New England Boom Bypasses Parts of State : Scenic Beauty in Maine Belies the Ugliness of Poverty and Joblessness

The lushness of spring and summer masks the poverty of the seasons.

A blanket of green trees, pierced here and there by church steeples, at the foothills of the White Mountains hides the leaky roofs, sagging porches and flaking paint of the ramshackle houses and trailers along the back roads of western Maine.

It is a world largely unknown to the tourists who flock to the pretty, well-to-do little towns along a 100-mile stretch of Maine’s rocky Atlantic coast, a region that boasts the sprawling L. L. Bean sporting goods emporium at Freeport as well as such posh resorts as Boothbay Harbor, Bar Harbor and Kennebunkport, where Vice President George Bush has a summer home.

It is also the grim, grindingly poor world portrayed in Carolyn Chute’s acclaimed 1985 novel, “The Beans of Egypt, Maine.”

“It’s beautiful, but not many well-paying jobs,” said Charleen Chase, director of Community Concepts Inc., a private nonprofit organization that helps the poor of 49 towns in Androscoggin and Oxford counties. “Look under the roof of the house.”

Under the roofs are broken interiors and broken dreams, but proud people.

“If we’re starving to death, my husband wouldn’t go to town to get help,” said Dale Hall of Oxford after receiving $500 from Community Concepts to fix her chimney. “Within an hour, it was all over town that we got help.”

Much remains to be fixed. Once-white paint is chipped and gray, and the porch is crumbling. There is no hot water, no indoor toilet, no phone. The house, heated by firewood, is so cold in the winter that Hall, her husband, Richard, and their four children can use only three of the nine rooms.

The Halls survive on $700 a month in government benefits, food stamps and whatever Richard brings home when he finds work hauling cars to junkyards. One recent week he made only $179, working 15 hours a day.

Vena Gray, 14, and Everrett Gray, 13, Dale’s two children by her first husband, who died, sell popcorn and programs at the Oxford Plains Speedway to supplement the family income.

“We don’t do much joy riding,” Dale Hall said. “You get what you need and that’s it. When I get food stamps I write down a list of meals for every day of the month and buy groceries.”

Maine’s average annual wage of $15,428 in 1985 ranked 47th among 49 states included in a study by Brizius and Foster, a Pennsylvania public affairs consulting firm, higher than only Mississippi and South Dakota. The national average for 1985 was $19,186.

Maine’s big industries--forestry, farming, fishing and tourism--provide mostly seasonal, part-time work and low wages. The state has never attracted heavy industry because of its severe climate, distance from raw materials and remote location, far from major consumer markets, according to Richard Silkman, the state’s planning director.

Gov. John R. McKernan Jr., who took office in January, is searching for ways to develop the poorer eastern, northern and western regions that have not kept pace with the Greater Portland area, anchor of the southern and coastal areas.

Proposed legislation would offer tax credits for investments and new jobs in areas of significantly high unemployment and would award grants to towns that participate.

A March, 1985, state report on Maine poverty said the number of poor people, based on income levels, increased by 10,000 from 1970 to 1980 because the population grew faster than the economy and well-paying jobs were too scarce to reduce poverty.

The federal “poverty line,” adjusted annually for inflation, is the level of income below which a family of a certain size cannot buy minimum necessities. For a family of six, like the Halls, it was $14,979 in 1986. For a family of four it was $11,200 and for a family of two $7,133.

The Maine report said the poverty rate, the percentage of the state’s 1.1 million residents living below the poverty line, was 13% in 1980, the latest date for which official figures are available.

But Joyce Benson, principal author of the report, estimates that for 1985 about 15% of Maine’s population was living below the poverty level. This compares to the official 1985 U.S. Census figure of 11.6% living at or below the poverty level in New England, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and of 14% nationally.

“If you took away the second-income families in Maine, the poverty rate would double,” Benson said.

The report said poverty is hardest on women as a group because they tend to earn less than men. About 45% of Maine’s civilian labor force is female.

Among them is Phyllis Dillingham, a 44-year-old who is deaf, divorced and lives in a trailer in West Sumner with her two children, Christine, 12, and Eric, 5. She is among 56,000 Maine residents who receive Aid to Families With Dependent Children.

Speaking in sign language through her daughter, Dillingham said she wants to go back to work but can’t afford a baby sitter.

The condition of her six-room trailer was so unsafe and so unsanitary that Community Concepts displayed before and after photos of the trailer under repair to illustrate the devastating conditions under which the poor often live.

The floor was rotted out, the ceiling sagged, the living room windows were taped to stop drafts, electrical wires were loose, and the plumbing and drainage were inadequate.

“Others don’t realize how substandard the conditions are,” Chase said. “There are a number of trailers in western Maine that are unsafe, but people are living in them because they have no other alternative.”

Cathy Ring, a twice-married single parent with a 2-year-old son, receives aid under the same program. She borrowed $6,000 in low-interest state loans last January to open a fabrics shop, which is struggling.

First Husband Dies

She divorced her second husband, she said, because he beat her. Her first husband was killed in a car crash seven years ago, when she was just 19. He hadn’t been with his company long enough to qualify for insurance.

“I had to go through bankruptcy,” she said. “I had huge medical and funeral bills. We were doing all right before then. We were not living great, but we both had full-time jobs.”

She was so poor she had to share a bedroom with her son in a friend’s home. It wasn’t until last fall, nearly seven years after her first husband’s death, that she could afford a headstone for his grave.

The poverty, however grim, has not diminished the spirit of its victims.

Despite what little she has, Dale Hall invites visitors in for coffee.

“We ain’t got much, but we’re proud of what we got,” she said.