Courthouse fixture returns to life as farmer

MACHIAS – After more than a quarter-century as building supervisor for the Washington County Courthouse, Norris Manchester is returning to the job he loves best.

He will leave his county job Friday to work full time on his Kennebec village farm, just south of Machias.

“My dream is to go back on the farm, where I belong,” he said during an interview Tuesday in his basement office at the courthouse.

Manchester was born on his family’s farm 60 years ago and worked as a dairy farmer for 15 years after graduating from Machias Memorial High School.

But he sold his dairy herd in 1973 and became a janitor at the county courthouse, working under his father-in-law, Robert Watts.

“It was a hard thing to do – selling those cows,” he said. “But farming was just a tough business and I wanted my family to have more.” His three sons and two daughters are grown, and he and his wife, Norma, have been building their herd of beef cattle.

“I’ve got 25 to 35 head of beef cattle, depending on the time of year, and I’ve got 200 hens,” he said. “I’m not doing it to make money. If I pay the taxes, that’s enough.”

Manchester said he kept the farm going on a small scale after he began working for the county, but couldn’t have done it without the help of his son Danny and his wife, Nancy, his daughter Anita and her husband, William.

“They want their children to experience a farm, and it’s not going to be too much longer before there won’t be any farm experiences for children,” he said. “It’s too bad that we’re losing all our family farms.”

Growing up on the farm prepared him for the demands of his job as supervisor of county buildings, he said.

“We always did our own carpentry, electricity and plumbing,” he said. “When you’re brought up on a farm, you learn to do for yourself.”

And, he said, he’s acquired quite a bit of knowledge working for the county. “There were no two days alike,” he said. “The only part of the job that is routine is opening the building in the morning and closing it at night.”

The time in between was dictated by whatever needed to be done -painting, carpentry, enlarging county offices, preparing bids or overseeing contractors, he said.

Manchester said he has experienced much in his job – good and bad. But the strangest experience, and the one that people still ask him about when he travels outside the county, is an incident that occurred Sept. 9, 1993.

He said he opened the building as usual and other employees began arriving. They told him they could hear a banging sound coming from the second floor. Manchester found Superior Court Justice Francis Marsano locked in the upstairs restroom.

The judge had been in his office the previous afternoon, preparing for a session of Superior Court. When Norris went to the restroom, the push-button door lock jammed, imprisoning him in the small room.

Washington County workers, whose offices are on the first floor or in the basement, had left the courthouse at closing time, not knowing of Marsano’s plight.

Manchester got the door open and released the justice about 8 the next morning. It wasn’t a good situation, and Manchester said that if it had happened to him, he wouldn’t be too happy.

“But he was very nice about it,” Manchester said. “He greeted us with a ‘good morning,’ spiffed himself up and went to court.”

Such an incident couldn’t happen now because the county building is equipped with an alarm system, Manchester said.

The county complex has gone through many changes in the past 27 years, he said. When he came to work, the complex was just two buildings – the courthouse and the old jail. Then the county acquired the old Bagley building, but tore it down 10 years later to install a parking lot behind the building.

The old jail was demolished to make way for a new jail, constructed in 1988 and now so overcrowded that Manchester believes it needs to be expanded, much in the way the state will be expanding the courthouse to accommodate the space needs of District and Superior courts.

Manchester said he has worked under 26 commissioners and six sheriffs, but has been left alone to do his job as he’s seen fit. The years at the county complex have been good ones, he said.

“I’ve worked with a lot of good people on a daily basis and I’ll miss them,” he said, “but they’re in good hands.” The commissioners hired Michael Ward of Dennysville, a licensed plumber and heating technician, to replace Manchester. Ward started work Nov. 27 so that Manchester could spend some time with him.