Sailing away Prospect restaurant closes doors after 55 years

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The day started much like any other at the Sail Inn Restaurant in Prospect, but for owners Paul and Bob Dyer, their families and the rest of the Sail Inn crew, Saturday was anything but a normal day.

A landmark for 55 years, with breathtaking views of the Penobscot River, the family restaurant closed its doors.

The restaurant had lost business steadily over the past year because of traffic backups as work was being done to strengthen the nearby Waldo-Hancock Bridge.

And earlier this month, the state Department of Transportation filed formal notice that it will take the 5-acre restaurant property by eminent domain in connection with construction of a new bridge to carry U.S. Route 1 across the Penobscot River.

Since word went out last week that the restaurant would close, the restaurant has been busier than ever, with patrons showing up to say goodbye to an old friend.

“It’s been a long week,” said Paul Dyer, who with his brother Bob has owned the restaurant their father started a half-century ago. “It’s been very emotional. We’ve had a lot of support from friends and customers coming in. But it keeps getting tougher and tougher every day.”

The crowds have been a bit of a surprise, Bob Dyer added.

“I guess we never realized just how many friends we’d made over the last 55 years, first through our parents and then new customers with us,” he said. “A lot of them have been coming in and showing support. It’s been very nice.”

The restaurant opened in 1948, when Eddie Dyer, their father, was just 17 years old. Right out of high school in Massachusetts, he moved to Maine and bought a vacant restaurant that sat about 200 feet closer to the Waldo-Hancock Bridge than the current building.

Eddie’s parents worked the day shift initially while he worked as a stonecutter at a nearby granite quarry, eventually becoming a master stonecutter whose granite pieces decorate such buildings as the Edmund S. Muskie Federal Building in Augusta and the Prudential Building in Boston.

He’d work at the quarry during the day, come to the restaurant, get cleaned up, then work the evening shift.

Eddie met his future bride, Vera, at local roller-skating parties, and she soon started working as one of the first waitresses at the Sail Inn.

The two of them worked side by side for 40 years before they sold the restaurant to Paul and Bob in 1988. Even after that, they stayed involved.

“We took it over 15 years ago, but Mom and Dad were always a part of it. They were our biggest cheerleaders,” Bob said. “Dad was always interested in the business. The first thing he’d say was, ‘How’d you do today?'”

One of their fondest memories of the restaurant centers on Eddie’s singing.

“He used to love to sing old Eddie Arnold songs,” Paul said.

Anyone who came to the restaurant in those earlier days would remember their father’s singing, added son Dick.

“He’d come out and sit at the counter and sing along with the jukebox,” he said. “People would put a nickel in and pick their favorites for him to sing.”

Eddie died on Jan. 2 this year. “We started the year with a death and now we’re ending the year with a death of sorts,” Dick said.

The restaurant was and remains a true family venture. All six of Eddie and Vera’s children grew up working in the restaurant.

“It was automatic,” said Dick, who now runs a public relations firm in Winthrop. “From the time I could handle a potato peeler, I was in there.”

That tradition has continued. Bob’s 15-year-old son Cody was at the restaurant Saturday, handing out carnations to the female customers while he waited to start a stint washing dishes.

“It’s hard to watch it go, especially after having come here all the time,” Cody said. “It’s been like my second home.”

The restaurant was full Saturday afternoon and each diner coming through the door received the same down-home welcome that they’d get at a relative’s home.

“Just sit anywhere,” the closest waitress called.

Waitress Alice Lanpher has worked for the restaurant for 41 years, the longest among a wait staff that measures its time more in decades than in years.

“It’s been terrific,” Lanpher said Saturday. “We’ve been together through the hard days and the good days and they’ve been here for me. It’s just like family.”

Many of the customers have become part of that family. “I know their faces,” Lanpher said. “I don’t do so well with the names, but I remember the faces.”

Most who came had fond memories of the restaurant and the people who run it.

“I’m here for the last hurrah,” said Bruce Mitchell of Stockton Springs. “It has been a tradition here for a long time. It has a nice local atmosphere and it’s run by two nice gentlemen. The waitresses here are all local and the food is good.”

The food has attracted people from the beginning.

“My wife and I like to frequent what we call mom and pop restaurants,” said John Greenleaf, who came down regularly from Bangor. “It’s better than the franchises. You get good, home-cooked food. This is just another one that’s going by the wayside. It’s too bad.”

Some have been weekly visitors to the restaurant, and the wait staff knows what they want before they sit down. Some have been visiting for decades.

Olive and Pat Goodwin of Levant met at the restaurant 45 years ago. Elvie Ramsdell has been coming in for about 50 years.

Like them, many old friends have been dropping by this week to sample one last time their favorite meals, whether it’s the freshly battered clams that the restaurant has been famous for, or simply a hot dog and onion rings.

And some, as always, stop at the kitchen door on their way in.

That’s been a tradition since Eddie built the new building in 1968, according to Dick. He kept it small enough so he could handle it himself and he had the kitchen door built facing the parking lot, Dick said, just so people could come in and visit.

“He was proud of the kitchen and he wanted to show it off. He wanted to show off the cleanliness of the kitchen,” Dick said. “He wanted people to be able to walk in there anytime.”

Ed Pert of Georgetown stood at the kitchen door Saturday, as he has over the past 40 years, still trying to wrangle the Dyers’ recipe for fish chowder out of them.

“It’s a long way to come for a bowl of fish chowder,” Pert said. “But it’s worth every spoonful.”