Camden’s best days

Camden, are you listening? How sad to see a community where few can afford to live there any more. Yes, change is inevitable. Sadly, it now happens way too quickly for all but the astute investor to grasp long-term implications and have any control.

When I was a kid, Camden was a mill town with five woolen mills. It also had a shipyard where many of our families built smaller vessels for the military effort during World War II. Camden had Curtis’ for hardware, Acorns for dry goods, the bakery, the theater, and Crockett’s Five and Dime that was the best of all for a youngster.

There were many memorable people as well as places.

Tige, the mailman, always had Life Savers to give to kids (though I seemed to always wind up getting the pineapple flavor).

Next to MacFarland’s garage on Washington Street was Mr. Bishop’s store, with Bishop behind the counter looking exactly like Groucho Marx, it seemed. Also on Washington, there was Maude and John, the second-generation owners of the Felton store at the corner of Sand Street, across from another mill, later to be the tannery.

My grandmother opened the store early and warmly greeted folks buying something to eat, drink or smoke as they went to work at the mill or took breaks. They had a Shell gas pump out front and a gear-driven kerosene pump in the back room. It was a great place to catch up on local news.

My point through all of the above is to remind folks that Camden was a place where hard-working folks worked and played among each other without having to go a great distance. There was a history in their ties with the community. Yes, there were also the many families where the bread-winner earned (usually) his living as far away as Bath, and who also eventually relocated to Connecticut to work at the aircraft plants there once there was little industry here.

Now, to the tannery, its future, and the future of Millville:

Are you prepared to see a gentrification of that site along the river? I hope there are some people left who care about Camden’s history and about what it stood for. There is certainly nothing to be ashamed about for being a robust mill town! I hope there are some folks who are tired of the gentrified names and don’t want to see Millville occupied by “The Inn at Megunticook Falls” or “Riverview Estates” or “Mountainview Commons.”

As for me, it is my hope that there will be a desire to retain a multi-use neighborhood with a diversity of building styles and housing that is as affordable as Camden can offer. I think it would be charming if the core original structure of the mill-tannery could be replicated, even if at a somewhat reduced scale, in the future structures to be on that site. Most important, I hope the town will give very serious consideration to negotiating with any new owner for some portion of the property to be used by the public, with access to the river.

So far, the general public hasn’t gotten much use out of what has happened along the river to date. It’s time that happened.

Camden’s citizens need to say in public what they say privately. You have power. The system is designed for you to speak.

More need to use that power.

Patricia I. Felton is a resident of Belfast.