Nobleboro entrepreneur makes fun of his work
  

Story and photos by Marilis Hornidge

A card table – on it, a jigsaw puzzle. People coming and going; people sitting around it chatting, fitting and trying pieces, matching color, picture-pattern, shape.

A high hill – running figures, colored shapes flying into the sky…laughter while the kites above them dip and dive.

    

The sign at the road leads to the treasure trove...
  

Yesterday’s pleasures? Today’s charmers. Often because of a man who not only remembers but also remembers in detail (and color) and who, above all, cannot stand not to be doing something. "Don’t like being bored," he says with a small grin. "Never have."

Truer words – at least when it comes to Bob Havenstein – were probably never spoken. He has fished or been involved with them (more on that later) for years, sold lobsters (still does), and three years ago began a business that landed him on the front page of the Wall Street Journal as having the largest display of jigsaw puzzles in New England.
   

 

Bob Havenstein behind his desk and, behind him, an incredible array of games for sale.
   

Havenstein shakes his head over that one. "People," he mused. "They’re interested in the most surprising things." He’s a great one to talk. After years of raising and selling tropical fish (a business he just recently sold, and which is still thriving) he, it’s a personal quote, "got awful tired of cleaning aquariums" and decided to put the business on the market. After it sold, "One night…" he says with that remembering grin which is the mark of all true storytellers, "I woke up about 2:30 a.m. and thought, ‘how come you can rent a video and you can’t rent a jigsaw puzzle?’"

I’M PUZZLED, his current business was born. Three years later, it and its wondrous spin-off, KITES TO FLY, are doing very well, thank you; and Havenstein is far from bored.
  
...three years ago Bob Havenstein began a business that landed him on the front page of the Wall Street Journal as having the largest display of jigsaw puzzles in New England.
     

It’s a treasure trove for puzzle fanciers and kite flyers, and games-of-all-sorts devotees. Of which, naturally, Maine has, perhaps more than any other state in the Union; and especially when you count in the summer people who flock in to pick up a puzzle for their summer rainy day enjoyment (you can rent one, as well as buy one, but there are rules; for example, "If you bring it back and a piece is missing, you’ve bought it"). "Funny," says Havenstein, "the adults head for the puzzles – the kids go straight for the kites."

His taste is wonderful; eclectic, colorful and often surprising, especially when you take into account that he is not a born-and-raised jigsaw puzzle fancier himself. Why then puzzles? He shrugs. "That’s the way the idea came," he says. It’s hard to argue with something that works.
  

  

On display are a whole group of antique wooden jigsaw puzzles. ("Professor from Bates comes down a couple times a year," he says. "Anne Williams – she wrote a whole book about them," a copy of which, of course, he has on display.)

Then there’s an 86-year-old woodworker in Surrey who makes them to order, plus other wooden puzzles from Europe. There are the impossibles ("not a straight line in those") and double-sided ones, and some gloriously beautiful ones which, once you got them together, you would need a wrench to take them apart again ("Got glue for that – you just put it on top and it clear-coats the whole puzzle; then you can frame it or whatever.") If you can imagine it in the puzzle world, Havenstein has it…he orders from catalogs that cover the world. There are over 750 puzzles on display, from giant to 3-D to ones that would require tweezers to pick up the pieces.

The phone rings – it’s the state forestry people checking local weather for fire conditions – the last time for now…he’s done that as well for years. "Replacing me with a computer next year, they are," he says dryly. He is not too fond of computers – his just having scrambled its brain and/or his program.
  

 

 

 

Puzzles – a few shelves full.
  

Why kites? Well, as a youngster he and his friends flew kites. "Made ’em out of balsa wood, paper and glue," he says, "with the old kind of tails." There’s a twinkle right about here that gives you a look of the boy who flew kites. "Sometimes we glued little bits of glass onto the string," he says. "Kite Wars…" (a wonderful picture all by itself). Today’s kites are very different – lightweight plastics, ready-made in strange or aerodynamic shapes. "Kids are the same," he murmurs.

Havenstein also came up with a number of photo-illuminated designs for the ceiling of kids’ rooms – a planetarium, an alphabet-numbers set, cars and trucks and several others. A large company pirated the idea. He shrugs. "It was a good idea," he says and lets it drop.
  

Kites and more kites
  

This is a truly one-man business – one of those gem-like 2:30 a.m. concept questions that spin themselves into reality. No big box could compete with this small, white, unprepossessing jewelry box tucked away on the winding roads of Nobleboro. Open the door and you know you’ve stepped into a dream; a fascinating take-your-time place.
  

 

A means of carrying and keeping puzzles together – the PortaPuzzle.
  

There’s the added plus of the genial company of a man who muses on "whatever happened to" and "why-not" and then makes it real…and fun. "I just don’t like to be bored," he says, "or not have something to do."

It’s hard to imagine that ever coming to pass.

FMI: I’M PUZZLED and KITES TO FLY in Nobleboro can be reached by following the signs from Route 1 to Lower Cross Road. Hours are Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 9 a.m.– 5 p.m.; Tuesday 1 p.m.–5 p.m. and Sunday from 10 a.m.–4 p.m. Call 207.563.5719.

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