York Corner
In the middle of this mild and almost snowless winter, last Saturday's weather was unremarkable for being dry and above-freezing but cloudy and lusterless - a little like the lifeless off-season atmosphere at York Beach when we swung by there shortly after noon.
There were two exceptions.
The big old Victorian hotel once proudly called the Atlantic House - more commonly referred to in recent years as Pop's Shell Shack for the business that long flourished on its ground floor - now sat high up on blocks in one stage of a restoration process calling for the installation of a new foundation beneath it. Undermined, stripped of all its clapboards, and with all its ancient nail-heads showing, it looked pathetically fragile and vulnerable - but its position was also evidence of a vitality there, both behind the scenes and to come.
And, just two doors away at The Dog Wash, the phone appeared to be ringing off the hook as proprietor Helen Crocker, simultaneously brushing and clipping dogs while stroking (figuratively) their owners, tended to client after client, who came and went in a steady stream.
When she had time in the midst of all this business (it took an hour or so for the stream to thin) Helen refreshed our memory about her history there. She'd opened up, she said, eight years ago, on May 17, 1999, two years after quitting her job as a regional manager with the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health, where her focus was on Medicare and Medicaid.
A Salem, Mass., native, the youngest of four children, she'd earlier earned an undergraduate degree in psychology from Bradford College in Haverhill, and a master's degree, also in psychology, from Tufts University, where her thesis had been on the emotional development of women who'd been born prematurely. (She herself, a "preemie" and a twin, she said, weighed just 1½ pounds when she was born; her twin did not survive infancy.)
She learned dog grooming, she reported, by earning an associate's degree in dog grooming and kennel management at Essex Agricultural College, and what tipped the scales for her in persuading her to quit her DMH job, where she'd worked since 1982, was the long commute between Arlington, Mass., and York, to which she'd moved in 1993.
On Saturday, she called that decision to quit "the best thing I ever did in my life," and she emphatically termed her self "totally thrilled" with what she's now doing.
"I work with the best creatures God put on this earth: dogs and cats," she said, "and I don't have to put up with anybody."
But of course she does have to please her customers, of both the four- and two-legged varieties, and we watched as she bustled about from person to person and task to task, doing just that.
Beverly Silva, for example, popped in to pick up Oliver, a four-year-old Yorkshire terrier whose silver and brown hair was gleaming silkily after his grooming, and she lingered just long enough to tell us that she was from Reading, Mass., but has been coming to York for about 20 years, has owned a townhouse here on Long Beach Avenue since 2002, and has been a customer of Helen's for three years.
"We don't come as often as we should," she said with a little chagrin, as Helen advised her, heading out the door with Oliver under her arm, "Do me a favor and wipe his eyes every morning."
And when Tim Horan, of Manchester, N.H., appeared to pick up his two aged cocker spaniels, Lady, 16, and Rebel, 15, Helen explained that she'd given those two dogs just a light trim because they were old and needed their coats for winter.
Tim said that he and his wife, Carol, had been bringing their dogs to Helen for grooming every month or six weeks for six years - a task made a little easier for them since the year 2000, when they bought a house on the Nubble where they now spend, he said, four to six months of every year. They've been coming to York since 1984, he added, and he had high praise for Helen.
"She's a nice woman and she does good work," he said.
His own work, he said, is in Chelmsford, Mass., where he helps industry "do the paperwork" involved in government contracting.
"It's a cross between accounting and legal work," he explained.
Arriving at just about the same time we did were Michael and Lorraine Deheulle, residents of York since March, formerly of Massachusetts, and they had their own stories, both dog- and human-related.
Michael works as a facility maintenance engineer for Brandies University's power plant, they reported, and Lorraine was a legal secretary until three years ago when she had a devastating life-transforming experience: she had a brain hemorrhage that left her paralyzed and confined to a wheel chair for six months.
"I had to learn to walk again," she said, "and undergo rehab for 2½ years."
We noticed that she limped a bit and appeared stiff on her left side, and she showed us the difficulty she still has extending the fingers on her left hand.
When we asked if they knew what had triggered the hemorrhage, they said that Lorraine was undergoing a routine colonoscopy when a doctor failed to note an abnormally high blood pressure.
There was a bright side to that experience, though. Much of her rehabilitation was conducted at Spaulding Rehab in Boston, Lorraine said, and through that facility she was introduced to a program she welcomed called Access Sports America, in which sports are interwoven with rehabilitative therapy. Among the sports activities included there that she listed were sailing, paddle-boating and weight training. She herself got to row an adapted Hawaiian kayak on the Charles River.
"It's a great program," she stressed.
The Deheulles' dog, Tristan, was about the size of a cocker, longhaired and black with white feet and a white vest, and, though only 9½ months old, he appeared to be quiet, disciplined and tolerant. He was, we learned, a Tibetan terrier, and Michael said that he'd discovered that breed first on the Internet, then found a Tibetan terrier breeder in Danvers, Mass., who just happened to have a pup available - and only because the first couple who'd bought him felt, after three weeks (and inexplicably for the Deheulles, as it turned out, who found him flawless), that he wasn't working out with them.
Tibetans were a breed we'd never heard of, but of course that was not true for Helen, who sent the Deheulles off with a suggestion that they consult the American Kennel Club's website for more information about standards for their dog's growth and care. She also delivered some specific instructions for bathing him: use baby shampoo, follow up with a cream rinse and use a stroking, rather than a circular, motion in the scrubbing stage.
The Deheulles left with an appointment to come back the following week, and we left shortly thereafter. Helen was then, she said, on her 13th dog that day, with one more to go.
York Beach dull on a Saturday in January?
Not if you look in the right places…
