’s been a lot of that, a lot of change and a lot of buildings coming up, and much more people. I always hear the story that’s nostalgic for the time before, but I think it’s kind of a nice sentiment to say, “Well, it’s nice to see people having a good time.”

 

DP: [0:13:14] I think there is a lot of nostalgia still here. I think people my age and older remember what it was like, and they still remember with nice memories, fond memories. But I think that people also realize that the changes have been pretty good, too.

 

GK: Yeah. Can you talk about this business and how you got into it?

 

DP: [0:13:46] When I got through college – I graduated from college in January of 1968, and it was the year of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, the month of Tet Offensive. I had some deferments, and I didn’t go to Vietnam, but what that meant was that people that did not go had plenty of business opportunities. I went to a business school, and I interviewed with several different companies. I went to Schenectady, New York, for a job. I went there and didn’t like it. I didn’t like the area, didn’t like – so I came back here. I worked in the post office for a couple of years, and I worked at several different restaurants. Then I came here in 1976 and started this. This was a variety store when I came here, and all it had was the stools. They sold steamed hot dogs and had a little small grill. So the first year I came here, I put in a bigger grill and put in some booths. I had a really hard job getting women to come here because it was a man’s store. It was open early in the morning. There was a lot of fishermen. There was a lot of language that maybe wasn’t proper, and it was not the cleanest place. So when I came here, I cleaned it up, put in the booths, put in a bigger grill, had some ladies working for me that would attract some other ladies. As soon as I got a few to come, then I got more and more and more. As you may know, when men and women go out to eat, it’s usually the woman’s determines where you eat, and so that’s worked out okay for me.

 

GK: [0:15:57] You had to get that part of the market; make sure you had women coming in.

 

DP: That’s half the market.

 

GK: Was it a hangout spot when it was a variety store, too, for fishermen?

 

DP: It was a hangout for fishermen. It was open early in the morning. They sold beer. They had dirty magazines. They did have some bread and some milk and some canned goods, but the canned goods had been there since 1920, I think. So they didn’t sell any of that. [00:16:34]

 

[End of Track 1. Start of Track 2]

 

DP: [0:00:00] It was okay when the ladies came. The guys that were used to being around nothing but men on the water or working in ditches or wherever they were working cleaned up their act themselves. I didn’t have to do much. They knew what was going on. There were good guys. They were not mean guys. It was just a man’s place, and so they cleaned it up themselves.

 

GK: That seems like it’s still sort of a tradition, and it’s forty years later or something?

 

DP: Forty-five years later, it’s still the same. The fishermen got different faces and different names, but they sit at the counter, and the people that are tourist-type people that sit there and listen to them talk and listen to them talk politics or weather or fishing or whatever it is, they get a kick out of it. They laugh, and it’s interesting to them. They’ve never heard anything like that probably, and they like it.

 

GK: [0:01:08] And that just kept – was that a business decision? Are you a morning person?

 

DP: Growing up as a kid, I was never a morning person, except to go to the golf course. I did go to the golf course. When it was a private golf course, the caddies could play from daylight until seven o’clock. I learned to get up in the morning and played all the holes you could play until seven o’clock. I did spend a lot of early mornings. When I first came here, it was open at night, too.

 

GK: Wow.

 

DP: We were open till eleven o’clock, twelve o’clock. I did that a couple of years, but that just about killed me, so I quit that.

 

GK: But was it important to you to be open early and have that same – because I don’t imagine all your major business is in the morning.

 

DP: [0:02:08] The early morning people are my favorite people, and they’ve become like a family because, in the summertime, it’s busy early morning, so you don’t have the chance to talk to them, but as a whole, in the off-season – I’ve been through divorces with them, deaths. I’ve been through all kinds of things, and they become like family. They’re great people. They get up in the morning. They want to work. They want to engage people. I’ve got everything from younger fishermen now to – one man is ninety-four years old who was an Omaha Beach survivor in Normandy on the first wave going in. It’s a big variety of ages, but they all love each other, I’ll tell you that.

 

GK: [0:03:11] And they all get up early.

 

DP: Yes.

 

GK: That’s the unifying – and did those folks come here a lot of days a week?

 

DP: Come every day.

 

GK: Wow.

 

DP: I can’t say every single day, but almost every day. Almost every day.

 

GK: That’s amazing.

 

DP: Yeah.

 

GK: That’s amazing. What is it, do you think, that keeps people coming back to something like that? The feeling of being together?

 

DP: The feeling of being together and the feeling of being – when they come through the door, they know that they’re appreciated. They know that not only do I care about them, but other people care about them, too.

