Neighbors

“That’s What Makes Relations”

Rufus Candage is 82 now, but he is still keen on bringing baseball back to Blue Hill—45 years after he last organized a semipro league for the area towns.

For the first time in years, Rufus Candage gets to enjoy his two favorite staples of summer, baseball and the Blue Hill Fair.

But not together, which is fine by him. The Blue Hill Fair goes just five days over the Labor Day weekend in September. And baseball, in the form of a semi-pro league he has dreamed up, will last from June through August.

Candage is 82, but age isn’t stopping him from bringing back to Blue Hill the sport that he calls his favorite. And that’s from a man who was once Maine’s boxing commissioner.

Candage is active as ever, even though he retired in 1990. For 32 years he owned the local hardware store, Candage Hardware and Supply. It was in the building now occupied by Fairwinds Florist, one door in from the corner of Main Street and Parker Point Road. 

He was born with an advantage to running a business in town: He is a lifelong Blue Hill resident with deep appreciation for the Peninsula’s way of life.

“I never wanted to live anywhere else,” he said. “It is still quiet and beautiful here. In fact, I don’t even want to travel anywhere else again.”

He says he got enough of the outside world between 1943 and 1946, when his military tour took him to the South Pacific. Those were the only years when he missed going to the Blue Hill Fair since he was a youngster.

When he walks around the fairgrounds these days, there is hardly an older face that he doesn’t know or remember.

It doesn’t hurt that his wife, Jeanette, was the town clerk for 35 years. And ever since she came from Sorrento to marry him in 1947, she never has missed a Blue Hill Fair, either.

Back in 1958, when Candage started selling nuts and bolts, he built his business through contacts and conversation.

“What I loved most about it was meeting people,” he said. “I was always a great talker. My wife said that we would have made more money if I didn’t talk all the time.

“But she was wrong, because that’s what makes relations.

“I put in 10 to 12 hours a day and loved every minute of it. I got to know everyone in this town. Not just here, but in all the towns around, too.”

For even longer, between 1962 and 1998, Candage held a real estate license. He witnessed firsthand the escalation of property values.

“There were a few years when house values doubled every year. If it was $10,000 one year, it was $20,000 the next, and then $40,000. See?

“But that kind of leveled off around 1990.”

It was the early 1970s, Candage recalled, the Blue Hill had an influx of individuals who, today, would be identified as having New Age interests. Back then, they were the hippies.

“They showed up here along about 1970,” he said. “Until then, it was only the common people living here.

“Then, here they were, mostly college-educated and intelligent. But they did things like wore ragged pants, ate a goldfish a day, had long hair and whiskers.

“That changed our town, when this different group of people came in their old cars and pitched their tents. We went from Republicans to Democrats.

“But once they got over that stage, they turned out to be intelligent. They ended up doing different things and contributed to the community.”

Candage’s more precious memories of the Blue Hill life go back to his youth. He fondly remembers living at South Blue Hill, where his father worked on the steamboats.

He attended George Stevens Academy, paying $1 a week for transportation into town. Tuition, he said, was $13 a year. He graduated in 1936.

“Until then, we hardly got into town,” he said. “Ellsworth? Maybe we went there twice a year.”

The Blue Hill Fair at Labor Day was always one reason for coming into town.

“People used to go there to meet others, once a year,” he said. “I don’t know everyone there, so much anymore. The older ones, yes. But they are all younger people now.”

Candage will immerse himself with younger people all summer through his new baseball league with four or five teams. He says it is his last stab at the sport: There was a semi-pro league 45 years ago—also thanks to his organizing.

Baseball is also something he can enjoy with Jeanette. Which is one of the reasons why he wanted to bring baseball back to Blue Hill and other area towns.

“I didn’t ask Jeanette about this,” he said. “I just did it. She likes baseball as well as I do, and always has.”

That is especially true now that their grandson, Chris Candage, plays on the George Stevens Academy team.