{"id":7267,"date":"2020-02-24T22:02:32","date_gmt":"2020-02-25T03:02:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jenniferbooher.com\/wp-walking\/?p=7267"},"modified":"2020-02-24T22:04:57","modified_gmt":"2020-02-25T03:04:57","slug":"interview-rick-savage-asticou","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jenniferbooher.com\/wp-walking\/interview-rick-savage-asticou\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Rick Savage, Asticou"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Photo of Harbor Cottage, and business card of A.C.Savage, Proprietor. Photo courtesy of Rick Savage.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Several people I interviewed had told me Rick Savage <\/a>would be a good person to talk to about the Asticou area and the Savage family, so on November 6, 2017, Rick and I met to talk history. Rick is a seventh-generation member of the Savage family, a charter boat captain, and a marine surveyor. He’s had a few other careers as well, but I’ll let him tell you about that himself!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rick:     How can I help you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    Well, I’m interested both in the history of\nthe MDI shoreline and also in how people are working on the shoreline now. So\nI’m doubly interested in talking with you, because of your family history, and because\nyou’re a boat builder and a charter captain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Asticou<\/em>, Rick’s charter boat.
Photo courtesy of Rick Savage<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     I\u2019ve been a boat charter captain for 45\nyears. I haven’t built any boats since about 2003. I’m also a marine surveyor. A\nsurveyor inspects boats for insurance companies, and financial institutions,\nand people who are buying boats and things like that. I’ve been doing that for\n15 years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    That sounds kind of complicated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     You’re required to get educational credits every year, and you have to belong to a professional organization<\/a>. I’m pleased to belong to the group  – there are only about 20 of us in Maine that are certified to do it. There are other people who do it on their own.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    So you come in when someone’s buying a boat,\nor when there’s been storm damage or something?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     I could. Particularly it’s for insurance\npurposes. Or if somebody goes to the bank, wants to borrow money, and they put\nthe boat up for collateral, the bank would insist on an inspection and survey.\nVery much like buying a house. \u2026 Anyway, getting back to the Savage family, I’m\nseventh generation. I’m living on Savage property that was passed down to me\nfrom my father, and his father, and his grandfather before him. So I feel very\nfortunate to be here. Mount Desert Island is a wonderful place to live, if you\ncan find a way to make a living.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    Tell me about it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     I’ve always said that unless you’re in a profession that pays you well, you have to wear a variety of hats. I did the boat building in the winter, and the boat charter business in the summer. I’ve been doing that for a long time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, I don’t know where to start. I’ve done a lot of research about island history, particularly Northeast Harbor – mainly because of my family. I first became interested in the bicentennial year, 1976. At the time I had two older relatives, cousins, who were in their 70s and 80s, and they were very pleased that somebody of the younger generation was showing an interest. You can’t mandate that every generation likes genealogy or history. I don’t think [my father\u2019s generation] really knew much about the family history. It was the previous generation that did. I was very fortunate to be the recipient of old papers and family bibles and photographs and letters, that actually meant a lot to me. So I’ve carried on from there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    I saw your article in the 2017 Chebacco<\/em><\/a>. There were some great photos in there! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rick:     And that was just a short span of time ago.\nWhen Tim Garrity [ed.note: director of\nthe MDI Historical Society<\/em>] asked me to write that, I said, “Nobody’d\nbe interested in that.” You know, my era, it wasn\u2019t that long ago. And he\nasked me how old I was, and I told him, and he said, “Yeah, you’re old\nenough.” [Laughs<\/em>] But it doesn’t\nseem really possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    Well the funny thing is, the island has\nchanged so much in the last 30 years we do need to document what it used to be\nlike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     It’s since the mid ’80s, the dramatic\nchange that I’ve seen. I grew up here in this village, went to high school\nhere. I was really encouraged to get out and go away to get a job. I went away\nto college. It was pretty grim around here in the ’60s. Bar Harbor had never\nrecovered from the fire. My parents were schoolteachers, and my father had\nstarted a small heating oil business. Northeast Harbor was prosperous in the\nsummer, but there were a lot of people unemployed in the wintertime. So my\ngeneration was encouraged to leave. Most of my classmates did, for a\nspell.  I came back a few years later and\nwondered what I was going to do, but I’ve never regretted it. I think things\nwere starting to change by the time I came back here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    I encouraged my kids to go away for college.