 

GK: Do you think there used to be more businesses with that kind of feel? I mean, do you think, in some ways, this is one of the –?

 

DP: [0:04:18] I think that the chain restaurants, which we don’t have any in Bar Harbor – well, we do have Subway, and we do have some. I think chain restaurants have taken a toll on the family businesses. I think there were more family businesses that had the same attitude and the same feelings that Jordan’s has, but they’re getting weeded out.

 

GK: Yeah. It’s something about knowing – when they come in, they know you, which is probably a big thing, too.

 

DP: Yeah.

 

[Telephone rings.]

 

GK: Should we wait for that? Wait for the phone?

 

DP: Yeah.

 

GK: Is that you up there?

 

DP: Yeah, that’s me and my wife. That’s not the wife that started here with me; that’s a different one. But the one that started here with me does work for us. She does.

 

GK: [0:05:20] Oh, wow. Is she a server or a cook?

 

DP: No. We have a store next door. We also have a store downtown that’s called Stone Soup. It’s a kids’ store, and she runs those stores for us.

 

GK: Oh, wow. It’s a family business. Your daughter works here, too, right?

 

DP: Yeah. My son has worked here. My daughter has worked here. My sister works here. I’ve had nieces work here, nephews. My brother worked here a little bit. It’s a family affair. Yeah.

 

GK: Did you ever have a time when it was –? Was it hard to get started, or did you already have a clientele because of the variety store?

 

DP: When I came here, people asked me why I left the name Jordan’s, and the reason I did that was because the man that started the store, his name was Lowell Jordan, and he’s a distant relative of mine. He was a well-liked man, and he was eighty years old when he was still working in the store. People from all over knew him and knew where he was, and so I wanted people to know where I was, and so I left the name the same because everybody knew where Jordan’s was.

 

GK: [0:06:50] Yeah, I love that. Yeah. Why change a good thing? Your marketing is built right in.

 

DP: That’s right.

 

GK: People already knew about it, so they just kept coming. Is that right?

 

DP: I had people that were coming here, particularly the fishermen and then anybody from away that had been to Bar Harbor. There weren’t as many businesses then, so Jordan’s was a more popular place. Most people knew where Jordan’s was. You could ask anybody. If anybody downtown was delivering product or doing something, you said, “Where’s Jordan’s,” they all knew. So I just left it the same.

 

GK: Has it just been more and more busy in the summer now that more people are coming? Have you had ebbs and flows?

 

DP: [0:07:55] We’ve had ebbs and flows. We’ve never had a year in Bar Harbor that I can ever remember in my lifetime when if you were selling a product, the right product, that people didn’t make a living. I’ve never seen a year that people couldn’t make a living. Now, if you had something people didn’t want to buy, that may be different, but there’s always been people coming here. There’s always been people willing to spend their money. The park has grown. The park is beautiful. It’s been well maintained, and it’s better maintained now than it was forty years ago. People have discovered it more recently, I think. I think it was a hidden treasure for a long time.

 

GK: Yeah, it seems like more people. I grew up in Deer Isle, and we would come. But when I was a kid, Bar Harbor was like going to the city. Now it’s like, in the summer, we don’t even go here.

 

DP: [0:09:05] Yeah, it’s true.

 

GK:  It’s so busy.

 

DP:  I hear that a lot. But people that know their way around, local people, they still can find places to go where they’re alone if they want to be alone, or there’s not as many people. There’s still places to go. You just have to know where to go.

 

GK: You have to come to Jordan’s early in the morning.

 

DP: Yeah.

 

GK: Do you think the early morning thing – people know about it, and they come to see it? Or it’s just that there’s so many people that they’re here at all hours of the day?

 

DP: No, I think they know about it. I think they’ve learned about it. I think that over the years I’ve had – I’m on my probably third generation of people. The people that have been here once before and been to the mountain to watch the sunrise and then come to Jordan’s for pancakes afterward or breakfast afterward – I think some of those people still come. I think some of their kids still come. Now I think some of their grandkids still come. It’s kind of a tradition-type thing.

 

GK: [0:10:14] Yeah, I did it in high school. [laughter]

 

DP: Yeah.  People like it, and I see the faces, some of the same faces, a little older, and some of the kids that were – a lot of the kids over the years flip pancakes and do things that maybe you wouldn’t do in other restaurants, and they come back twenty-five years later and say, “Do you remember when I flipped that pancake? I flipped my own pancake?” or did something. So it all makes an experience.

