Kennebunkport, Me. A Small Town Goes Prime-Time

By Sam Allis

The only way Bob Brigham used to know that George Bush was in town was when his daughter would return from Bradbury Brothers Market and announce, "The Filipinos are here." This meant that the Vice President's household staff was preparing for his arrival. Things change. "Now it looks like a damned convention for the hearing impaired," observes Brigham, a local real estate agent, about the swarm of Secret Service men sporting earphones when Bush is in Kennebunkport.

For the record, it was on Wednesday, Nov. 23, that Kennebunkport met its first metal detector. Bush was to address his friends and neighbors -- folks like Booth Chick and Carl Bartlett -- on the town green, and his security men set one up on Ocean Avenue to screen the audience. He had survived more than 60 summers in this lovely coastal Maine town without a single metal detector, but then he never was President-elect. Trouble was, there were too many people for the lone detector. The police finally said the hell with it, just before Bush began, and let everyone in to hear the speech. "We're going to need more of them," sighs Roland Drew, chairman of the board of selectmen.

It is going to get tricky. "I can't imagine anyone here calling him Mr. President," predicts Bartlett, owner of Port Hardware. "It has always been 'Hi, George, how are you?' Hell, I've never heard anyone call him Mr. Bush."

Two days later, Bill Ward over at Port Video had a scare. He was having breakfast next door at Karens Restaurant when Bush arrived to rent a couple of videos, leading a 15-car motorcade of security and media people. "For a moment I thought my place was on fire," Ward recalls. "It reminded me of the Monty Python movie where the kid opens the bedroom window and sees a lawn full . of people. It's ridiculous for the press to follow Bush around to see what he buys. Renting Broadcast News is not a national policy decision."

Brace yourself, Bill, you are in summer White House country now. Weird things happen. Remember Plains, Ga.? "If anyone spent a dime there, that was an improvement over the year before," sniffs Ward. True enough. Plains shot into the limelight with Jimmy Carter and sunk back into the kudzu like Brigadoon. Then there was Hyannis, Mass., which metamorphosed from a decent summer community into the world capital of turquoise John F. Kennedy ashtrays. The place has never recovered from the combination of Kennedy mystique, weak zoning and bad taste.

None of this is lost on Kennebunkport's 4,500 natives. Many ponder their future at Alisson's Restaurant, where fresh rumors mingle daily with the clam chowder. Someone murmurs that the Secret Service will close Ocean Avenue, the road that runs past the Bush compound on Walker's Point, for security reasons. "If they do that, the cars will back up all the way to Wells," moans Rick Griffin, owner of the Kennebunkport Inn, envisioning a traffic jam stretching to a town seven miles away.

The truth is that the town is already a tourist hive in season, and George Bush has nothing to do with it. The population swells to around 30,000 in the summer, and 19,000 cars cross the narrow two-lane bridge into Dock Square each day in peak season. Gridlock comes with the Coppertone. "Ocean Avenue is already a zoo," concedes selectman Drew. Adds Tom Bradbury, whose family has been in town for generations: "The Bush factor changes the name on the souvenir, but the souvenirs were already here."

Kennebunkport was not always a summer mob scene. When Bush's maternal grandfather George Herbert Walker built his house in 1903, the town was a quiet refuge for well-heeled gentry from New York and Boston. They built sprawling "cottages" along Ocean Avenue and played tennis at the River Club, while the natives fished and built ships on the Kennebunk River. Life remained peaceful until a decade or so ago, when the southern coast of Maine was discovered by tourists and developers. Dock Square used to have a gas station, a hardware store, a market, a movie theater. They are all gone now, replaced by shops with names like Frangipani.

Some focus heroically on the bright side. "It's exciting," says Monroe Scharff, a Bush neighbor. "How often do you find a beautiful place that is ; also the summer residence of the President of the United States?" And selectman Joe Finn trumpets, "We've been in the London Times and the Hong Kong Daily News!"

Others are less sanguine. "I can see this town is going to hell fast," says Mike Day, a lobster fisherman. Adds Rick Griffin: "We're already maxed out. We may be in for what Hyannis experienced. I don't see any way to stop it. I'm amazed at the number of people who are excited about this."

Far worse will be the media, who will be as thick as black flies whenever Bush is in town. The Washington press corps already left its mark on Kennebunkport over Thanksgiving. Roland Drew was talking to a photographer before Bush arrived at the South Congregational Church for Sunday services when a reporter snapped, "Get out of my way!" Says Drew, more in wonder than anger: "No one talks like that around here." Day defended some firewood that two reporters planned to liberate to warm themselves while camped out near the Bush compound. "How do you 'borrow' firewood?" Day asks. "It's going to be like Boston soon. You'll have to put fences around everything that's worth anything."

On the other hand, there will be more business for the cluster of gift shops in Dock Square that sell things like scented candles and T shirts. Diane Frazier, owner of Mountain Tops, which offers BUSH COUNTRY sweat shirts for $16.99, says, "He's great for business. But I don't want to do anything tacky. He's the President."

"Real estate prices will go up, no question about that," adds Bob Dennis, the town Republican Party chairman. This is bad news for many residents whose modest incomes do not match the town's tony image. Says Mike Marceau, a lobster wholesaler: "George Bush does nothing for commercial fishermen. Workingmen can't afford to buy a house here. I don't make enough money to buy property in this town, and I was born here."

Still, most folks are proud of their local boy who made good. They are convinced Kennebunkport will survive this latest act of God. "This too shall pass," intones Barbara Rencurrel with abundant Yankee stoicism. In the meantime, says Carl Bartlett, "it's like being in the stands at the circus."