Author Topic: Ha Ha Ken I can copy yer site  (Read 3165 times)

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Offline Anonymous

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« on: October 08, 2002, 04:52:00 PM »
Locations and Map of all Past and Current Elan Facilities
 
Elan One: The first house in Naples, Maine.
Then in Sebago,  Maine and very briefly the
main house at Poland Spring, Maine.. The
Sebago house burned down in a fire in the
winter on 1974.  In 1975, shortly after  Elan
moved to Poland Spring, a  set of small
modular buildings used as administration
offices began being called Elan One.
Elan Two: Formerly Pinehenge School on
Apple Blossom Road, in Waterford. Later
this building was renamed Elan Six.
Elan Two-A : Called the 'modern house',
it was located on the Waterford property.
This house was briefly called Elan Four
when it opened.
Elan Three: The main house in Poland
Spring, Maine. Prior to Elan, it was a hunting
lodge/resort hotel called Poland Spring
Estates. It was purchased several months
after the Elan One (Sebago) fire. When it
first opened it was called Elan One for a
short period of time. Elan Four: A large former T.B. sanitarium on
a mountain in Parsonfield. It was a locked
facility. Earlier, for a brief period of time the
"modern house" at Waterford, Maine was
known as Elan Four..
Elan Five: A 'prefab' house built in days on
the road leading up to the complex in Poland
Spring. . It was built to hold about 25  residents.
This building is now called Elan Seven.
Elan Six: The same building on Apple
Blossom Lane in Waterford that was
previously called Elan Two.
Elan Seven: Was constructed from two cabins
which had been dormatory space. It was located
behind Elan Three. This facility was closed and the
building which used to be known as Elan Five is
now called Elan Seven   .
Elan Eight: The last house built on the Poland
Spring complex. .

 

 

 

 

Contents Copyright ©2000 or 2001 by ElanAlum.com All Rights Reserved. No portion of this site, including photographs may be used without written permission.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »

Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #1 on: October 08, 2002, 04:56:00 PM »
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Contents Copyright ©2000 or 2001 by ElanAlum.com All Rights Reserved. No portion of this site, including photographs may be used without written permission.
Revised: 21 Mar 2002 14:57:02 -0000.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »

Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #2 on: October 08, 2002, 11:04:00 PM »
Anyone who possesses enough brains to click on view/source and then cut and paste can copy that. Don't you think ken knows that?

God, some people are so stupid.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »

Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #3 on: January 05, 2004, 03:21:00 PM »
Well, unlike most of the stories that appear on your site, my Elan experience was rather fun. Of course, I was neither a resident nor a full time staff member.
In the spring of 1979 I was finishing up my junior year at Bowdoin. I wanted a summer job that would not be too demanding of my time or my brain. Figuring that I'd be working my ass off for the next 40 years or more, I felt I deserved one fairly laid back summer. Scanning the want ads in the Lewiston paper I saw an advertisement for a 3 day a week position mowing lawns. It was at Elan in Poland Springs, not a long drive from Auburn, my hometown. I applied and was accepted. The job proved to be not too difficult. I mowed lawns all day, unless I was pulled off to do something else. As the summer progressed this became more common. I usually worked for one of the two full time maintenance men. One was Art, the other a big fat man named Herb. Art and Herb didn't particularly like each other. Whenever I worked with one, I'd hear about all the faults of the other. Art was a pretty good plumber; Herb was an OK carpenter. Between them they'd do the jobs that Joe didn't want to hire outside help to do. Art was a born again Christian and an altogether pretty nice guy. I used to pay him a dollar a day to drive me back and forth from my parents home in Auburn to Poland. Herb was a hellraiser. He cursed and yelled at the slightest provocation. He'd also brag at the beginning of the week about just how much booze he'd polished off the weekend before. I remember that one Friday evening he and a bunch of Elan staff had gone down to Joe Ricci's race track in Scarborough. Seems that Herb won a large amount of money betting on the horses. On the way home he bought a case of Gordon's gin. He claimed that by Monday morning he'd finished five of the dozen bottles in the case. Herb must be dead by now. As it was, his constitution must have been heroic to have withstood all the abuse he subjected it to. Once, Art and I stopped by Herb's house on our way home. He proudly showed us his marijuana patch. Herb also had a whore he visited regularly in Grey, Maine. When I'd get home, I'd tell Herb stories to my brother, who would laugh so hard, it'd hurt. The high point of the whole Herb thing was when Joe Ricci decided to use Herb in television ads for Scarborough Downs. They weren't very good ads, but at least they gave my brother some idea of how Herb looked and acted.
My impression of Elan was that everything was run on a very ad hoc basis. To be sure, there was structure, but the structure was always changing. It must have been hard on the residents sometimes. Everything seemed to be either in a state of construction, just constructed, or desperately in need of reconstruction. None of the buildings had a solid, institutional feel to them. Actually, they were mostly either house trailers, or else they were all summer camp buildings that had been winterized. I remember crawling under the main building with Art to deal with some plumbing issue. None of the houses had basements. Everything seemed cheaply made and run up at the last minute. Not that there wasn't plenty of money being spent. It just wasn't being spent very wisely. I wonder now if Joe Ricci had any conception of planning.
For instance, in the late summer of 1979, Joe decided that he really wanted to push Elan's football team to heights of glory. A coach was hired and a lot of money was spent on football equipment. I had to stop mowing the athletic field because... well, I don't know, but I did. Anyway, my new job in the afternoons, at least, was to go to a convenience store a couple miles away and buy vast quantities of soda pop. I would then deliver said soda pop to the field so that the players could indulge after their workout. It probably wasn't the ideal thing for these kids to be drinking under the circumstances, but Joe had decreed that if be so, so it was done. Of course, it probably would have been vastly cheaper to have had the stuff delivered in wholesale quantities, but that wasn't the way things were done. The only problem was that the folks who ran the store seemed to figure I was a resident, and wouldn't talk to me. This was humiliating to a degree, though I can laugh about it now.
Several times that summer I was driven by Art down to Joe's house in Falmouth to help the regular maintenance man. Joe wasn't actually living there at the time since he and his wife were estranged, but she lived there along with their kids. It was a big horse farm up on Blackstrap Hill Road, a very nice neighborhood. The house was huge and from the little I saw of the inside, richly appointed, though in a rather nouveau riche manner. Joe's wife seemed nice enough, and I have been told by others that have known her that she is a decent enough person. Now that Joe is dead, his son's have inherited all that land in Scarborough, which is worth a pretty penny by all accounts. Clearly Joe had the bucks coming in from somewhere.
About once a week, I'd been pulled away from my lawnmower and given charge of a working party of shotdowns. Actually, one of the more senior residents would do the actual supervision. I'd just sit around and do... nothing. It sounds like a cushy position but I often got rather bored. Most of the work the kids would be doing under my, ahem, supervision, consisted of digging holes for some reason or enough. For instance, Joe had a few loads of fill delivered. Unfortunately, it was dumped on top of the outlet to the drainage system for the center of the "campus". After the next big rain storm (it rained a lot that summer) there was a flood. I was put in charge of a small team of shotdowns whose job it was to find the damned drainage pipe and to dig it out to get rid of the water. It was all a little surreal.
I realize now that what they should have done was to have hired a single experienced individual to ran the maintenance dept. and to plan things out, make work assignments and figure out what was the best way to use budgeted funds. Of couse, that would have been too logical. So things continued on in the half-assed way that Joe was accustomed to.
Meanwhile, the summer ended, my last year of college was about to begin, so I left, never to return. Occasionally, when I'm in the area, which is not uncommon, I'll get the urge to look in on Elan, but I've never done so to this day. Things must have changed, or at least one would hope so.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »

Offline Pete

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« Reply #4 on: January 05, 2004, 04:17:00 PM »
What an interesting story!  It's kind of ironic, because in Elan we'd get reamed if we were disorganized, yet Elan was an incredibly disorganized regime itself.

I remember working at Scarborough Downs -- siphoning water after a flood.  It was interesting.  To tell you the truth, I thought the place was a dump.  On the trip, I smoked a broken cigarette from the ground.  You could smoke a little back then.  I wound up feeling like a junkie and giving myself a sign.  LOL.