 

GK: It’s a feeling of community here.

 

DP: Yes.

 

GK: Are there things as a small business owner –? Well, I call this a small business; you’re a family-owned business. It’s a robust business. Are there things in town that are challenges that you see yourself facing or things that you’re excited about that are happening?

 

DP: [0:11:15] I think the challenges have been government regulated, whether it’s federal government, state government, or town government. There’s more and more paperwork, more and more things to do all the time. Kelly spent two days doing a report for an insurance company on our payroll or worker compensation things. Even the bigger companies are getting you to do their work. They used to come around, give you an audit, and do it themselves. Now they want you to do the audit, and then you mail it into them, and then they check it against your 941 employment forms and things like that.

 

GK: [0:12:12]Yeah, it’s things you might not have time for.

 

DP: Each time that it happens, you have to hire somebody to do that, and so things become more expensive. Eventually, that translates into higher prices. Business people understand that. Sometimes people who aren’t in business don’t.

 

GK: Yeah. Have you had to raise your prices a lot? It’s not like they’re that high.

 

DP: I have. The state minimum wage has gone up. I think it’s twelve dollars now. I think that is a good thing. That doesn’t bother us. Everybody that works here makes more than that, so that’s not a problem. Doing away with the tip credit was a big deal. You understand what that is?

 

GK: I worked in a restaurant so I should, but will you tell me again?

 

DP: A tip credit is where I get to pay my waitresses half of the minimum wage, and then what they earn in tips, I can count as the other half of the minimum wage. If they don’t make up to the minimum wage, I have to make up the difference. But there was a group – I think it was an outside group from outside the state of Maine – that wanted to go to fifteen dollars an hour, and if you did that, if you went to fifteen dollars an hour, even twelve dollars an hour, and had to pay my waitresses that, and the customer didn’t have to leave a tip, it would put a big burden on me, a very expensive burden, and I couldn’t find a waitress to work for fifteen dollars an hour.

 

GK: [0:14:02] Yeah.

 

DP: My waitresses are making well over that. It was defeated, and it was defeated by the waitresses and waiters in the state of Maine that went to Augusta and spent their time defeating it themselves.

 

GK: Yeah.

 

DP: Are you familiar with that at all?

 

GK: Yeah, I remember because I worked at a restaurant at the time, but I was a food runner, so I didn’t want them to get rid of their tips either. Having someone explain it like that was easier. Sometimes it’s hard to know what is going on.

 

DP: Well, when people voted on minimum wage, the tip credit was thrown in with it, and people didn’t know what the tip credit was. They voted – let’s put the minimum wage to twelve dollars. Everybody said that was a good idea, and the tip credit went along with it, but they didn’t understand what was going to happen to the smaller businesses, smaller restaurants, and waiters and waitresses.

 

GK: [0:15:11] Yeah. It’s all those little – and it’s all those little things. Do you feel like now you’re in a position where the restaurant can sustain, and it seems like a good –?

 

DP: Oh, the restaurant can sustain the minimum wage. I have no problem with that. I have no problem with minimum wage going up. But the tip credit is a big deal. It would have been a big deal. I figured it was four or five hundred dollars a day to me. Some of the bigger places, probably a thousand a day. That’s a lot of money. You can only raise your prices – people will only pay so much.

 

GK: Yeah. How many people do you see coming through your doors? Do you have counts for that?

 

DP: How many do I seat?

 

GK: Do you see on a busy summer day.

 

DP: Oh, we can see six to seven hundred regularly on busy days. We gear up to do a thousand, not necessarily feeding them, but for somebody who comes through the door and buys a bottle of water or buys a newspaper or buys a cup of coffee to go or something. Somebody’s got to wait on them. Every person that comes through the door, I count as one person. I think probably some days there are a thousand.

 

GK: [0:16:42] Woah, that’s crazy.

 

DP: Yeah.  But as far as feeding them, I don’t think we feed a thousand, but someone’s got to wait on them.

 

GK: Yeah.  How many staff people do you have in summertime?

 

DP: On each shift, there’s twenty-three or four.

 

GK: Woah.

 

DP: I use three dishwashers. There’s either two or three people doing prep work for the next day. I’ve got either six or seven waitresses depending on the day. I’ve got four cooks working, sometimes five. I’ve got probably five bus people at least, maybe six, maybe seven. Then a cashier. Sometimes two cashiers and somebody working on the door, telling people where to sit and how long it’s going to be.

 

GK: [0:17:51] Yeah, and a line out the door some days.

