Category Archives: civil rights

>Autism = Changeling????

>
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In light of recent events I have come to question many things. Religion one of them, as noted in the link, but it’s more than that. If you have read this, than you will also know that I have NEVER been treated like a Human. In fact, since I was 4 years old, adults have told me I was eveything other than Human. They told me I was a witch. They told me I was a demon or was possessed by a demon. They told me I was or had a poltergeist. They told me I had an evil spirit that should be hidden from the world and at 8 years old I was locked away by adults to live the rest of my past 26 years in absolute isolation and solitude with nothing but animals for compainionship. I have not been allowed to leave the house except to go to church. I have not been allowed to have Human friends.

At church, members and leaders shared my family’s sentiments. With each new Sunday, I was told by more and more Humans that I did not deserve to be among them because I was too differant, because I was not like them, because I was not one of them. They told me I was eveything other than Human. They told me I was a witch. They told me I was a demon or was possessed by a demon. They told me I was or had a poltergeist. They told me I had an evil spirit. I was never allowed to sit among the members, forced instead to sit alone in a chair against the back wall during my youth, and alone in a chair in the hall later on. The other children were not allowed by their parents to speak to me, because as they said, I needed to be punished, to be taught a lesson, to learn that I was not one of them, because as they said I was evil – the child of Satan.
I have never understood their words or their actions, but I quickly learned not to voice my confussion as that would only result in exocism attempts. Do you have any idea how many times I’ve had oil dumped on my head and the hands of many church leaders on my head as the prayed loudly to cast out my demons? I couldn’t even begin to count.

It’s been 34 years now. Four years ago I was told I had Autism, thus explaining why I did not act the same as every one else. Family and church members however say that the doctor lied and that Autism is just an excuse, Satan’s way of decieving folks into allowing a demon possessed person to continue on in their duties as a witch. I continue to question their accusations. I remain as always, puzzled by their words. I am confussed by the things they say to me and about me. I have come to question now, if what they say is true: am I not Human? And if I am not Human, what than am I? How did I get here? How would I find out? Does anyone know?
I was trying to find out more information when I found out about Indigo and Crystal and Rainbow Children. I’m not too sure exactly what they are, but from what little I’ve read so far, I’m wondering if I am in the category too? How would I go about finding out? Is there any sort of “official” way of testing or is just more hit and miss guess work or something in between the two?

I’m trying to make sense of this whole Asperger Syndrome thing, but it’s hard because I get no support from family or church and I don’t know any one else. I am basically left alone in my room all day, but at least I have my computer and can thus try to find someone online. Surrprisingly people online are nothing like the people I’ve known in person and so I feel more confidant about being able to ask you people for advice, in hopes that I can get some real answers (I do not consider the “demon possession” and “witch” accusations to be real answers!) I try very hard to make sense of these things but it’s difficult because I’ve no one to ask advice from.

I am very confused and upset right now, seeing how the bishop has decided to excommunicate me from the church on grounds of witchcraft. I’ve never had any place to go other than to church and in 2 weeks I will not be allowed back there because they say I am a witch. I am very sad and lonely right now. I wish I knew what to do or how to handle this situation, but I don’t and I’ve no one to talk to about it either.

Autism does not = witchcraft. I know that, why don’t they? Why do they treat me like this? I don’t understand.

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

Thank You Kitty. . .Page copy protected against web site content infringement by Copyscape

————-
If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:
Create your own banner at mybannermaker.com!.
Create your own banner at mybannermaker.com!.
Create your own banner at mybannermaker.com!
.

black birdfall leaves centerblack bird

Blingo

Shop the Star Trek Store Today!
Your Favorite Characters Are At CartoonNetworkShop.com!

Autism = Changeling????

black birdfall leaves centerblack bird

In light of recent events I have come to question many things. Religion one of them, as noted in the link, but it’s more than that. If you have read this, than you will also know that I have NEVER been treated like a Human. In fact, since I was 4 years old, adults have told me I was eveything other than Human. They told me I was a witch. They told me I was a demon or was possessed by a demon. They told me I was or had a poltergeist. They told me I had an evil spirit that should be hidden from the world and at 8 years old I was locked away by adults to live the rest of my past 26 years in absolute isolation and solitude with nothing but animals for compainionship. I have not been allowed to leave the house except to go to church. I have not been allowed to have Human friends.

At church, members and leaders shared my family’s sentiments. With each new Sunday, I was told by more and more Humans that I did not deserve to be among them because I was too differant, because I was not like them, because I was not one of them. They told me I was eveything other than Human. They told me I was a witch. They told me I was a demon or was possessed by a demon. They told me I was or had a poltergeist. They told me I had an evil spirit. I was never allowed to sit among the members, forced instead to sit alone in a chair against the back wall during my youth, and alone in a chair in the hall later on. The other children were not allowed by their parents to speak to me, because as they said, I needed to be punished, to be taught a lesson, to learn that I was not one of them, because as they said I was evil – the child of Satan.
I have never understood their words or their actions, but I quickly learned not to voice my confussion as that would only result in exocism attempts. Do you have any idea how many times I’ve had oil dumped on my head and the hands of many church leaders on my head as the prayed loudly to cast out my demons? I couldn’t even begin to count.

It’s been 34 years now. Four years ago I was told I had Autism, thus explaining why I did not act the same as every one else. Family and church members however say that the doctor lied and that Autism is just an excuse, Satan’s way of decieving folks into allowing a demon possessed person to continue on in their duties as a witch. I continue to question their accusations. I remain as always, puzzled by their words. I am confussed by the things they say to me and about me. I have come to question now, if what they say is true: am I not Human? And if I am not Human, what than am I? How did I get here? How would I find out? Does anyone know?
I was trying to find out more information when I found out about Indigo and Crystal and Rainbow Children. I’m not too sure exactly what they are, but from what little I’ve read so far, I’m wondering if I am in the category too? How would I go about finding out? Is there any sort of “official” way of testing or is just more hit and miss guess work or something in between the two?

I’m trying to make sense of this whole Asperger Syndrome thing, but it’s hard because I get no support from family or church and I don’t know any one else. I am basically left alone in my room all day, but at least I have my computer and can thus try to find someone online. Surrprisingly people online are nothing like the people I’ve known in person and so I feel more confidant about being able to ask you people for advice, in hopes that I can get some real answers (I do not consider the “demon possession” and “witch” accusations to be real answers!) I try very hard to make sense of these things but it’s difficult because I’ve no one to ask advice from.

I am very confused and upset right now, seeing how the bishop has decided to excommunicate me from the church on grounds of witchcraft. I’ve never had any place to go other than to church and in 2 weeks I will not be allowed back there because they say I am a witch. I am very sad and lonely right now. I wish I knew what to do or how to handle this situation, but I don’t and I’ve no one to talk to about it either.

Autism does not = witchcraft. I know that, why don’t they? Why do they treat me like this? I don’t understand.

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

Thank You Kitty. . .Page copy protected against web site content infringement by Copyscape

————-
If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:
Create your own banner at mybannermaker.com!.
Create your own banner at mybannermaker.com!.
Create your own banner at mybannermaker.com!
.

black birdfall leaves centerblack bird

Blingo

Shop the Star Trek Store Today!
Your Favorite Characters Are At CartoonNetworkShop.com!

Plagiarism Update: Sent Report To WordPress

Plagiarism Update: Sent Report To WordPress

I have just sent a report on this evil thief’s activities to WordPress. I urge anyone with the sewing related WordPress blog to look at the thief’s blog and see if your posts are being stolen. If they are, please send a report to WordPress as well. If there is a way to identify this plager and send them to jail, let me know, because I will pursue that course of action. As an author I take plagiarism very seriously, and so should you. Well, at least they chose the right name for their blog: Scum Bag Clothing. I can’t think of anything that makes a person more of a scumbag than being a thief.

Here is a copy of the letter I sent to WordPress:

Posts off of more than 30 different WordPress blogs (all sewing topics) are being copied and posted word for word, picture for picture, on someone else’s blog!

I use CopyScape on my posts, and CopyScape notified me that my posts were being copied and distributed on someone else’s blog without my permission, so I went to their blog to check and CopyScape was right. They copied everything, word for word, picture for picture… even the CopyScape plagiarizing warning gif!

Because they are copying posts off of my sewing blog, so I started checking all the other posts on their blog, and they’ve plagiarized every single post on their blog, by stealing posts and pictures off of other people’s blogs! I’ve only checked the posts for Jun so far, but so far I’ve counted over 30 different WordPress blogs from which they are stealing posts and hotlinking images from!

Here is their blog link:

http://www.scumbagclothing.com/category/dressmaking/

I don’t know how to stop them. I’ve been trying to find a way to notify their blog host, but so far have not had any luck. If you know of a way to stop them from stealing the posts off of our blogs, please let me know, cause I don’t like them claiming that they wrote the articles I wrote. They are even displaying my drawings on their blog and claiming they drew them!

Sorry for the rant, but I thought you’d want to know that they’ve been stealing posts and passing them off as theirs. :(

This is so frustrating. I put so much work into writing my articles and drawing my artwork, and I know other folks do as well. It’d be one thing if they were linking back to our blogs with a review or something, but they are claiming that they wrote all of these posts and drew all of the art and took all of the photos themselves!

Is there a law enforcement agency I can contact about this? I was told that the FBI had an identity theft division that handles online predators that steal other peoples identities. Should I contact the FBI about this? I mean who ever is running this blog is claiming to be me, by saying they wrote those articles, so that’s identity theft as far as I can tell.

What should I do?

Is there anything that you can do about it, since they are stealing posts off of WordPress blogs?

Harrasment Continues

My name is Wendy Allen. I am writing to you on behalf of my father, Kenneth Allen of Old Orchard Beach, Maine. Our family is in desperate need of help. In the past two years we have tried without success to get help locally, but now the deadline is less than a week away and we do not know what to do or who to turn too for help. Since this is a long and complicated ordeal, I well start at the beginning. First off, I should tell you that we are fighting the local government, the officials of the Town of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, for the followingcharges: Discrimination against a disabled senior. A seniors rights being taken away from him.Repeated harassment, and discriminatory attempts to force a low income family off their land, resulting in the year long hospitalization of already mentioned senior and resulting in his becoming disabled.Threat of the destruction of property, including the threat of tearing down the home of aforementioned senior and his minor children and their pets.Forcing the senior and his minor children out of their home and onto the streets where they lived for much of 2006 in a “tent” constructed out of shipping pallets and a tarp, where they lived in the elements of Maine’s harsh winter, some days suffering at below zero temperatures.The threat of having all our belongings destroyed.The reason the town official Ken Shoup gave for this harassment was quote:“This is Old Orchard, you have to change you lifestyle.”End quote. No other reason has been given.Now, for our story and how this train of events came to be:First off, our family has a long history with the Town of Old Orchard, due to the fact that our family settled this town more than 300 years ago. Our family has lived on the properties here in since 1657. Originally there were several hundred acres on our land, both forest and farmland, but as the centuries went by the land was divided among relatives and passed on in increasingly smaller sections from one generation to the next. As the town grew and the land became more valuable, relatives sold out and moved away. By the 1940’s ours was the last to remain in the original family, a small lot less than an acre in size. Not only was it the last to remain in the original family, but it was also the last farm in Old Orchard Beach.It should be noted that property in Old Orchard is valued in the millions due to it being one of the world’s top rated award-winning beaches, and there in lies the root of our problem. Our farm has been accused of decreasing the property values. By the 1980’s Old Orchard became known as the hang out for biker gangs, honky-tonks, and strip shops. Property values dropped as the family image of the town plummeted. In the 1990’s, things changed once again, the gangs were driven out, the honky-tonks and bars shut down, and the strip shops became restaurants and art galleries. Property taxes sky-rocketed to the second highest in the state as millionaire mansions and high rise condos reconstructed the sky-line, forever blocking out the view of the beach from the roads.Old Orchard beach town officials, spent millions putting in brick sidewalks, Victorian street lamps, and building a replica of the town hall that had stood here in the 1800’s…. their campaign was to create a “historical town” to draw in high income tourists. The campaign was wildly advertised, and well promoted… until the new town manager and his new staff showed their true colors, that is and their campaign turned to harassing long time locals off of their land. Several families have been driven out already. Most unable and unwilling to fight the local government as the threats of propety destruction, and the removal of personal belongings (including pets) has scared most of the “offending families” into selling thier land and moving. There are only a handful of families that have stood thier ground, but those too are leaving. Ours is one of the last to remain, still standing our round, and refusing to give in to the threats made by local police officers, local code enforcement officers, and the town manager himself. In the past year they have changed (without proper votes from the people) nearly every code on the book in an attempt to force these families off thier land. Changes in code include such things as “banning the growing of vegetation”, “painting your house”, “owning more than one car per family”, and other ridiculous town laws, that now prohibit such things as growing a garrden. It is like living in a strict gated community, only it is the entire town.On the outskirts of the town, one finds the beautiful rolling acres of Ross Forest, once a candidate to become a national park, most of it now clear cut, and what little remains is soon to be sold for housing complexes, many already under construction. Dividing the Ross Forest from the down town district, lay the remains of a few scattered farms, no longer in use. Except for one: ours. At one time a large full production poultry farm, today the home of pet farm animals, but still very much an active farm, small as it is.

The harassment of our family began in the fall of 2005 after an unknown person, wrote an editorial to the local newspapers, saying, “Four homes on Portland Avenue were distracting from the value of other properties in the town”. The writer continued saying that something should be done about it, that these four homes “should be torn down”, and the families should be forced to move out of town to make way for the new generation. Two of those four homes mentioned, as it turns out, were 144 Portland Ave and 146 Portland Ave.

At 144 Portland Avenue there lives my elderly dad Kenneth Allen, myself, and my three brothers (all under 16 years of age). As you may guess, our dad was much, much older than our mother, explaining how a senior came to have young children. In 1983, my dad’s mother died and he inherited her house at 146 Portland Ave. The tiny 16 foot by 9-foot house, which never had plumbing, etc. Was turned into a shed, but even so, the town has continued to tax it as a house. Since October of 2001 (six years ago) we have been applying for a permit to repair this building, and turn it into a greenhouse so we can extend our growing season, but the town STILL has that on a waiting list.

We continued to live in the old 700 square foot house, more of a cabin than a house by the town’s standards anyways. My dad was a newspaper carrier for 21 years, our family income was under $20,000 a year, so we were never able to afford much, but we never noticed, because we were happy. Our family was living together, we had our pets with us, and we lived on our farm. That we lacked a “normal income” or a “normal lifestyle” (as the town officials now put it) never occurred to us.

Than in spring of 2006, there came the letters from the town. One after another. Demands to “remove the junk and debris” or else. As it turns out, what they were calling junk and debris, was as follows:

Our car, which though they consider it “junk” still runs in spit of what it looks like, and we use it daily.

Our fire wood (we have a woodstove for heat, cause we can‘t afford anything else.)

My dad’s tools (he was a car mechanic in the 1970’s, and still works on his own car and cars of relatives)

Our brooder (used for raising baby chickens each spring)

My dad’s antique cast iron wood stove collection

Our garden (bean poles, pea fences, etc… they say we can’t have a garden any more either)

Our washing machine (a 1947 wringer, which we use weekly)

Our farming equipment (tiller, ATV, etc…. all used on a regular basis)

In other words, what they are calling “trash”, “junk”, and “debris” are actually things we use every day, things we need in order to survive… without them we can not garden, if we can not garden we can not eat, because we can not afford to buy enough food to eat more than one meal a day per person, without the garden we well starve to death, without the farm equipment we can not garden, they are trying to kill us… this is not a figure of speech… as you shall soon understand.

My dad explained to the town that this stuff is not junk but our livelihood. The town responded by attaching a lean/fine on our property, for “refusal to comply with orders“. I’m not sure how much the amount is unto today, but it was much more than we could afford than, and more so now.

My dad made an attempt to move the items so that they could not be seen from the road, in an attempt to comply with the town’s orders, hoping that if the items could not be seen from the road, that it would stop the harassment by the town… this was the biggest mistake he could have made, because as a result, a few days later on May 9, 2006, he went into a coma.

May 9, 2006 started like any other day. I woke up and went out to feed the chickens, work in the garden, and than help my dad move items out of view of the street. My dad had not yet gotten up. I had been in the yard barely 20 minutes when my 15 year old brother came running across the yard in a panic… something was wrong, I could see it on his face, and I ran to meet him… he told me that something was wrong with daddy… daddy had woken up and torn the wood stove out of the wall tearing with it all of the water pipes… and now the house was under water, while daddy was throwing everything from the toilet to the tables to shelves to files all over the house. By the time I arrived in the house there was 8 inches of water on the floor, and nothing left of anything… everything in the house was totally destroyed, there was not only nothing left on shelves, there were no longer any shelves. It looked like a tornado had gone through the house. The house was barely recognizable.

My smaller brothers had run into the bedroom to hide, terrified at the event that was unfolding, while daddy was now in an attempt at tearing out the windows. When I asked him what he was doing, he did not recognize me, he could not hear me, he could not see me… it was like he had turned into a blind man and was tearing at the walls in an attempt to see… I rushed to the neighbor who called an ambulance.

The ambulance arrived, and talk of nervous breakdown and meningitis, were scatted around the conversations… the emergency team was in attempt of asking me what happened, when I was pulled away by a police officer named Jack Nichols, who proceeded to interrogate me about the condition of our house.

The wood stove was laying in pieces in the center of the dinning room, and this was his main focus…

repeating the same question again and again: “How long has this been laying here?” he demanded. I told him, it had just happened, he accused me of lying, and repeated the question…. over and over again, and I kept explaining to him, that daddy had just done this, which was why we had called 911. Than he turned his questions to the piles of paper and mail that scattered the house… “What’s all this clutter?” he yelled. Again I explained that this had just happened, that it was stuff that had been on the shelves and table, but as before, he accused me of lying and repeated the question again and again, his voice growing more heated and temperamental each time. Than in a menacing voice he turned on my three little brothers “Why aren’t these children in school?”. I explained that we home schooled, and we had approval from the town’s superintendent. Next he railed me out about how children can’t live in “clutter and filth” like this… again I explained that this “clutter and filth” as he called it, had just happened moments ago, and it was because this had happened that we had called for his help. He responded by calling the Department of Human Services to take my brothers away, and than calling the town code enforcement officer to condemn the house on grounds of “clutter and filth”.

While all this was happening the ambulance had taken my dad away, to where they had taken him I did not know, because Jack Nichols had not given me a chance to even know what had happened to my dad. More police, this time with cameras, stormed into the house, none of them would tell me what they were doing, why they were there, or what had happened to my dad. In the mean time my mom and her husband arrived, and my brothers and me packed a few things so we could move in with her while we figured out what to do next. We tried to pack what little we could find that hadn’t been destroyed by the flood, and do it around police officers who seemed to be going through everything in the house for no reason at all, and who refused to talk to me or even acknowledge that I was there. Luckily the hospital called us during this time and told us where my dad was, but they would not discuss his condition over the phone. It was four hours before the police would let us leave to find out what happened to my dad. A friend, who had witnessed the police searching the house with their cameras, said that he thought it looked like a drug raid, and he suggested that we get copies of the police report to find out why they were going through the house like that. I told my dad this after he came out of the hospital and he went to the station to get copies of the report, but they refused to give them to him without a court order, so we have been unable to obtain any info as to why the police were going through everything like that.

It was a lesson well learned. We called the police for help and they turned on us like rabid wolves. I well never call 911 again.

Once at the hospital I was told that what we had just witnessed was a diabetic seizure, brought on by extreme amounts of stress. The doctor asked if my dad had any recent stress… yes, he had, with the town harassing him the past couple of weeks, and than the police harassing him even during a medical emergency, nearly hindering the emergency teams ability to get him to the hospital. Dr. Greene than explained that it was luckily he had gotten to the hospital when he did “another 20 minutes and he’d have been dead” is what he said. I shudder to think that the town police and their obsession with throwing us off our land nearly resulted in my dad’s death. Dr. Greene went on to explain that my dad was now in a diabetic coma on full life support. Wither or not he would live was not yet known.

As days, turned to weeks, my dad remained in a coma, his system getting weaker by the minute, at one point his kidneys failed him and he had to be rushed in for dialysis.

My dad remained in Southern Maine Medical Center in a diabetic coma on full life support for 21 days. In mid-June they moved him, wheelchair bound, from SMMC to New England Rehab Center in Portland. On June 29, 2006, my dad came home, unable to walk on his own, and saw for the first time what had become of our house. Just three days after my dad went into the hospital our electricity was shut off. The town claims they had nothing to do with it when I asked them. Without electricity, there was no light, and thus no way to see to clean the mess from the flood, and so, it remained just as it had been left on that day in May.

My dad, was now severely disabled, only able to walk a few feet at a time and unable to lift anything. The stress caused by the town’s harassment had left him with a weak heart and failing kidney’s, but the harassment had only just begun, for almost as soon as he was out of the hospital, the town once again began its relentless pursuit to remove us from our land. Land that for us means our heritage, our history, our legacy, but land that for the town, means nothing but dollar signs and profit margins.

Due to the months of the house sitting filled with water, we could not go back in to live in it. Having no family or relatives willing to help us, we were forced to camp out in the yard. We signed up for various shelter foundations and were put on their waiting lists. At HUD we were informed that we were #600 on the list.

