Cartoon Tuesday

This week’s Cartoon Tuesday selection is another thought-provoking chapter in A Pirate Ship Adventure, the comic series by Katy Finch and Bob Bergeron about unsheltered life in Portland, from our February 2020 issue.

This piece reminds me of a remarkable local book, The Ghosts of Walter Crockett, published in 2021 by Islandport Press. It’s a memoir by Walter’s son, Ed Crockett, about growing up in poverty on Munjoy Hill in the 1960s and ’70s with — or rather, mostly without — a father known as “the biggest drunk in Portland.”

“My father was always drunk on the downtown streets — often sleeping on a bench in Lincoln Park, sometimes curled up against a building near the waterfront, or sprawled out in a local jail cell sobering up, if he was lucky,” Crockett wrote.

“When I was fourteen and attending Cheverus High School, I would wait for the school bus at the edge of Lincoln Park,” he continued. “On too many mornings, I would spy him out of the corner of my eye, a deeply flawed and crumbled mess of a man passed out on a bench reeking of alcohol. My friends sometimes nudged me and said, ‘Hey, isn’t that your dad?’ I wouldn’t answer; I would just turn away. That time spent waiting for the school bus, no matter how fleeting in reality, was simply soul-crushing. In those moments, I hated him.”

Ed Crockett served four terms in the Maine House representing part of Portland. Prevented from seeking reelection due to term limits, he announced last year that he was leaving the Democratic Party and running as an independent for governor. In two op-eds published by the Portland Press Herald, Crockett bemoaned the deep partisanship and political power plays in Augusta that prevent lawmakers from representing “all Mainers.”

He failed to gather enough signatures to get on the ballot this fall.