The irony of Steve Methia’s retirement is, while the world is coming to a standstill, he’s gotten busier, and while the rest of the world is trying not to socialize, he has a steady stream of visitors at his Mattapoisett door.

            The pickups and deliveries won’t stop anytime soon.

            Locally known on Facebook and other social media platforms for his custom work with motorcycles, Methia has repurposed his hobby shop to produce face shields for medical and other essential personnel, and for those who cannot avoid facing the public during their day.

            The irony is not lost on Methia, who will turn 66 this month.

            “Normally, I’m a hermit,” he laughed. “Everything’s been on hold because I’ve been doing this for a week and a half.”

            By Monday, he had made approximately 80 face shields that his girlfriend, Mary Ellen Silva, helps deliver where needed.

            A retired mechanic who worked 42 years for Verizon out of the company’s Taunton location, Methia was already spending the majority of free time in his basement, albeit on other, less-urgent projects like Ducati motorcycles and furniture repairs and restorations.

            A self-described “tinkerer” and “dumpster diver,” Methia had decided five years ago that retirement from Verizon was his ticket not to sit back, but to do the things he really wanted to do when he didn’t have the time.

            “I have two goals every day – one is to learn something and one is to make something,” he said, admitting regret over the math and science he didn’t pay enough attention to in high school. “Now I can’t get enough of it. The machine shop has taken over my craziness.”

            Methia’s “craziness” makes nothing but sense to desperate, frontline workers dealing without adequate protection. His 3D printer was admittedly more of a science project until COVID-19 prompted his new hobby.

            “I’m not an engineer,” said Methia, whose lathe and milling machine that help him build motorcycle parts now function as his research-and-development department for tweaks to the face-shields being produced by the two 3D printers in his home office.

            The second printer belongs to the Old Rochester Regional Junior High School. It wasn’t working properly when Methia began soliciting donations to help him with the face-shield project, but thanks to his day-long effort to fix it, there are now two printers working side by side, each producing a face-shield every few hours.

            The community has also noticed.

            ORR Junior High also donated filament, the spools of synthetic material for the 3D printer, and John Coucci of Guido’s Glass in New Bedford donated the clear plastic for the shields.

            Methia performs laser cuts himself on equipment owned by custom engraver FME Technologies based in Mattapoisett. He waits until night to use FME’s machine due to resulting fumes.

            One of his neighbors is a seamstress, and those who are making cloth facemasks have given Methia the stretch material he uses to fashion the elastic straps for his face shields.

            “A lot of this stuff is (typically available) on Amazon, but they’re shutting that all down because they’re only giving it to essential (medical industries),” he said. “It’s been difficult finding the supplies. I had some filament in stock, but I used it up really quick.”

            Old Hammondtown School also donated some filament, and Methia said he is trying to make contact with Old Colony Regional Vocational Technical High School.

            “The more printers I have, I can make more product,” he said.

            The design, procured online, is derived from 3D printer company Prusa, based in the Czech Republic. The company is open source, which means copycats are welcome to adopt Prusa’s technology and reproduce it themselves without copyright infringement.

            The absence of such a legal hurdle is music to the ears of everyone affected, however indirectly, by the coronavirus pandemic.

            Methia has made his own modifications using computer-aided design (CAD) programming. “I’m constantly making changes, depending on what straps I have,” he said. “I spend all day and all night, between changing the filaments and changing the programs. When it’s done, I make a new one.

            “I’m going around and getting supplies. I’ve been doing it 24/7. Everyone else is bored, they’ve got nothing to do,” he said of his new mission. “It doesn’t bother me when I don’t leave the house. I can do everything I need to do right from the house. And I’ve had so much support.”

            Methia looks forward to giving back ORR Junior High a perfectly working 3D printer that students there can use as part of a normal life that these last few weeks has become elusive and precious. He won’t take money, only requests, and the donations to help him fulfill those requests.

            “I’m a big believer that, if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem,” he said.

            This is the first in a series of stories that will highlight some of the special efforts local people are making to help their communities in a time of crisis. If you know a “hometown hero” in the Tri-Town that you want to tell us about, tell us about that person in an email, sending it with your name and phone number to news@wanderer.com.

Nestled deep in tissue paper inside a box inside a cedar closet in the dark recesses of our basement is a Teddy Bear my son received as an infant. It was much loved and wears the stains and patches that denote its years of service to a little boy who often needed Teddy to help him get through sickness. No doubt in his imagination Teddy had much to say. I think it’s time to let Teddy do his job again – making small children smile.

            There is a movement wending its way through Facebook to place Teddy Bears in windows for children to find. Call it a playful bear hunt where all that is collected are smiles and all that is heard is, “I found one – look, look!”

            Recently I joined in the fun. I placed two Teddy Bears in my front window. These bears were purchased as remembrances of a trip we took to Niagara Falls with my son and his daughter about 11 years ago. My granddaughter has moved on from wanting to play with a toy bear. I have not. Those bears have been with me ever since. Now they grace the front windows waiting for little children to find them.