Problems had gotten worse than I had known… for my dad was now disabled and could not go to work, thus I started my long and fruitless search for a job, which is today still ongoing. During his hospitalization, no bills had been paid, and about 10 or so years ago my dad had taken out a mortgage on the house… there has been no money since May of 2006 (nearly a year now), and thus no mortgage payments since that time either, they are now threatening to foreclose, but know the situation and are trying to work out a payment plan with my dad, in hopes that his disability check well eventually be approved by the state (he is still waiting to hear from the state on that… they sure do take a long time. They said it well is approved, they just have to wait for the paperwork to go through, so there should be some type of an income soon, we hope.)

With no income, and a house that we can not live in, my dad lived in his car, my brothers now liveing with our mom and her husband, and I built a house-tent-lean-to type of thing out of 12 shipping pallets, 3 cinderblocks, and a tarp. We had asked the town if we could put up a yurt (not hard to build as our land boarders a forest) until we could get a house back up, but they told us no, only tents were allowed, but we couldn’t afford to buy a real tent, so I built one instead. (UPDATE: The town has since taken our house. No one ever did make an attempt to help us as every one is just too scared of the town counel to stand up to them.)

Letters from the town continued to arrive. We continued to visit the town hall where we got the run around… “Come back in the morning, he’s only here in the mornings.”…Next day: “I’m sorry, did I say mornings? No, you’ll have to come in the afternoon.”… Day after day after day… week after week after week… “He’s out sick today”… “He’s on vacation this week.”… “He’s out on an inspection today.”… Weeks became months and STILL we had yet to meet the man behind the letters: Ken Shoupe. Though we went to his office almost daily, we would not meet him until November of 2006.

In July my dad had to have surgery, and was bed-ridden or rather car-ridden, as he had no bed, for several weeks afterwards. For food we get a bag a month from the Salvation Army (the only place that made an attempt to help us, little as it was) and each month we stretch that single bag of food as much as we possible can to make it last the entire month, but that often means we are limited to one very small meal a day (sometimes less). The State only allows us $13 a month for food stamps, and we aren’t eligible for TANF or welfare because we own our land.

We went to our church for help, but than there isn’t much they can do, you see, our town manager, Jim (James) Thomas, the man giving the orders to Ken Shoupe, is a “leading member” of the church, and others involved in the letters, such as the secretary who mails them out, also go to our church. The bishop tries to help when he can, but, in the end all he was able to do was get our electricity turned back on, but for that there was a catch: The town was going to let us remove our belongings from the house, before they tore it down. So, with the electricity back on, and this new threat hanging over our heads, me and my 3 brothers, built a second tent next to the first one, and began to move what we could salvage out of the house and into the second tent. Everything we own now sits outside, damp and wet, under a tarp, buried in snow.

Such threats and happenings have been going on now ever since my dad came home from the hospital, and the stress has made his recovery almost impossible, and thus he remains weekly, sometimes daily, in and out of doctor’s offices and hospitals with increasingly failing health, and every day his doctors tell him: “You have got to get the stress out of your life before it kills you.”

And now I shall skip ahead to where we are at today and why I am writing to you:

In December, with below zero temperatures and snow burying the “tent”, a woman from the Department of Human Services showed up at our land, explaining that someone had filed a complaint, because there was a family living outdoors during Maine’s harsh sub-zero winter. We have been on waiting lists for shelter since this had happened, but we are such a large family: 5 people, plus cats, dogs, and farm animals, there is no one who would take us, we had no choice but to sit out Maine’s winter and try to keep the tarp from collapsing on our heads under the weight of the snow. She was furious, at the Town Officials, for she had attempted to contact them first and was given the same “run around” that we had been given. She told them that if they were going to force us out of our home than they should at least pay for a hotel room (Old Orchard Beach has over 300 hotels, motels, cabins, camp grounds and condos.) She said that they had told her off. She is the one who said that what was happening here was not legal, that it was harassment, and that it was bordering on criminal. It seems that if one of us had died from the cold, the town could be charged with murder, we did not realize this. Before the DHS came in, we didn’t know that what was happening was illegal, we didn’t know that we had the right to fight the town. She gave us the phone number of Pine Tree Legal, Maine’s free lawyer group. We called. And called again. And keep calling, but can’t get past the operator, who says our name is on a waiting list.

This woman from DHS was the very first person to make any attempt to really and truly help us, with her help we went from #600 on HUD’s waiting list to #1 and on January 10, 2007, after nine months of homelessness, me and my dad were allowed to move into a temporary apartment in Biddeford, while HUD, AVESTA, and CALEB Foundation, try to find a place that well take both us and my 3 brothers, and our pets… a wait that we are told could take as many as 8 years! Unfortunately the apartment is tiny beyond belief and so everything we own is still back at home in the 2 “tents”. (UPDATE: We have been taken off the CALEB foundation list because our income is too low.)

We thought things were looking up at this point. We should have known that the town officials would not allow us to be happy for a single moment. Following the news that we are in an apartment the town has moved on to a new level of harassment: This week, we received a letter from the town, saying that we have until February 12 (just 3 days from now) to remove EVERYTHING from our land (including not only the things they had listed before but also the 2 tents, our house, the sheds, and the barns), after which time they well come in and level the land. They came to the land and told us that they wanted a totally empty lot… nothing, apparently not even the trees. They are complaining that the tents are an eyesore… the tents that THEY told us we had to put up to store our belongings in, because back than they were threatening to tear down the house. Among the items in the tent is my book collection, some 7,000 books that I have been collecting over the years; antiques that had belonged to my great-grandmother, and grandmothers; and other such items. Everything we own, now stands to be stolen from us, by the town officials, and why? We asked Shoup why he was doing this to us, he said: “This is Old Orchard, you have to change you lifestyle.”

We know this is Old Orchard! Unlike outsiders like him, our family has been here on this land since 1657. My dad’s family built this town. Of course we know its Old Orchard. What kind of a reason is that to force a family off their land? We have 3 days to stop them, and no one well helps us. It seems like the whole town has turned on us. People who we once called friends now seem to be strangers.

Today this caper of harasment has taken on a new level… they are now threaten to take our animals away, based on false accusations made by one named Smith. They say they well take them in 5 days from today, but they have no grounds to take them, and as with everything else they have done, they have no court order to back themselves up with. The animals are part of our family, they are like children to me, they have no right to threaten to take them. No right at all!

We have gone to everyone we can pleading, begging for help, but no one is willing to help us. Every church, every charity… even the volunteer lawyers, but Old Orchard Beach is Maine’s biggest tourist attraction, a town that draws in millions of tourist each summer, tourists who bring with them, money that makes Old Orchard one of Maine’s wealthiest towns, and because of that no one well help us fight them. We are told to give up, to just move… we are told that we can’t fight the Town of Old Orchard because it’s one of Maine’s most powerful government seats. But that doesn’t give them the right to steal our belongings! That doesn’t give them the right to steal our land! That doesn’t give them the right to force us to live in a tent during the winter! How can they just come in and level our land? They don’t even have any court orders to back themselves up with! What they are doing is not legal, but no one well do anything to stop them! They well not break us into losing, but if this doesn’t stop, they well kill my dad. This has to stop. They have too far. Please, there must be someway someone can help us! If you know of anyone who may be able to help us, please let us know!

Our Mailing address is:

Wendy C. Allen
P.O.Box 1452
Saco, ME 04072

my email address (my dad don’t have one) xavychup@yahoo.com

You can also write a letter of protest to the town council at:

Old Orchard Beach Town Council
1 Portland Ave
Old Orchard Beach, ME 04064

Please, even if all you can do is write a letter to the town hall, please help us.

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

If you liked this post, than you might like what I say on my other blog too!

Need To Publish Your First Novel?

Save the Goldeneagle

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All donations to Star Log go either to The Rabbit Hole Fund and/or The Pidgie Fund. The Rabbit Hole Fund is raising money to start a small retail clothen shop, while The Pidgie Fund buys food for pets in Southern Maine.


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Blingo

>Harrasment Continues

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My name is Wendy Allen. I am writing to you on behalf of my father, Kenneth Allen of Old Orchard Beach, Maine. Our family is in desperate need of help. In the past two years we have tried without success to get help locally, but now the deadline is less than a week away and we do not know what to do or who to turn too for help. Since this is a long and complicated ordeal, I well start at the beginning. First off, I should tell you that we are fighting the local government, the officials of the Town of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, for the followingcharges: Discrimination against a disabled senior. A seniors rights being taken away from him.Repeated harassment, and discriminatory attempts to force a low income family off their land, resulting in the year long hospitalization of already mentioned senior and resulting in his becoming disabled.Threat of the destruction of property, including the threat of tearing down the home of aforementioned senior and his minor children and their pets.Forcing the senior and his minor children out of their home and onto the streets where they lived for much of 2006 in a “tent” constructed out of shipping pallets and a tarp, where they lived in the elements of Maine’s harsh winter, some days suffering at below zero temperatures.The threat of having all our belongings destroyed.The reason the town official Ken Shoup gave for this harassment was quote:“This is Old Orchard, you have to change you lifestyle.”End quote. No other reason has been given.Now, for our story and how this train of events came to be:First off, our family has a long history with the Town of Old Orchard, due to the fact that our family settled this town more than 300 years ago. Our family has lived on the properties here in since 1657. Originally there were several hundred acres on our land, both forest and farmland, but as the centuries went by the land was divided among relatives and passed on in increasingly smaller sections from one generation to the next. As the town grew and the land became more valuable, relatives sold out and moved away. By the 1940’s ours was the last to remain in the original family, a small lot less than an acre in size. Not only was it the last to remain in the original family, but it was also the last farm in Old Orchard Beach.It should be noted that property in Old Orchard is valued in the millions due to it being one of the world’s top rated award-winning beaches, and there in lies the root of our problem. Our farm has been accused of decreasing the property values. By the 1980’s Old Orchard became known as the hang out for biker gangs, honky-tonks, and strip shops. Property values dropped as the family image of the town plummeted. In the 1990’s, things changed once again, the gangs were driven out, the honky-tonks and bars shut down, and the strip shops became restaurants and art galleries. Property taxes sky-rocketed to the second highest in the state as millionaire mansions and high rise condos reconstructed the sky-line, forever blocking out the view of the beach from the roads.Old Orchard beach town officials, spent millions putting in brick sidewalks, Victorian street lamps, and building a replica of the town hall that had stood here in the 1800’s…. their campaign was to create a “historical town” to draw in high income tourists. The campaign was wildly advertised, and well promoted… until the new town manager and his new staff showed their true colors, that is and their campaign turned to harassing long time locals off of their land. Several families have been driven out already. Most unable and unwilling to fight the local government as the threats of propety destruction, and the removal of personal belongings (including pets) has scared most of the “offending families” into selling thier land and moving. There are only a handful of families that have stood thier ground, but those too are leaving. Ours is one of the last to remain, still standing our round, and refusing to give in to the threats made by local police officers, local code enforcement officers, and the town manager himself. In the past year they have changed (without proper votes from the people) nearly every code on the book in an attempt to force these families off thier land. Changes in code include such things as “banning the growing of vegetation”, “painting your house”, “owning more than one car per family”, and other ridiculous town laws, that now prohibit such things as growing a garrden. It is like living in a strict gated community, only it is the entire town.On the outskirts of the town, one finds the beautiful rolling acres of Ross Forest, once a candidate to become a national park, most of it now clear cut, and what little remains is soon to be sold for housing complexes, many already under construction. Dividing the Ross Forest from the down town district, lay the remains of a few scattered farms, no longer in use. Except for one: ours. At one time a large full production poultry farm, today the home of pet farm animals, but still very much an active farm, small as it is.

The harassment of our family began in the fall of 2005 after an unknown person, wrote an editorial to the local newspapers, saying, “Four homes on Portland Avenue were distracting from the value of other properties in the town”. The writer continued saying that something should be done about it, that these four homes “should be torn down”, and the families should be forced to move out of town to make way for the new generation. Two of those four homes mentioned, as it turns out, were 144 Portland Ave and 146 Portland Ave.

At 144 Portland Avenue there lives my elderly dad Kenneth Allen, myself, and my three brothers (all under 16 years of age). As you may guess, our dad was much, much older than our mother, explaining how a senior came to have young children. In 1983, my dad’s mother died and he inherited her house at 146 Portland Ave. The tiny 16 foot by 9-foot house, which never had plumbing, etc. Was turned into a shed, but even so, the town has continued to tax it as a house. Since October of 2001 (six years ago) we have been applying for a permit to repair this building, and turn it into a greenhouse so we can extend our growing season, but the town STILL has that on a waiting list.

We continued to live in the old 700 square foot house, more of a cabin than a house by the town’s standards anyways. My dad was a newspaper carrier for 21 years, our family income was under $20,000 a year, so we were never able to afford much, but we never noticed, because we were happy. Our family was living together, we had our pets with us, and we lived on our farm. That we lacked a “normal income” or a “normal lifestyle” (as the town officials now put it) never occurred to us.

Than in spring of 2006, there came the letters from the town. One after another. Demands to “remove the junk and debris” or else. As it turns out, what they were calling junk and debris, was as follows:

Our car, which though they consider it “junk” still runs in spit of what it looks like, and we use it daily.

Our fire wood (we have a woodstove for heat, cause we can‘t afford anything else.)

My dad’s tools (he was a car mechanic in the 1970’s, and still works on his own car and cars of relatives)

Our brooder (used for raising baby chickens each spring)

My dad’s antique cast iron wood stove collection

Our garden (bean poles, pea fences, etc… they say we can’t have a garden any more either)

Our washing machine (a 1947 wringer, which we use weekly)

Our farming equipment (tiller, ATV, etc…. all used on a regular basis)

In other words, what they are calling “trash”, “junk”, and “debris” are actually things we use every day, things we need in order to survive… without them we can not garden, if we can not garden we can not eat, because we can not afford to buy enough food to eat more than one meal a day per person, without the garden we well starve to death, without the farm equipment we can not garden, they are trying to kill us… this is not a figure of speech… as you shall soon understand.

My dad explained to the town that this stuff is not junk but our livelihood. The town responded by attaching a lean/fine on our property, for “refusal to comply with orders“. I’m not sure how much the amount is unto today, but it was much more than we could afford than, and more so now.

My dad made an attempt to move the items so that they could not be seen from the road, in an attempt to comply with the town’s orders, hoping that if the items could not be seen from the road, that it would stop the harassment by the town… this was the biggest mistake he could have made, because as a result, a few days later on May 9, 2006, he went into a coma.

May 9, 2006 started like any other day. I woke up and went out to feed the chickens, work in the garden, and than help my dad move items out of view of the street. My dad had not yet gotten up. I had been in the yard barely 20 minutes when my 15 year old brother came running across the yard in a panic… something was wrong, I could see it on his face, and I ran to meet him… he told me that something was wrong with daddy… daddy had woken up and torn the wood stove out of the wall tearing with it all of the water pipes… and now the house was under water, while daddy was throwing everything from the toilet to the tables to shelves to files all over the house. By the time I arrived in the house there was 8 inches of water on the floor, and nothing left of anything… everything in the house was totally destroyed, there was not only nothing left on shelves, there were no longer any shelves. It looked like a tornado had gone through the house. The house was barely recognizable.

My smaller brothers had run into the bedroom to hide, terrified at the event that was unfolding, while daddy was now in an attempt at tearing out the windows. When I asked him what he was doing, he did not recognize me, he could not hear me, he could not see me… it was like he had turned into a blind man and was tearing at the walls in an attempt to see… I rushed to the neighbor who called an ambulance.

The ambulance arrived, and talk of nervous breakdown and meningitis, were scatted around the conversations… the emergency team was in attempt of asking me what happened, when I was pulled away by a police officer named Jack Nichols, who proceeded to interrogate me about the condition of our house.

The wood stove was laying in pieces in the center of the dinning room, and this was his main focus…

repeating the same question again and again: “How long has this been laying here?” he demanded. I told him, it had just happened, he accused me of lying, and repeated the question…. over and over again, and I kept explaining to him, that daddy had just done this, which was why we had called 911. Than he turned his questions to the piles of paper and mail that scattered the house… “What’s all this clutter?” he yelled. Again I explained that this had just happened, that it was stuff that had been on the shelves and table, but as before, he accused me of lying and repeated the question again and again, his voice growing more heated and temperamental each time. Than in a menacing voice he turned on my three little brothers “Why aren’t these children in school?”. I explained that we home schooled, and we had approval from the town’s superintendent. Next he railed me out about how children can’t live in “clutter and filth” like this… again I explained that this “clutter and filth” as he called it, had just happened moments ago, and it was because this had happened that we had called for his help. He responded by calling the Department of Human Services to take my brothers away, and than calling the town code enforcement officer to condemn the house on grounds of “clutter and filth”.

While all this was happening the ambulance had taken my dad away, to where they had taken him I did not know, because Jack Nichols had not given me a chance to even know what had happened to my dad. More police, this time with cameras, stormed into the house, none of them would tell me what they were doing, why they were there, or what had happened to my dad. In the mean time my mom and her husband arrived, and my brothers and me packed a few things so we could move in with her while we figured out what to do next. We tried to pack what little we could find that hadn’t been destroyed by the flood, and do it around police officers who seemed to be going through everything in the house for no reason at all, and who refused to talk to me or even acknowledge that I was there. Luckily the hospital called us during this time and told us where my dad was, but they would not discuss his condition over the phone. It was four hours before the police would let us leave to find out what happened to my dad. A friend, who had witnessed the police searching the house with their cameras, said that he thought it looked like a drug raid, and he suggested that we get copies of the police report to find out why they were going through the house like that. I told my dad this after he came out of the hospital and he went to the station to get copies of the report, but they refused to give them to him without a court order, so we have been unable to obtain any info as to why the police were going through everything like that.

It was a lesson well learned. We called the police for help and they turned on us like rabid wolves. I well never call 911 again.

Once at the hospital I was told that what we had just witnessed was a diabetic seizure, brought on by extreme amounts of stress. The doctor asked if my dad had any recent stress… yes, he had, with the town harassing him the past couple of weeks, and than the police harassing him even during a medical emergency, nearly hindering the emergency teams ability to get him to the hospital. Dr. Greene than explained that it was luckily he had gotten to the hospital when he did “another 20 minutes and he’d have been dead” is what he said. I shudder to think that the town police and their obsession with throwing us off our land nearly resulted in my dad’s death. Dr. Greene went on to explain that my dad was now in a diabetic coma on full life support. Wither or not he would live was not yet known.

As days, turned to weeks, my dad remained in a coma, his system getting weaker by the minute, at one point his kidneys failed him and he had to be rushed in for dialysis.

My dad remained in Southern Maine Medical Center in a diabetic coma on full life support for 21 days. In mid-June they moved him, wheelchair bound, from SMMC to New England Rehab Center in Portland. On June 29, 2006, my dad came home, unable to walk on his own, and saw for the first time what had become of our house. Just three days after my dad went into the hospital our electricity was shut off. The town claims they had nothing to do with it when I asked them. Without electricity, there was no light, and thus no way to see to clean the mess from the flood, and so, it remained just as it had been left on that day in May.

My dad, was now severely disabled, only able to walk a few feet at a time and unable to lift anything. The stress caused by the town’s harassment had left him with a weak heart and failing kidney’s, but the harassment had only just begun, for almost as soon as he was out of the hospital, the town once again began its relentless pursuit to remove us from our land. Land that for us means our heritage, our history, our legacy, but land that for the town, means nothing but dollar signs and profit margins.

Due to the months of the house sitting filled with water, we could not go back in to live in it. Having no family or relatives willing to help us, we were forced to camp out in the yard. We signed up for various shelter foundations and were put on their waiting lists. At HUD we were informed that we were #600 on the list.

Problems had gotten worse than I had known… for my dad was now disabled and could not go to work, thus I started my long and fruitless search for a job, which is today still ongoing. During his hospitalization, no bills had been paid, and about 10 or so years ago my dad had taken out a mortgage on the house… there has been no money since May of 2006 (nearly a year now), and thus no mortgage payments since that time either, they are now threatening to foreclose, but know the situation and are trying to work out a payment plan with my dad, in hopes that his disability check well eventually be approved by the state (he is still waiting to hear from the state on that… they sure do take a long time. They said it well is approved, they just have to wait for the paperwork to go through, so there should be some type of an income soon, we hope.)

With no income, and a house that we can not live in, my dad lived in his car, my brothers now liveing with our mom and her husband, and I built a house-tent-lean-to type of thing out of 12 shipping pallets, 3 cinderblocks, and a tarp. We had asked the town if we could put up a yurt (not hard to build as our land boarders a forest) until we could get a house back up, but they told us no, only tents were allowed, but we couldn’t afford to buy a real tent, so I built one instead. (UPDATE: The town has since taken our house. No one ever did make an attempt to help us as every one is just too scared of the town counel to stand up to them.)

Letters from the town continued to arrive. We continued to visit the town hall where we got the run around… “Come back in the morning, he’s only here in the mornings.”…Next day: “I’m sorry, did I say mornings? No, you’ll have to come in the afternoon.”… Day after day after day… week after week after week… “He’s out sick today”… “He’s on vacation this week.”… “He’s out on an inspection today.”… Weeks became months and STILL we had yet to meet the man behind the letters: Ken Shoupe. Though we went to his office almost daily, we would not meet him until November of 2006.

In July my dad had to have surgery, and was bed-ridden or rather car-ridden, as he had no bed, for several weeks afterwards. For food we get a bag a month from the Salvation Army (the only place that made an attempt to help us, little as it was) and each month we stretch that single bag of food as much as we possible can to make it last the entire month, but that often means we are limited to one very small meal a day (sometimes less). The State only allows us $13 a month for food stamps, and we aren’t eligible for TANF or welfare because we own our land.

