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Uh Oh, Melvin, They’re On To Us…

The town administrator contacted me about a month ago. Evidently this municipality needs a new Addressing Officer and George, who does most of the town paperwork, was hoping I’d replace the previous guy, seeing as I’d had the job once before.

I don’t particularly want to be the Addressing Officer. Neither does George. Nobody wants to be the Addressing Officer. To do that job, somebody would have to give up time they might spend collecting sea glass or drinking beer to struggle mightily with unanswerable questions, shamefully impose upon his neighbor’s cherished rights, confront irate and potentially armed community members, and try to memorize yet another long list of acronyms.

For the past couple of years we’ve had Melvin Frumpwert be our Addressing Officer. This came about at an Assessors Meeting after I had lost all patience with the job following a desperately panicked telephone message left for me at the town office by some frantic staffer, to wit: “Extremely urgent matter for the Addressing Officer, please call back right away!” I called the Augusta number and asked, “Where’s the fire?” The source of panic: “Is it Markey Beach Road or Markey’s Beach Road?”

Sure.

I told the Assessors I didn’t want to be the AO anymore. I told them people just yell at me. People say, “I’ve been at 100 Driftwood Circle for 25 years and now you’re saying I have to re-order my checks to say “37 East Road?” No way! Who do you think you are?” People on Matinicus think picking their own address is an obvious personal right, sort of like choosing a breakfast cereal, and no office flunky is going to tell them they can’t have “Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve Industrial Park” on their letterhead.

The assessors all said they didn’t want to be the AO either.

The thing about street addresses on Matinicus is we have no RFD mail delivery. All we’ve ever had is post office boxes, and there are very few of us, so nobody really needs a street address. Islanders have historically made up any address they like just to satisfy the folks on the shipping end when placing an order. No UPS truck is ever going to be driving around searching for our house number, as all freight deliveries to Matinicus go to Penobscot Island Air at the Knox County airport, and the pilots take over from here. The UPS drivers know this. People have historically concocted addresses from the bucolic (“Saltspray Lane”) to the wise-aleck (“Kumquat Street.”) One islander, exasperated with some shipping clerk on the phone demanding a better street address, provided her with “3352B Generalissimo Francisco Franco Boulevard.” She dutifully took it all down.

We also have buildings, mostly trap shops and other structures attached to wharves--some with telephones-- that are not located on streets at all but are more or less piled up in a random architectural heap around the harbor. Trying to enumerate these in some real order just gives a poor Addressing Officer heartburn.

So we had welcomed the help of our friend Melvin.

Melvin Frumpwert was born in a Service Merchandise store in South Portland about thirty years ago when a customer resented the requirement that his name be read out over a storewide loudspeaker just to buy a toaster. Over the years Melvin has been willing to have his name put down on any manner of senseless document. But this time an intrepid state official, a patient fellow named Todd at the Emergency Services Communications Bureau and the Public Utilities Commission, wrote to George that, “Although I can certainly understand the benefits of having a fictitious town official, in this case we really need to have a live body listed as the AO.”

The reasoning is sensible. As an EMT, I will certainly attest that E-911 a good idea. If somebody calls 911 but is too sick, too young, or too scared to speak to the dispatcher –if they are hiding from an intruder, say, or even if they don’t speak much English—the dispatcher can see the address from which the call originated on their computer and can send help even without details. Every telephone number, then, needs to correspond to a physical address.

Huge databases generally work better in theory than in practice, though. A couple of weeks ago I had a hard time registering to renew my Notary Public qualification because our state’s database still did not accept my Matinicus Island zip code as valid. But with gentle Todd in Augusta having discovered the truth about Melvin, and having requested somebody more, uh, available to talk on the phone, we have drafted an advertisement for the position:

JOB DESCRIPTION:
MUNICIPAL ADDRESSING OFFICER

This is an unpaid position where the applicant’s main responsibility will be to inform citizens that the addresses they have used for years are incorrect.

Applicant must be available to take frantic emergency calls from citizens at all hours who are attempting to order satellite television from a Best Circuit store in Portland where they are asked to provide their street address.

Additional duties include interacting with hidebound bean-counters and exasperated minor functionaries who cannot be made to realize that we are on a small island, and interacting with representatives of TDS Telecom in Madison, Wisconsin who do not realize that we are not on a small island in Lake Michigan.

Successful applicant will present a stern and unemotional response to pleas of historical precedent, local charm, longstanding custom or printed stationery. Ability to read maps a plus.