Living in a Maine millionaire's attic

By Ted Cohen/Patch.com

Fifty years ago Maine’s largest paper took a chance on a 24-year-old claiming to be a reporter.

The kid had had only six months’ experience writing newspaper stories, for a much-smaller paper no less, but the Portland rag was apparently desperate for help.

The young “journalist” was hired to start working on Monday, July 14, 1975 out of the Biddeford Bureau.

Now needing a place to live, the young newspaper recruit walked into the Biddeford Chamber of Commerce office downtown on the premise they could recommend a quick fix.

On the front counter was a number of business cards of area summer rentals, among them Oddy's Guest House, also known as The Lodge at Biddeford Pool.

Seemed quick and easy so the kid grabbed the card, walked out and found his way to Biddeford Pool.

“The Pool,” for those unfamiliar, is the “high-rent district” in what was, and still is, a scrappy, poor mill town.

In other words, the humble mill workers lived in downtown tenements and the “other half” of Biddeford - the millionaires - hung out at The Pool.

But many of them didn't really, like, live there. They summered there, and come Labor Day they'd cover their wicker porch furniture in plastic, shut off the water and head back to their out-of-state winter palaces.

The Oddys were a bit different however. Though the family never wanted for a meal, they ended up Mainers by default through their love for their adopted home state that started with their summer place at The Pool.

John G. Oddy Jr., 41 at the time, told the young reporter - who was seven years older than Oddy’s namesake son John G. Oddy III- he had one “room” available as a weekly rental.

But Oddy Jr., who had taken over managing the family's properties for his father, WWII veteran surgeon John G. Oddy, forthrightly explained it was in the attic and not much bigger than a twin bed.

The kid climbed up a steep, narrow, third-floor stairway to scope out the “room,” finding it barely tall enough to stand up in due to the slope of the roof.

Even worse, a square galvanized metal heating duct ran along the floor in the center of the “room.”

So this was where it all began for the Press Herald’s new Biddeford reporter, who had found a place to sleep if nothing else.

Climbing those stairs in the dark was quite the challenge for the young man after he'd get back to The Pool following those halcyon nights of summer spent partying with the Weinstein boys, whose family still owns a string of summer rentals along Old Orchard Beach.

The stairs were only the first challenge. That heating duct made quite a racket when party boy in his cowboy boots tripped over it in the dark one night when he was trying to sneak back in after curfew, so to speak.

Oddy never said a word…

With the recent passing of 67-year-old John Oddy III, a flood of grateful memories came rushing back.

The Oddy family had rescued a kid who needed a place to rest (and sleep off OOB’s Old Whaler beers) by generously giving him a cheap rent - along the ocean, no less - sandwiched among coastal “cottages” along Millionaires Row.

Oddy III, later known as “Johnny Ace” for his hardware stores in Cape Porpoise and Kennebunk, was named for his grandfather - a WWII Pacific Theater surgeon instrumental in the original development of Biddeford Pool - and then of course his father, Oddy Jr.

A big shout-out to the Oddys for their timeless hospitality and kindness.

Those were the days my friend, we thought they would never end.