We went to our church for help, but than there isn’t much they can do, you see, our town manager, Jim (James) Thomas, the man giving the orders to Ken Shoupe, is a “leading member” of the church, and others involved in the letters, such as the secretary who mails them out, also go to our church. The bishop tries to help when he can, but, in the end all he was able to do was get our electricity turned back on, but for that there was a catch: The town was going to let us remove our belongings from the house, before they tore it down. So, with the electricity back on, and this new threat hanging over our heads, me and my 3 brothers, built a second tent next to the first one, and began to move what we could salvage out of the house and into the second tent. Everything we own now sits outside, damp and wet, under a tarp, buried in snow.

Such threats and happenings have been going on now ever since my dad came home from the hospital, and the stress has made his recovery almost impossible, and thus he remains weekly, sometimes daily, in and out of doctor’s offices and hospitals with increasingly failing health, and every day his doctors tell him: “You have got to get the stress out of your life before it kills you.”

And now I shall skip ahead to where we are at today and why I am writing to you:

In December, with below zero temperatures and snow burying the “tent”, a woman from the Department of Human Services showed up at our land, explaining that someone had filed a complaint, because there was a family living outdoors during Maine’s harsh sub-zero winter. We have been on waiting lists for shelter since this had happened, but we are such a large family: 5 people, plus cats, dogs, and farm animals, there is no one who would take us, we had no choice but to sit out Maine’s winter and try to keep the tarp from collapsing on our heads under the weight of the snow. She was furious, at the Town Officials, for she had attempted to contact them first and was given the same “run around” that we had been given. She told them that if they were going to force us out of our home than they should at least pay for a hotel room (Old Orchard Beach has over 300 hotels, motels, cabins, camp grounds and condos.) She said that they had told her off. She is the one who said that what was happening here was not legal, that it was harassment, and that it was bordering on criminal. It seems that if one of us had died from the cold, the town could be charged with murder, we did not realize this. Before the DHS came in, we didn’t know that what was happening was illegal, we didn’t know that we had the right to fight the town. She gave us the phone number of Pine Tree Legal, Maine’s free lawyer group. We called. And called again. And keep calling, but can’t get past the operator, who says our name is on a waiting list.

This woman from DHS was the very first person to make any attempt to really and truly help us, with her help we went from #600 on HUD’s waiting list to #1 and on January 10, 2007, after nine months of homelessness, me and my dad were allowed to move into a temporary apartment in Biddeford, while HUD, AVESTA, and CALEB Foundation, try to find a place that well take both us and my 3 brothers, and our pets… a wait that we are told could take as many as 8 years! Unfortunately the apartment is tiny beyond belief and so everything we own is still back at home in the 2 “tents”. (UPDATE: We have been taken off the CALEB foundation list because our income is too low.)

We thought things were looking up at this point. We should have known that the town officials would not allow us to be happy for a single moment. Following the news that we are in an apartment the town has moved on to a new level of harassment: This week, we received a letter from the town, saying that we have until February 12 (just 3 days from now) to remove EVERYTHING from our land (including not only the things they had listed before but also the 2 tents, our house, the sheds, and the barns), after which time they well come in and level the land. They came to the land and told us that they wanted a totally empty lot… nothing, apparently not even the trees. They are complaining that the tents are an eyesore… the tents that THEY told us we had to put up to store our belongings in, because back than they were threatening to tear down the house. Among the items in the tent is my book collection, some 7,000 books that I have been collecting over the years; antiques that had belonged to my great-grandmother, and grandmothers; and other such items. Everything we own, now stands to be stolen from us, by the town officials, and why? We asked Shoup why he was doing this to us, he said: “This is Old Orchard, you have to change you lifestyle.”

We know this is Old Orchard! Unlike outsiders like him, our family has been here on this land since 1657. My dad’s family built this town. Of course we know its Old Orchard. What kind of a reason is that to force a family off their land? We have 3 days to stop them, and no one well helps us. It seems like the whole town has turned on us. People who we once called friends now seem to be strangers.

Today this caper of harasment has taken on a new level… they are now threaten to take our animals away, based on false accusations made by one named Smith. They say they well take them in 5 days from today, but they have no grounds to take them, and as with everything else they have done, they have no court order to back themselves up with. The animals are part of our family, they are like children to me, they have no right to threaten to take them. No right at all!

We have gone to everyone we can pleading, begging for help, but no one is willing to help us. Every church, every charity… even the volunteer lawyers, but Old Orchard Beach is Maine’s biggest tourist attraction, a town that draws in millions of tourist each summer, tourists who bring with them, money that makes Old Orchard one of Maine’s wealthiest towns, and because of that no one well help us fight them. We are told to give up, to just move… we are told that we can’t fight the Town of Old Orchard because it’s one of Maine’s most powerful government seats. But that doesn’t give them the right to steal our belongings! That doesn’t give them the right to steal our land! That doesn’t give them the right to force us to live in a tent during the winter! How can they just come in and level our land? They don’t even have any court orders to back themselves up with! What they are doing is not legal, but no one well do anything to stop them! They well not break us into losing, but if this doesn’t stop, they well kill my dad. This has to stop. They have too far. Please, there must be someway someone can help us! If you know of anyone who may be able to help us, please let us know!

Our Mailing address is:

Wendy C. Allen
P.O.Box 1452
Saco, ME 04072

my email address (my dad don’t have one) xavychup@yahoo.com

You can also write a letter of protest to the town council at:

Old Orchard Beach Town Council
1 Portland Ave
Old Orchard Beach, ME 04064

Please, even if all you can do is write a letter to the town hall, please help us.

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

————-

Copper Cockeral
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Copper Cockeral

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Blingo

Harrasment Continues

My name is Wendy Allen.

I am writing to you on behalf of my father, Kenneth Ricker-Allen of Old Orchard Beach, Maine.

Our family is in desperate need of help. In the past two years we have tried without success to get help locally, but now the deadline is less than a week away and we do not know what to do or who to turn too for help.

Since this is a long and complicated ordeal, I well start at the beginning. First off, I should tell you that we are fighting the local government, the officials of the Town of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, for the followingcharges:

Discrimination against a disabled senior.

A seniors rights being taken away from him.

Repeated harassment, and discriminatory attempts to force a low income family off their land, resulting in the year long hospitalization of already mentioned senior and resulting in his becoming disabled.

Threat of the destruction of property, including the threat of tearing down the home of aforementioned senior and his minor children and their pets.

Forcing the senior and his minor children out of their home and onto the streets where they lived for much of 2006 in a “tent” constructed out of shipping pallets and a tarp, where they lived in the elements of Maine’s harsh winter, some days suffering at below zero temperatures.

The threat of having all our belongings destroyed.

The reason the town official Ken Shoup gave for this harassment was quote:”This is Old Orchard, you have to change you lifestyle.”End quote. No other reason has been given.

Now, for our story and how this train of events came to be:

First off, our family has a long history with the Town of Old Orchard, due to the fact that our family settled this town more than 300 years ago. Our family has lived on the properties here in since 1657.

Originally there were several hundred acres on our land, both forest and farmland, but as the centuries went by the land was divided among relatives and passed on in increasingly smaller sections from one generation to the next. As the town grew and the land became more valuable, relatives sold out and moved away.

By the 1940′s ours was the last to remain in the original family, a small lot less than an acre in size. Not only was it the last to remain in the original family, but it was also the last farm in Old Orchard Beach.

It should be noted that property in Old Orchard is valued in the millions due to it being one of the world’s top rated award-winning beaches, and there in lies the root of our problem. Our farm has been accused of decreasing the property values. By the 1980′s Old Orchard became known as the hang out for biker gangs, honky-tonks, and strip shops. Property values dropped as the family image of the town plummeted. In the 1990′s, things changed once again, the gangs were driven out, the honky-tonks and bars shut down, and the strip shops became restaurants and art galleries.

Property taxes sky-rocketed to the second highest in the state as millionaire mansions and high rise condos reconstructed the sky-line, forever blocking out the view of the beach from the roads.Old Orchard beach town officials, spent millions putting in brick sidewalks, Victorian street lamps, and building a replica of the town hall that had stood here in the 1800′s…. their campaign was to create a “historical town” to draw in high income tourists.

The campaign was wildly advertised, and well promoted… until the new town manager and his new staff showed their true colors, that is and their campaign turned to harassing long time locals off of their land.

Several families have been driven out already. Most unable and unwilling to fight the local government as the threats of propety destruction, and the removal of personal belongings (including pets) has scared most of the “offending families” into selling thier land and moving.

There are only a handful of families that have stood thier ground, but those too are leaving. Ours is one of the last to remain, still standing our round, and refusing to give in to the threats made by local police officers, local code enforcement officers, and the town manager himself.

In the past year they have changed (without legal and proper votes from the people) nearly every code on the book in an attempt to force these families off thier land.

Changes in code include such things as “banning the growing of vegetation”, “painting your house”, “owning more than one car per family”, and other ridiculous town laws, that now prohibit such things as growing a garden.

It is like living in a strict gated community, only it is the entire town.

On the outskirts of the town, one finds the beautiful rolling acres of Ross Forest, once a candidate to become a national park, most of it now clear cut, and what little remains is soon to be sold for housing complexes, many already under construction.

Dividing the Ross Forest from the down town district, lay the remains of a few scattered farms, no longer in use. Except for one: ours. At one time a large full production poultry farm, today the home of pet farm animals, but still very much an active farm, small as it is.

The harassment of our family began in the fall of 2005 after an unknown person, wrote an editorial to the local newspapers, saying, “Four homes on Portland Avenue were distracting from the value of other properties in the town”.

The writer continued saying that something should be done about it, that these four homes “should be torn down”, and the families should be forced to move out of town to make way for the new generation.

Two of those four homes mentioned, as it turns out, were 144 Portland Ave and 146 Portland Ave.

At 144 Portland Avenue there lived (they have since taken our home) my elderly dad Kenneth Allen, myself, and my three brothers (all under 16 years of age). As you may guess, our dad was much, much older than our mother, explaining how a senior came to have young children.

In 1983, my dad’s mother died and he inherited her house at 146 Portland Ave. The tiny 16 foot by 9-foot “house”, which never had plumbing, etc. We turned into a shed, but even so, the town has continued to tax it as a house. Since October of 2001 (seven years ago) we have been applying for a permit to repair this building, and turn it into a greenhouse so we can extend our growing season, but the town STILL has that on a waiting list.

We continued to live in the old 700 square foot house, more of a cabin than a house or at least by the town’s standards anyways.

My dad was a newspaper carrier for 21 years, our family income was under $20,000 a year, so we were never able to afford much, but we never noticed, because we were happy.

 Our family was living together, we had our pets with us, and we lived on our farm. That we lacked a “normal income” or a “normal lifestyle” (as the town officials now tell us) never occurred to us.

Than in spring of 2006, there came the letters from the town. One after another. Demands to “remove the junk and debris” or else.

As it turns out, what they were calling junk and debris, was as follows: Our car, which though they consider it “junk” still runs in spite of what it looks like, and we use it daily.

 Our fire wood (we have a woodstove for heat, cause we can’t afford anything else.)

My dad’s tools (he was a car mechanic in the 1970′s, and still works on his own car and cars of relatives)

Our brooder (used for raising baby chickens each spring)

My dad’s antique cast iron wood stove collection

Our garden (bean poles, pea fences, etc… they say we can’t have a garden any more either)

Our washing machine (a 1947 wringer, which we use weekly)

Our farming equipment (tiller, ATV, etc…. all used on a regular basis)

In other words, what they are calling “trash”, “junk”, and “debris” are actually things we use every day, things we need in order to survive… without them we can not garden, if we can not garden we can not eat, because we can not afford to buy enough food to eat more than one meal a day per person, without the garden we well starve to death, without the farm equipment we can not garden, they are trying to kill us… and no this is not a figure of speech… as you shall soon come to understand.

My dad explained to the town that this stuff is not junk but our livelihood. The town responded by attaching a lean/fine on our property, for “refusal to comply with orders”.

(They eventualy threw us out of our house and stole my grandmothers antiques, and took our house)

My dad made an attempt to move the items so that they could not be seen from the road, in an attempt to comply with the town’s orders, hoping that if the items could not be seen from the road, that it would stop the harassment by the town… this was the biggest mistake he could have made, because as a result, a few days later on May 9, 2006, he went into a coma. May 9, 2006 started like any other day.

I woke up and went out to feed the chickens, work in the garden, and than help my dad move items out of view of the street. My dad had not yet gotten up. I had been in the yard barely 20 minutes when my 15 year old brother came running across the yard in a panic… something was wrong, I could see it on his face, and I ran to meet him… he told me that something was wrong with daddy… daddy had woken up and torn the wood stove out of the wall tearing with it all of the water pipes… and now the house was under water, while daddy was throwing everything from the toilet to the tables to shelves to files all over the house. By the time I arrived in the house there was 8 inches of water on the floor, and nothing left of anything… everything in the house was totally destroyed, there was not only nothing left on shelves, there were no longer any shelves. It looked like a tornado had gone through the house. The house was barely recognizable. My smaller brothers had run into the bedroom to hide, terrified at the event that was unfolding, while daddy was now in an attempt at tearing out the windows.

When I asked my dad what he was doing, he did not recognize me, he could not hear me, he could not see me… it was like he had turned into a blind man and was tearing at the walls in an attempt to see… I rushed to the neighbor who called an ambulance. The ambulance arrived, and talk of nervous breakdown and meningitis, were scatted around the conversations… the emergency team was in attempt of asking me what happened, when I was pulled away by a police officer named Jack Nichols, who proceeded to interrogate me about the condition of our house.

The wood stove was laying in pieces in the center of the dinning room, and this was his main focus… repeating the same question again and again: “How long has this been laying here?” he demanded. I told him, it had just happened, he accused me of lying, and repeated the question…. over and over again, and I kept explaining to him, that daddy had just done this, which was why we had called 911. Than he turned his questions to the piles of paper and mail that scattered the house… “What’s all this clutter?” he yelled.

Again I explained that this had just happened, that it was stuff that had been on the shelves and table, but as before, he accused me of lying and repeated the question again and again, his voice growing more heated and temperamental each time.

Than in a menacing voice he turned on my three little brothers “Why aren’t these children in school?”. I explained that we home schooled, and we had approval from the town’s superintendent.

Next he railed me out about how children can’t live in “clutter and filth” like this… again I explained that this “clutter and filth” as he called it, had just happened moments ago, and it was because this had happened that we had called for his help. He responded by calling the Department of Human Services to take my brothers away, and than calling the town code enforcement officer to condemn the house on grounds of “clutter and filth”.

While all this was happening the ambulance had taken my dad away, to where they had taken him I did not know, because Jack Nichols had not given me a chance to even know what had happened to my dad. More police, this time with cameras, stormed into the house, none of them would tell me what they were doing, why they were there, or what had happened to my dad. Meanwhile another police officer, Will Watson, stormed through the house “photgraphing evidance”, and turn what was left of the house inside out and upside down. Him and the handful of officers who were with him (names unknown to me otherwise I’d list them here as well) turned oer ever unturned item in a desperate search. Though I asked them what they were doing, none of these officers said a word, and continued to destroy everything they touched, never telling me why they were doing so or what it was they were looking for. By the time they got down, everything we own was completly destroied, there was nothing left in one peice.

In the mean time my mom and her husband arrived, and my brothers and me packed a few things so we could move in with her while we figured out what to do next. We tried to pack what little we could find that hadn’t been destroyed, and do it around police officers who seemed to be going through everything in the house for no reason at all, and who refused to talk to me or even acknowledge that I was there.

Luckily the hospital called us during this time and told us where my dad was, so at leaste we knew were to find him, but they would not discuss his condition over the phone.

We were not allowed to leave until the police had continued and finished their destructive mad dash search of the house. It was four hours before the police would let us leave to find out what happened to my dad. A friend, who had witnessed the police searching the house with their cameras, said that he thought it looked like a drug raid, and he suggested that we get copies of the police report to find out why they were going through the house like that. I told my dad this after he came out of the hospital (several months later) and he went to the station to get copies of the report, but they refused to give them to him without a court order (which we could not afford to buy), so we have been unable to obtain any info as to why the police were going through everything like that.

It was a lesson well learned. We called the police for help and they turned on us like rabid wolves. I well never call 911 again.

Once at the hospital I was told that what we had just witnessed was a diabetic seizure, brought on by extreme amounts of stress.

The doctor asked if my dad had any recent stress… OMG! I told him what the town hall had been doing to us and about this freakish ordeal we went through with the police, so, yes, he had suffered from stress… extreem stress, and the doctor agreed that it was the fault of the town hall that my dad was now in a coma. … As I said earlier, they are trying to kill us, and that is not a figure of speach, they are literally trying to kill us.

So, with the town harassing him the past couple of weeks, and than the police harassing him even during a medical emergency, nearly hindering the emergency teams ability to get him to the hospital, the doctors agreed that the town was at fault and the cause of my dad’s coma.

Dr. Greene than explained that it was lucky he had gotten to the hospital when he did {quote}”another 20 minutes and he’d have been dead” {end quote} is what he said. I shudder to think that the town hall, the police and their obsession with throwing us off our land nearly resulted in my dad’s death!

 I shudder to think was horrors the town hall will dish out to us next.

Dr. Greene went on to explain that my dad was now in a diabetic coma on full life support. Wither or not he would live was not yet known.

As days, turned to weeks, my dad remained in a coma, his system getting weaker by the minute, at one point his kidneys failed him and he had to be rushed in for dialysis.

My dad remained in Southern Maine Medical Center in a diabetic coma on full life support for 21 days.

In mid-June they moved him, wheelchair bound, from SMMC to New England Rehab Center in Portland.

On June 29, 2006, my dad came home, unable to walk on his own, and saw for the first time what had become of our house.

Just three days after my dad went into the hospital in May, our electricity was shut off. The town claims they had nothing to do with it when I asked them.

Without electricity, there was no light, and thus no way to see to clean the mess from the flood and the police, and so, it remained just as it had been left on that day in May.

My dad, was now severely disabled, only able to walk a few feet at a time and unable to lift anything at all.

The stress caused by the town’s harassment had left him with a weak heart and failing kidney’s, but the harassment had only just begun, for almost as soon as he was out of the hospital, the town once again began its relentless pursuit to remove us from our land. Land that for us means our heritage, our history, our legacy, but land that for the town, means nothing but dollar signs and profit margins.

Due to the months of the house sitting filled with water, we could not go back in to live in it, but even so, the polce would not allow us to go back home anyways, as they had condemed our house after they got done tearing it apart.

Having no family or relatives willing to help us, we were forced to camp out in the yard.

We signed up for various shelter foundations and were put on their waiting lists.

At HUD we were informed that we were 600 on the list. Problems had gotten worse than I had known… for my dad was now disabled and could not go to work, thus I started my long and fruitless search for a job, which is today (2 years later) is still ongoing.

During his hospitalization, no bills had been paid,  there had been no money at (not one single penny) since May of 2006 (nearly a year), but we lived in hopes that his disability check well eventually be approved by the state (it took 17 months after he came out of the hospital for them to approve it.) With no income, and a house that we can not live in, my dad lived in his car, my brothers now liveing with our mom and her husband, and I built a house-tent-lean-to type of thing out of 12 shipping pallets, 3 cinderblocks, and a tarp.

We had asked the town if we could put up a yurt (not hard to build as our land boarders a forest) until we could get a house back up, but they told us no, only tents were allowed, but we couldn’t afford to buy a real tent, so I built one instead.

(UPDATE: The town has since taken our house. No one ever did make an attempt to help us as every one is just too scared of the town counel to stand up to them.)

Letters from the town continued to arrive.

We continued to visit the town hall where we got the run around… “Come back in the morning, he’s only here in the mornings.”…

Next day: “I’m sorry, did I say mornings? No, you’ll have to come in the afternoon.”…

Day after day after day… week after week after week… “He’s out sick today”… “He’s on vacation this week.”… “He’s out on an inspection today.”… Weeks became months and STILL we had yet to meet the man behind the letters: Ken Shoupe.

Though we went to his office almost daily, we would not meet him until November of 2006.

In July my dad had to have surgery, and was bed-ridden (or rather car-ridden, as he had no house thus no bed,) for several weeks afterwards.

For food we get one paper bag a month from the Salvation Army (the only place that made an attempt to help us, little as it was) and each month we stretch that single bag of food as much as we possible can to make it last the entire month, but that often means we are limited to one very small meal a day (sometimes less).

The State only allows us $13 a month for food stamps, and we aren’t eligible for TANF (Temporary Assitance For Needy Families) or welfare because we owned our land.

We went to our church for help, but than there isn’t much they can do, you see, our town manager, Jim (James) Thomas, the man giving the orders to Ken Shoupe, is a “leading member” of the church, and others involved in the letters, such as the secretary who mails them out, also go to our church.

The bishop tried to help, but, he had to get church coucil approval, and with his council members also being the town mangaer and the town hall workers, we could not get approval for help from our church either, and in the end all the bishop was able to do was get our electricity turned back on, but for that there was a catch to that even:

The town was only going to let us have our electricty back on long enough for us to remove our belongings from the house, before they tore it down.

So, with the electricity back on, and this new threat hanging over our heads, me and my 3 brothers, built a second tent-lean-to-thing next to the first one, and began to move what we could salvage out of the house and into the second tent-thingy.

