Small Sawmill The small sawmill next to Richard Verney's house just off Rt. 218 in Alna was actually put together for parts and equipment scavenged from sawmills in Kingfield, Wiscasset and Edgecomb. (Photo Paula Gibbs)

Richard Verney, 75, still works in the woods, cutting down trees, hauling in logs and cutting them into lumber at his sawmill on the Verney Mill Road in Alna.

When he's needed, he also drives a school bus for the town. Tall and thin, with ramrod straight posture, he moves more like a man in his 30s than someone who will be 80 in five years.

He bought his 100 acres of land just off Route 218 in 1951, the year he got drafted. He paid for it with a loan he got from Waldoboro Savings & Loan, long ago paid off.

He went off to the Baffin Islands, Labrador, and Greenland for two years, one of many in the U.S. military who played a role in the Distant Early Warning System. He was a crane operator for nearly his whole time in the service.

When he got back home, he drove a pulp wood truck for awhile, then decided he wanted to have a saw mill. He put his operation together using parts scrounged from three different sawmills, in the towns of Wiscasset, Edgecomb and Kingfield.

"I got the saw from the town of Hope," he says.

His engine he got 30 years ago after learning that a college in Massachusetts, which had used it for teaching purposes, no longer had any use for it. One of his sons drove a pick up truck to the college and brought it back to Maine.

"It was a U.S. Air Force engine," he says. "The brass tag is still on it."

Verney put a clutch on it and he was in business. Since that time he's found three other similar engines which he has stored nearby in case he needs some parts.

He has a portable electric heater in the little shed that houses the 120 horsepower engine, so it will start more easily in cold weather. The diesel engine holds 100 quarts of antifreeze and uses very little diesel fuel.

Pointing to a fuel tank outside the shed, he said, "I had this filled up last spring and I haven't used half of it."

He has a 22-foot-long building with a metal roof that houses the rest of his equipment. His logging truck has a crane on the back to pick up logs after he cuts the trees down.

Sawdust falls into a hole near the huge saw, and is sucked out through a pipe on the side of the building where it lands in a big soft pile.

"People who have horses come and get it," Verney says.

He built a small log cabin behind his house with trees from his land. It sits next to the 55-acre Verney Leighton pond, which he says was created when Central Maine Power dammed up a nearby brook.He says he's never stayed overnight in it, but his five children used to play in it and warm up inside during the winter when they went skating on the pond.

Verney still takes some of his best logs to a sawmill in Jay, where he sells them. The cedar and ash trees on his land are in demand from lobstermen who like to use the wood in boat building. Years ago, he supplied wood to the Old Town Canoe company in Old Town and to Mad River Canoe in Vermont.

Verney grew up in Sheepscot with his father, John and his mother, Selina, who ran the post office from her home.

One of his three sons, Jay, has built a house and a garage, all from lumber milled at his father's sawmill. He's now in the process of building a horse barn at his house in Newcastle. Another son, Jeff, who has an excavation business on the West Alna Road, often brings wood to his father's sawmill from property where he has cleared the land.

Verney likes the fact that all five of his children live nearby.

"They all live within six miles," he says. His third son, Joel, owns Wiscasset Travel. His two daughters are Joyce and Joy.

His wife, Phyllis, has helped him operate his sawmill for many years.

"We celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary last summer," Verney says with a smile. "The kids got together and gave us a party."