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Isabel Condon Is Still Signing Books at 92
Condon’s Garage
still gets tourists. Isabel Condon, widow of former owner Dick
Condon, lives nearby and still signs autographs. |
After 70 years in
the same house, Isabel Condon says, at 92, she could do with one
slightly smaller.
But she reckons
she’ll stay in the roomy, white clapboard house on Cornfield Hill
Road, just up from the Bucks Harbor Market.
“I am right here
where it’s handy,” she said. “I’m right near the church and the
store and the garage. And my son stops by every morning and
afternoon to see if I need anything.”
Nor does Condon,
living alone now, lack for other company. Many take the time to look
in on one of Brooksville’s oldest residents.
She also qualifies
as the person about town with one of the best-known names. That’s
because Condon’s Garage is across the field near Bucks Harbor—all
made famous, of course, by Robert McCloskey’s children’s book, “One
Morning in Maine.”
The widow of Dick
Condon, the longtime owner of the garage, Isabel Condon handles all
the autograph-seekers these days.
“I signed three
books just the other day,” she said.
Few of those
passing through realize that the Condons are one of Brooksville’s
original families. The name is found in local records as early as
1768.
The town has
changed plenty since Isabel’s childhood, when she remembers the days
of steamboats.
“The town has
changed—oh, terribly!” she said. “We have had lots of people who
have moved in: You can just see the dirt roads going to their new
homes off the main road.”
While Dick worked
the garage, Isabel had her own career—37 years as a teacher. After
early years in Winterport and Sedgwick, she taught for 21 years in
Brooksville and nine more in
Stonington.
Then, she thought,
it came time to retire.
“Dick stayed at the
garage until he said to me one day that he wanted to retire,” she
said. “I said that if he retired, then I would, too, because I
thought we both needed a little time to rest.
“So I retired, but
he didn’t. He just kept going down to the garage every day.”
Shortly before Dick
Condon died in 1987, he received a citation from the Legislature for
60 years of service.
Isabel Condon’s
only regret is that she and Dick didn’t travel.
“I was fine, as
long as Dick was happy,” she said. “It didn’t matter, because I had
lots to do around here. We had a vegetable and a flower garden.”
She still cans and
she still cooks for the church dinners. She also sends over cookies
to her bachelor neighbor, who last year bought and renovated the old
high school building that has stood empty since closing in 1961.
She has gone to
the same Methodist church for 70 years, and has been treasurer
there for 33 years. For the last 25 years—until two weeks ago, when
Judy Parker agreed to take over—she was treasurer of the Lakeview
Cemetery Association.
“There are so few
people around here, that if you get a job, you tend to stay with
it,” she said.
Like Condon’s
Garage. It is still in the family, now handled by cousins Phillip
Condon and Donald Condon.
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