COP TO YOUR GUILT, JUNKIE!  Ha ha.
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Offline E7haterJe

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« Reply #5 on: January 05, 2004, 11:59:00 PM »
ahahaah... i remember diff occassions in elan or when i was in the john dewey academy, tryin to bum a ciggy, or even bein on a desperate trip, and picking up a half smoked ciggy and goin on a mission to get matches to light it...I remember when id light it, i would try to hide when i lit it, so people wouldnt wonder why i was smokin a half smoked cigg,,,lol... :silly:
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Offline E7haterJe

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« Reply #6 on: January 06, 2004, 12:19:00 AM »
by the way Joe Ricci died? When? How/? I feel dumb as shit..
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Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #7 on: January 06, 2004, 07:37:00 AM »
Joe died within the last three years or so. Cancer, I think. Re cigarettes: though my work in the summer of 1979 didn't take me into the living quarters that often sometimes I was there to help one of the other maintenance men fix something or another. I believe that residents were then allowed to smoke if they were senior enough and in the right place and time. However, there was this kid who apparently had been caught smoking against the rules. When I saw him he was dressed up in some sort of cardboard costume which made him look like an ambulatory pack of cigarettes. He may have had a sign on him as well, inscribed with the words "Mr Butts" or something to that effect. It was, after all, a long time ago. I was both amused and saddened by it but what can you expect?
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Offline Pete

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« Reply #8 on: January 06, 2004, 05:03:00 PM »
Joe Ricci died in early 2001 at the age of 54.  The cause of death was lung cancer.  From what I've heard, his body was cremated, so all this talk about pissing on his grave is for naught.

The "Duck in a Raincoat" book reminds me a lot of the way Elvis is portrayed in the Albert Goldman book "Elvis."  Arrogant, incoherent and abusive.
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Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #9 on: January 06, 2004, 06:13:00 PM »
I apologize if my initial post sounded a little jocular. I realize now that you folks who were residents at Elan had a rough time of it. That said, I strongly suspect that you won't have much luck in getting legal redress. The reasons for this include: 1) Statute of limitations. 2) Joe is dead. 3)Not enough money there to attractive money hungry lawyers. 4) Many of you are not from Maine, so the Maine legal establishment has less interest in your cases. 5) When I went to work at Elan in 1979, one of the first things I was told by the woman who hired me (Sharon? I can't really remember her name) was that you were all practiced liars who would say anything to get your way. Though I no longer believe this to be true, I suspect that the powers that be at Elan are still taking that line about any former residents who complain about their treatment. The deck is stacked against you. Unfortunately, justice doesn't always prevail.
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Offline Gal-Ileo

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« Reply #10 on: January 08, 2004, 11:37:00 PM »
:grin:

Glad everyone is so cheery.  I've written a play based on Elan (loosely) and the rest of the TC's called "Before After Galileo" and anyone that wants can visit my blog which I'll attempt to post momentarily.

Yeah, Ricci died in ... 2001.  Yeah, I've been given the "list" that I guess is at Ken's but also at Dave Hirsh's by other older Elan residents..you guys are a little closer to my age, I began hs in 79.  

I didn't go to Elan.  I WAS sent to a sickening Baptist "Hellfire" school where the Pastor's wife and the Principal ran things like Elan; and damn, I had sleepless nights for the whole year and half.  Luckily, I didn't have to sleepover although my hours out of school I spent reciting the weirdo prayers they gave us so we wouldn't go to "The lake of Fire" when I was in....

I started this as an article.  Simply, it's a full-length play I may actually slim down a little in production now.

But did you know-- someone made a movie?  I don't know WHICH of the TC's or if it is "fictionalized" (I think the film is) it is based on.  Coming soon.

good luck to all of you and any who want please keep in touch.  I don't really need any more stories for the play but I'd like to have them for "The Aftermath."  I'm trying to begin a "Museum of Elan" (and the OTHER TC's) and there's that asylum at Parsonfeld I hope is still standing as "prime property."  Thoughts for this "arts mission" ARE sorely needed; and any and ALL things concerned with your time would be helpful.  It will be...more or less "multimedia arty documentary."  Maybe, your kids, or the next set will "read" about the "dark times of Elan" in a history book; instead of just being sent there; as is happening.

I'm Liz btw, hi!

Off my soapbox.

http://home.earthlink.net/~before_after_galileo/

If you have to copy sorry, I'm not great at html.

 :em:

The college idealists who fill the ranks of the environmental movement seem willing to do absolutely anything to save the biosphere, except take science courses and learn something about it.


--P.J. O'Rourke

« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »
Lunatics are melodramatic. The subtleties of drama are wasted on them...The final chapters of my book are knitting together: incest, buggery, outrageous women and strange love-cults catering for depraved appetites. All the fashionable bric-a-brac...My \'u

Offline Anonymous

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« Reply #11 on: January 08, 2004, 11:48:00 PM »
OMG you sure you werent in a TC?
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