\nYou appreciate the island more when you come back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     Well, both of my kids are back here now,\nand I was really surprised. My son has got a successful tree business, and my\ndaughter and her husband are teachers, and they have a comfortable home. I\nthink they both realize it’s a nice place to live. So, what would you like to\nknow? Would you like to know something about the Savage family?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    I want to know everything. [We both laugh<\/em>ed.] Are you working on any projects right now that you’re really interested in? Either history or boats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     Well, I am actually. I’m writing a story about growing up here. The article in Chebacco<\/em> was taken from what I’m writing. I have done a number of talks to historical groups and things like that around the island. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cRick Savage reading a passage from his article “Growing up in Asticou: The Late 1940s to Mid-1960s” recently published in the 2017 CHEBACCO.\u201d Photo by the Mount Desert Island Historical Society<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     I ought to show you this map first. This is a survey map by John Peters, he was a surveyor in Blue Hill, Maine, and he did the eastern half of Mount Desert Island. The island was divided in two originally. The Bernard Tract was the western side and the DeGregoire tract was the eastern side. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Copy of original survey done in 1807 by John Peters. Augustus D. Phillips, \u201cPlan of the French Grant on Mount Desert,\u201d Northeast Harbor Library, accessed February 22, 2020.<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

You know the original settlers came around 1761, the Someses and Richardsons, and my family came here in 1792. They got kicked out of town.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    What!?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     Yeah, because they didn’t own property. They called you an indigent if you didn’t have land ownership, so my family didn’t come back until 1798. John Savage (the first) bought this tract of land by Harbor Brook and this is where they settled. The east side of Harbor Brook, which is that little stream right there. It’s just off Bear Island. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the background for John Savage the first – he was born in 1756. Came to America at 14 years of age. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    Wow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     That’s because when you turned 14 in\nScotland, you were considered an adult, and you had to have a means of\nemployment. I’ve been to Glasgow and tried to look up my family genealogy. I\nwas told over there that either you had to be a land owner, or Catholic to have\nany records. They weren’t either one, and I found no records.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    That’s too bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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He had seven children, and three of the sons stayed in the area, and the daughters married into other families. But my direct ancestor, John Savage (the second), was born in 1801, three years after they came here. So there was John the first, John the second, then A.C. Savage, then A.C. had four sons, one of them was my grandfather, and then my father, and then me, and then my children. When he was 16, John Savage the second and a man named Will Roberts bought these two tracts of land, up here at the head of the harbor:  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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detail of Peters, \u201cPlan of the French Grant on Mount Desert,\u201d Northeast Harbor Library<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The irony of it is, the direct ancestry always came down to one child, every time. John Savage the first had three sons. One was drowned, one eventually moved out of this area and went to Southwest Harbor. But John Savage the second settled here on the site of the Asticou Inn. This is the earliest depiction of the Asticou Inn area. [The house on the left] is John Savage the second\u2019s farmhouse, it sits right where the hotel sits today. This is the same road location:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Painting of Asticou ca.1860-1870, by John L. Hughes, ca.1880. Image courtesy of the Northeast Harbor Library via Maine Memory Network.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     John Savage II had seven children – only one son lived to maturity, and that was A.C. Savage. All the other sons died. One was killed in the Civil War before he was married, the other sons died of – they called it consumption, but that was TB – and other diseases. It was a tough time. All the daughters died young, without any families. A.C. Savage was the only survivor out of seven children. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A.C. Savage and his father were partners and they went coasting – shipping up and down the coast – that’s how they made their living. A.C. married Emily Manchester and built his home in 1854: the house that you see there in the painting is the second house, Cranberry Lodge [the house on the right.] This scene didn’t really change for 30 years, until the first Asticou Inn was built in 1883 on that site. A.C. Savage and Emily raised eight children. And my grandfather was John C. Savage, one of the last of the children. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    Where are we standing to get this view?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     We’re standing out in the harbor, looking back. This is an original painting done by a family member. At the time, Mount Desert Island was pretty well populated, although Northeast Harbor and Seal Harbor were not. Bar Harbor, Somesville, and the Southwest Harbor side were populated. Seal Harbor and Northeast were the last areas to be settled on the island. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    Do you know why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     My theory is that Northeast Harbor wasn’t a\nvery good harbor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    Oh really?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     Well, today this cove is all filled in. This is where the Harbor Master’s office is, it was all mudflats. All the boating had to be out here in the mouth of the harbor. So it wasn’t a good harbor. And Seal Harbor definitely is not a really good harbor for year round activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hand-drawn \u201cMap of Mount Desert Island,\u201d Colby & Stuart, 1887. Image courtesy of the Northeast Harbor Library<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     There\u2019s a story from the War of 1812, when the family had settled in Little Harbor Brook. There was a British ship called the Tenedos<\/em>, and it created a little havoc around the island. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    That’s the one that was at the Battle of\nNorwood Cove?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     It was. And they were anchored off Bear\nIsland. John Savage and his son and son-in-law were trying to take some logs\nfrom there up to Somesville, and the British cut the logs loose and kept the men\non the Tenedos<\/em> as prisoners of war\nuntil the Battle of Norwood Cove was over, then they released them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    That must have been a pretty rough time to be here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     Yes. That brings us up to the Civil War. A.C. Savage was commissioned in the Navy, and he stayed until the end of the war. Then in 1870 he started taking summer boarders at Harbor Cottage. [Ed. note: See the photo at the very top of this post.<\/em>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    So which one was Harbor Cottage?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     That’s Cranberry Lodge now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    Oh, okay. So that was the first rusticators?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     He says they were the first in Northeast\nHarbor to take rusticators in. Bar Harbor had already been pretty well\nestablished then. There was some spill-over I would say, wouldn’t you? Then in\n1883, his son Herman built the Rock End Hotel, that’s down near where the\nNortheast Harbor Fleet is. And 1883 also saw A.C. Savage building the first\nAsticou Inn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    So the Asticou Inn and the Rock End Hotel were\nthe same year?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     They were. Herman was a young man, 28. He\nmarried a Gilpatrick woman, and that’s how they got the land where the Fleet\nis. Obviously there was a growing need for hotels in the area. I think the Claremont’s\nnot far behind. I think that was built in 1885. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    Seaside House must have been starting about\nthen too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     Seaside, I’m not sure when that was built, there were two other hotels in Seal Harbor, built on the village green, and I think it had to be right around that same year. The Roberts family also built a hotel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“1885? \/ Left to Right \/ Asticou Inn \/ F.L. Savage house, later J.C. Savage \/ A.C. Savage home.” Photo courtesy of Rick Savage.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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“Asticou – about 1895 or earlier – showing the Roberts House, a house known as the Kelly House (stood between the R House and the Asticou Inn.) The John Savage House – The Phillips Cottage, the first Asticou Inn with the old farm house in front of it (later moved and in 1967 used by the Phillips family in summer) The Harbor C – The Morris cottage up the hill. Note the old Savage cemetery (later moved to a newer Forest Hill Cemetery)” [sic] Photo courtesy of Rick Savage.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This\nis Asticou in about 1890. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    Oh, wow! That’s quite the village.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     It is. Cranberry Lodge is there, this is\nthe Asticou Inn, this is the Roberts House. That’s about where the round houses\nare today. You know those, down at the hotel?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    Yeah, the yurt things. My daughter calls\nthem the mushroom houses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     Yeah, they’re not much.  That\u2019s called the Phillips House, she was a\ndaughter of A.C. Savage. That house is still there. The little farmhouse, the\nother white house, had been moved down in the field, and that’s that building\nright there. This is Cranberry Lodge, of course the big tall one’s Asticou Inn.\nSo this area had really grown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    So are we standing somewhere close to Asticou\nStream over here?