March 9th, 2007
Gnome on the roam finds his way back home
And both tales are Michael Heskanen’s to tell, because someone returned his four-foot, 100-pound wooden gnome that was stolen from his mother’s cottage porch at 701 Gurnet Road on Jan. 7.
Heskanen reclaimed his roving gnome Thursday via a parent who made good the misdeed of a son and friends who swiped the carved mythological figure that kept a Christmastime watch over the Gurnet bridge, a stone’s throw from the cottage.
As a nod to his Scandinavian heritage, Heskanen carved the green-garbed elf with conical red cap from an oak stump on his Minnesota property about 10 years ago. It traveled with him when he moved to Maine in 2001 and served an appreciated career as part of his family’s Christmas decorations.
So when the gnome disappeared a week after New Year’s, Heskanen was stumped why anyone besides his family would want it.
“It isn’t something I would anticipate a professional thief would take,” he said.
Mischievous trolls, perhaps?
Others who heard about the vagrant gnome offered their sympathy. One man called Heskanen to offer wolf pine tree stumps so Heskanen could carve another gnome.
“I was hoping he would do it if we didn’t get (the stolen gnome) back,” Heskanen’s mother, Ruth Pettit, said of the prospect of her son carving a new gnome.
But Heskanen turned the job down, a faithful act to his only chain-saw carving and an act of faith that his first gnome would return.
That faith was rewarded.
“The collective community put its ear to the ground,” he said, telling how someone heard a reference to the gnome and alerted the parent of the student who had it.
“I’m actually quite grateful to the community for taking an interest,” he said.
Still he was surprised when the parent called late Tuesday night.
“He goes, ‘I got your gnome,’” Heskanen said. “He was very apologetic. Because of the attitude, I thought I’d just let it go.”
Heskanen added that a forthcoming apology from the students would substitute for charges with the police.
The next morning he visited his mother’s cottage with the news.
“I could just tell. His face was so aglow you could just tell something good had happened,” Pettit said. “It just gives one faith in humanity. I slept better last night than I had in a long time.”
The parent returned the gnome unharmed and complete with its pouch of rhinestones, odd coins and a forgotten poem Heskanen wrote when he carved it, but he didn’t read the poem when the sculpture came back.
“I just patted the pouch to see if was there,” he said.
Heskanen stowed the gnome in an outbuilding, where it’s doubtless resting from its winter sojourn and for next year’s watch on the cottage porch.
“He’ll be out supervising the highway,” Heskanen said.
by Rachel Ganong of The Times Record
cottage life, cottage stories, gnome, garden gnomes