Everything we own now sits outside, damp and wet, under a tarp, buried in snow.

Such threats and happenings have been going on now ever since my dad came home from the hospital, and the stress has made his recovery nearly impossible, and thus he remains weekly, sometimes daily, in and out of doctor’s offices and hospitals with increasingly failing health, and every day his doctors tell him: “You have got to get the stress out of your life before it kills you.”

And now I shall skip ahead to where we are at today and why I am writing to you:

In December, with below zero temperatures and snow burying the “tent”, a woman from the Department of Human Services showed up at our land, explaining that someone had filed a complaint, because there was a family living outdoors during Maine’s harsh sub-zero winter.

We have been on waiting lists for shelter since this had happened, but we are such a large family: 5 people, plus cats, dogs, and farm animals, there is no landlord who would take us, we had no choice but to sit out Maine’s winter and try to keep the tarp from collapsing on our heads under the weight of the snow.

She was furious, at the Town Officials, because, as she told us, she had just come from the town hall, where she had attempted to contact them first and was given the same “run around” that we had been given.

She told them that if they were going to force us out of our home than they should at least pay for a hotel room (Old Orchard Beach has over 300 hotels, motels, cabins, camp grounds and condos.) She said that they had {quote}”told her off” {end quote}.

She is the one who told us that what was happening here was not legal, that it was harassment, it was unconstitutional, and that it was bordering on criminal. It seems that, according to her, that if one of us had died from the cold, the town could be charged with murder, we did not realize this.

Before the DHS came in, we didn’t know that what was happening was illegal, that they were acting on {quote}”Communist Rules”{end quote}, and we didn’t know before than that we had the legal right to fight the town.

She gave us the phone number of Pine Tree Legal, Maine’s free lawyer group. We called. And called again. And keep calling, but can’t get past the operator, who says our name is on a waiting list.

This woman from DHS was the very first person to make any attempt to really and truly help us, with her help we went from 600 on HUD’s waiting list to 1 and on January 10, after months of homelessness, me and my dad were allowed to move into a temporary apartment in Biddeford, while HUD, AVESTA, and CALEB Foundation, tried to find a place that well take both us and my 3 brothers, and our pets… a wait that we are told could take as many as 8 years!

Unfortunately the apartment is tiny beyond belief and so everything we own is still back at home in the 2 “tents”.

 (UPDATE: We have been taken off the CALEB foundation list because our income is too low. huh? our income is too low for section 8 housing? WTH?)

We thought things were looking up at this point. We should have known that the town officials would not allow us to be happy for a single moment.

Following the news that we are in an apartment the town has moved on to a new level of harassment: This week, we received a letter from the town, saying that we have until February 12 (just 3 days from now) to remove EVERYTHING from our land (including not only the things they had listed before but also the 2 tents, the sheds, the barns, and even my beloved Goldeneagle {a town landmark and worl famous car}), after which time they well come in and level the land.

They came to the land (with a developer, no less!) and told us that they wanted a totally empty lot… nothing, apparently not even the trees, as they talked about cutting them down as well!!!!

 They are complaining that the tents are an eyesore… the tents that THEY told us we had to put up to store our belongings in, because back than they were threatening to tear down the house. Among the items in the tent is my book collection, some 7,000 books that I have been collecting over the years; antiques that had belonged to my great-grandmother, (many of which have since been stolen), and grandmothers; and other such items.

Everything we own, now stands to be stolen from us, by the town officials, and why? We asked Shoup why he was doing this to us, he said: {quote} ”This is Old Orchard, you have to change you lifestyle.” {end quote}

We know this is Old Orchard!

Unlike outsiders like him and the town manager, our family has been here on this land since 1657.

My dad’s family (Thomas Rogers, the Googins, and the Rickers) built this town. Of course we know its Old Orchard.

What kind of a reason is that to force a family off their land?

We have 3 days to stop them, and no one well helps us.

It seems like the whole town has turned on us. People who we once called friends now seem to be strangers.

Today this caper of harasment has taken on a new level… they are now threaten to take our animals away, based on false accusations made by one named “Smith”… I only know one person named Smith, and I thought they were our friends, so either they are 2-faced, or the code enforcment officer is lieing to us yet again.

They say they well take them, but they have no grounds to take them, and as with everything else they have done, they have no court order to back themselves up with. The animals are part of our family, they are like children to me, they have no right to threaten to take them. No right at all!

We have gone to everyone we can pleading, begging for help, but no one is willing to help us fight these communistic bullies.

Every church, every charity… even the volunteer lawyers, but Old Orchard Beach is Maine’s biggest tourist attraction, a town that draws in millions of tourist each summer, tourists who bring with them, money that makes Old Orchard one of Maine’s wealthiest towns, and because of that no one well help us fight them.

We are told to give up, to just move… we are told that we can’t fight the Town of Old Orchard because it’s one of Maine’s most powerful government seats. But that doesn’t give them the right to steal our belongings!

That doesn’t give them the right to steal our land!

That doesn’t give them the right to force us to live in a tent during the winter!

How can they just come in and level our land?

How can they steal my car?

How can they steal my pets?

They don’t even have any court orders to back themselves up with!

What they are doing is not legal, but no one well do anything to stop them!

They well not break us into losing, but if this doesn’t stop, they well kill my dad, and the stress has yaken it’s toll on my own health now as well, I’ve been sick for weeks, I don’t know how much longer I can hold out under these conditions, and I have no medical insurance so the hospital won’t admot me, and the state said I’m not eligable for a medical card, either, again, saying that our income is too low.

This has to stop.

They have too far.

Please, there must be someway someone can help us! If you know of anyone who may be able to help us, please let us know!

Our Mailing address is:

Wendy C. Allen

P.O.Box 1452

Saco, ME

04072

my email address (my dad don’t have one) xavychup@yahoo.com

Please some one help us!

You can write a letter of protest to the town council at:

 

Old Orchard Beach Town Council

1 Portland Ave

Old Orchard Beach, ME

 04064

 

Please, even if all you can do is write a letter to the town hall, please help us.

 

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post.

Leave a comment and share your views!

If you liked this post, than you might like what I say on my other blog too!

Need To Publish Your First Novel?

Save the Goldeneagle

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    Hello! I am a 1964 Dodge 330 4-door sedan, VIN 4142216364, my name is The Goldeneagle. This site was created by my owner Wendy C. Allen of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, to save my life.

    I am the main character of the original Twighlight Manor book, and a major supporting character of more that 30 other books and short stories by Maine author Wendy C. Allen.

    I started out in life as a silver undercover Police car in Maine. In 1975 I retired from my job as a police car and was sent to Marcot Motors of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, where I was painted gold by some fool with a paint brush. He totally ruined my lovely silver paint job and left me streaked with brush lines. I was only there a few months before I was bought by the Allen family, who sanded me down and painted a lovely shade of metalic orange.

    I remained the faithful family chauffer for the next ten years. Together we drove on many roadtrips throughout the NorthEast. In 1978, I took them to New York where we croosed the Brooklen Bridge during it’s major repair construction. That same year we went to Washington D.C. I took the Allen family to Arcadia in Bar Harbor to see The Thunder Hole in 1981. Every year I drove them to New Hampshire where we visited The Old Man on the Mountain and Story Land and The Swift River. Three times I climbed Mt. Washington.

    I’ve brought home puppies and baby chickens. I waited in hospital parking lots and veterinary clinics. I remained forever and always a faithful friend. The only friend who was always there, steadfast and unmoveble, silent and unjudgmental. My red plush seats always there like a shoulder to cry on when no one else would lend and ear or a shoulder. I alone remained to one true friend, the only friend to the child who loved me and defend me when no one else would put up with my break downs and failrues.

    Over the years I grew old and tired, my engine weak and my transmission failing. My last trip was a desperate trip to the hospital, one dark and stormy night in 1985 when a hurrican flooded the town, sending the Atlantic Ocean over the Peir and up Maine Street. My last trip came when abulances could ride faster than my Mopar engine and Mrs Allen had to be rushed to the hostpital at 3AM. We speed through Old Orchard fatser than ever before, through hurrican floods that went higher than my door panels seeping water into my interior and flooding my floors, filling my transmission and engine with icy salt water, we made it to the hospital with Mrs. Allen, but I did not make it back home on my own and was towed home by a friend’s little VW Rabbit.

    In spite of my loyalty, with a dead trasmission and an engine full of salt, I was usless, and parked in the yard, put up for sale for junk.

    I was rescued from a trip to the junk yard in 1985 by 9 year old, Wendy C. Allen, after my trans died. Since 1985 I have remained a decoration on the hill in her rose garden, where she sits in my seats or on my hood to write the stories in which I appear. Without me, she can not write these stories for I am the one that inspires them. I have been happy in my life of peace and rest here in Old Orchard Beach these past 30 years. That has now changed.

    New town ordinances and zoning laws have been set in Old Orchard Beach. As a result the police, the code enforments officers, and the town manager are now in attempt to see my death and destruction, with threats of stealing me from my rightful owner and sending me to become scrap metal in the junk yard.

    This is an outrage! They well not listen to reason.

    My profile now comes to you to spread the word and ask for your help in saveing my life. An entire network of websites devoted to my plight are now in the works and links to them well be added here within the next few hours.

    Please join the protest and put an end to the Old Orchard Beach reign of terror. Old Orchard Beach is a town not a dynasty, they have no right to take me from my home and kill me!

    PLEASE DON’T LET THEM KILL ME!!!!!

To read more, please visit my profile: http://www.myspace.com/savethegoldeneagle

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Blingo

Harrasment Continues

My name is Wendy Allen. I am writing to you on behalf of my father, Kenneth Allen of Old Orchard Beach, Maine. Our family is in desperate need of help. In the past two years we have tried without success to get help locally, but now the deadline is less than a week away and we do not know what to do or who to turn too for help. Since this is a long and complicated ordeal, I well start at the beginning. First off, I should tell you that we are fighting the local government, the officials of the Town of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, for the followingcharges: Discrimination against a disabled senior. A seniors rights being taken away from him.Repeated harassment, and discriminatory attempts to force a low income family off their land, resulting in the year long hospitalization of already mentioned senior and resulting in his becoming disabled.Threat of the destruction of property, including the threat of tearing down the home of aforementioned senior and his minor children and their pets.Forcing the senior and his minor children out of their home and onto the streets where they lived for much of 2006 in a “tent” constructed out of shipping pallets and a tarp, where they lived in the elements of Maine’s harsh winter, some days suffering at below zero temperatures.The threat of having all our belongings destroyed.The reason the town official Ken Shoup gave for this harassment was quote:“This is Old Orchard, you have to change you lifestyle.”End quote. No other reason has been given.Now, for our story and how this train of events came to be:First off, our family has a long history with the Town of Old Orchard, due to the fact that our family settled this town more than 300 years ago. Our family has lived on the properties here in since 1657. Originally there were several hundred acres on our land, both forest and farmland, but as the centuries went by the land was divided among relatives and passed on in increasingly smaller sections from one generation to the next. As the town grew and the land became more valuable, relatives sold out and moved away. By the 1940’s ours was the last to remain in the original family, a small lot less than an acre in size. Not only was it the last to remain in the original family, but it was also the last farm in Old Orchard Beach.It should be noted that property in Old Orchard is valued in the millions due to it being one of the world’s top rated award-winning beaches, and there in lies the root of our problem. Our farm has been accused of decreasing the property values. By the 1980’s Old Orchard became known as the hang out for biker gangs, honky-tonks, and strip shops. Property values dropped as the family image of the town plummeted. In the 1990’s, things changed once again, the gangs were driven out, the honky-tonks and bars shut down, and the strip shops became restaurants and art galleries. Property taxes sky-rocketed to the second highest in the state as millionaire mansions and high rise condos reconstructed the sky-line, forever blocking out the view of the beach from the roads.Old Orchard beach town officials, spent millions putting in brick sidewalks, Victorian street lamps, and building a replica of the town hall that had stood here in the 1800’s…. their campaign was to create a “historical town” to draw in high income tourists. The campaign was wildly advertised, and well promoted… until the new town manager and his new staff showed their true colors, that is and their campaign turned to harassing long time locals off of their land. Several families have been driven out already. Most unable and unwilling to fight the local government as the threats of propety destruction, and the removal of personal belongings (including pets) has scared most of the “offending families” into selling thier land and moving. There are only a handful of families that have stood thier ground, but those too are leaving. Ours is one of the last to remain, still standing our round, and refusing to give in to the threats made by local police officers, local code enforcement officers, and the town manager himself. In the past year they have changed (without proper votes from the people) nearly every code on the book in an attempt to force these families off thier land. Changes in code include such things as “banning the growing of vegetation”, “painting your house”, “owning more than one car per family”, and other ridiculous town laws, that now prohibit such things as growing a garrden. It is like living in a strict gated community, only it is the entire town.On the outskirts of the town, one finds the beautiful rolling acres of Ross Forest, once a candidate to become a national park, most of it now clear cut, and what little remains is soon to be sold for housing complexes, many already under construction. Dividing the Ross Forest from the down town district, lay the remains of a few scattered farms, no longer in use. Except for one: ours. At one time a large full production poultry farm, today the home of pet farm animals, but still very much an active farm, small as it is.

The harassment of our family began in the fall of 2005 after an unknown person, wrote an editorial to the local newspapers, saying, “Four homes on Portland Avenue were distracting from the value of other properties in the town”. The writer continued saying that something should be done about it, that these four homes “should be torn down”, and the families should be forced to move out of town to make way for the new generation. Two of those four homes mentioned, as it turns out, were 144 Portland Ave and 146 Portland Ave.

At 144 Portland Avenue there lives my elderly dad Kenneth Allen, myself, and my three brothers (all under 16 years of age). As you may guess, our dad was much, much older than our mother, explaining how a senior came to have young children. In 1983, my dad’s mother died and he inherited her house at 146 Portland Ave. The tiny 16 foot by 9-foot house, which never had plumbing, etc. Was turned into a shed, but even so, the town has continued to tax it as a house. Since October of 2001 (six years ago) we have been applying for a permit to repair this building, and turn it into a greenhouse so we can extend our growing season, but the town STILL has that on a waiting list.

We continued to live in the old 700 square foot house, more of a cabin than a house by the town’s standards anyways. My dad was a newspaper carrier for 21 years, our family income was under $20,000 a year, so we were never able to afford much, but we never noticed, because we were happy. Our family was living together, we had our pets with us, and we lived on our farm. That we lacked a “normal income” or a “normal lifestyle” (as the town officials now put it) never occurred to us.

Than in spring of 2006, there came the letters from the town. One after another. Demands to “remove the junk and debris” or else. As it turns out, what they were calling junk and debris, was as follows:

Our car, which though they consider it “junk” still runs in spit of what it looks like, and we use it daily.

Our fire wood (we have a woodstove for heat, cause we can‘t afford anything else.)

My dad’s tools (he was a car mechanic in the 1970’s, and still works on his own car and cars of relatives)

Our brooder (used for raising baby chickens each spring)

My dad’s antique cast iron wood stove collection

Our garden (bean poles, pea fences, etc… they say we can’t have a garden any more either)

Our washing machine (a 1947 wringer, which we use weekly)

Our farming equipment (tiller, ATV, etc…. all used on a regular basis)

In other words, what they are calling “trash”, “junk”, and “debris” are actually things we use every day, things we need in order to survive… without them we can not garden, if we can not garden we can not eat, because we can not afford to buy enough food to eat more than one meal a day per person, without the garden we well starve to death, without the farm equipment we can not garden, they are trying to kill us… this is not a figure of speech… as you shall soon understand.

My dad explained to the town that this stuff is not junk but our livelihood. The town responded by attaching a lean/fine on our property, for “refusal to comply with orders“. I’m not sure how much the amount is unto today, but it was much more than we could afford than, and more so now.

My dad made an attempt to move the items so that they could not be seen from the road, in an attempt to comply with the town’s orders, hoping that if the items could not be seen from the road, that it would stop the harassment by the town… this was the biggest mistake he could have made, because as a result, a few days later on May 9, 2006, he went into a coma.

May 9, 2006 started like any other day. I woke up and went out to feed the chickens, work in the garden, and than help my dad move items out of view of the street. My dad had not yet gotten up. I had been in the yard barely 20 minutes when my 15 year old brother came running across the yard in a panic… something was wrong, I could see it on his face, and I ran to meet him… he told me that something was wrong with daddy… daddy had woken up and torn the wood stove out of the wall tearing with it all of the water pipes… and now the house was under water, while daddy was throwing everything from the toilet to the tables to shelves to files all over the house. By the time I arrived in the house there was 8 inches of water on the floor, and nothing left of anything… everything in the house was totally destroyed, there was not only nothing left on shelves, there were no longer any shelves. It looked like a tornado had gone through the house. The house was barely recognizable.

My smaller brothers had run into the bedroom to hide, terrified at the event that was unfolding, while daddy was now in an attempt at tearing out the windows. When I asked him what he was doing, he did not recognize me, he could not hear me, he could not see me… it was like he had turned into a blind man and was tearing at the walls in an attempt to see… I rushed to the neighbor who called an ambulance.

The ambulance arrived, and talk of nervous breakdown and meningitis, were scatted around the conversations… the emergency team was in attempt of asking me what happened, when I was pulled away by a police officer named Jack Nichols, who proceeded to interrogate me about the condition of our house.

The wood stove was laying in pieces in the center of the dinning room, and this was his main focus…

repeating the same question again and again: “How long has this been laying here?” he demanded. I told him, it had just happened, he accused me of lying, and repeated the question…. over and over again, and I kept explaining to him, that daddy had just done this, which was why we had called 911. Than he turned his questions to the piles of paper and mail that scattered the house… “What’s all this clutter?” he yelled. Again I explained that this had just happened, that it was stuff that had been on the shelves and table, but as before, he accused me of lying and repeated the question again and again, his voice growing more heated and temperamental each time. Than in a menacing voice he turned on my three little brothers “Why aren’t these children in school?”. I explained that we home schooled, and we had approval from the town’s superintendent. Next he railed me out about how children can’t live in “clutter and filth” like this… again I explained that this “clutter and filth” as he called it, had just happened moments ago, and it was because this had happened that we had called for his help. He responded by calling the Department of Human Services to take my brothers away, and than calling the town code enforcement officer to condemn the house on grounds of “clutter and filth”.

While all this was happening the ambulance had taken my dad away, to where they had taken him I did not know, because Jack Nichols had not given me a chance to even know what had happened to my dad. More police, this time with cameras, stormed into the house, none of them would tell me what they were doing, why they were there, or what had happened to my dad. In the mean time my mom and her husband arrived, and my brothers and me packed a few things so we could move in with her while we figured out what to do next. We tried to pack what little we could find that hadn’t been destroyed by the flood, and do it around police officers who seemed to be going through everything in the house for no reason at all, and who refused to talk to me or even acknowledge that I was there. Luckily the hospital called us during this time and told us where my dad was, but they would not discuss his condition over the phone. It was four hours before the police would let us leave to find out what happened to my dad. A friend, who had witnessed the police searching the house with their cameras, said that he thought it looked like a drug raid, and he suggested that we get copies of the police report to find out why they were going through the house like that. I told my dad this after he came out of the hospital and he went to the station to get copies of the report, but they refused to give them to him without a court order, so we have been unable to obtain any info as to why the police were going through everything like that.

It was a lesson well learned. We called the police for help and they turned on us like rabid wolves. I well never call 911 again.

Once at the hospital I was told that what we had just witnessed was a diabetic seizure, brought on by extreme amounts of stress. The doctor asked if my dad had any recent stress… yes, he had, with the town harassing him the past couple of weeks, and than the police harassing him even during a medical emergency, nearly hindering the emergency teams ability to get him to the hospital. Dr. Greene than explained that it was luckily he had gotten to the hospital when he did “another 20 minutes and he’d have been dead” is what he said. I shudder to think that the town police and their obsession with throwing us off our land nearly resulted in my dad’s death. Dr. Greene went on to explain that my dad was now in a diabetic coma on full life support. Wither or not he would live was not yet known.

As days, turned to weeks, my dad remained in a coma, his system getting weaker by the minute, at one point his kidneys failed him and he had to be rushed in for dialysis.

My dad remained in Southern Maine Medical Center in a diabetic coma on full life support for 21 days. In mid-June they moved him, wheelchair bound, from SMMC to New England Rehab Center in Portland. On June 29, 2006, my dad came home, unable to walk on his own, and saw for the first time what had become of our house. Just three days after my dad went into the hospital our electricity was shut off. The town claims they had nothing to do with it when I asked them. Without electricity, there was no light, and thus no way to see to clean the mess from the flood, and so, it remained just as it had been left on that day in May.

My dad, was now severely disabled, only able to walk a few feet at a time and unable to lift anything. The stress caused by the town’s harassment had left him with a weak heart and failing kidney’s, but the harassment had only just begun, for almost as soon as he was out of the hospital, the town once again began its relentless pursuit to remove us from our land. Land that for us means our heritage, our history, our legacy, but land that for the town, means nothing but dollar signs and profit margins.

Due to the months of the house sitting filled with water, we could not go back in to live in it. Having no family or relatives willing to help us, we were forced to camp out in the yard. We signed up for various shelter foundations and were put on their waiting lists. At HUD we were informed that we were #600 on the list.