 

DP: Some days. But we do a good job of getting them in and out. We’re fast.

 

GK: Yeah. That’s amazing. It’s just amazing, too, in Bar Harbor how many people are coming every year.

 

DP: Yeah. The people are traveling in generations. I don’t know if you’ve noticed it or not, particularly Oriental people; there’s a lot of Oriental people. There’s a lot of people from India and other places, and they’re traveling with grandparents, parents, and children. They’re traveling in groups of six, eight, ten at a time. I don’t know if it’s because they want to come here, or it’s safer here, or they’re staying away from Europe. I’m not sure what the reason is, but it’s busy.

 

GK: Yeah. Some sort of tourism – somehow, the Maine Bureau of Tourism got it over to China.

 

DP: [0:18:55] I don’t know, but there are. There are lots of Oriental people, lots of Indian people.

 

GK: Yeah. I’m curious about what family is your family that goes back so many years. Is that the Paine family?

 

DP: Yes.

 

GK: And that was Mayflower and then –?

 

DP: The woman that came over on Mayflower when she was over in England was a Paine, but she was married to a guy named Hopkins. She came over. That family came over on the Mayflower. But my family [has] been here – I don’t know exactly when, but when it was part of Massachusetts, I would say. I would say in the early 1700s anyways. I don’t know if it was before that.

 

GK: On the same piece of land? Do you know?

 

DP: [0:19:55] No. At one time, up on what was called the Crooked Road or the Norway Drive, they owned a lot of land up through there. You ought to go see the stone barn.

 

GK: Yeah, I will.

 

DP: Right across the street from the stone barn in a bunch of bushes, there’s a cemetery.

 

GK: Okay, cool.

 

DP: That cemetery is filled with Paines, and there’ll be some dates on it. There’ll be some older dates on it that go way back.

 

GK: Yeah, I like to see those old cemeteries.

 

DP: Yeah, this is small. If you go by it – if you’re driving in a car, you’re paying attention to the road; you wouldn’t see it, but it’s right across from the stone barn.

 

GK: Cool. I don’t want to keep you too much longer because it’s nearing –

 

DP: It’s alright.

 

GK: I’m just curious what you like about living in Bar Harbor and MDI [Mount Desert Island]. What keeps you here?

 

DP: [0:21:00] What keeps me here?

 

GK: Other than family ties?

 

DP: It was a great place to grow up. It was a great place to raise a family. The crime rate compared to cities is pretty well nonexistent. We have some problems, but really, I would consider them minor compared to other areas. It’s beautiful. You have to find the niche to be able to make a living to afford housing here and afford to stay. You’ve got to find something that – I found my niche here, and so I’ve been able to stay here and could afford to stay here and afford to buy property and afford to have a house. Some of the younger people are struggling with that, with that affordability. I was just reading an article recently that fifty-four percent of the workforce on the island lives off the island, so that’s an issue.

 

GK: Would you rather that people were able to live on the island?

 

DP: That’s a mixed bag there. I would rather have people live on the island, but some of the homes that were deteriorating that have been bought by people now are using Airbnb’s, are turning them into Airbnb’s, or renting them by the week. Those homes were deteriorating, many of them, and so these people from away or some local people have bought those places and fixed them up, and they’re now not run down. They’re nice-looking properties. So I like that, but at the same time, now it’s not affordable for people to live, and so it’s a mixed bag of things here.

 

GK: [0:23:07] Yeah. Have you heard of any plans for ways to deal with that?

 

DP: The only plan that I’ve heard that makes sense to me to deal with that right now is to ease the restrictions on property out of town. People that have several acres of property, if you sell a lot off – I don’t know exactly what it is, but you have to have something like two acres to build a house on or something. I think you could take some of that restriction and make them smaller, make the properties maybe one acre – one acre is a pretty good lot – and do something to ease the restrictions on some of that property that could be developed.

 

GK: Yeah.  Are your children able to live in town?

 

DP: Yeah, they were able to – Kelly owns a house, and she lives in town, and Dean is a resident of Florida actually, but he has a place in town. He owns the building where Choco-Latte is.

 

GK: [0:24:26] Okay.

 

DP: He lives upstairs over there. Well, actually, he rents that in the summertime, and he lives over to one of the ponds. But he’s a Florida resident. When he’s not in Alaska, he comes back to Florida. He has to stay out of the state for one hundred and eighty one days, I think it is, to avoid state income taxes. That doesn’t seem right to me.

 

GK:  That’s a whole other thing.

