Rockland address alive with memories

There should be a plaque outside 410 Main St. in Rockland.

In its latest incarnation, it will become the future home of the Rockland Courier Gazette. It has also been the home of the Island Institute, Bangor Daily News, the Rockland Coffee Shop and God only knows what else.

The coffee shop was Ground Zero in Rockland in the 1970s, when it was operated by David Achorn, a leprechaun if there ever was one. If you wanted a news story, you sat down at a table and heard the gossip from Waldoboro to Belfast before the English muffins hit the table. If you were a person of sufficient stature, you got to sit at The Table, the one closest to the kitchen. Only the most prestigious businessmen and raconteurs sat there. It was the Lime City’s version of the Round Table.

If you didn’t have enough to pay for the cheeseburger and fries, you asked Bev or one of the other waitresses to “put it in the drawer,” then came back on payday to settle up … maybe.

The seminal event of the 1970s in Rockland was the night of Feb. 14, 1976, when a 5-gallon gasoline can exploded on the floor of the coffee shop. Achorn ended up in prison for the impromptu effort at redecorating. I remember it well because I was supposed to be sitting in the NEWS office, directly over the gasoline can, when it exploded. If it went off as designed, I would have been the first satellite launched from the midcoast area.

A family medical problem dispatched me to Massachusetts and left one of Ted Sylvester’s sons in the hot seat. Sylvester was the saintly bureau chief of the NEWS in those days. His son escaped without a scratch.

These were the days when Rockland had two daily newspapers, The Courier and a host of radio stations. Seven reporters often showed up for the Friday press conferences at Rockland City Hall. No matter what you think of reporters, they excel at partying. This preponderance of reporters meant for massive parties, at the drop of a hat.

One event at 410 Main St. celebrated the long-awaited departure of Ted Cohen of the Portland Press Herald in an idle second floor office. Someone baked a farewell cake for Cohen. Unfortunately, it was also the birthday of five different people, all of whom got a cake. That’s six cakes. Can you figure out the rest?

As I took a picture of Cohen cutting his cake with a machete (don’t ask), he threw a piece of cake at the camera. It made for a great photo and a small riot. In a scene reminiscent of “Animal House,” a fierce food fight soon ensued. Can you imagine what six cakes look like, plastered all over an office wall? Even a Rockland police officer was hit with frosting shrapnel when he came up to see what the noise was all about.

I came back the next day to shovel the frosting off the wall. Poor Rex Garrett, who ran a printing business on the third floor, looked like a Sherpa guide on K2, as he tried to walk up the frosting-coated stairs. “What happened?” Garrett asked. Who could answer?

At the party, Achorn gave Cohen a going-away present of all the slips the Portland reporter left unpaid, in “the drawer.” As Achorn said during the presentation, “I knew you weren’t going to pay for them, anyway.”

It could have been the same night, it could have been another, when occasional reporter Mike McGuire wandered too close to an open window during a party in the same vacant, second-floor office. Two other celebrants, without a word, threw McGuire out the window and held him by his ankles, swinging above Main Street traffic.

Half the party screamed “Drop him!” The other half danced to the Ohio Players. McGuire’s female companion, who has repeatedly asked to remain unidentified, punched the two ankle-holders, who could not determine if the blows were an effort to get them to drop McGuire or to bring him back in.

Reason, or the prospect of prosecution, prevailed and McGuire was hauled back in.

Now McGuire claims to be a big time official at the Courier. As he looks over the plans for the new office at 410 Main, he would be well advised to take an office without any windows.

Forget the water view. It could be dangerous.

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmears@msn.com.