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     Yeah, the brook would run right down here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“Asticou – about 1885 – repro made 5\/27\/80 \/ showing Roberts house – a hotel \/ the first Asticou Inn 1883-1899 \/ old store + post office – now home of R Savage II family – 1980 \/ Fred L. Savage house – Hill Top \/ Caspar Morris house – still in Morris family \/ F.I. Phillips house \/ A.C. Savage house + barn – now Cranberry Lodge \/ Old homestead of John Savage II built 1820 – still standing as summer home of Don Phillips \/ Davenport house – later Crofoot – later P. Malicote (1980) \/ Tyson House now owned by Richard Estes (1980)” Photo courtesy of Rick Savage<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     Okay, that’s an aerial view of Asticou\nvillage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    Oh, wow! And what year is this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     It had to be pre-1890. So let’s see. That’s\nthe Roberts house. That’s Cranberry Lodge. The Asticou Inn is tucked in between\nthem. This house is still here, that was Major Danforth’s. This house is still\nhere. That’s the brown house where the boy’s dormitory is today. Well, anyway.\nI’m gonna say, what did I say, about 1885.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    And how did they … were they up on one of\nthe mountains to do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     I think they were standing on the road. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Left to right: Roberts House, Kelley House, John Savage House, original Asticou Inn, 1883-1899, A.C.Savage House (now Cranberry Lodge.) Photo courtesy of Rick Savage.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     That’s a water view. Doesn’t look as busy as this photo, but\nit’s also about the same time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    That’s very cool. It’s so neat to see the\nold photos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     Yep. Well, if I hadn’t shown an interest in this, years ago, I don’t know what would have happened to these photos, because they belonged to Charles Savage and Emily Phillips. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo courtesy of Rick Savage<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    So this is the town landing before they filled in Fraser Cove?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo courtesy of Rick Savage<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     Yes. And this is an aerial view before they\nfilled in Fraser Cove. I’d say this was pre-1950, because it’s before the high\nschool, the school that I call the high school was built. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    There’s the Fleet down there! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo from Savage, \u201cGrowing Up in Asticou\u201d <\/em>Chebacco, vol.XVIII, 2017, p.82<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Photo courtesy of Rick Savage<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     That’s filling in Fraser Cove. Building the\nwall across it. I remember them filling in the cove. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    Oh wow. I can\u2019t imagine trying to get the DEP to approve that now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo courtesy of Rick Savage<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     Yeah, we’ve always said that – this would never happen today. Of course that’s Northeast Harbor before, that’s down at Clifton Dock area. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo courtesy of Rick Savage<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And this is the dredge itself. You know, back when I was copying these photographs, I didn\u2019t write down who took them, and I don’t even know where the originals are. These are some panoramic views of the harbor. Charles Savage did these. This is pre-dredging era. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo courtesy of Rick Savage<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     This was a copy of somebody’s sketch done at the library:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Jenn:    “Before the summer people came.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     Yep. So Tom Savage was still over here by\nHarbor Brook. He would’ve been a cousin to A.C. Savage. And he had a house\nhere. This is where the big Rales Mansion is. Pre-1870 post office. This is the\nwharf that I keep referencing, the Savage wharf, it’s in front of the Story\nLitchfield place.  Then Horace Roberts,\nhe had a dock. This is A.C. Savage’s house, and then the little house down in\nthe field before the hotel. Then the post office up here in the corner. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    So there are two post offices here?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     No. They changed them by politics. Pre-1870-75,\nthen they were the wrong persuasion, so then they got moved into town. Right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    Oh, that’s too funny. What is the ‘village gate?’<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     Well, the Smallidges owned all the land, and\nthe Gilpatricks, so they had a gate across here. This was all their land so the\ncattle wouldn’t get out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    Oh my gosh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     Yep. Herman Savage married a Gilpatrick\nwoman, and that’s how he got this property over here, this is where the\nNortheast Harbor fleet is. Gilpatrick’s Cove. The Rock End Hotel was right on\nthat point. This is the Kimball House. And Kimball Store.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    So when you grew up in the area, where did\nyou grow up? Here in the village, or up on the hill?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     No, down right across the street from the\nAsticou Inn was a little red house, a single story. My father built that in\n1954. They were tearing down the Stotesbury Estate in Bar Harbor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    Oh right, I remember your photos of that in\nthe article.