As westbound traffic from Winslow to Waterville is detoured to the Carter Memorial Bridge because of Ticonic Bridge construction, a steady stream of cars and trucks pass Adam Norton’s house on Water Street in Waterville’s South End.
Many residents might not be happy about that, but for Norton, it is fortuitous.
As he creates stone bird baths on his front lawn, some motorists give him a thumbs up or wave. Others stop to admire his works and even buy them.
A tall, wiry man with dark hair and eyes, Norton, 42 and single, is full of stories. He works the overnight shift as a sandblaster at Bath Iron Works, drives home to Waterville early mornings, and sculpts in stone until about noon. Then he sleeps three to six hours before returning to work, more than an hour’s drive away. Some days, he has his 4-year-old son, Timmy, in the afternoon, and Timmy likes to fill the birdbaths with water.
“It’s all locally harvested stone,” Norton said Wednesday as he worked. “Some is granite, some is basalt and some, jasper.”
He removed his T-shirt, donned a mask and poured water from a little blue bucket over a thick, flat stone. Kneeling on the ground, he cut long lines into the stone with an electric cutter, as dust kicked up all around. He cut slowly, the blade screaming as it moved back and forth.
He ditched his mask, placed six metal wedges into the cuts and whacked them with a 6-pound hammer until the stone split into long pieces.
“This is going to be a bird bath stem,” Norton said. “It’s really no different than cutting wood — it’s just the process. When you chisel wood, it peels off. When you hit stone, it chunks off.”

The removable stone owls he creates to adorn the bird baths have large yellow eyes, rimmed with black. They stare out at motorists passing by. Norton says he uses lacquer paint sticks to create those eyes.
“They’re basically used to draw on steel,” he said of the sticks. “We use them at work a lot. You can pick ’em up at any hardware store.”
He started sculpting stone about 15 years ago while working on granite countertops in Florida, cutting holes for sinks. A woman at the shop lamented all the unusable granite pieces piling up in the shop, Norton recalled.
“I was like, “I bet I can turn this into money.’ ”
He created bird baths and customers immediately bought three or four. Later, he sold them on his own.
“I’ve sold hundreds of these all over the country, at ridiculously low prices,” he said. “It’s a hobby I enjoy. It’s provided extra money many times. I’ve sold them at fairs, and mostly out of my front yard.”

He also sells them at China Lake Provisions, a store in China Village. From his lawn, he sells the small bird baths for about $35 and the large ones, around $65.
Norton grew up in Whitefield, on the Windsor town line, where his father was a bus mechanic. He attended Erskine Academy in China and then sold used cars at his father’s shop before landing a job at a stone shop. He worked for years as a commercial fisherman off the Maine coast before starting at the shipyard 10 years ago.
“This birdbath work allows me to travel with my son,” he said. “The shipyard pays the bills and fills the cupboards, but this is all pocket money and it allows me to take him to monster truck shows.”
As he worked Wednesday from his lawn, a small white car stopped at the curb. The driver, Holden Luce of Winslow, said he bought a birdbath from Norton for his mother and she loves it.
“It brought tears to her eyes,” Luce said. “It’s incredible.”

Norton also skis, skateboards and snowboards. He enjoys talking to people, and says it feels good to be doing something positive in the neighborhood. He laughs easily as he tells stories and touts the merits of stone sculpting in public.
“Working the graveyard shift at the shipyard, you never get to see anybody, so you can’t socialize,” he said. “So this is a good way to be social without going to the bar and getting hammered. I find that idle hands do the devil’s work and if my hands aren’t busy, I can get myself in trouble.”
While he displays a sharp sense of humor, there is a sadness about Norton as he speaks philosophically about lost time, and his hopes for the future.
“I’ve spent my life making other people rich, building people beautiful homes and beautiful lawns,” he said, “and I’ve never had that, so I am trying to find out how to get it, and the only way I know how to do it is to work.”
Amy Calder has been a Morning Sentinel reporter 37 years. Her columns appear here Sundays. She is the author of the book, “Comfort is an Old Barn,” a collection of her curated columns, published in 2023 by Islandport Press. She may be reached at [email protected]. For previous Reporting Aside columns, go to centralmaine.com
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