I swear I never do this, but in a harried moment of weakness one day this spring, I parked my delivery Prius in front of a fire hydrant and ran into Three Dollar Deweys in the Old Port to put a bundle of Bollards in the entryway. Walking back across Union Street seconds later, I saw Bill Dawson in his beat-up wagon, waiting for the light, and waved and called out amiably, “Hey, Bill!”
Bill, an old buddy from the Brian Ború days of 20 years ago, and more recently a fellow regular at Dock Fore, looked at me with fury in his eyes. “Never park on a hydrant!” he growled, and then spat out his window and drove on. Not because he needed to spit, I had to force myself to admit afterward. He was spitting at me, well short but in my direction, like civilized people do when they see a Nazi or an ICE agent.
Fuck him, I thought, and marveled that of all the people to call me out for poor parking in downtown Portland, Bill Dawson was the blackest pot possible. His ridiculously bad parking jobs were a running joke at the bar. I mean, people took pictures.
That was Wild Bill, an old coke dealer and carpenter with zero fucks to give, yet wildly passionate about many subjects — history, sports and politics, in particular — possessed of an encyclopedic memory and a razor-sharp wit that could’ve made Don Rickles feel small.
Next time I saw Bill at the bar, I’d give him some shit back for spitting at me, and for days I thought, way too much, about what I’d say. But I didn’t see him for weeks, and then a couple mutual friends suggested I try to arrange to have Bill interviewed at Dock Fore for our feature, The Regulars, because he was in ill health and, ya know, better late than…
As luck had it, I saw Bill at Dock Fore soon after. I didn’t bring up the spit. I got him in touch with Jessie Banhazl and Sara Hogan, who write and photograph The Regulars, and I stopped by the bar while they interviewed him a week or two later. Stepping outside that day for a vape, I saw Bill’s ride parked on Fore Street next to the bar’s seasonal parking-space patio, its rear end jutting way out over the cobblestones into traffic. I took a picture.
“How’d the interview with Wild Bill go?” I asked Sara a few days later. “Well,” she said, “he made both of us touch that thing on his elbow,” a bulbous growth of some sort that always grossed me out. “And he said some things I don’t think we can print.”
“Like what?” I eagerly asked.
“Well,” said Sara, “he told us he ‘wouldn’t piss in [Commercial Street Pub proprietor] John Guinn’s ear if his brain was on fire.’”
I laughed hard. That was classic Dawson. His brain was an endless card catalogue of creative insults like that. “I think we have to print that,” I told Sara, and being an ethical journalist, I even went to the Pub to get a response from John.
“Fuck him,” Guinn grumbled. “I kicked his ass out of here thirty years ago.”
When Sara and Jessie sent me the interview, the Guinn line wasn’t in it, and I thought better of trying to insert it into the intro. Wild Bill’s burned bridges and made enemies all over town, but more than a few locals could see the kind and fun-loving soul behind his cantankerous facade, Jessie and Sara among them. Why stain his little moment in the sun by bringing up an old barroom beef?
Bill was pleased as punch when the interview came out in our June issue. He loved newspapers and read them religiously, and here he was, in print. I was happy for him and let my beef about the hydrant thing go, but when a golden opportunity arrived, I couldn’t resist.
Driving east on Fore a few weeks later, I saw Bill and some of our fellow cronies drinking on Dock Fore’s street patio. Careful to note there were no cars behind me, I stopped right next to the patio, entirely blocking the narrow street, and called out through my passenger-side window, “Hey, Bill! Can I park here?”
“What?” he barked, perhaps not hearing.
“Can I park here and join you guys?”
“Put it in the alley and walk up!” Bill yelled back, referring to the short one-way between Dock Fore and Commercial Street. I waved and drove on home, not having planned to stop in. That was the last thing Bill ever said to me.
Bill Dawson passed away in late August. In addition to his lovely wife, Donna, he left many friends made during the 46 years he lived and partied in Portland, and a legacy more Mainers should appreciate. As a pioneering practitioner and energetic proponent of craft beer and home-brewing in the early 1990s, Bill helped jumpstart the entire industry in this state. Numerous people he taught how to brew went on to establish or lead influential breweries, like Tom Bull, who founded two of Maine’s first lager breweries.
Richard Pfeffer, who co-founded Gritty McDuff’s in the Old Port in 1988, recalled the “sense of unbridled optimism, that you could just do what you wanted” back in those days. “Everybody was working hard and playing hard,” he said, and Bill was a ringleader in that circus.
“That was the strength of the community back then,” Richard added. “There were a lot of strong personalities. You put ’em all in a couple of pubs and fill ’em with alcohol and stir, and you can create some really good stories.”
Also some delicious beer.
“He definitely was the guy who pioneered beer in Portland, no question,” said Fred Forsley, founder of Shipyard Brewing, recalling Bill’s home-brewing shop and advocacy. “He helped build Shipyard, cooler panel by cooler panel. … In the early days, he helped me deliver beer.”
“There are very few people that had the wit and knowledge and the ability to interject a compliment as an insult,” Fred added with a laugh. “He was proud of his service to his country [Bill served and was wounded in Vietnam], proud of the fact that he got connected to his son. He was a great craftsman. … He just had a unique ability to make a moment special.”
Fred recalled drinking beers with Bill earlier this summer at Deweys. Bill told him that day that helping launch Shipyard, one of Maine’s oldest and most successful breweries, was also something he was proud of.
So raise a glass to Wild Bill Dawson, and next time you see someone parked on a hydrant, give ’em some hell in his name.