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     And they hauled the lumber over to\nNortheast here, my father did, and built that little red house. That’s what\nthey did in those days. Prior to that we lived in a little family house. I was\nonly eight or nine years old when they built that, so I grew up there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    People have told me it was more of a village\nthen. It’s hard to picture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     There were five families, an aunt, an uncle,\nCharles Savage’s family, the Phillips family, they all lived there. The Azalea garden\ndidn’t exist then. Then there was a house on the corner called the Roberts\nhouse, and there were families living there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    And was it your Dad who had the garage?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     My father had a garage, and a taxi\nbusiness. When I was about 12, he started a small heating oil business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    Was there a dairy or an ice house, something, or stores?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo from Savage, \u201cGrowing Up in Asticou\u201d <\/em>Chebacco, vol.XVIII, 2017, p.74<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     There was a gas station there. George\nSavage, Charles Savage’s brother, he was an architect, he had his office there.\nGus Phillips was a map maker and photographer, and he had his studio there. It\nwas a little year-round community. By that time the post office had moved into\nNortheast Harbor. This was vacant land, woodland, and fields. I graduated from\nhigh school, what’s now the elementary school, in 1963, went away to college,\nto New York City, big change. I was educated to be an automotive engineer and had\na job at Chrysler in Detroit when I graduated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    How long were you there?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     Three weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    Seriously! What happened?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     I quit. I couldn’t stand it. I came back\nhere at the end of August, my parents looked at me and shook their heads,\n“Now what are you going to do?” I pumped gas for a year, and decided\nthat wasn’t going to be my livelihood, so I went back to college and got a\ndegree in education. I graduated with another BS in industrial arts. I was a\nshop teacher for a couple of years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    In Northeast?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     Yeah, on the whole island. Then about 1970 my\nfather wanted to retire from his heating oil business, so I took that over. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    How did you end up in boat building?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     I always liked boats. Even as a kid, I\nwanted a boat in the worst way. We used to play on the Asticou dock, and we’d\nrig up sails and boats and stuff like that. I always wanted a boat. My father\nwould never let me have one. He didn’t care if I had cars. I owned a car when I\nwas 15, and I could drive anywhere I wanted to, he didn’t care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    Why was he worried about boats?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     When I was a little, little kid, he had a boat built in Castine, over in Brooksville, and he had a lot of trouble with it. He always told me he bought a second hand gas tank for the boat, and it was dirty, so the engine would always stall on him. When I was about four years old, they launched this boat, and I was with him, and he was going drive it from Castine Harbor to Northeast Harbor. We were a long time getting in, and my mother was getting quite worried. She called a guy named Ted Bunker on Cranberry Island to see if they’d go look for my father, because I was there, too. And Ted, he said, “Don’t worry, we’ve been watching him for about an hour drifting around out here.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My father later on told me that he didn’t know how to read a chart or anything, he couldn’t recognize Mount Desert Island, so he cut in by Baker’s Island. Well, there was a bar there, and he had to pull the boat across Baker Island Bar, to get to Northeast Harbor. I think he didn’t have good boating experiences so he didn’t want anything to do with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I bought my first boat when I was old enough to afford one, in the early ’70s. In 1974, I got a Coast Guard license, I started taking people out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    Were you teaching industrial arts then?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     I had quit by then. I only taught for two\nyears. I taught from 1969 to ’71, and from 1971 to ’89 I ran the heating oil\nbusiness, and I sold it in ’89. Then I went into boat building full time, for\nmyself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    That’s so funny. I keep telling my kids,\nreally, don’t sweat what you’re going to major in, in college, because you’re\nprobably not going to use it, nobody does. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     My grandson was here last night, and he’s a\nsenior, and he says he’s really worried. I said, “Listen, you have no idea\nwhat you want to do, and even if you did, you should try something else\nanyway.” I think when kids rush off and they build up a huge debt in\ncollege and then they get stuck in some mundane cubicle or job, man that’s\nawful. I couldn’t imagine that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    My mother is the only person I’ve ever met\nwho knew what she wanted to do when she was a little kid. She wanted to be a\ndoctor, and she became a doctor and was happy doctoring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     I think that’s wonderful, when people can\nchoose a career and do that, and be happy at it. I look back on my career now,\nthere were a lot of things I would’ve liked to have done. When I went back to\ncollege to be an industrial arts teacher, I found out I was a really good\nwoodworker. And that’s how I went into boat building, it just was easy for me.