Problems had gotten worse than I had known… for my dad was now disabled and could not go to work, thus I started my long and fruitless search for a job, which is today still ongoing. During his hospitalization, no bills had been paid, and about 10 or so years ago my dad had taken out a mortgage on the house… there has been no money since May of 2006 (nearly a year now), and thus no mortgage payments since that time either, they are now threatening to foreclose, but know the situation and are trying to work out a payment plan with my dad, in hopes that his disability check well eventually be approved by the state (he is still waiting to hear from the state on that… they sure do take a long time. They said it well is approved, they just have to wait for the paperwork to go through, so there should be some type of an income soon, we hope.)

With no income, and a house that we can not live in, my dad lived in his car, my brothers now liveing with our mom and her husband, and I built a house-tent-lean-to type of thing out of 12 shipping pallets, 3 cinderblocks, and a tarp. We had asked the town if we could put up a yurt (not hard to build as our land boarders a forest) until we could get a house back up, but they told us no, only tents were allowed, but we couldn’t afford to buy a real tent, so I built one instead. (UPDATE: The town has since taken our house. No one ever did make an attempt to help us as every one is just too scared of the town counel to stand up to them.)

Letters from the town continued to arrive. We continued to visit the town hall where we got the run around… “Come back in the morning, he’s only here in the mornings.”…Next day: “I’m sorry, did I say mornings? No, you’ll have to come in the afternoon.”… Day after day after day… week after week after week… “He’s out sick today”… “He’s on vacation this week.”… “He’s out on an inspection today.”… Weeks became months and STILL we had yet to meet the man behind the letters: Ken Shoupe. Though we went to his office almost daily, we would not meet him until November of 2006.

In July my dad had to have surgery, and was bed-ridden or rather car-ridden, as he had no bed, for several weeks afterwards. For food we get a bag a month from the Salvation Army (the only place that made an attempt to help us, little as it was) and each month we stretch that single bag of food as much as we possible can to make it last the entire month, but that often means we are limited to one very small meal a day (sometimes less). The State only allows us $13 a month for food stamps, and we aren’t eligible for TANF or welfare because we own our land.

We went to our church for help, but than there isn’t much they can do, you see, our town manager, Jim (James) Thomas, the man giving the orders to Ken Shoupe, is a “leading member” of the church, and others involved in the letters, such as the secretary who mails them out, also go to our church. The bishop tries to help when he can, but, in the end all he was able to do was get our electricity turned back on, but for that there was a catch: The town was going to let us remove our belongings from the house, before they tore it down. So, with the electricity back on, and this new threat hanging over our heads, me and my 3 brothers, built a second tent next to the first one, and began to move what we could salvage out of the house and into the second tent. Everything we own now sits outside, damp and wet, under a tarp, buried in snow.

Such threats and happenings have been going on now ever since my dad came home from the hospital, and the stress has made his recovery almost impossible, and thus he remains weekly, sometimes daily, in and out of doctor’s offices and hospitals with increasingly failing health, and every day his doctors tell him: “You have got to get the stress out of your life before it kills you.”

And now I shall skip ahead to where we are at today and why I am writing to you:

In December, with below zero temperatures and snow burying the “tent”, a woman from the Department of Human Services showed up at our land, explaining that someone had filed a complaint, because there was a family living outdoors during Maine’s harsh sub-zero winter. We have been on waiting lists for shelter since this had happened, but we are such a large family: 5 people, plus cats, dogs, and farm animals, there is no one who would take us, we had no choice but to sit out Maine’s winter and try to keep the tarp from collapsing on our heads under the weight of the snow. She was furious, at the Town Officials, for she had attempted to contact them first and was given the same “run around” that we had been given. She told them that if they were going to force us out of our home than they should at least pay for a hotel room (Old Orchard Beach has over 300 hotels, motels, cabins, camp grounds and condos.) She said that they had told her off. She is the one who said that what was happening here was not legal, that it was harassment, and that it was bordering on criminal. It seems that if one of us had died from the cold, the town could be charged with murder, we did not realize this. Before the DHS came in, we didn’t know that what was happening was illegal, we didn’t know that we had the right to fight the town. She gave us the phone number of Pine Tree Legal, Maine’s free lawyer group. We called. And called again. And keep calling, but can’t get past the operator, who says our name is on a waiting list.

This woman from DHS was the very first person to make any attempt to really and truly help us, with her help we went from #600 on HUD’s waiting list to #1 and on January 10, 2007, after nine months of homelessness, me and my dad were allowed to move into a temporary apartment in Biddeford, while HUD, AVESTA, and CALEB Foundation, try to find a place that well take both us and my 3 brothers, and our pets… a wait that we are told could take as many as 8 years! Unfortunately the apartment is tiny beyond belief and so everything we own is still back at home in the 2 “tents”. (UPDATE: We have been taken off the CALEB foundation list because our income is too low.)

We thought things were looking up at this point. We should have known that the town officials would not allow us to be happy for a single moment. Following the news that we are in an apartment the town has moved on to a new level of harassment: This week, we received a letter from the town, saying that we have until February 12 (just 3 days from now) to remove EVERYTHING from our land (including not only the things they had listed before but also the 2 tents, our house, the sheds, and the barns), after which time they well come in and level the land. They came to the land and told us that they wanted a totally empty lot… nothing, apparently not even the trees. They are complaining that the tents are an eyesore… the tents that THEY told us we had to put up to store our belongings in, because back than they were threatening to tear down the house. Among the items in the tent is my book collection, some 7,000 books that I have been collecting over the years; antiques that had belonged to my great-grandmother, and grandmothers; and other such items. Everything we own, now stands to be stolen from us, by the town officials, and why? We asked Shoup why he was doing this to us, he said: “This is Old Orchard, you have to change you lifestyle.”

We know this is Old Orchard! Unlike outsiders like him, our family has been here on this land since 1657. My dad’s family built this town. Of course we know its Old Orchard. What kind of a reason is that to force a family off their land? We have 3 days to stop them, and no one well helps us. It seems like the whole town has turned on us. People who we once called friends now seem to be strangers.

Today this caper of harasment has taken on a new level… they are now threaten to take our animals away, based on false accusations made by one named Smith. They say they well take them in 5 days from today, but they have no grounds to take them, and as with everything else they have done, they have no court order to back themselves up with. The animals are part of our family, they are like children to me, they have no right to threaten to take them. No right at all!

We have gone to everyone we can pleading, begging for help, but no one is willing to help us. Every church, every charity… even the volunteer lawyers, but Old Orchard Beach is Maine’s biggest tourist attraction, a town that draws in millions of tourist each summer, tourists who bring with them, money that makes Old Orchard one of Maine’s wealthiest towns, and because of that no one well help us fight them. We are told to give up, to just move… we are told that we can’t fight the Town of Old Orchard because it’s one of Maine’s most powerful government seats. But that doesn’t give them the right to steal our belongings! That doesn’t give them the right to steal our land! That doesn’t give them the right to force us to live in a tent during the winter! How can they just come in and level our land? They don’t even have any court orders to back themselves up with! What they are doing is not legal, but no one well do anything to stop them! They well not break us into losing, but if this doesn’t stop, they well kill my dad. This has to stop. They have too far. Please, there must be someway someone can help us! If you know of anyone who may be able to help us, please let us know!

Our Mailing address is:

Wendy C. Allen
P.O.Box 1452
Saco, ME 04072

my email address (my dad don’t have one) xavychup@yahoo.com

You can also write a letter of protest to the town council at:

Old Orchard Beach Town Council
1 Portland Ave
Old Orchard Beach, ME 04064

Please, even if all you can do is write a letter to the town hall, please help us.

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

————-

Copper Cockeral
Publishing Your NaNo Novel?
Do You and I Read the Same Books?
Want to Give Me a Reward for Reaching 50k?
*I Love Phookas!*
Copper Cockeral

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Blingo

Harrasment Continues

black birdfall leaves centerblack bird

My name is Wendy Allen. I am writing to you on behalf of my father, Kenneth Allen of Old Orchard Beach, Maine. Our family is in desperate need of help. In the past two years we have tried without success to get help locally, but now the deadline is less than a week away and we do not know what to do or who to turn too for help. Since this is a long and complicated ordeal, I well start at the beginning. First off, I should tell you that we are fighting the local government, the officials of the Town of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, for the followingcharges: Discrimination against a disabled senior. A seniors rights being taken away from him.Repeated harassment, and discriminatory attempts to force a low income family off their land, resulting in the year long hospitalization of already mentioned senior and resulting in his becoming disabled.Threat of the destruction of property, including the threat of tearing down the home of aforementioned senior and his minor children and their pets.Forcing the senior and his minor children out of their home and onto the streets where they lived for much of 2006 in a “tent” constructed out of shipping pallets and a tarp, where they lived in the elements of Maine’s harsh winter, some days suffering at below zero temperatures.The threat of having all our belongings destroyed.The reason the town official Ken Shoup gave for this harassment was quote:“This is Old Orchard, you have to change you lifestyle.”End quote. No other reason has been given.Now, for our story and how this train of events came to be:First off, our family has a long history with the Town of Old Orchard, due to the fact that our family settled this town more than 300 years ago. Our family has lived on the properties here in since 1657. Originally there were several hundred acres on our land, both forest and farmland, but as the centuries went by the land was divided among relatives and passed on in increasingly smaller sections from one generation to the next. As the town grew and the land became more valuable, relatives sold out and moved away. By the 1940’s ours was the last to remain in the original family, a small lot less than an acre in size. Not only was it the last to remain in the original family, but it was also the last farm in Old Orchard Beach.It should be noted that property in Old Orchard is valued in the millions due to it being one of the world’s top rated award-winning beaches, and there in lies the root of our problem. Our farm has been accused of decreasing the property values. By the 1980’s Old Orchard became known as the hang out for biker gangs, honky-tonks, and strip shops. Property values dropped as the family image of the town plummeted. In the 1990’s, things changed once again, the gangs were driven out, the honky-tonks and bars shut down, and the strip shops became restaurants and art galleries. Property taxes sky-rocketed to the second highest in the state as millionaire mansions and high rise condos reconstructed the sky-line, forever blocking out the view of the beach from the roads.Old Orchard beach town officials, spent millions putting in brick sidewalks, Victorian street lamps, and building a replica of the town hall that had stood here in the 1800’s…. their campaign was to create a “historical town” to draw in high income tourists. The campaign was wildly advertised, and well promoted… until the new town manager and his new staff showed their true colors, that is and their campaign turned to harassing long time locals off of their land. Several families have been driven out already. Most unable and unwilling to fight the local government as the threats of propety destruction, and the removal of personal belongings (including pets) has scared most of the “offending families” into selling thier land and moving. There are only a handful of families that have stood thier ground, but those too are leaving. Ours is one of the last to remain, still standing our round, and refusing to give in to the threats made by local police officers, local code enforcement officers, and the town manager himself. In the past year they have changed (without proper votes from the people) nearly every code on the book in an attempt to force these families off thier land. Changes in code include such things as “banning the growing of vegetation”, “painting your house”, “owning more than one car per family”, and other ridiculous town laws, that now prohibit such things as growing a garrden. It is like living in a strict gated community, only it is the entire town.On the outskirts of the town, one finds the beautiful rolling acres of Ross Forest, once a candidate to become a national park, most of it now clear cut, and what little remains is soon to be sold for housing complexes, many already under construction. Dividing the Ross Forest from the down town district, lay the remains of a few scattered farms, no longer in use. Except for one: ours. At one time a large full production poultry farm, today the home of pet farm animals, but still very much an active farm, small as it is.

The harassment of our family began in the fall of 2005 after an unknown person, wrote an editorial to the local newspapers, saying, “Four homes on Portland Avenue were distracting from the value of other properties in the town”. The writer continued saying that something should be done about it, that these four homes “should be torn down”, and the families should be forced to move out of town to make way for the new generation. Two of those four homes mentioned, as it turns out, were 144 Portland Ave and 146 Portland Ave.

At 144 Portland Avenue there lives my elderly dad Kenneth Allen, myself, and my three brothers (all under 16 years of age). As you may guess, our dad was much, much older than our mother, explaining how a senior came to have young children. In 1983, my dad’s mother died and he inherited her house at 146 Portland Ave. The tiny 16 foot by 9-foot house, which never had plumbing, etc. Was turned into a shed, but even so, the town has continued to tax it as a house. Since October of 2001 (six years ago) we have been applying for a permit to repair this building, and turn it into a greenhouse so we can extend our growing season, but the town STILL has that on a waiting list.

We continued to live in the old 700 square foot house, more of a cabin than a house by the town’s standards anyways. My dad was a newspaper carrier for 21 years, our family income was under $20,000 a year, so we were never able to afford much, but we never noticed, because we were happy. Our family was living together, we had our pets with us, and we lived on our farm. That we lacked a “normal income” or a “normal lifestyle” (as the town officials now put it) never occurred to us.

Than in spring of 2006, there came the letters from the town. One after another. Demands to “remove the junk and debris” or else. As it turns out, what they were calling junk and debris, was as follows:

Our car, which though they consider it “junk” still runs in spit of what it looks like, and we use it daily.

Our fire wood (we have a woodstove for heat, cause we can‘t afford anything else.)

My dad’s tools (he was a car mechanic in the 1970’s, and still works on his own car and cars of relatives)

Our brooder (used for raising baby chickens each spring)

My dad’s antique cast iron wood stove collection

Our garden (bean poles, pea fences, etc… they say we can’t have a garden any more either)

Our washing machine (a 1947 wringer, which we use weekly)

Our farming equipment (tiller, ATV, etc…. all used on a regular basis)

In other words, what they are calling “trash”, “junk”, and “debris” are actually things we use every day, things we need in order to survive… without them we can not garden, if we can not garden we can not eat, because we can not afford to buy enough food to eat more than one meal a day per person, without the garden we well starve to death, without the farm equipment we can not garden, they are trying to kill us… this is not a figure of speech… as you shall soon understand.

My dad explained to the town that this stuff is not junk but our livelihood. The town responded by attaching a lean/fine on our property, for “refusal to comply with orders“. I’m not sure how much the amount is unto today, but it was much more than we could afford than, and more so now.

My dad made an attempt to move the items so that they could not be seen from the road, in an attempt to comply with the town’s orders, hoping that if the items could not be seen from the road, that it would stop the harassment by the town… this was the biggest mistake he could have made, because as a result, a few days later on May 9, 2006, he went into a coma.

May 9, 2006 started like any other day. I woke up and went out to feed the chickens, work in the garden, and than help my dad move items out of view of the street. My dad had not yet gotten up. I had been in the yard barely 20 minutes when my 15 year old brother came running across the yard in a panic… something was wrong, I could see it on his face, and I ran to meet him… he told me that something was wrong with daddy… daddy had woken up and torn the wood stove out of the wall tearing with it all of the water pipes… and now the house was under water, while daddy was throwing everything from the toilet to the tables to shelves to files all over the house. By the time I arrived in the house there was 8 inches of water on the floor, and nothing left of anything… everything in the house was totally destroyed, there was not only nothing left on shelves, there were no longer any shelves. It looked like a tornado had gone through the house. The house was barely recognizable.

My smaller brothers had run into the bedroom to hide, terrified at the event that was unfolding, while daddy was now in an attempt at tearing out the windows. When I asked him what he was doing, he did not recognize me, he could not hear me, he could not see me… it was like he had turned into a blind man and was tearing at the walls in an attempt to see… I rushed to the neighbor who called an ambulance.

The ambulance arrived, and talk of nervous breakdown and meningitis, were scatted around the conversations… the emergency team was in attempt of asking me what happened, when I was pulled away by a police officer named Jack Nichols, who proceeded to interrogate me about the condition of our house.

The wood stove was laying in pieces in the center of the dinning room, and this was his main focus…

repeating the same question again and again: “How long has this been laying here?” he demanded. I told him, it had just happened, he accused me of lying, and repeated the question…. over and over again, and I kept explaining to him, that daddy had just done this, which was why we had called 911. Than he turned his questions to the piles of paper and mail that scattered the house… “What’s all this clutter?” he yelled. Again I explained that this had just happened, that it was stuff that had been on the shelves and table, but as before, he accused me of lying and repeated the question again and again, his voice growing more heated and temperamental each time. Than in a menacing voice he turned on my three little brothers “Why aren’t these children in school?”. I explained that we home schooled, and we had approval from the town’s superintendent. Next he railed me out about how children can’t live in “clutter and filth” like this… again I explained that this “clutter and filth” as he called it, had just happened moments ago, and it was because this had happened that we had called for his help. He responded by calling the Department of Human Services to take my brothers away, and than calling the town code enforcement officer to condemn the house on grounds of “clutter and filth”.

While all this was happening the ambulance had taken my dad away, to where they had taken him I did not know, because Jack Nichols had not given me a chance to even know what had happened to my dad. More police, this time with cameras, stormed into the house, none of them would tell me what they were doing, why they were there, or what had happened to my dad. In the mean time my mom and her husband arrived, and my brothers and me packed a few things so we could move in with her while we figured out what to do next. We tried to pack what little we could find that hadn’t been destroyed by the flood, and do it around police officers who seemed to be going through everything in the house for no reason at all, and who refused to talk to me or even acknowledge that I was there. Luckily the hospital called us during this time and told us where my dad was, but they would not discuss his condition over the phone. It was four hours before the police would let us leave to find out what happened to my dad. A friend, who had witnessed the police searching the house with their cameras, said that he thought it looked like a drug raid, and he suggested that we get copies of the police report to find out why they were going through the house like that. I told my dad this after he came out of the hospital and he went to the station to get copies of the report, but they refused to give them to him without a court order, so we have been unable to obtain any info as to why the police were going through everything like that.

It was a lesson well learned. We called the police for help and they turned on us like rabid wolves. I well never call 911 again.

Once at the hospital I was told that what we had just witnessed was a diabetic seizure, brought on by extreme amounts of stress. The doctor asked if my dad had any recent stress… yes, he had, with the town harassing him the past couple of weeks, and than the police harassing him even during a medical emergency, nearly hindering the emergency teams ability to get him to the hospital. Dr. Greene than explained that it was luckily he had gotten to the hospital when he did “another 20 minutes and he’d have been dead” is what he said. I shudder to think that the town police and their obsession with throwing us off our land nearly resulted in my dad’s death. Dr. Greene went on to explain that my dad was now in a diabetic coma on full life support. Wither or not he would live was not yet known.

As days, turned to weeks, my dad remained in a coma, his system getting weaker by the minute, at one point his kidneys failed him and he had to be rushed in for dialysis.

My dad remained in Southern Maine Medical Center in a diabetic coma on full life support for 21 days. In mid-June they moved him, wheelchair bound, from SMMC to New England Rehab Center in Portland. On June 29, 2006, my dad came home, unable to walk on his own, and saw for the first time what had become of our house. Just three days after my dad went into the hospital our electricity was shut off. The town claims they had nothing to do with it when I asked them. Without electricity, there was no light, and thus no way to see to clean the mess from the flood, and so, it remained just as it had been left on that day in May.

My dad, was now severely disabled, only able to walk a few feet at a time and unable to lift anything. The stress caused by the town’s harassment had left him with a weak heart and failing kidney’s, but the harassment had only just begun, for almost as soon as he was out of the hospital, the town once again began its relentless pursuit to remove us from our land. Land that for us means our heritage, our history, our legacy, but land that for the town, means nothing but dollar signs and profit margins.

Due to the months of the house sitting filled with water, we could not go back in to live in it. Having no family or relatives willing to help us, we were forced to camp out in the yard. We signed up for various shelter foundations and were put on their waiting lists. At HUD we were informed that we were #600 on the list.

Problems had gotten worse than I had known… for my dad was now disabled and could not go to work, thus I started my long and fruitless search for a job, which is today still ongoing. During his hospitalization, no bills had been paid, and about 10 or so years ago my dad had taken out a mortgage on the house… there has been no money since May of 2006 (nearly a year now), and thus no mortgage payments since that time either, they are now threatening to foreclose, but know the situation and are trying to work out a payment plan with my dad, in hopes that his disability check well eventually be approved by the state (he is still waiting to hear from the state on that… they sure do take a long time. They said it well is approved, they just have to wait for the paperwork to go through, so there should be some type of an income soon, we hope.)

With no income, and a house that we can not live in, my dad lived in his car, my brothers now liveing with our mom and her husband, and I built a house-tent-lean-to type of thing out of 12 shipping pallets, 3 cinderblocks, and a tarp. We had asked the town if we could put up a yurt (not hard to build as our land boarders a forest) until we could get a house back up, but they told us no, only tents were allowed, but we couldn’t afford to buy a real tent, so I built one instead. (UPDATE: The town has since taken our house. No one ever did make an attempt to help us as every one is just too scared of the town counel to stand up to them.)

Letters from the town continued to arrive. We continued to visit the town hall where we got the run around… “Come back in the morning, he’s only here in the mornings.”…Next day: “I’m sorry, did I say mornings? No, you’ll have to come in the afternoon.”… Day after day after day… week after week after week… “He’s out sick today”… “He’s on vacation this week.”… “He’s out on an inspection today.”… Weeks became months and STILL we had yet to meet the man behind the letters: Ken Shoupe. Though we went to his office almost daily, we would not meet him until November of 2006.

In July my dad had to have surgery, and was bed-ridden or rather car-ridden, as he had no bed, for several weeks afterwards. For food we get a bag a month from the Salvation Army (the only place that made an attempt to help us, little as it was) and each month we stretch that single bag of food as much as we possible can to make it last the entire month, but that often means we are limited to one very small meal a day (sometimes less). The State only allows us $13 a month for food stamps, and we aren’t eligible for TANF or welfare because we own our land.

