SCARBOROUGH – The Pine Point residents group won a small victory at the Scarborough Council meeting June 19 after challenging what Town Manager Ron Owens said was a relatively minor road paving project.

The residents’ group, which says it has about 100 members, has been at odds with town officials and Lighthouse Inn owners Nick and – for years over beach access, use of Pine Point Road, and various plans to convert the Lighthouse Inn Motel to condominiums, which neighbors say is incompatible with the surrounding homes.

Town Manager Ron Owens informed Lighthouse Inn neighbors May 8 of what he says was a relatively minor road repair project that offered the opportunity for some small improvements as well.

“When we repair roads, we take up the asphalt, level the road out, put the asphalt back down,” Owens said. “(We thought), ‘While we’re doing that, why don’t we put sidewalks in.'” This led to consideration of narrowing the road to accommodate the sidewalk and slow traffic.

In an e-mail to the residents’ group, posted on the group’s Web site, Owens described the work as “a slight redesign of the entrance to Depot Street, rounding out some of the edges and increasing its functionality.”

The residents’ group, however, wanted more input, and after a May 21 meeting with with the architect described the work as “clearly a significant project (that) would be very disruptive” to the neighborhood.

After more e-mail exchanges, the group appealed to Town Council Chairman Jeffrey Messer and asked the the item be placed on the June 19 Council agenda.

After hearing from residents group leaders Judy Shirk, Sue Perrino and Harold Hutchinson at the meeting, the council passed a motion creating a committee to study potential Pine Point Road changes.

The council made several changes to a proposed motion prepared by Owens CHEK, which included extending the period of time the study committee would have to work by about a month – from September to Nov. 5 – specifying that the meetings be run by a facilitator and occur in public in the council chambers, and that minutes be taken and posted on the town Web site.

The council also agreed to allow the committee to consider removal of a controversial traffic island at Depot Street. Removal of the island, which town officials call a safety measure and the resident’s group calls a “barricade,” would not have been a topic for the committee to consider under the wording in the suggested motion.

In an interview Monday, Owens said the controvery over the road repairs speaks more to the ongoing bad blood between residents and the Lighthouse Inn than to the scope of the proposed paving job.

“Even minor issues are seized upon by one group or another,” he said.

He said the paving project would have “slightly inconvenienced (abuttors) … for about three days.”

Councilwoman Carol Rancourt said she hopes the study committee will be “a step in the right direction.” And she said that more people than just Pine Point group members are affected by things like sidewalks and the traffic island.

“The residents group has a fairly large membership, but … many, many, many people use Pine Point Beach, so it isn’t just the neighborhood (that’s affected),” she said. “We’re really talking about a community.”

On the group’s Web site, www.pinepointbeach.com, the group called the formation of the study committee “good news.”

“The Council clearly respects our input and recognizes the frustrations we’ve endured,” the Web site says.

SCARBOROUGH – What was life like in the olden days? There were just three channels on the black-and-white TV – if your family even had one – and they weren’t Nickelodeon, Disney and MTV.

Ten cents an hour was a pretty good wage, drive-in movies were all the rage, and the bathroom was out back – and didn’t flush.

Scarborough children walked to school, walked to church on Sundays, wore their hair in beehives and obeyed the Golden Rule.

And there wasn’t a Wal-Mart anywhere.

For sixth-grades at Scarborough Middle School, a class project of interviewing some of thetown’s older residents this spring became an opportunity to journey into the past.

Run by teachers –, the interview project brought together pre-teen boys and girls with senior citizens ranging in age from 65 to 106. After learning interview techniques and listing questions, groups of four to five students were paired with an older resident, who they interviewed and then wrote a poem about.

The interviews turned the skeptical pre-teens into avid listeners with a new respect for older generations, they said.

“There is a lot you learn,” said Alicia Beckwith, 12, who interviewed 106-year-old Blanche Small Cook. “They have experienced a lot more than we have.”

Her group’s poem describes Cook’s life in matter-of-fact terms that are eloquent in their simplicity. Cook was the oldest of five children of a “Jack of all trades,” went to school in a one-room schoolhouse heated by a wood stove and walked home for lunch.

She married a printer named John during the Great Depression and workesd in a sardine factory to help support her family, but “still wishes she could go back to high school.” Today, she is the only one of her siblings left, still “can’t carry a tune if she tried,” lives with her daughter and two cats to keep her company, and “calls herself a ‘tough cookie’ to make it to 106 years old.”