The Casino strip wasn't there. Neither was the seawall. Route 1A was just a thin layer of pavement covering sandy dunes. There wasn't much of anything when Freddy Gagne settled in Hampton Beach 76 years ago.

Just a few thin-walled cottages on stilts that peppered any solid ground beyond the marsh.

"At that time," he said, looking through his window at a neighbor's house six feet away, "people called this place a wasteland... The streets were all sand, and no one could get in with a car."

On Tuesday, Gagne moved energetically back and forth in his rocking chair, trying to avoid the heat outside. A thousand pieces of lumber had plowed their mark into his hands. He was missing half a finger, probably from his mill work in Massachusetts during Hampton Beach's barren winters.

But he smiled and talked a lot. He's proud that his mind is still sharp after 90 years. Most of his friends are gone now - people who bootlegged liquor just like Gagne did, people who fought the fires that ravaged C Street in 1921, people who began the lonely beach town.

Gagne literally helped build Hampton Beach when he first moved down from a small town near Manchester. Working as a carpenter from a young age, he migrated south with his trade in 1914 to help his father build a cottage on White Rocks Island, a section of land near the present-day Mile Bridge.

"We built it just as cheap as we could," Gagne said. "Instead of using 2 by 4, we used 2 by 3, two feet apart instead of 18 inches. Well, we didn't have much money, you know!

"When you wanted a piece of land," he said, leaning forward, "then you went down to the Hampton Beach Improvement Company. You went down to see Teddy Batchelder. Give him $10 a year...it all depends."

Gagne rocked slowly back and forth in his chair. "It kept going up every year. You see," he said, taking off his glasses, "they used to give you a lease for 10 years or 20 years, because they wanted to make sure you'd stay there."

The carpenter turned cowboy when a thunderous 1919 November storm sucked 18 cottages out to sea. Gagne lassoed some of the floating homes, reeled them in, claimed them and planted them on Epping Avenue. He said that's how he got into real estate.

But money was scarce and the ocean was merciless in Hampton Beach's early days. When autumn and winter storms raced up the East Coast and clobbered Hampton Beach, most cottages ended up in the ocean.

"There were 42 houses taken from these streets in one year on account of a storm," Gagne said. "There was a man by the name of Crocker, and he lost about eight or nine in one day.

Gagne smiled and shook his head. "When I first came here in 1914, Billy Brown, one of the selectmen then, had some men build a breakwater out of cement. But they never had the foundation." He laughed like he knew better. "They just built on sand. So a big storm came and knocked the crud out of it, you know? And it's still buried there. Big slabs of cement...right in front."

In 1931, Gagne and other beach property owners traveled to Concord and delivered their request for help. "We had a big sign on our car asking the state Legislature to take over the beach or the water would," Gagne said.

"Of course, some of the selectmen didn't like it," he said. "But we needed the state, because that's the only protection we had. We lost one house, you know? $2,500 in about half an hour.

Photos by Nicholas Thomas

When Gagne wasn't trolling for houses or building them for 15 cents an hour in the 1920's, he would travel to the mill towns of Massachusetts. "If we had one house to build, with all our regular summer repairs, then we were all set for the year," he said.

When World War I took its men from Hampton Beach, it took the blood of Gagne's livelihood, too. "We couldn't get lumber because of the war and we couldn't build houses, so I'd go down to Somerville or Lowell and find a job. I worked in a cartridge factory in 1917, but just for the winter months."

Before 1930, roads were not plowed by the state, and winter travelers took great risk on their journeys. "When we lived on White Star Island, "said Gagne, "the only way we could get out is by driving on the beach with a car. Then we'd drive to Exeter and on to Manchester, but we'd have to scrape our own road.

"When they did plow the roads," Gagne said, "the farmers in town would get angry because they were hauling lumber by sleigh. At Hampton Crossing (near Lamie's Tavern) the plow had to leave some snow on the road so farmers could cross the pavement with their runners."

Hampton Beach always had a saving grace, Gagne said, when the harsh winter storms gave way to warm summer days. "Crowds of people started coming to Hampton Beach in the '20s and '30s... gradually," he said. "It all depended on the mills, because you had working people from the mills coming down here back then. They weren't rich people. They'd save their money all year and spend what they had when they came."

Even in Hampton Beach, where a long-standing temperance movement had kept things quite dry for 70 years, the hard-working vacationers always found a way to drink. There were two alternatives in Gagne's day: drink in Salisbury or bootleg liquor across the state line.

"There was a woman on Epping Avenue," Gagne said, "and she used to go the beach in the early morning and bury bottles in the sand. If somebody wanted a pint or something during the day, she had two kids who she'd send down to the beach, and they'd dig it up and bring it back," Gagne said.

"See, nobody suspected the kids, and even if they got caught, nobody could 'pinch' them."

Gagne sits back in his chair, and swings his arm over his shoulder, pointing westward. "This other guy on Epping Avenue...well, the police dug up his whole yard back in 1953 looking for liquor. But they never found anything," he said, laughing again. "About two years later they pinched him for selling liquor from his front porch and forced him to move. So this guy just picked up his house and moved it across the street onto a new piece of land."

"I was a bootlegger, too," Gagne admits. "When I was working in Lowell when I was 17, there was no work for people my age. What I used to do is go into Lowell, buy a pint of this and a pint of that," he said, picking invisible bottles from the air. "I'd buy about $20 or $30 worth, and I'd pack it in a suitcase."

Taking the train to Manchester, Gagne would sell the liquor to friends and return to Lowell using a different railcar.

"That way the police didn't know I was carrying stuff back forth." he said. "They would stop the guy that traveled a lot. But I always went different ways. They never pinched me."

Gagne's days of evading the law ended when he was sworn to uphold the law as a precinct commissioner. And as commissioner for 15 years through the 1950's, Gagne saw his share of oddities.

Driving to Newbury on a summer day, Gagne discovered that the Mile Bridge had sunk six inches overnight. Thinking he had a hot story, he called WBZ radio station in Boston, persuaded the station manager to pay for his phone call, and then unloaded the story.

Apparently, Gagne was the first to see the sunken bridge, and he garnered $50 from WBZ for the tip. Even former Gov. King in Concord, Gagne said, was startled by the news and hustled to Hampton Beach to survey the damage.

Gagne stopped rocking in his chair, and looked outside the screen door at a passing car blasting music from its windows. "Well, the '60s weren't too bad either because the kids didn't have cars like they have today.

"During the riot in 1964, you couldn't get out of your house. You had to stay inside because the police had orders to shoot on sight, if you didn't mind them," Gagne said.

"And see, the kids were coming down in droves from the Casino. Throwing rocks and shooting down Marshwood Avenue. There was a restaurant, and the kids almost shot a woman," he continued, leaning forward in his chair to stress his words. "Oh yeah...it was rough."

"What's going to ruin the beach today is the kids. The liquor, the cars," Gagne said. "I can tell you when the barrooms around here are closing, without even getting up. So much noise."

When he was young, he didn't have time to fool around, Gagne said. Working six, sometimes seven days a week never left much time for anything. "It was OK," Gagne said, "because I fell in love with the place."

Gagne pulled off his glasses and looked around the house, then cleared his throat. "When I die, I want them to fix me up and then drive me around the beach. Then bring me back to the cemetery and dump me." He started to laugh. "That's it. I love `Hampton Beach ...it's my home.