The world is changing, and many of the changes are hitting the U.S. Postal Service in the gut. Mail volume is down. Revenue is down. Losses are up.

Somebody asked if the Scarborough Post Office would change – move into a broom closet or something. It reminded me of the first “official” brand-spanking-new post office we built in Scarborough – started 45 years ago, in 1964, and finished the next year.

Frank Hodgdon was with the post office from day one until his death in 2004. Here is a column I wrote upon his death, but never published.

Frank Hodgdon died the other day. The obituary said he was 73, but there are certain Historical Society types in Scarborough whose years on Earth should actually be measured like they do dog years – extra time earned for all those articles written or Garden Club talks given about “old Scarborough.” Put Frank down in that category. He was closer to 450 upon his death Dec. l9.

There is a sometimes hard-edged “stare-down” (fight is too strong a word) that goes on daily in modern Scarborough between the “old-timers” and the newcomers. Probably every southern Maine community witnesses the same tensions.

In Scarborough, long-time residents have a joke about the hundreds of expensive homes that have been built the past five or six years: “You know what the definition of ‘affordable housing’ is in Scarborough now?” the joke goes. “A house without a built-in swimming pool.”

The recent arrivals, meanwhile, smile at complaints from older residents over increased municipal services such as a stepped-up Scarborough road paving program.

“10 years ago, they only used half the asphalt to pave each road, and they wouldn’t bother to pave all these cul-de-sacs and turnarounds, I am told,” a new taxpayer will say. “And, what’s most impressive is that the horses and buggies stood up well under those conditions!”

Touche.

Frank Hodgdon was one of the few “old-timers” in Scarborough who actually liked newcomers and many changes in the town. I would run into him about once a week at the post office, where he had worked for about 50 years before retiring in l986.

We joked about The Great Compromise: Frank suggested once that the Town Council limit the number of Sugarloaf stickers a person could put on their Volvo or Saab to four, and that a family’s total allotment should be l8.

Meanwhile, Frank begrudgingly urged that long-timers such as himself be foreclosed from describing any location or destination in Scarborough by using references to more than three prior owners or tenants, e.g, “How do you get to Konica Photo in Scarborough from Dunstan? Oh, that’s easy; go past the old St. Louis Home orphanage, which used to be The Bible Speaks

religious facility, and now is Bosal Foam, on your left. Keep going. You will see the old Dunstan School Restaurant on your left; a lot of kids went to fourth and fifth grade there; now, it’s a restaurant run by Donnie Thurlow, or actually by his son Kevin since Donnie’s passed away.

“Go thru Oak Hill. Keep going straight. On the right, you’ll pass the old State Police barracks, which also used to be run as professional office spaces by Donnie Thurlow’s nephew John, and which is now, I guess, Southern Maine Area Agency on Aging. Keep going. On the right, directly after that, is the old Kmart building, which also used to house Martin’s grocery store, and which is now a Maine Medical Center cancer facility.” And so on. “Konica is on your left right after that.”

OK, thanks.

“Now, if you go too far, you will hit the old Humpty Dumpty potato chip factory, which is now office space …”

Uncle!

In the l960s and 1970s, there used to be a tourist information center housed in an old wooden blockhouse on the marsh on Route 1, across the street from Anjon’s Restaurant (thank God the only occupant there for 50-plus years!). The Scarborough Chamber of Commerce ran it for awhile. The Scarborough Rotary Club ran it longer.

I worked at the blockhouse (a replica of the building you see on town stationery) the summers of l973 to 1975. Frank Hodgdon, an active Rotarian, was my boss. He would drop by from time to time. We high school kids who worked there liked him, but we would kind of dread his visits.

Why? Because if a French Canadian came in while Frank was there, and asked for road directions, Frank would always jump in and do a version of the diatribe outlined above! Bad enough that English-speaking people would have to go through it; try being French-speaking and a first-time visitor to the area. Arrrggghhh!

Frank was a lovely blend of the old and the new in Scarborough. Who else would sell his lifelong home to make way for a controversial retirement home project?

“These people need a place to live,” Frank once reasoned about the Piper Shores project. “I like the fact that on my land there will be many generations of people in their 80s, sitting in rocking chairs, staring out at the ocean.” He would chuckle his little laugh and smile a leprechaun’s smile.

Frank’s death leaves a gap in our little town. May someone step forward and fill it, and do it well, in 2005.