We went to our church for help, but than there isn’t much they can do, you see, our town manager, Jim (James) Thomas, the man giving the orders to Ken Shoupe, is a “leading member” of the church, and others involved in the letters, such as the secretary who mails them out, also go to our church. The bishop tries to help when he can, but, in the end all he was able to do was get our electricity turned back on, but for that there was a catch: The town was going to let us remove our belongings from the house, before they tore it down. So, with the electricity back on, and this new threat hanging over our heads, me and my 3 brothers, built a second tent next to the first one, and began to move what we could salvage out of the house and into the second tent. Everything we own now sits outside, damp and wet, under a tarp, buried in snow.

Such threats and happenings have been going on now ever since my dad came home from the hospital, and the stress has made his recovery almost impossible, and thus he remains weekly, sometimes daily, in and out of doctor’s offices and hospitals with increasingly failing health, and every day his doctors tell him: “You have got to get the stress out of your life before it kills you.”

And now I shall skip ahead to where we are at today and why I am writing to you:

In December, with below zero temperatures and snow burying the “tent”, a woman from the Department of Human Services showed up at our land, explaining that someone had filed a complaint, because there was a family living outdoors during Maine’s harsh sub-zero winter. We have been on waiting lists for shelter since this had happened, but we are such a large family: 5 people, plus cats, dogs, and farm animals, there is no one who would take us, we had no choice but to sit out Maine’s winter and try to keep the tarp from collapsing on our heads under the weight of the snow. She was furious, at the Town Officials, for she had attempted to contact them first and was given the same “run around” that we had been given. She told them that if they were going to force us out of our home than they should at least pay for a hotel room (Old Orchard Beach has over 300 hotels, motels, cabins, camp grounds and condos.) She said that they had told her off. She is the one who said that what was happening here was not legal, that it was harassment, and that it was bordering on criminal. It seems that if one of us had died from the cold, the town could be charged with murder, we did not realize this. Before the DHS came in, we didn’t know that what was happening was illegal, we didn’t know that we had the right to fight the town. She gave us the phone number of Pine Tree Legal, Maine’s free lawyer group. We called. And called again. And keep calling, but can’t get past the operator, who says our name is on a waiting list.

This woman from DHS was the very first person to make any attempt to really and truly help us, with her help we went from #600 on HUD’s waiting list to #1 and on January 10, 2007, after nine months of homelessness, me and my dad were allowed to move into a temporary apartment in Biddeford, while HUD, AVESTA, and CALEB Foundation, try to find a place that well take both us and my 3 brothers, and our pets… a wait that we are told could take as many as 8 years! Unfortunately the apartment is tiny beyond belief and so everything we own is still back at home in the 2 “tents”. (UPDATE: We have been taken off the CALEB foundation list because our income is too low.)

We thought things were looking up at this point. We should have known that the town officials would not allow us to be happy for a single moment. Following the news that we are in an apartment the town has moved on to a new level of harassment: This week, we received a letter from the town, saying that we have until February 12 (just 3 days from now) to remove EVERYTHING from our land (including not only the things they had listed before but also the 2 tents, our house, the sheds, and the barns), after which time they well come in and level the land. They came to the land and told us that they wanted a totally empty lot… nothing, apparently not even the trees. They are complaining that the tents are an eyesore… the tents that THEY told us we had to put up to store our belongings in, because back than they were threatening to tear down the house. Among the items in the tent is my book collection, some 7,000 books that I have been collecting over the years; antiques that had belonged to my great-grandmother, and grandmothers; and other such items. Everything we own, now stands to be stolen from us, by the town officials, and why? We asked Shoup why he was doing this to us, he said: “This is Old Orchard, you have to change you lifestyle.”

We know this is Old Orchard! Unlike outsiders like him, our family has been here on this land since 1657. My dad’s family built this town. Of course we know its Old Orchard. What kind of a reason is that to force a family off their land? We have 3 days to stop them, and no one well helps us. It seems like the whole town has turned on us. People who we once called friends now seem to be strangers.

Today this caper of harasment has taken on a new level… they are now threaten to take our animals away, based on false accusations made by one named Smith. They say they well take them in 5 days from today, but they have no grounds to take them, and as with everything else they have done, they have no court order to back themselves up with. The animals are part of our family, they are like children to me, they have no right to threaten to take them. No right at all!

We have gone to everyone we can pleading, begging for help, but no one is willing to help us. Every church, every charity… even the volunteer lawyers, but Old Orchard Beach is Maine’s biggest tourist attraction, a town that draws in millions of tourist each summer, tourists who bring with them, money that makes Old Orchard one of Maine’s wealthiest towns, and because of that no one well help us fight them. We are told to give up, to just move… we are told that we can’t fight the Town of Old Orchard because it’s one of Maine’s most powerful government seats. But that doesn’t give them the right to steal our belongings! That doesn’t give them the right to steal our land! That doesn’t give them the right to force us to live in a tent during the winter! How can they just come in and level our land? They don’t even have any court orders to back themselves up with! What they are doing is not legal, but no one well do anything to stop them! They well not break us into losing, but if this doesn’t stop, they well kill my dad. This has to stop. They have too far. Please, there must be someway someone can help us! If you know of anyone who may be able to help us, please let us know!

Our Mailing address is:

Wendy C. Allen
P.O.Box 1452
Saco, ME 04072

my email address (my dad don’t have one) xavychup@yahoo.com

You can also write a letter of protest to the town council at:

Old Orchard Beach Town Council
1 Portland Ave
Old Orchard Beach, ME 04064

Please, even if all you can do is write a letter to the town hall, please help us.

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

————-

Copper Cockeral
Publishing Your NaNo Novel?
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Copper Cockeral

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Blingo

Harrasment Continues

My name is Wendy Allen.

I am writing to you on behalf of my father, Kenneth Ricker-Allen of Old Orchard Beach, Maine.

Our family is in desperate need of help. In the past two years we have tried without success to get help locally, but now the deadline is less than a week away and we do not know what to do or who to turn too for help.

Since this is a long and complicated ordeal, I well start at the beginning. First off, I should tell you that we are fighting the local government, the officials of the Town of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, for the followingcharges:

Discrimination against a disabled senior.

A seniors rights being taken away from him.

Repeated harassment, and discriminatory attempts to force a low income family off their land, resulting in the year long hospitalization of already mentioned senior and resulting in his becoming disabled.

Threat of the destruction of property, including the threat of tearing down the home of aforementioned senior and his minor children and their pets.

Forcing the senior and his minor children out of their home and onto the streets where they lived for much of 2006 in a “tent” constructed out of shipping pallets and a tarp, where they lived in the elements of Maine’s harsh winter, some days suffering at below zero temperatures.

The threat of having all our belongings destroyed.

The reason the town official Ken Shoup gave for this harassment was quote:”This is Old Orchard, you have to change you lifestyle.”End quote. No other reason has been given.

Now, for our story and how this train of events came to be:

First off, our family has a long history with the Town of Old Orchard, due to the fact that our family settled this town more than 300 years ago. Our family has lived on the properties here in since 1657.

Originally there were several hundred acres on our land, both forest and farmland, but as the centuries went by the land was divided among relatives and passed on in increasingly smaller sections from one generation to the next. As the town grew and the land became more valuable, relatives sold out and moved away.

By the 1940′s ours was the last to remain in the original family, a small lot less than an acre in size. Not only was it the last to remain in the original family, but it was also the last farm in Old Orchard Beach.

It should be noted that property in Old Orchard is valued in the millions due to it being one of the world’s top rated award-winning beaches, and there in lies the root of our problem. Our farm has been accused of decreasing the property values. By the 1980′s Old Orchard became known as the hang out for biker gangs, honky-tonks, and strip shops. Property values dropped as the family image of the town plummeted. In the 1990′s, things changed once again, the gangs were driven out, the honky-tonks and bars shut down, and the strip shops became restaurants and art galleries.

Property taxes sky-rocketed to the second highest in the state as millionaire mansions and high rise condos reconstructed the sky-line, forever blocking out the view of the beach from the roads.Old Orchard beach town officials, spent millions putting in brick sidewalks, Victorian street lamps, and building a replica of the town hall that had stood here in the 1800′s…. their campaign was to create a “historical town” to draw in high income tourists.

The campaign was wildly advertised, and well promoted… until the new town manager and his new staff showed their true colors, that is and their campaign turned to harassing long time locals off of their land.

Several families have been driven out already. Most unable and unwilling to fight the local government as the threats of propety destruction, and the removal of personal belongings (including pets) has scared most of the “offending families” into selling thier land and moving.

There are only a handful of families that have stood thier ground, but those too are leaving. Ours is one of the last to remain, still standing our round, and refusing to give in to the threats made by local police officers, local code enforcement officers, and the town manager himself.

In the past year they have changed (without legal and proper votes from the people) nearly every code on the book in an attempt to force these families off thier land.

Changes in code include such things as “banning the growing of vegetation”, “painting your house”, “owning more than one car per family”, and other ridiculous town laws, that now prohibit such things as growing a garden.

It is like living in a strict gated community, only it is the entire town.

On the outskirts of the town, one finds the beautiful rolling acres of Ross Forest, once a candidate to become a national park, most of it now clear cut, and what little remains is soon to be sold for housing complexes, many already under construction.

Dividing the Ross Forest from the down town district, lay the remains of a few scattered farms, no longer in use. Except for one: ours. At one time a large full production poultry farm, today the home of pet farm animals, but still very much an active farm, small as it is.

The harassment of our family began in the fall of 2005 after an unknown person, wrote an editorial to the local newspapers, saying, “Four homes on Portland Avenue were distracting from the value of other properties in the town”.

The writer continued saying that something should be done about it, that these four homes “should be torn down”, and the families should be forced to move out of town to make way for the new generation.

Two of those four homes mentioned, as it turns out, were 144 Portland Ave and 146 Portland Ave.

At 144 Portland Avenue there lived (they have since taken our home) my elderly dad Kenneth Allen, myself, and my three brothers (all under 16 years of age). As you may guess, our dad was much, much older than our mother, explaining how a senior came to have young children.

In 1983, my dad’s mother died and he inherited her house at 146 Portland Ave. The tiny 16 foot by 9-foot “house”, which never had plumbing, etc. We turned into a shed, but even so, the town has continued to tax it as a house. Since October of 2001 (seven years ago) we have been applying for a permit to repair this building, and turn it into a greenhouse so we can extend our growing season, but the town STILL has that on a waiting list.

We continued to live in the old 700 square foot house, more of a cabin than a house or at least by the town’s standards anyways.

My dad was a newspaper carrier for 21 years, our family income was under $20,000 a year, so we were never able to afford much, but we never noticed, because we were happy.

 Our family was living together, we had our pets with us, and we lived on our farm. That we lacked a “normal income” or a “normal lifestyle” (as the town officials now tell us) never occurred to us.

Than in spring of 2006, there came the letters from the town. One after another. Demands to “remove the junk and debris” or else.

As it turns out, what they were calling junk and debris, was as follows: Our car, which though they consider it “junk” still runs in spite of what it looks like, and we use it daily.

 Our fire wood (we have a woodstove for heat, cause we can’t afford anything else.)

My dad’s tools (he was a car mechanic in the 1970′s, and still works on his own car and cars of relatives)

Our brooder (used for raising baby chickens each spring)

My dad’s antique cast iron wood stove collection

Our garden (bean poles, pea fences, etc… they say we can’t have a garden any more either)

Our washing machine (a 1947 wringer, which we use weekly)

Our farming equipment (tiller, ATV, etc…. all used on a regular basis)

In other words, what they are calling “trash”, “junk”, and “debris” are actually things we use every day, things we need in order to survive… without them we can not garden, if we can not garden we can not eat, because we can not afford to buy enough food to eat more than one meal a day per person, without the garden we well starve to death, without the farm equipment we can not garden, they are trying to kill us… and no this is not a figure of speech… as you shall soon come to understand.

My dad explained to the town that this stuff is not junk but our livelihood. The town responded by attaching a lean/fine on our property, for “refusal to comply with orders”.

(They eventualy threw us out of our house and stole my grandmothers antiques, and took our house)

My dad made an attempt to move the items so that they could not be seen from the road, in an attempt to comply with the town’s orders, hoping that if the items could not be seen from the road, that it would stop the harassment by the town… this was the biggest mistake he could have made, because as a result, a few days later on May 9, 2006, he went into a coma. May 9, 2006 started like any other day.

I woke up and went out to feed the chickens, work in the garden, and than help my dad move items out of view of the street. My dad had not yet gotten up. I had been in the yard barely 20 minutes when my 15 year old brother came running across the yard in a panic… something was wrong, I could see it on his face, and I ran to meet him… he told me that something was wrong with daddy… daddy had woken up and torn the wood stove out of the wall tearing with it all of the water pipes… and now the house was under water, while daddy was throwing everything from the toilet to the tables to shelves to files all over the house. By the time I arrived in the house there was 8 inches of water on the floor, and nothing left of anything… everything in the house was totally destroyed, there was not only nothing left on shelves, there were no longer any shelves. It looked like a tornado had gone through the house. The house was barely recognizable. My smaller brothers had run into the bedroom to hide, terrified at the event that was unfolding, while daddy was now in an attempt at tearing out the windows.

When I asked my dad what he was doing, he did not recognize me, he could not hear me, he could not see me… it was like he had turned into a blind man and was tearing at the walls in an attempt to see… I rushed to the neighbor who called an ambulance. The ambulance arrived, and talk of nervous breakdown and meningitis, were scatted around the conversations… the emergency team was in attempt of asking me what happened, when I was pulled away by a police officer named Jack Nichols, who proceeded to interrogate me about the condition of our house.

The wood stove was laying in pieces in the center of the dinning room, and this was his main focus… repeating the same question again and again: “How long has this been laying here?” he demanded. I told him, it had just happened, he accused me of lying, and repeated the question…. over and over again, and I kept explaining to him, that daddy had just done this, which was why we had called 911. Than he turned his questions to the piles of paper and mail that scattered the house… “What’s all this clutter?” he yelled.

Again I explained that this had just happened, that it was stuff that had been on the shelves and table, but as before, he accused me of lying and repeated the question again and again, his voice growing more heated and temperamental each time.

Than in a menacing voice he turned on my three little brothers “Why aren’t these children in school?”. I explained that we home schooled, and we had approval from the town’s superintendent.

Next he railed me out about how children can’t live in “clutter and filth” like this… again I explained that this “clutter and filth” as he called it, had just happened moments ago, and it was because this had happened that we had called for his help. He responded by calling the Department of Human Services to take my brothers away, and than calling the town code enforcement officer to condemn the house on grounds of “clutter and filth”.

While all this was happening the ambulance had taken my dad away, to where they had taken him I did not know, because Jack Nichols had not given me a chance to even know what had happened to my dad. More police, this time with cameras, stormed into the house, none of them would tell me what they were doing, why they were there, or what had happened to my dad. Meanwhile another police officer, Will Watson, stormed through the house “photgraphing evidance”, and turn what was left of the house inside out and upside down. Him and the handful of officers who were with him (names unknown to me otherwise I’d list them here as well) turned oer ever unturned item in a desperate search. Though I asked them what they were doing, none of these officers said a word, and continued to destroy everything they touched, never telling me why they were doing so or what it was they were looking for. By the time they got down, everything we own was completly destroied, there was nothing left in one peice.

In the mean time my mom and her husband arrived, and my brothers and me packed a few things so we could move in with her while we figured out what to do next. We tried to pack what little we could find that hadn’t been destroyed, and do it around police officers who seemed to be going through everything in the house for no reason at all, and who refused to talk to me or even acknowledge that I was there.

Luckily the hospital called us during this time and told us where my dad was, so at leaste we knew were to find him, but they would not discuss his condition over the phone.

We were not allowed to leave until the police had continued and finished their destructive mad dash search of the house. It was four hours before the police would let us leave to find out what happened to my dad. A friend, who had witnessed the police searching the house with their cameras, said that he thought it looked like a drug raid, and he suggested that we get copies of the police report to find out why they were going through the house like that. I told my dad this after he came out of the hospital (several months later) and he went to the station to get copies of the report, but they refused to give them to him without a court order (which we could not afford to buy), so we have been unable to obtain any info as to why the police were going through everything like that.

It was a lesson well learned. We called the police for help and they turned on us like rabid wolves. I well never call 911 again.

Once at the hospital I was told that what we had just witnessed was a diabetic seizure, brought on by extreme amounts of stress.

The doctor asked if my dad had any recent stress… OMG! I told him what the town hall had been doing to us and about this freakish ordeal we went through with the police, so, yes, he had suffered from stress… extreem stress, and the doctor agreed that it was the fault of the town hall that my dad was now in a coma. … As I said earlier, they are trying to kill us, and that is not a figure of speach, they are literally trying to kill us.

So, with the town harassing him the past couple of weeks, and than the police harassing him even during a medical emergency, nearly hindering the emergency teams ability to get him to the hospital, the doctors agreed that the town was at fault and the cause of my dad’s coma.

Dr. Greene than explained that it was lucky he had gotten to the hospital when he did {quote}”another 20 minutes and he’d have been dead” {end quote} is what he said. I shudder to think that the town hall, the police and their obsession with throwing us off our land nearly resulted in my dad’s death!

 I shudder to think was horrors the town hall will dish out to us next.

Dr. Greene went on to explain that my dad was now in a diabetic coma on full life support. Wither or not he would live was not yet known.

As days, turned to weeks, my dad remained in a coma, his system getting weaker by the minute, at one point his kidneys failed him and he had to be rushed in for dialysis.

My dad remained in Southern Maine Medical Center in a diabetic coma on full life support for 21 days.

In mid-June they moved him, wheelchair bound, from SMMC to New England Rehab Center in Portland.

On June 29, 2006, my dad came home, unable to walk on his own, and saw for the first time what had become of our house.

Just three days after my dad went into the hospital in May, our electricity was shut off. The town claims they had nothing to do with it when I asked them.

Without electricity, there was no light, and thus no way to see to clean the mess from the flood and the police, and so, it remained just as it had been left on that day in May.

My dad, was now severely disabled, only able to walk a few feet at a time and unable to lift anything at all.

The stress caused by the town’s harassment had left him with a weak heart and failing kidney’s, but the harassment had only just begun, for almost as soon as he was out of the hospital, the town once again began its relentless pursuit to remove us from our land. Land that for us means our heritage, our history, our legacy, but land that for the town, means nothing but dollar signs and profit margins.

Due to the months of the house sitting filled with water, we could not go back in to live in it, but even so, the polce would not allow us to go back home anyways, as they had condemed our house after they got done tearing it apart.

Having no family or relatives willing to help us, we were forced to camp out in the yard.

We signed up for various shelter foundations and were put on their waiting lists.

At HUD we were informed that we were 600 on the list. Problems had gotten worse than I had known… for my dad was now disabled and could not go to work, thus I started my long and fruitless search for a job, which is today (2 years later) is still ongoing.

During his hospitalization, no bills had been paid,  there had been no money at (not one single penny) since May of 2006 (nearly a year), but we lived in hopes that his disability check well eventually be approved by the state (it took 17 months after he came out of the hospital for them to approve it.) With no income, and a house that we can not live in, my dad lived in his car, my brothers now liveing with our mom and her husband, and I built a house-tent-lean-to type of thing out of 12 shipping pallets, 3 cinderblocks, and a tarp.

We had asked the town if we could put up a yurt (not hard to build as our land boarders a forest) until we could get a house back up, but they told us no, only tents were allowed, but we couldn’t afford to buy a real tent, so I built one instead.

(UPDATE: The town has since taken our house. No one ever did make an attempt to help us as every one is just too scared of the town counel to stand up to them.)

Letters from the town continued to arrive.

We continued to visit the town hall where we got the run around… “Come back in the morning, he’s only here in the mornings.”…

Next day: “I’m sorry, did I say mornings? No, you’ll have to come in the afternoon.”…

Day after day after day… week after week after week… “He’s out sick today”… “He’s on vacation this week.”… “He’s out on an inspection today.”… Weeks became months and STILL we had yet to meet the man behind the letters: Ken Shoupe.

Though we went to his office almost daily, we would not meet him until November of 2006.

In July my dad had to have surgery, and was bed-ridden (or rather car-ridden, as he had no house thus no bed,) for several weeks afterwards.

For food we get one paper bag a month from the Salvation Army (the only place that made an attempt to help us, little as it was) and each month we stretch that single bag of food as much as we possible can to make it last the entire month, but that often means we are limited to one very small meal a day (sometimes less).

The State only allows us $13 a month for food stamps, and we aren’t eligible for TANF (Temporary Assitance For Needy Families) or welfare because we owned our land.

We went to our church for help, but than there isn’t much they can do, you see, our town manager, Jim (James) Thomas, the man giving the orders to Ken Shoupe, is a “leading member” of the church, and others involved in the letters, such as the secretary who mails them out, also go to our church.

The bishop tried to help, but, he had to get church coucil approval, and with his council members also being the town mangaer and the town hall workers, we could not get approval for help from our church either, and in the end all the bishop was able to do was get our electricity turned back on, but for that there was a catch to that even:

The town was only going to let us have our electricty back on long enough for us to remove our belongings from the house, before they tore it down.

So, with the electricity back on, and this new threat hanging over our heads, me and my 3 brothers, built a second tent-lean-to-thing next to the first one, and began to move what we could salvage out of the house and into the second tent-thingy.

Everything we own now sits outside, damp and wet, under a tarp, buried in snow.