 

DP: It’s a whole other thing. I don’t think people mind – he doesn’t mind paying state income tax on money he earns in the state of Maine. But the state of Maine wants their cut of money he earns in Alaska, and that doesn’t seem right to me.

 

GK: Yeah, yeah.

 

DP: Maybe they could take a lesser cut. Maybe that would be fairer. That drives people away.

 

GK: Yeah, I guess that makes sense. You would be paying it twice, wouldn’t you be?

 

DP: [0:25:28] No, you wouldn’t be paying it twice, but the money he earns in Alaska – there’s no state income tax in Alaska. If he’s able to have Florida residency, but he has to stay out of the state of Maine, I think it’s one hundred and eighty one days.

 

GK: Right, right. Florida doesn’t have a state income tax?

 

DP: No state income tax

 

GK: Florida. Who knew? I didn’t know that.

 

DP: What?

 

GK: I didn’t know that.

 

DP: Oh, there’s a few states that are gaining population. Florida’s one. Texas is one. Nevada is one. New Hampshire has no state income tax. There’s several that don’t have – and they’re gaining population, and people are leaving. For example, New York City. New York State has federal income tax. They have state income tax. If you live in New York City in Manhattan, you have a Manhattan income tax. If they can move, they’re going to move.

 

GK: [0:26:35] Yeah.  That’s a good point. I think we could probably talk about – I could talk about the historical part for a long time, but I really love what you said about the community and the people here and it feeling like a family.

 

[0:27:01.7]

 

DP: It’s great. I’ve had fundraisers here over the years, and people are very generous. There’s one particular lady in town that will write a check for ten thousand dollars. There are others that will – not as much but will support with what they can and in other ways. It’s a nice place.

 

GK: [0:27:37] Yeah. Sometimes, I think about that, and I’m like, “I wonder if there’s ways for that money to go into an affordable housing thing,” but I don’t know how that would work. I don’t know if you could have – I don’t know. It’s too far-fetched. [laughter]

 

DP: It’s an interesting thing because, years ago, these properties that we were talking about that were deteriorating and starting to run down, that was affordable housing, and then over the years, you’ve had – the Malvern Belmont is the government subsidy-run program. Then you have the Rodick Lorraine. Then you have one in Southwest Harbor, and you have one in Ellsworth. All of these places have – they took people from these properties, so the owner of these properties sold them because they couldn’t get people to live in them because they were living in these government-subsidized places. Over the years, these properties have been bought by other people and refurbished and fixed up, and now they rent them by the week, or they used to rent them just to summer people. They got a lot of money for them, but they stuck their neck out there and invested and fixed them up. Now it’s forty years since – thirty, forty years since this government housing has been, and now we’re back to new people would live in less sophisticated places maybe, but there aren’t any.

 

GK: [0:29:39] Right.

 

DP: They’ve all been fixed up or developed. But the change came when the government started subsidizing housing. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but that’s when the change came.

 

GK: Because people left the housing that they were in.

 

DP: Yes.

 

DP: Then other people bought them up. Was there a period of time where the property values were quite a bit less at that point?

 

DP: Yes. I paid twelve thousand dollars for my first house.

 

GK: What? That’s crazy.

 

DP: Yeah, and right in the center of town. It’s a big house.

 

GK: Wow,

 

GK: Is that where you live now?

 

DP: No, I moved. I live upstairs now. I moved over here in 1984, but I bought my house in 1970. When I moved over here, I turned that house into six apartments, and I still own it. I still rent the apartments.

 

GK: [0:30:42] Wow. How do you rent them? Are they seasonal rentals?

 

DP: I used to rent them year-round. They all were set up to be year-round rentals, but I had so many problems with some of the people that now I rent them on a seasonal basis, and the same people have been coming back for years. I get less money for them, but I have no problems. They pay the rent on time. They keep the places nice.

 

GK: Yeah. Did what you had to do.

 

DP: Yes.

 

GK: So there’s that building, and then you have two other stores or restaurants? Stone Soup is a store?

 

DP: Stone Soup is a store.

 

GK: Okay

 

DP: Stone Soup is a store. This building next door is a store.

 

GK: [0:31:45] Yeah, right. The building next door.

 

DP: It’s got an apartment up over it, and then the apartment house I have is down behind the Swan building. Are you familiar with that?

 

GK: Yes.

 

DP: Right behind it, there’s an apartment house; that’s mine.

 

GK: Okay, cool. Well, David, I’m going to stop today because it’s almost five, and I have to be at another home at 5:30.

 

DP: Okay.

 

GK: Thank you so much.

 

[0:32:11.2]