As a resident of Dixmont from 1946 to 1965 Dixmont was a official post office untill 1950 hence the redundant sounding address on the safe. The PO building was along Rt 88 and received & sent mail on the train with out the train stopping.

Construction of the Hutcheson building was originally started about 100 yards west from where it is today. It's named after the past superintendent. After the foundation was completed and the steel work had a good start the whole building slid down the hill as an old abandoned sewer had been blocked by the new foundation. Much to my fathers dismay, the building site was paved over and the construction was started anew very near to our house. It was an early lesson to me about NIMBY. I can still hear the screams that came through my bedroom window on hot summer nights.
The Hutcheson building was where shock therapy and lobotomies were done. Those practices never sat well with me as I was growing up and I distanced myself even more from the subterfuge behind those walls. I never really trusted or befriended any patients although I knew plenty of them. There was always that uncertainty.
When the Hutcheson building was being built I made a lot of pin money buying pop at the canteen and selling it to the construction people at about 100% profit. Richard Goubeaud sold them groundhogs he shot on the hill. He got 50 cents for them. He and his mother made and bottled root beer all summer to sell on the job site to buy her dentures.
There was a big black man who was his best customer. He worked alone and cleaned up around the nearly completed building site at night and my sister and I used to listen to his jokes and funny stories. He was the first black adult I ever knew and he fascinated Nancy and I many nights in the summer of 51. I remember following him to the streetcar loop in Emsworth one time and ratting on him as a joke for bringing a dead groundhog on the trolley. The conductor thought that was funny as heck when our friend then offered to pay an extra fare for that shopping bag that held his dinner.
But a practical joke got out of hand when his construction boss asked him to clean up around the new, but not yet commissioned morgue in the basement. He had fixed up a mannequin with a big bandage on its head doused with mercurochrome. Then he put it on a stainless steel draw out tray in the morgue refrigerator. Our friend dropped dead when he pulled out the tray. I never learned his name.
Bob Cammarata, son of Dr. J.A. Cammarata and resident of the Gate House that burned down 11/23/05