Such threats and happenings have been going on now ever since my dad came home from the hospital, and the stress has made his recovery nearly impossible, and thus he remains weekly, sometimes daily, in and out of doctor’s offices and hospitals with increasingly failing health, and every day his doctors tell him: “You have got to get the stress out of your life before it kills you.”

And now I shall skip ahead to where we are at today and why I am writing to you:

In December, with below zero temperatures and snow burying the “tent”, a woman from the Department of Human Services showed up at our land, explaining that someone had filed a complaint, because there was a family living outdoors during Maine’s harsh sub-zero winter.

We have been on waiting lists for shelter since this had happened, but we are such a large family: 5 people, plus cats, dogs, and farm animals, there is no landlord who would take us, we had no choice but to sit out Maine’s winter and try to keep the tarp from collapsing on our heads under the weight of the snow.

She was furious, at the Town Officials, because, as she told us, she had just come from the town hall, where she had attempted to contact them first and was given the same “run around” that we had been given.

She told them that if they were going to force us out of our home than they should at least pay for a hotel room (Old Orchard Beach has over 300 hotels, motels, cabins, camp grounds and condos.) She said that they had {quote}”told her off” {end quote}.

She is the one who told us that what was happening here was not legal, that it was harassment, it was unconstitutional, and that it was bordering on criminal. It seems that, according to her, that if one of us had died from the cold, the town could be charged with murder, we did not realize this.

Before the DHS came in, we didn’t know that what was happening was illegal, that they were acting on {quote}”Communist Rules”{end quote}, and we didn’t know before than that we had the legal right to fight the town.

She gave us the phone number of Pine Tree Legal, Maine’s free lawyer group. We called. And called again. And keep calling, but can’t get past the operator, who says our name is on a waiting list.

This woman from DHS was the very first person to make any attempt to really and truly help us, with her help we went from 600 on HUD’s waiting list to 1 and on January 10, after months of homelessness, me and my dad were allowed to move into a temporary apartment in Biddeford, while HUD, AVESTA, and CALEB Foundation, tried to find a place that well take both us and my 3 brothers, and our pets… a wait that we are told could take as many as 8 years!

Unfortunately the apartment is tiny beyond belief and so everything we own is still back at home in the 2 “tents”.

 (UPDATE: We have been taken off the CALEB foundation list because our income is too low. huh? our income is too low for section 8 housing? WTH?)

We thought things were looking up at this point. We should have known that the town officials would not allow us to be happy for a single moment.

Following the news that we are in an apartment the town has moved on to a new level of harassment: This week, we received a letter from the town, saying that we have until February 12 (just 3 days from now) to remove EVERYTHING from our land (including not only the things they had listed before but also the 2 tents, the sheds, the barns, and even my beloved Goldeneagle {a town landmark and worl famous car}), after which time they well come in and level the land.

They came to the land (with a developer, no less!) and told us that they wanted a totally empty lot… nothing, apparently not even the trees, as they talked about cutting them down as well!!!!

 They are complaining that the tents are an eyesore… the tents that THEY told us we had to put up to store our belongings in, because back than they were threatening to tear down the house. Among the items in the tent is my book collection, some 7,000 books that I have been collecting over the years; antiques that had belonged to my great-grandmother, (many of which have since been stolen), and grandmothers; and other such items.

Everything we own, now stands to be stolen from us, by the town officials, and why? We asked Shoup why he was doing this to us, he said: {quote} ”This is Old Orchard, you have to change you lifestyle.” {end quote}

We know this is Old Orchard!

Unlike outsiders like him and the town manager, our family has been here on this land since 1657.

My dad’s family (Thomas Rogers, the Googins, and the Rickers) built this town. Of course we know its Old Orchard.

What kind of a reason is that to force a family off their land?

We have 3 days to stop them, and no one well helps us.

It seems like the whole town has turned on us. People who we once called friends now seem to be strangers.

Today this caper of harasment has taken on a new level… they are now threaten to take our animals away, based on false accusations made by one named “Smith”… I only know one person named Smith, and I thought they were our friends, so either they are 2-faced, or the code enforcment officer is lieing to us yet again.

They say they well take them, but they have no grounds to take them, and as with everything else they have done, they have no court order to back themselves up with. The animals are part of our family, they are like children to me, they have no right to threaten to take them. No right at all!

We have gone to everyone we can pleading, begging for help, but no one is willing to help us fight these communistic bullies.

Every church, every charity… even the volunteer lawyers, but Old Orchard Beach is Maine’s biggest tourist attraction, a town that draws in millions of tourist each summer, tourists who bring with them, money that makes Old Orchard one of Maine’s wealthiest towns, and because of that no one well help us fight them.

We are told to give up, to just move… we are told that we can’t fight the Town of Old Orchard because it’s one of Maine’s most powerful government seats. But that doesn’t give them the right to steal our belongings!

That doesn’t give them the right to steal our land!

That doesn’t give them the right to force us to live in a tent during the winter!

How can they just come in and level our land?

How can they steal my car?

How can they steal my pets?

They don’t even have any court orders to back themselves up with!

What they are doing is not legal, but no one well do anything to stop them!

They well not break us into losing, but if this doesn’t stop, they well kill my dad, and the stress has yaken it’s toll on my own health now as well, I’ve been sick for weeks, I don’t know how much longer I can hold out under these conditions, and I have no medical insurance so the hospital won’t admot me, and the state said I’m not eligable for a medical card, either, again, saying that our income is too low.

This has to stop.

They have too far.

Please, there must be someway someone can help us! If you know of anyone who may be able to help us, please let us know!

Our Mailing address is:

Wendy C. Allen

P.O.Box 1452

Saco, ME

04072

my email address (my dad don’t have one) xavychup@yahoo.com

Please some one help us!

You can write a letter of protest to the town council at:

 

Old Orchard Beach Town Council

1 Portland Ave

Old Orchard Beach, ME

 04064

 

Please, even if all you can do is write a letter to the town hall, please help us.

 

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post.

Leave a comment and share your views!

If you liked this post, than you might like what I say on my other blog too!

Need To Publish Your First Novel?

Save the Goldeneagle

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Shot at 2007-04-04

    Hello! I am a 1964 Dodge 330 4-door sedan, VIN 4142216364, my name is The Goldeneagle. This site was created by my owner Wendy C. Allen of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, to save my life.

    I am the main character of the original Twighlight Manor book, and a major supporting character of more that 30 other books and short stories by Maine author Wendy C. Allen.

    I started out in life as a silver undercover Police car in Maine. In 1975 I retired from my job as a police car and was sent to Marcot Motors of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, where I was painted gold by some fool with a paint brush. He totally ruined my lovely silver paint job and left me streaked with brush lines. I was only there a few months before I was bought by the Allen family, who sanded me down and painted a lovely shade of metalic orange.

    I remained the faithful family chauffer for the next ten years. Together we drove on many roadtrips throughout the NorthEast. In 1978, I took them to New York where we croosed the Brooklen Bridge during it’s major repair construction. That same year we went to Washington D.C. I took the Allen family to Arcadia in Bar Harbor to see The Thunder Hole in 1981. Every year I drove them to New Hampshire where we visited The Old Man on the Mountain and Story Land and The Swift River. Three times I climbed Mt. Washington.

    I’ve brought home puppies and baby chickens. I waited in hospital parking lots and veterinary clinics. I remained forever and always a faithful friend. The only friend who was always there, steadfast and unmoveble, silent and unjudgmental. My red plush seats always there like a shoulder to cry on when no one else would lend and ear or a shoulder. I alone remained to one true friend, the only friend to the child who loved me and defend me when no one else would put up with my break downs and failrues.

    Over the years I grew old and tired, my engine weak and my transmission failing. My last trip was a desperate trip to the hospital, one dark and stormy night in 1985 when a hurrican flooded the town, sending the Atlantic Ocean over the Peir and up Maine Street. My last trip came when abulances could ride faster than my Mopar engine and Mrs Allen had to be rushed to the hostpital at 3AM. We speed through Old Orchard fatser than ever before, through hurrican floods that went higher than my door panels seeping water into my interior and flooding my floors, filling my transmission and engine with icy salt water, we made it to the hospital with Mrs. Allen, but I did not make it back home on my own and was towed home by a friend’s little VW Rabbit.

    In spite of my loyalty, with a dead trasmission and an engine full of salt, I was usless, and parked in the yard, put up for sale for junk.

    I was rescued from a trip to the junk yard in 1985 by 9 year old, Wendy C. Allen, after my trans died. Since 1985 I have remained a decoration on the hill in her rose garden, where she sits in my seats or on my hood to write the stories in which I appear. Without me, she can not write these stories for I am the one that inspires them. I have been happy in my life of peace and rest here in Old Orchard Beach these past 30 years. That has now changed.

    New town ordinances and zoning laws have been set in Old Orchard Beach. As a result the police, the code enforments officers, and the town manager are now in attempt to see my death and destruction, with threats of stealing me from my rightful owner and sending me to become scrap metal in the junk yard.

    This is an outrage! They well not listen to reason.

    My profile now comes to you to spread the word and ask for your help in saveing my life. An entire network of websites devoted to my plight are now in the works and links to them well be added here within the next few hours.

    Please join the protest and put an end to the Old Orchard Beach reign of terror. Old Orchard Beach is a town not a dynasty, they have no right to take me from my home and kill me!

    PLEASE DON’T LET THEM KILL ME!!!!!

To read more, please visit my profile: http://www.myspace.com/savethegoldeneagle

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Shot at 2007-04-04

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Blingo

testing tags

having a problem getting posts to show up… testing to see if tags are working yet

Me and Politics?

You are a
Social Moderate
(56% permissive)

and an…
Economic Liberal
(25% permissive)

You are best described as a:

Democrat (25e/56s)

Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid
Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

Explanation Of Results:

We wanted to get beyond the two catch-alls of American politics, the Democratic and Republican parties, and see where people actually stand. Parties can bring together people with marginally differing values and make collective action easier. But party platforms can misrepresent their constituents, and blind loyalty to a party can convince individuals to harbor inconsistent views.

The goal of this test was to exactly classify your personal politics, without the traditional labels. We avoided the edgy party issues and focused on fundamental values.

Your score is a measure of what you believe in, economically and socially. Higher permissiveness, on either axis, indicates a “live and let live” philosophy. Of course, we’re almost conditioned in America, “Land of the Free”, to think positively of such a philosophy. But practically speaking, permissiviness (or its opposite, regulation) can create any number of outcomes:

For example, on the economic axis, a highly permissive system, like the American system of the early 1900s, might mean things like low taxes and increased scientific innovation. It might also result, as it did back then, in unrestricted child labor and millions of poor people with black lung. At the other end of the economic spectrum, a highly regulated system might conserve the environment, establish national health care, and eliminate poverty. But as we’ve learned from the Soviet system, extreme regulation can also lead to stagnation, sameness, and unhappiness.

If you liked the test, forward it. Thanks for participating.

“I would put a ban on wealthy bullies who move into small towns, buy their way into the town hall, and than procied to harass local families via vandalism, threats, destruction of property, and stealing of their pets. Down with Old Orchard Beach’s Nazi laws!”
WCA, Old Orchard Beach, Maine

Page copy protected against web site content infringement by Copyscape

All donations to Star Log go either to The Rabbit Hole Fund and/or The Pidgie Fund. The Rabbit Hole Fund is raising money to start a small retail clothen shop, while The Pidgie Fund buys food for pets in Southern Maine.

TAGS:
Communist blacklist, Communism in America, the communist town of Old Orchard Beach, Jim Thomas the Communist, Will Watson the Communist, down with Communism, fight for your rights, make America the land of the free again, 1964 Dodge 330, angry, animal rights, animal welfare, animals, anti-elder abuse, antiquies, author’s rights, authors, bantams, belief, beliefs, Biddeford, birds, cats, chickens, Christ, Christianity, church corruption, conspiracy, corrupt leaders, corruption, crime, criminal, criminals, cruel, cruelty, danger, disabled, discrimination, dogs, evil, evil men, faith, Family, farm animals, farm life, fear, Garden by the Sea, geography, God, government, government crime, harasment, harassment, hell, help wanted, Holiness, Holy Spirit, humans, in need of help, Jesus, LDS, lies, Life, life blogging, local government, Maineland, Mormons, my thoughts on…, news, ocean, ocean life, Old Orchard, police, police corruption, police threats, politics, Relationships, religon, seniors, sin, sinner, sinners, social change, stamp collecting, stamps, stealing, Stolen House, stolen items, strange but true, strangers, tent, terror, terrorism, terrorists, Theology, theology beliefs, thief, thieves, thoughts, threats, town hall, Town of Old Orchard, vandelism, vandels, villain, war, weather, Winter, World, writer, writer’s rights, writers, York county

animal rights, bad habits, conspiracy, corrupt leaders, corruption, disabled, Discernment, discrimination, EelKat, EK, Family, fear, Future, geography, government, harassment, help wanted, humans, in need of help, Jesus, lies, Life, local government, my thoughts on…, Old Orchard, Personal, politics, Power, stealing, tent, thieves, Town of Old Orchard, unprotected, unsafe, vegetarian, war, wisdom, World, York county, Communist blacklist, Communism in America, the communist town of Old Orchard Beach, Jim Thomas the Communist, Will Watson the Communist, down with Communism, fight for your rights, make America the land of the free again, 1964 Dodge 330, angry, animal rights, animal welfare, animals, anti-elder abuse, antiquies, author’s rights, authors, bantams, belief, beliefs, Biddeford, birds, cats, chickens, Christ, Christianity, church corruption, conspiracy, corrupt leaders, corruption, crime, criminal, criminals, cruel, cruelty, danger, disabled, discrimination, dogs, evil, evil men, faith, Family, farm animals, farm life, fear, Garden by the Sea, geography, God, government, government crime, harasment, harassment, hell, help wanted, Holiness, Holy Spirit, humans, in need of help, Jesus, LDS, lies, Life, life blogging, local government, Maineland, Mormons, my thoughts on…, news, ocean, ocean life, Old Orchard, police, police corruption, police threats, politics, Relationships, religon, seniors, sin, sinner, sinners, social change, stamp collecting, stamps, stealing, Stolen House, stolen items, strange but true, strangers, tent, terror, terrorism, terrorists, Theology, theology beliefs, thief, thieves, thoughts, threats, town hall, Town of Old Orchard, vandelism, vandels, villain, war, weather, Winter, World, writer, writer’s rights, writers, York county

Me and Politics?

You are a
Social Moderate
(56% permissive)

and an…
Economic Liberal
(25% permissive)

You are best described as a:

Democrat (25e/56s)

Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid
Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

Explanation Of Results:

We wanted to get beyond the two catch-alls of American politics, the Democratic and Republican parties, and see where people actually stand. Parties can bring together people with marginally differing values and make collective action easier. But party platforms can misrepresent their constituents, and blind loyalty to a party can convince individuals to harbor inconsistent views.

The goal of this test was to exactly classify your personal politics, without the traditional labels. We avoided the edgy party issues and focused on fundamental values.

Your score is a measure of what you believe in, economically and socially. Higher permissiveness, on either axis, indicates a “live and let live” philosophy. Of course, we’re almost conditioned in America, “Land of the Free”, to think positively of such a philosophy. But practically speaking, permissiviness (or its opposite, regulation) can create any number of outcomes:

For example, on the economic axis, a highly permissive system, like the American system of the early 1900s, might mean things like low taxes and increased scientific innovation. It might also result, as it did back then, in unrestricted child labor and millions of poor people with black lung. At the other end of the economic spectrum, a highly regulated system might conserve the environment, establish national health care, and eliminate poverty. But as we’ve learned from the Soviet system, extreme regulation can also lead to stagnation, sameness, and unhappiness.

If you liked the test, forward it. Thanks for participating.

“I would put a ban on wealthy bullies who move into small towns, buy their way into the town hall, and than procied to harass local families via vandalism, threats, destruction of property, and stealing of their pets. Down with Old Orchard Beach’s Nazi laws!”
WCA, Old Orchard Beach, Maine

Page copy protected against web site content infringement by Copyscape

All donations to Star Log go either to The Rabbit Hole Fund and/or The Pidgie Fund. The Rabbit Hole Fund is raising money to start a small retail clothen shop, while The Pidgie Fund buys food for pets in Southern Maine.

Me and Politics?

You are a
Social Moderate
(56% permissive)

and an…
Economic Liberal
(25% permissive)

You are best described as a:

Democrat (25e/56s)

Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid
Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

Explanation Of Results:

We wanted to get beyond the two catch-alls of American politics, the Democratic and Republican parties, and see where people actually stand. Parties can bring together people with marginally differing values and make collective action easier. But party platforms can misrepresent their constituents, and blind loyalty to a party can convince individuals to harbor inconsistent views.

The goal of this test was to exactly classify your personal politics, without the traditional labels. We avoided the edgy party issues and focused on fundamental values.

Your score is a measure of what you believe in, economically and socially. Higher permissiveness, on either axis, indicates a “live and let live” philosophy. Of course, we’re almost conditioned in America, “Land of the Free”, to think positively of such a philosophy. But practically speaking, permissiviness (or its opposite, regulation) can create any number of outcomes:

For example, on the economic axis, a highly permissive system, like the American system of the early 1900s, might mean things like low taxes and increased scientific innovation. It might also result, as it did back then, in unrestricted child labor and millions of poor people with black lung. At the other end of the economic spectrum, a highly regulated system might conserve the environment, establish national health care, and eliminate poverty. But as we’ve learned from the Soviet system, extreme regulation can also lead to stagnation, sameness, and unhappiness.

If you liked the test, forward it. Thanks for participating.

“I would put a ban on wealthy bullies who move into small towns, buy their way into the town hall, and than procied to harass local families via vandalism, threats, destruction of property, and stealing of their pets. Down with Old Orchard Beach’s Nazi laws!”
WCA, Old Orchard Beach, Maine

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All donations to Star Log go either to The Rabbit Hole Fund and/or The Pidgie Fund. The Rabbit Hole Fund is raising money to start a small retail clothen shop, while The Pidgie Fund buys food for pets in Southern Maine.

TAGS:
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animal rights, bad habits, conspiracy, corrupt leaders, corruption, disabled, Discernment, discrimination, EelKat, EK, Family, fear, Future, geography, government, harassment, help wanted, humans, in need of help, Jesus, lies, Life, local government, my thoughts on…, Old Orchard, Personal, politics, Power, stealing, tent, thieves, Town of Old Orchard, unprotected, unsafe, vegetarian, war, wisdom, World, York county, Communist blacklist, Communism in America, the communist town of Old Orchard Beach, Jim Thomas the Communist, Will Watson the Communist, down with Communism, fight for your rights, make America the land of the free again, 1964 Dodge 330, angry, animal rights, animal welfare, animals, anti-elder abuse, antiquies, author’s rights, authors, bantams, belief, beliefs, Biddeford, birds, cats, chickens, Christ, Christianity, church corruption, conspiracy, corrupt leaders, corruption, crime, criminal, criminals, cruel, cruelty, danger, disabled, discrimination, dogs, evil, evil men, faith, Family, farm animals, farm life, fear, Garden by the Sea, geography, God, government, government crime, harasment, harassment, hell, help wanted, Holiness, Holy Spirit, humans, in need of help, Jesus, LDS, lies, Life, life blogging, local government, Maineland, Mormons, my thoughts on…, news, ocean, ocean life, Old Orchard, police, police corruption, police threats, politics, Relationships, religon, seniors, sin, sinner, sinners, social change, stamp collecting, stamps, stealing, Stolen House, stolen items, strange but true, strangers, tent, terror, terrorism, terrorists, Theology, theology beliefs, thief, thieves, thoughts, threats, town hall, Town of Old Orchard, vandelism, vandels, villain, war, weather, Winter, World, writer, writer’s rights, writers, York county

An Autobiography of a car…

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    Hello! I am a 1964 Dodge 330 4-door sedan, VIN 4142216364, my name is The Goldeneagle. This site was created by my owner Wendy C. Allen of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, to save my life.

    I am the main character of the original Twighlight Manor book, and a major supporting character of more that 30 other books and short stories by Maine author Wendy C. Allen.

    I started out in life as a silver undercover Police car in Maine. In 1975 I retired from my job as a police car and was sent to Marcot Motors of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, where I was painted gold by some fool with a paint brush. He totally ruined my lovely silver paint job and left me streaked with brush lines. I was only there a few months before I was bought by the Allen family, who sanded me down and painted a lovely shade of metalic orange.

    I remained the faithful family chauffer for the next ten years. Together we drove on many roadtrips throughout the NorthEast. In 1978, I took them to New York where we croosed the Brooklen Bridge during it’s major repair construction. That same year we went to Washington D.C. I took the Allen family to Arcadia in Bar Harbor to see The Thunder Hole in 1981. Every year I drove them to New Hampshire where we visited The Old Man on the Mountain and Story Land and The Swift River. Three times I climbed Mt. Washington.

    I’ve brought home puppies and baby chickens. I waited in hospital parking lots and veterinary clinics. I remained forever and always a faithful friend. The only friend who was always there, steadfast and unmoveble, silent and unjudgmental. My red plush seats always there like a shoulder to cry on when no one else would lend and ear or a shoulder. I alone remained to one true friend, the only friend to the child who loved me and defend me when no one else would put up with my break downs and failrues.

