Edward S. Pocock III may be the first optimistic, “post-apocalyptic” town manager ever hired in Maine.
Or anywhere for that matter.
The former cop, trained sniper, and author of a series of dystopian novels is the new municipal boss in Limestone, Maine.
Limestone is perhaps best known as the home of a former Air Force base – and ground zero for America’s post-World War II, easternmost-U.S. A-bomb bunkers.
A cold-war-era base structure located in the Aroostook National Wildlife Refuge in Limestone, is known as the Limestone Vampire House.
The leftover structure is a relic from the time when nuclear weapons were stored at the base.
“The Vamp House is a building with secrets: there’s legends of an accident that may have left monsters trapped inside,” say two macabre podcasters, Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger, with a demonic obsession.
“On this adventure we bring along a former military police officer who was there in the 1980s. It turns out with this legend, when there’s smoke, there’s also fire.”
Author Pocock will fit in well …
He had never been to Maine when he penned “American Calamity,” the first in an anticipated trilogy of novels set in a dystopian America.
But early this summer, the retired police captain and U.S. Air Force veteran left his longtime home in Connecticut to move to northern Maine to work his “magic.”
“I’m going to do whatever is necessary to bring tax dollars, commercial and industrial tax dollars into the town of Limestone,” Pocock said.
The base’s 1994 closure sparked a decline the town has struggled to recover from.
In the last decade limestone has had 13 Town Managers. Pocock is No. 14.
Maybe a creative novelist can turn the former bomb town into a boom town.
