BATH

A lifelong Bowdoinham resident, Calvin Temple jumped into the field of law enforcement in 1978 when he was appointed a parttime constable for the town.

As constable, like a town police officer with arrest powers, he was one of the first to respond to the Emily Chase murder in Bowdoinham in February 1978.

In March of that year, Sagadahoc County Sheriff Arthur Tainter was on scene during the investigation and offered Temple a job, “and I accepted.”

He worked as a full-time deputy while still working as a constable for a short time before they were discontinued.

Now, 36 years later at age 61, Temple is retiring from the sheriff ’s department as a lieutenant.

“I’ve loved it here, to be honest,” Temple said.

There are ups and downs like any job, he said, but overall it has been a great place to work. You might drive to the beach on a hot day and be walking in the woods in Bowdoin the next. You’re not punching a clock and no one is looking over your shoulder, he said.

Not one to ever be the center of attention, Temple accommodated a Times Record reporter requesting to sit down last week and reflect on a career in local law enforcement spanning more than three decades. There are too many stories for him to easily hone in on highlights, but those he tapped were told with Temple’s special brand of dry humor.

The first to a murder scene while freshly appointed constable on an early Sunday morning, he remembers, “you know you don’t have a clue what you’re supposed to do, and the scene wasn’t a very good scene. You kind of think for a second, ‘Do you really want to do this job?’”

But once wrapped up with watching state police investigate, “you get hooked on it.”

The incidents you do remember are not good, Temple said, such as responding to suicides. He pointed to the tub of Vicks vapor rub on the cabinet he has kept to rub under his nose to help cover up the smell of a dead body.

A lot of the incoming deputies are looking for excitement and one thing Temple tells them is don’t watch the cop shows on television because, “that’s not what it’s about.”

The public’s perception isn’t always in line with reality either. He’s gone to calls where people have watched him dust for prints and take photographs. One couple said, “Wow, that’s just what they do on CSI.”

“This isn’t CSI,” Temple told them. “We don’t get the crime, get the call, come do the evidence, solve it and go to trial in an hour.”

When he first started with the department, there were no detectives, so “we basically investigated all our own crimes,” Temple said. Crimes solved were usually because “people run their mouth. They confess or break down during the interview.”

Forensics are so advanced now, with DNA testing done for various crimes. The training has come a long way and there’s a lot of it, Temple said, and he’s seen the department become more professional.

When he started, Temple said there were four full-time deputies and two full-time dispatchers, “and I was making $4.25 an hour.”

The barrel was bent on the first gun he was nearly issued so he carried his own. Sometimes the weather was so bad, he’d take his own four-wheel drive Subaru on patrol. The gas gauge in one of the cruisers didn’t work so he was transporting a woman from Bowdoinham once and ran out of gas by the time he got to Cook’s Corner in Brunswick — the only time this happened he’ll admit to.

Sagadahoc and Lincoln counties didn’t have Two Bridges Regional Jail and when deputies made arrests, they had to take prisoners to any jail they could find with room. One night they took someone to Aroostook County in an ice storm.

“Oh, it used to be so fun,” Temple said. “Things have changed a lot, that’s for sure.”

Now they have 13 full-time deputies, the lieutenant, chief deputy and sheriff.

There have been the strange calls, like the time he was called to help a Richmond officer and one of Sagadahoc’s matrons, remove a naked woman from the home of a man who wanted her gone, as she hung onto one of the rails of a water bed refusing to leave.

He never had to fire his gun, fortunately, other than to shoot deer hit by cars and a rabid raccoon. It was a close call one night he responded to a shooting on Main Street in Bowdoinham. He got on scene and a man started shooting at deputies.

“I’ll never forget,” Temple said. “I’m trying to hide behind a telephone pole and hoping my head and my butt will stay behind the pole as the bullets are winging by.”

The man was leaning out the window and Temple almost shot him. The man ended up shooting himself and setting the house on fire. He’d shot his wife but she got away and survived.

Then once, he was in plainclothes responding to a report of a man threatening someone with a gun, “so talk about adrenaline.” When he arrived, the man had run into the woods, so he circled around and waited for the guy, like deer hunting, until he saw the man coming right for him, “and you know it’s going to be you and him.”

He had something in his hands and, at about 20 feet away through thick trees, Temple hollered for him to stop and drop whatever he had in his hands, but the man didn’t and swore at Temple, who then pointed the gun at the man, who finally dropped the black item in his hands. It was a hat.

He hasn’t handled many fatal car crashes himself but remembers one he responded to that happened around 7 a.m. one Christmas morning, “and when I got there, she had two little kids in the car.” A little girl was not injured but crying. The mother was crushed against her brother, who was crying as well.

One of the most difficult things to do is making notifications to family of those killed in vehicle crashes. Once a lady denied her daughter was dead and made him sit down and look at photos of her. Another time, a family member fainted.

“I know it’s shock,” Temple said. “Those are tough.”

There are the tough calls, and the strange. Once he went into a house in Topsham to investigate a disturbance. The home was dimly lit and while standing in the living room interviewing some people, the closed drapes behind him began moving.

“I’m thinking somebody’s hiding behind that drape, so I go over and I pull that open, and there’s a monkey on the perch! He screams, I scream like a school girl!” and he drew his gun. The monkey leaped at him but was on chain, Temple said. “Who’s going to expect a monkey in the middle of the night behind a curtain?”

“The main reason that I like this job,” Temple said, “is because when you got up in the morning, you had absolutely no idea what you were going to be doing the rest of the day.”

The father of two sons, Aaron, 29, and Adam, 41, Temple said at times his job was probably toughest on them, being the kids at school whose dad is a cop and keeping an eye on who they bring home. It was tough for his wife of 42 years, Jewel, when he worked birthdays and holidays too, but where she worked at the hospital, which called her away at times too, she understood.

Lieutenant now for a little more than seven years, Temple has supervised the patrol division and jail transport, but misses being out on the road. Part of his decision to retire now is health-related but he’s also come to realize it’s hard for him to keep up with new technology. He’s sad to be leaving because the sheriff ’s department is like a second home, but knows it’s time.

As a retiree, he’ll have time to cut fire wood, go fishing and hunt, and be jobless for the first time since high school.

“I always said I wanted a whole season that I do not have to go to work, I can go hunting … just one,” Temple said, adding with a laugh, “One time. After that, I can drop dead, I don’t care, I’ll be happy.”

dmoore@timesrecord.com