    Over the years I grew old and tired, my engine weak and my transmission failing. My last trip was a desperate trip to the hospital, one dark and stormy night in 1985 when a hurrican flooded the town, sending the Atlantic Ocean over the Peir and up Maine Street. My last trip came when abulances could ride faster than my Mopar engine and Mrs Allen had to be rushed to the hostpital at 3AM. We speed through Old Orchard fatser than ever before, through hurrican floods that went higher than my door panels seeping water into my interior and flooding my floors, filling my transmission and engine with icy salt water, we made it to the hospital with Mrs. Allen, but I did not make it back home on my own and was towed home by a friend’s little VW Rabbit.

    In spite of my loyalty, with a dead trasmission and an engine full of salt, I was usless, and parked in the yard, put up for sale for junk.

    I was rescued from a trip to the junk yard in 1985 by 9 year old, Wendy C. Allen, after my trans died. Since 1985 I have remained a decoration on the hill in her rose garden, where she sits in my seats or on my hood to write the stories in which I appear. Without me, she can not write these stories for I am the one that inspires them. I have been happy in my life of peace and rest here in Old Orchard Beach these past 30 years. That has now changed.

    New town ordinances and zoning laws have been set in Old Orchard Beach. As a result the police, the code enforments officers, and the town manager are now in attempt to see my death and destruction, with threats of stealing me from my rightful owner and sending me to become scrap metal in the junk yard.

    This is an outrage! They well not listen to reason.

    My profile now comes to you to spread the word and ask for your help in saveing my life. An entire network of websites devoted to my plight are now in the works and links to them well be added here within the next few hours.

    Please join the protest and put an end to the Old Orchard Beach reign of terror. Old Orchard Beach is a town not a dynasty, they have no right to take me from my home and kill me!

    PLEASE DON’T LET THEM KILL ME!!!!!

To read more, please visit my profile: http://www.myspace.com/savethegoldeneagle

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Happy La Kermeese!

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Happy La Kermesse June 21-24 2007

frog

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myspace layouts, myspace codes, glitter graphics

myspace layouts, myspace codes, glitter graphics

Happy La Kermeese!

I’m watching them set up for the block party right now. We got front row seats to the concert and fireworks and we don’t even have to leave to house! Can’t get out the front door right now, cause there’s a Slush Puppy machine and a hot dog stand in the sidewalk. The radio stations are setting up in front of my bedroom window. Such exicentment going on. I love it.

Wondering: Are any of you guys going to be here tonight?

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For Those who don’t know, it’s a French festival celebrated in Maine. It celebrates the peace between Maine and Quebec and the mixed heritage of everyone that lives in the area. It’s headquarters are in Biddeford Maine, which is a predominaty French town, and they close off all of Main Street and the off streets and turn the entire city into a giant carnival.

It looks like the entire population of Quebec is here right now, you should see the traffic!

A green frog is the symbol of the festival, and everyone has got frogs on their shirts and frog hats, and kids are winning stuffed frog prizes at the game stands.

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myspace layouts, myspace codes, glitter graphics

This is our first year living in Biddeford (we used to live in Old Orchard Beach on the other side of the river), so we’ve never gotting to see it like this before. We’ve only seen it after it was open. It opens in a half hour, but they started setting up last night, so we’ve been watching the whole thing.

They have fireworks off the bridg at 9. We are in the first house off the bridge, overlooking the river, so the fireworks are going to be shot off just a few feet from my window. That ought to be interesting.

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EDIT:

They just started. Right now they are singing the National Anthem of the US, they’ll do the Canadian one next, and the one for Quebec. Everything the announcer says gets said twice, once in Engligh nd than again in French.

EDIT:

Only in Biddeford! There’s a guy with a “trash pick up claw” going around picking up the trash that is grewing steadily on the streets. An elderly man with a cane just came walking by, waked the trash-picker-upper with the cane, and now the two men are duelinging, with cane and trash-pick-up-thing, like it was a sword fight.

EDIT:

I’m back again. Had to go out and watch what was going on out there. The fireworks just ended. Oh it was just amazing! The La Kermeese fireworks are the largest fireworks display in Maine… 4th of July has nothing on La Kermeese. The fireworks are so big andthey shoot them up so high that they can be seen over most of Southern York county. So we always see them no matter where we happen to be when they go off each year. But this year we are living in the first house off the bridge, right on the river’s edge, so this year we got to see them up close. And boy did we see them up close! OMG! I’ve never seen fireworks so close before. They were shooting them off about 50 feet from our front door. I went out on the front porch to watch them. OMG! It sounded like there was a canoon in my brain! That thing they shoot fireworks out of is SO LOUD! Even with tens of thousands of people all talking at once and the big band music playing (live band too!) I couldn’t hear them, all I could hear was the firework’s canon-thing.

But seeing it was amazing! OMG! It was like we were right inside of the fireworks! They were going up straight over our heads. I’ve always seen fireworks from a distance, far off, away from the crowd; kind of on a hill “looking down” at the fireworks. But this time I was right underneath them!!!! Boy is that ever a change of perspective! Watching them fan out from underneath, was just undescribably amazing! I wish you guys could have seen it! I’ve never seen anything like that before!

Well, it’s all done down, so I cam back in. The fireworks lasted a full half-hour, and ended with a big “atomic bomb” looking mushroom display that just kept going up higher and higher. It was beautiful! Now the band’s playing again. It sounds like an old 1800′s ciruse out there, they are playing the old carousel/carvial type music. Like what you hear on a merry-go-round, only it’s being played live by a real band… and boy is it loud!

I love La Kermeese.

~~EK

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Bear Attacks in Old Orchard Beach, Maine

You know, it was about 5 years ago when I first told Old Orchard Beach police that there was a bear in our yard, but because I didn’t have pictures, they just laughed and said there was no bear in Old Orchard Beach. Yes, tell that to the bear that routinely makes her weekly visits to our brook for a drink. Or tell that to the “bear tree” that marks her territory some 100 feet behind The GoldenEagle. Tell that to my terrified hens, who refuse to lay eggs after the bear has been by. But, who am I too know a bear, I only grew up in the Ross Forest, on land settled by Thomas Rogers (my ancestor and founder of this town) , making friends with every wild animal out there: from the bobcats to the coyotes, both of which btw the way the police also told me did not live in Old Orchard Beach, Maine. Uhm-huh. I believe you, I’ll just go on seeing these animals in my yard and keeping my pets under lock and key, and I’m NOT cutting a hole in my wall to allow the cats to roam free in bear, coyote, and bobcat country no matter how bitchy they get.

But why am I telling you this. Well, for those of you in Maine, you already know, but for those of you not in Maine, well us Maine folks awoke this morning to the news reports announcing: BEAR ATTACKS IN OLD ORCHARD BEACH! My question is what’s with all the exclamation points? So those bear that no one believes visit my back yard every week are now attacking the neighbors? So what. Took five years and an attack on humans before the police would believe me? Oh yeah, they believe me now…. they’re out there hauling around big bear traps behind the police van. My question: why didn’t you do that five years ago, before you got yourself a whole herd of bears. Five years ago, you only had a pair of bears out there, now; there have been about 2 cubs each year since. There isn’t just one bear in Old Orchard Beach anymore, there’s about 10 bear, at least there are about 10 bear that I know of, who knows how many I haven’t seen yet.

Why are the bear attacking? Why now? Do you really have to ask? King Realty just cut down some 50 acres of forest on the Ross Rd. Not one, but three new sub-divisions just started up on Portland Ave. We’re talking close to 200 acres of Ross Forest that no longer exists. What would you do if a bunch of big yellow rigs came in and decimated your home? Wouldn’t you attack the people who did it? I know I would. Why did those idiots think it’s unusual that the bear are “out to get them”? They cut down the forest, they build a house on the bear’s home, and than they wonder why a bear is sitting on their front porch? How stupid can you get?

I saw, take down the bear traps, and let the bear stay. To the people moving in: You’ve seen Maine, leave us in peace and go home. Keep Maine green: shoot a developer.

Lots of love to the bears, and lots of hate to the Town officials of Old Orchard Beach, Maine, from Wendy C. Allen; here’s to hoping the next attack the bears make is on the town hall.

Stolen Items: Please be on the look out for them!

Stolen Items! Please be on the look out for them!
Current mood: angry

On April 26, 2007 our home in Old Orchard Beach Maine was broken into, several items were stolen. Among other things, the thieves stole an antique stamp collection that has been passed down in our family for nearly 100 years. There were 2 bound books, and several pages torn from a third book stolen, as well as a glass/cardboard case. The descriptions of the items that have been stolen are as follows:

 

One stamp album is a red cloth bound book dating from the 1920/1930 eras, containing stamps dating from 1890′s – 1950′s. Many of the stamps are from Japan and it’s neighboring South Pacific region as my grandmother was best friends with the wife of the ambassador of Japan, who was living in the South Pacific at that time and sent the stamps back to Maine to my grandmother, Helen Ricker Allen. In addition to these the album contains several hundred stamps from this era from nearly every country in the world that had stamps at that time. My grandmother was quite young at the time and knew nothing of stamp collecting, as a result the stamps are glued down, not hinged, onto the pages, with the duplicate colors of them pasted one on top of the other. This fact along with the date and size of this collection makes it stand out among old collections, so should the thieves attempt to sell it to you, you well have no difficultly in mistaking it.

 

The second album is not so unique and may be more difficult to trace, though we hope that the thieves attempt to sell them both at the same time. It is a plastic ring binder from the late 1960′s era, quite common, and contains the basic colorful world stamps that are so often found in world collections of this era. The torn out pages come from a second identical plastic ring binder album. These belonged to my mother as a child.

 

The glass/cardboard case is a butterfly case, whose butterflies long since rotted and were replaced (by me) with another item. The glass/cardboard case contains a one of a kind hand carved heirloom that has been passed down in our family since the 1930′s. The item is a hand carved wooden weaving comb (or hair comb) from a tribe in Papua New Guinea (believed to be Chimbu, but the exact tribe is unknown). Along with the comb is a negative of the solider (my dad’s uncle) who brought the comb back with him from PNG during the 1930′s. Also in the case is an index card on which I hand wrote the info about the comb and the solider.

 

These items are dearly beloved and greatly missed; both have been in my family and passed down for generations. We want them returned, and are contacting as many local dealers and appraisers as we can find and requesting that they be on the look out for anyone selling or requesting an appraisal on items fitting this description. If you see these items please know that they are stolen goods and call the police immediately! Make sure that you get the description of the bearer of these stolen items and if possible their names, so that you can give this information to the police. In addition to stealing these items the thieves did considerable damage to our home, using a crowbar to tear the lock off the door, and than trashing the house, including breaking and antique gold/glass anniversary clock that my grandmother had brought with her from Germany and smashing many 78′s. We are seeking to prosecute these vandals and thieves once we know their identity, but mostly we want the stamp album and the PNG comb returned safely back home where they belong.

I am trying to send this notice on to as many dealers as possible, but it is a daughting task, and ask if you could help by passing copies of this letter on to any of your associates, fellow dealers/appraisers, and collectors. Any help you can give us in tracking down these stolen items would be greatly helpful.

 

If you should find them, Please contact me:

 

Wendy C. Allen

Harassment Continues and Grows Worse by the day…

Oh, man! It’s been like a week since I was last here, sorry guys, but real life has kept me offline for a bit, the harasment has increseased at an alarming rate, as has the daily bouts of vandalism we have to content with. It’s down right sickening coming home to this every day. As usual we came home tonight to find pack-boxes now unpacked and strewn all over the yard. Once again, the vandls tore stuff out of the tent and just threw it. Stuff, like usual is broken. More items have been stolen.  This time, not only did they tear the lock off the front door, but they tore the front door off the house. They tore the door off the outhouse as well. I think today’s round of vandalism has to rank at the most destructive yet.

We still do not know who is behind this. All we do know for certain is that it is obviously someone who knows when we are and are not home and that the police well do nothing for fear of loseing there jobs as a result of threats from the town manager.

We are not gone from home on a regular schedul… one day we well leave at 7AM and get home at  noon, another day we will leave at 4PM and get home at 5PM… other times we leave at 9PM and get home around midnight… there is no set pattern, no work schedule, every day is differant, sometimes we leave in the monring, sometimes noon, sometimes  night… some times we gone 20 mins, sometimes we are gone for hours… who ever it is that is doing this vandalism, they live in seeing distanct from our comings and goings otherwise they would not know the exact time we are gone each day, and we only have 3 neighbors in seeing distance. One a peacful eldery man who I could not see doing anything like this… the others… related and one of them on the  town counsel, and works closely with the Town Manager… uh-huh! alarm bells are ringing on that one! but, as I said we have no  proof as to who is doing this, so we do not know who to sue for the damages.

~~EK

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Update on The Lockdown & More Harassment & Vandelism

We spent the last 2 days calling everyone under the sun, trying to find out what the hell is going on, but we can’t get through to anyone; they are just giving us the run around again, putting us on hold, directing our calls to someone else who in turn directs them to someone else, who has no idea why we were directed to them and hangs up with a “Sorry”.

Well, since no one well tell us what’s going on, we just went ahead and broke down the barricade. Well wonders never cease? Now that we’ve gotting back in to see the damage, I can honesty say I hope these jackasses die a long slow death. The bastards stole my grandmother’s stamp collection. They tore the pages out of a second stamp book, keeping the pages that had stamps on them. They also stole the comb my dad’s uncle brought back from PNG when he was one of the soliders who was there and discovered that people lived their back in 1937. They also stole the photos of the uncle. They smashed my other grandmother’s gold and glass anniversay clock that she brought to America with her from Germany. To top it all off the bastards took my records and it looks like they used them for frisbies, they are strewn from one end of the house to the other, several of them broken.

We still don’t know who is behind this, but who ever they are I hope they die soon, so that they well have a longer time to burn in hell.

~~EK

Update: The Stolen House of Maine

Interesting thing happened today. We got home about 2 hours earlier than usual. We may now have a suspect in for who has been moveing stuff around the yard and opening the hen gate these last couple of weeks.

For those of you who remember the “Stolen House of Maine”  Our house, the one that so long ago was the start of the years of harassment that our family has had to withstand. It all started in 2001 with a house. Our house, the one that made front page news the day we came home to find an empty lot: our house as my long time readers already know, was cut in half and than moved 50 miles away where it was sold to a man who in turn sold it to something else. This resulted in a grueling 3 year court battle between us and the pastor who stole our house: Pastor Bernard Elliot of The Arundel Christian Tabernacle. Since the court battle we had not heard from him, but today, his wife Evelyn, stopped out front of our “still houseless” yard. We do not know why she was here, she drove off when I started down the driveway to see what she wanted. It dose raise the question, of just who exactly it is behind the harassment we have recieved from our very “religious” town manager,  Jim Thomas . (and ours is not the first they have done this to, they have a long history of doing this!)

I just have to wonder why are the Elliot’s back? What do they want with us? Haven’t they done enough damage already? Why won’t they leave us alone? These people are the ones who lefts pictures of guns on our door, way back in the summer of 2002. The Elliot’s are the ones who paint balled our car. They are the ones who took an axe to signs that stood on our land. They are the ones that caused us to need police protection for 3 long and terrifying years. Three years that my family spent in such terror that we dared not go to the store, because these people were stalking us, we meet them everywhere we went. That was yearws ago. We thought they had stopped, but when they did, that’s when the town manager and his crew started harassing us instead. We had thought that the two things, these two very differant episodes of unexplained harassment had been two seperate incedents. Now it seems that they are together, one and the same that the harssment from the town has been nothing more than an extention of the harsement from the Elliot’s.

Why? Whay are they doing this? What reason could they possibly have for this torture?

National TV-Turnoff Week, April 23-29

Today is the first day of  National TV-Turn Off Week, April 23-29

I have decided to write a list of 101 things for you to do during this week of no TV, should you decide to take on the challange.

  1. Go for a walk on the beach.
  2. Read a book.
  3. Write a book in 7 days.
  4. Volunteer at the local  animal shelter.
  5. Do a crossword puzzle.
  6. Dress up like a pirate.
  7. Buy a camera and use it.
  8. Play an hours-long game of Monopoly.
  9. Grow a crystal garden.
  10. Catalog your book collection useing the Dewey Decimal System.
  11. Plan a family budget.
  12. Go on a camping trip.
  13. Plant a vegetable garden.
  14. Watch the stars.
  15. Sew, knit, or crochet a blanket for a cause (Snuggles, Linus Foundation, etc.)
  16. Raise a family of sea monkeys.
  17. Answer all those unread emails.
  18. Pay your bills.
  19. Start a petition.
  20. Take your family out to a fancy resturant.
  21. Look for BigFoot.
  22. Take in a foster pet.
  23. Spend a few hours browsing in your local library.
  24. Donate pet food to a local shelter.
  25. Take a walk around the block.
  26. Have a chat with your mom or dad.
  27. Go fishing.
  28. Organize your DVD collection.
  29. Build a personal website.
  30. Write a short story for a fiction magazine.
  31. Volunteer at the local  soup kitchen.
  32. Go sight-seeing.
  33. Put the pictures into the photo albums.
  34. Throw a “Just-As-You-Are” party.
  35. Attempt to prove aliens are real.
  36. Visit a local museum.
  37. Take your family to an all you can eat buffet.
  38. Invent something new.
  39. Start to tackle the list of projects that has been getting longer.
  40. Head to an amusment park.
  41. Take a cruise.
  42. Sew a new dress.
  43. Get a family photo taken.
  44. Take a child to the zoo.
  45. Write a letter to someone you haven’t seen in a while.
  46. Attend an art show.
  47. Vacuum the car.
  48. Refinish an old piece of furniture.
  49. Write an article for a non-fiction magazine.
  50. Go boating.
  51. Start a blog.
  52. Attend a book reading.
  53. Solve a mystery: play a game of Clue.
  54. Visit with someone in a nursing home.
  55. Go to the circus.
  56. Head to your local swamp to pick fiddleheads.
  57. Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper.
  58. Take a hike in the woods.
  59. Visit an art gallery.
  60. Open an online store (Zazzle, CafePress, etc.).
  61. Take swimming lessons.
  62. Quit smoking.
  63. Plant a tree.
  64. Cook a gourmet dinner.
  65. Help your child with his/her homework.
  66. Play a game of basketball.
  67. Go birdwatching.
  68. Wash the windows.
  69. Get a makeover.
  70. See a play.
  71. Repaint your living room.
  72. Read a story to a child.
  73. Paint a masterpiece.
  74. Go on a picnic.
  75. Read a comic book.
  76. Start a new career.
  77. Organize a family reunion.
  78. Study up on your family history.
  79. Go on a diet.
  80. Sing a song.
  81. Write a poem.
  82. Bake a cake.
  83. Go horseback riding.
  84. Set up an aquarium.
  85. Write a letter to a prisoner.
  86. Take up a new hobby, such as stamp collecting.
  87. Spend the week looking for UFO’s.
  88. Go rock climbing.
  89. Dye your hair blue.
  90. Wax your car.
  91. Redecorate your bedroom.
  92. Play video games with your child.
  93. Write a business plan for your dream job.
  94. Take dance lessons.
  95. See a ballet.
  96. Buy a box of crayons and draw.
  97. Design your dream-house.
  98. Make home-made ice-cream.
  99. Dress-up and go to the opera.
  100. Take you family out to a movie.
  101. Visit a haunted house.
  102. Write a list of a 101 things you can do.

Quote: “I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.” —Groucho Marx 

Harassment Continues…

Once again we came home to find that someone had tresspassed onto our land and let the hens lose. You know, I’m really getting sick of this. Whoever is doing this, it is not funny, and the fact that it happens again and again, makes it go beyound annoying. I’d really like to find out who is doing this and why. I don’t take to kindly to people endangering my pets.

~~EK

pet food recall update: HUMAN FOOD BEING RECALLED!!!!!!!!!

Remember when I wrote this post and questioned what would happen; the effects of farm animals eating tainted food ; being a poultry farmer, my post focused on chicken not pork, but news that corn was now effected, and chickens eat corn one thing lead to another and I started questioning what we feed our chickens…. PORK from pigs that have eaten tainted food, has now been added to the recall!!!
Reading this post lead me to:
Pet Food Contamination Scandal Spreads to Pork, FDA Opens Criminal Investigation.

You know what this is staring to sound like? Biological warfare.

Treespassers OR Harassers?

I am getting really sick and tired of this. Once again we came home tonight to find that vandals  have been here. This time they took a wheelbarrle and left it across the path AND once again they have opened the gate and I found myself spending 2 hours looking for missing hens and roosters. I wish I knew who it was that is doing this. One hen got killed by a hawk because of these bastards. They are in a fenced in yard for a reason! To keep them safe from predators! I want my hands around their necks, and I want to know why are they doing this to us. Where is the logic in any of this? What is wrong with these people? Who the hell are they? What do they want? Sick bastards who  ever they are. Sooner or later they’ll slip up and we’ll chatch them in the act.

~EK

“Where do you come from?”

When people ask me that question I never know how to answer and usually I say something like this:

I was born in Maine, USA;

my dad’s grandfather was Cherokee; his other grandfather was the serveral greats grand son of Thomas Rodger, friend of Capt John Smith and founder of our town, settler of the land on which we still live)

my mom’s mother was Kickapoo;

my mom’s dad was Canadian; his mom was British (and her dad was Capt John Drake… several greats grandson of Sir Francis Drake the Dragon) and his dad was Scottish

I can go on like this tracing my ancestors all the way back to the 1300′s… several inter racial marriages one after the other for a period of 700 years… so what am I? A hell of a mixed up mess  born and raised in the mixed up state of Maine, living on land that has been in our family for more than 300 years… I just tell people I’m a Maine-iac and leave it at that.

~~EK