            It seems the activity began in Belgium and was picked up by Danish families where it is enjoying a great deal of exposure and giving kids something fun to do. More recently, a local Facebook group started Teddy Bear hunting. We want to jump in and add to the game, so get out those Teddy Bears and let’s have some fun!

            Starting April 2, The Wanderer is asking its readers to take pictures of the bears they find and share those pictures with the Tri-Town community. All we need to make this game really super-duper is lots of Teddy Bears in lots of windows throughout the Tri-Town. 

            To add to the fun, the April 9 issue The Wanderer will publish photos you take of the Teddy Bears you’ve tracked down. Please make sure to include your name and the town where the Teddy Bear was spotted. That’s it. Let’s see how many Teddy Bears our Tri-Town community can press into new service and how many pictures you can take and share.

            Feeling a little self-conscious because you don’t want anyone to know you collect Teddy Bears? Pish-tosh! Grown-ups can play, too. What better time than now to add a bit of humor, a bit of adventure, a bit of the carefree to our lives. Let those Teddy Bears out.

            Send your Teddy Bear pictures to news@wanderer.com or post them on our Facebook page!

By Marilou Newell

            Word spread quickly on social media that grocery stores would be open at specific times for senior citizens to do their shopping. I thought, “This is great.” Then I saw the hours that “special shopping” was being offered to seniors – butt-crack dawn.

            Why is it that so many believe senior citizens are up enjoying life at the crack of dawn? No doubt there are many people whose daily habits include rising from the warmth and comfort of their beds at dawn. But these people aren’t all over the age of 65. In fact, I’d speculate that most of them are young people on their way to work or school, when those venues were fully functioning.

            Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining so much as pointing out a fact – old people don’t necessarily like being awake at dawn much less going grocery shopping in the dark. Heck, my 80-something-year-old neighbor prides herself on staying up late and sleeping in, bless her bohemian soul. But I thought it was my duty to take advantage of the opportunity to be six-feet from my peers searching the shelves for an off-brand can of beans. Truth be told, I was mining the experience for this column.

            It was depressing. People didn’t look very pleased to be up and about. The public-address system in the store wasn’t playing music. The lighting was too bright, casting deep shadows across the elder faces. I thought, “Don’t they know that pink tones favor older skin?” I was wishing I had taken the time to fix myself up with a layer of make-up. On second thought, it simply doesn’t matter. No one was looking at me anyway, not even my husband.

            Mornings can be a difficult time of the day for seniors suffering from mobility issues. Heck, I’m usually not fully functional until 10:00 am. Yet there I was pushing a grocery carriage along, keeping my distance as I tried to put my best foot forward, literally, and hunt down what I could for the pantry at home.

            People seemed scared. Was I the only one making eye contact and smiling? Pleasantries weren’t being exchanged. These people were on a mission, some looking rather desperate as they collected products and dropped them noisily into the baskets.

            I’ll pause here to say the employees of the store were great. At that time of the day, the staff were filling shelves as fast as they could. Aisles were cluttered with pallets of non-perishable items. There was plenty to select from but, for many of the shoppers I watched, these were not the items they were seeking. Disappoint was on full view.

            As the clock ticked away the moments allocated to the aged, it was clear that a silly, fun, lighthearted story was slipping away from me. It began to feel more surreal and sad by the moment. What was I doing out there? After all my husband, the Great Gatherer historically, is the grocery shopper in our little family. He’s the one who literally brings home the bacon. I occasionally join him in what I call “recreational food shopping,” but this early-morning experience had been far from recreational. It was a sociology class.

            What happens to us when our world is tipped away from all we considered to be normal? It didn’t seem to be bringing out the best in us at that moment. Fight or flight was in the air. Or, was it just me seeing things through brown-colored glasses. Give me the rose color any day.

            At 7:30 am the doors were opened to all-comers. The younger crowd poured in through the opened doors, each and every one of them focused on the task at hand. I smiled at them. No one smiled back. I wanted to cry. Maybe they thought I was just a senile old lady. That’s how I probably looked.

            I’ve only been back to the large-chain grocery store once in the last three weeks. I’ve always supported small, local retail outlets and now plan on doing so exclusively whenever possible. I’ll try the curbside service many are offering, while remaining mindful that germs may cling to any surface. It’s important to wipe down everything that comes into your home, then wash your hands after handling materials from the outside world. No, I’m not being paranoid by the way.

            If I’m up at dawn again any time soon, I hope it’s because I write best during the earliest part of the day, not because I need to buy milk. But if you are shopping at dawn, as you go up and down the aisles, I hope you remember to look up, make eye contact, and smile at your fellow shopper. You never know whose life might be improved by simply seeing your smile.

This Surreal Mattapoisett Life

By Marilou Newell