\nMaybe I could have gone into the real boat building business. I was always a\nsmall operator. But I built five boats from new and sold them. Did everything\nmyself. My wife and I built three houses together. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    Did you build this one?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    Wow!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     Took me five years. We built a house in\nSomesville first. Built that garage apartment over there, and then immediately\nstarted building this one. Then we had another rental house that we built in\nAsticou. So, yeah, I built them all myself. \u2026 My education really prepared me\nfor almost everything I’ve continued to do. I mean, even the automotive thing\nwas beneficial, the mechanical stuff, the engines. Then I went to the\nUniversity of Southern Maine, I got into woodworking, found out I really liked\nthat, better than the automotive end of it, and found out I had some ability\nbuilding furniture and stuff like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    It’s funny the paths you take, isn’t it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     Yep. And it worked in with my boat building\ntoo, because that’s always a challenge. But it was easy for me, I always\nfigured people should do things that are easy for them, that they enjoy. I\nguess, actually, if you enjoy your work, you don’t really go to work, do you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    No, you just show up day after day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     Well, you know, it’s good. \u2026 Getting old\nenough, I’m thinking I still might like to retire, I haven’t done it yet.  I haven’t built any boats, but I do the marine\nsurvey work. I still run my charter boat in the summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    You still enjoying that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     Yeah, I mean, it’s pretty hard not to. Go on picnics and whale watching, stuff like that, and not enjoy it. I have a nice boat that I built. I don’t know if you saw it or not. It’s called Asticou<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    I saw the photos on the website. It said you could take 40 people?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Asticou. <\/em>Photo courtesy of Rick Savage<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     Yeah, it’s licensed for 49. It\u2019s a big\nboat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn     Holy cow, 40 people, that is a big boat. So\ndo you take people out for picnics, or tours, or?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     Picnics, and whale watching and\nsightseeing.  All private charters, I\ndon’t sell tickets. I’ve been doing it long enough, so I have quite a following\nof repeat customers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    Cool. I’m always glad when I meet someone\nwho’s found a way to make a living here that they still enjoy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     I’ve been blessed with good health, ownership of this property is a blessing. I feel honored to carry on a family tradition, that the land is still in my ownership. I’m sorry to say that all the other properties have been sold off pretty much. Anyway, that’s the way it goes. I think it’s great when somebody wants to carry on the information. It gets lost, you know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    I guess my hope is that by putting it out on\nthe web, it’s there for everybody.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     Well, I thank my forebears for passing it\non to me, because otherwise I don’t know what would’ve happened to it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jenn:    And thank you so much for sharing all this with me!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rick:     Good luck to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

___________________________________________________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WORKS CITED<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Savage, Rick, \u201cGrowing Up in Asticou: The Late 1940\u2019s to Mid-1960\u2019s,\u201d Chebacco<\/em>, vol.XVIII, 2017. [https:\/\/mdihistory.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/09-Rick-Savage.pdf<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Several people I interviewed had told me Rick Savage would be a good person to talk to about the Asticou area and the Savage family, so on November 6, 2017, Rick and I met to talk history. Rick is a… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6615,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jenniferbooher.com\/wp-walking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jenniferbooher.com\/wp-walking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jenniferbooher.com\/wp-walking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jenniferbooher.com\/wp-walking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jenniferbooher.com\/wp-walking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7267"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"http:\/\/jenniferbooher.com\/wp-walking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7313,"href":"http:\/\/jenniferbooher.com\/wp-walking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7267\/revisions\/7313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jenniferbooher.com\/wp-walking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jenniferbooher.com\/wp-walking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jenniferbooher.com\/wp-walking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jenniferbooher.com\/wp-walking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}