Community helps Pittsfield man settle into new home

PITTSFIELD — When 77-year-old Selwyn Small answered his telephone Monday afternoon, he quickly shouted, “I have to go. I have company right now.”

That little statement illustrates just how Small’s life has changed in the past month.

On the verge of being evicted from his dilapidated home this summer, Small had nowhere to go. He had been living virtually a hermit’s existence, with no central heating, no indoor plumbing, broken windows and a leaking roof. His farmhouse, where he had lived for 51 years, was literally falling down around him.

He was distrustful of strangers and reportedly came to the back door with a rifle when visitors tried to aid him during last year’s ice storm.

But the life Small is living today bears little resemblance to the one he and his dog shared in the farmhouse.

In an effort that took a corps of volunteers and endless hours by Assistant Town Manager Sylvia Hudson, Animal Control Officer Rick Curtis and Stacey Fitts of the Pittsfield Community Christmas Project, Small has a new home and a new outlook.

A tax-acquired mobile home on Raymond Avenue has been renovated and refurbished for Small.

“Volunteers completely furnished the kitchen and the living room,” Hudson said Monday. “It has been so heartwarming.”

Home-cooked Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners were delivered to Small, and Hudson said she is confident that he had a Christmas this year unlike most of the past.

“An awful lot of people contributed to making this happen,” she said.

Not the least of which was Pittsfield’s Town Council, which took a tax-acquired mobile home and leased it to Small for the remainder of his life at $1 a month.

Volunteers cleaned the trailer. Kennebec Valley Community Action Program provided a new roof and heating system. Plumbers and others volunteered their time, and community members donated dishes, couches and curtains.

Although spring yardwork and skirting the trailer remain to be done, Hudson said the renovations are nearly complete.

In a situation that could have become disastrous for Small and made Pittsfield look like a community without a heart, “everyone came out a winner,” said Hudson.

After months of negotiating with the council, lining up volunteers, and beds, bureaus and lamps, Small climbed into his car on Nov. 20 in the dirt driveway of the crumbling farmhouse. He took a long look back at the place where he and his parents lived and sold vegetables in the 1940s and ’50s and drove to his new home.

“He cried,” Hudson recalled. “I cried. We both cried all the way to the new house.”

Once there, Small began adjusting to a new way of life, Hudson said. He had to learn to use a stove, and indoor plumbing. He has been getting help training his dog, which he previously had never let outside. He now has a homemaker coming in several times a week to help him create balanced meals, keep his housecleaning up to snuff and show him how to do his laundry.

Hudson said he is adjusting well.

Reached by telephone Monday, Small would stay on the line for only a few minutes. Not a man of many words, Small simply said Monday, “I’m getting homesick, but I’m safe and warm.”

“We know he’s homesick,” said Hudson, “but at the same time, you see how quick he is to say he is safe and warm. He’s doing very, very well. In fact, he’s already made plans to put in a garden this spring.”