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Eaton Exceeds Teachers’ Expectations
Ken Eaton takes a moment to relax at Eaton’s Boatyard in Castine.
The selectman had just finished stepping a mast in a customer’s
sailboat and was preparing to attend a special town meeting
where a water supply issue was to be decided. |
Ken Eaton has
always known what he wanted, even if people around him did not.
As a schoolboy in
Castine years ago, Eaton recently confided, teachers were certain
that his professional life would follow the same dismal route his
academic one had.
He sure showed
them.
Today, Eaton is his
own master, owner of Eaton’s Boatyard on Sea Street, in one of the
most beautiful seaports on the east coast.
Not only that, he
is a town selectman and people listen to him. In all, he has proven
his teachers so, so wrong.
On a recent
Thursday, Eaton and his crew were busy trying to beat the tide as
they prepared a mainmast for Dr. David Bebee of Winterport, who uses
Eaton’s Boatyard to care for his 36-foot sailboat.
As the crew
struggled with the hoists and the mast slowly stood on end, hanging
precariously over the boat, Eaton grasped it and gave commands to
lower, hold or pull back up, all the while reminding the crew that
the tide was coming in and the boat was rising.
A boat rising with
the tide is no problem unless someone is stepping a mast and the
Eaton crewmembers have had their races with the tide over the years.
This time, they came to within about an inch of the small portal
through which Eaton was trying to feed the hefty piece of hardware.
He ran below decks
to take charge of the final seating as his crew stood by, Keith
Cloukey of Penobscot capturing one line with his left foot against
the dock and pulling on another to guide the bulky mast. Eaton
shouted muffled commands from below to lower the mast, then raise
it, as he guided it the final inches to its resting place.
Job done, and sighs
of relief breathed, Eaton and his crew decided that it was time to
break for lunch, but at that moment, Carroll Allen of Hampden
appeared. Allen, a long-time customer of Eaton’s, had returned from
Daytona, Fla., seeking refuge at the boatyard in Castine. The two
men retold stories of Allen’s several boats he had owned over the
years, recalling his efforts to keep seagulls from littering one,
all of them failing, including the owl set out to scare the
creatures—“They mated with it,” Allen said, flatly.
As the day drew to
a close, Eaton, two selectmen and 28 other townspeople gathered at a
special town meeting to discuss a proposed moratorium on new wells.
Eaton sat among the audience, as did Selectman Peter Vogel, and
quizzed Town Manager Joseph Slocum about the need for the moratorium
and what it would accomplish.
Eaton, from remarks
he made earlier Thursday, was of two minds about the measure, which
passed with no more trouble than three or four opponents could
muster by proposing amendments. Those amendments failed to gain
support and the moratorium sailed through the meeting just as
selectmen and town manager had written it.
But Eaton had said
earlier that he did not like the moratorium. “It’s a God-given
right,” he had said of people being able to drill wells for water.
He would have done it, himself, right at the boatyard, he said,
sweeping one arm around to indicate the lot where his business sits.
But being a selectman that would look bad, he admitted, and he had
not seriously considered a private well.
It was Eaton who
approached school officials at a budget hearing in January at the
tiny Adams School, asking
them to give the same care to their budget as selectmen had to the
town budget. But, no matter what the topic might be, whether
stubborn numbers on a budget sheet or a mast to be wrestled into
place on a sailboat, Eaton is easy to talk with, even jovial, and
always has the town’s best interests at heart. |
