Need a hand with something in Northampton? Andrew Bombard is the guy you call.
If that sounds a little vague, just look at his business card: “Jack of all trades, master of four.”
When asked about it, Bombard, 50, just grins. “Those would be kissing girls, sleeping, fishing, and … I’ll leave the fourth one blank.”
Bombard suffers from attention-deficit disorder, but he always has his sleeves rolled up and his eyes peeled. Fast-talking, busy-bodied, and unabashedly social, he’s stitched together a working routine for himself out of a broad collection of part-time jobs and day gigs throughout downtown Northampton and the Valley.
“You know Family Circle, that comic strip?” he asks over slices at Sam’s Pizzeria and Cafe in Northampton. “Remember when the kid would come home from school, and he’d make that dotted line when he walked all over the place? I do that every day.”
Bombard’s dotted line runs through the west end of commercial Main Street in Northampton, where he knows many of the business owners. He stops in at Sam’s, where he helped with some build-out work in 2007. He visits Adams Jewelry to chat with owner Andy Adams, whose apartment he recently painted.
He’ll swing by Ode Boutique, where he’s been helping with cleaning and assorted errands for the past four years. He’s a doorman, cleaner, and occasional bar-back at Packard’s. And he works for Alternative Recycling, helping to maintain the dumpsters at the Masonic Street parking lot.
Several property owners in Northampton have him help with upkeep at their homes, including lawn work, pool cleaning, and small repair jobs. He often house-sits as well.
Get him started, and the list of jobs keeps flowing. He’s worked construction in Haydenville. He’s been an overnight relief worker at a local cot shelter. He drives people to the airport. He cat-sits. The other day he earned a few bucks alphabetizing a friend’s personal library.
“Think about the diversity,” he says. “Who lives like I do?”
A work life like Bombard’s comes together through a lot of hand-shaking and word-of-mouth.
“Sometimes I barter for work,” he says. “And when I get paid, it’s flexible. I say to people: I’m the best 10-dollar-a-day guy that you’re ever going to meet, although I like to get 15. And you know what? People usually pay me 20.”
So, he just accepts whatever he gets?
“Sure. And then maybe I’ll keep working for you, maybe I won’t. Some people look at me funny when I say that. But no, really. Pay me what you think you should. And if I don’t like it, I won’t come back.
“You know what happens?” he adds. “They hand me more than enough. And I make a joke. I say I’m on retainer. They can call me anytime. They love that.”
Bombard’s favorite months are his busiest: April, May, and June.
Sometimes he’ll get a call from someone he doesn’t know. Occasionally he’ll turn down a gig. “Like roofing. I don’t do roofing anymore. My body’s not what it was.”
When Bombard isn’t working, he’s fishing. It’s his raison d’être. It comes up constantly.
He pulls out his phone to show a photo he’s taken. “See this? This is a five-inch lure next to that fish’s head. Pretty cool, huh? I caught this the night before last, at the oxbow off South Street. It’s about a 25- or 26-inch pike.”
He’s been fishing since he was a kid, and he goes year-round. “I watch the weather, to take the luck out of it. Fish react to barometric pressure, water pressure, cloud cover… I just finished reading a science book about the five senses of the fish. It dispelled a lot of myths.”
By this point, Bombard has had side conversations with three other people at the pizzeria. He points at a man walking past. “That guy owns a tree business. I cut trees with him sometimes.”
Then he laughs. “I’m glad you’re taping this. I’m really scattered. So, you’ll be able to go through this and pick things out?”
Bombard rewinds his narrative a bit. He’s been in Northampton since 2000, but he grew up in Worcester, where he attended Assumption College, a Roman Catholic school.
“I’m not religious,” he says. “But I got community out of it. Same at AA.”
Bombard has a history of alcohol and narcotics abuse. That can cast a long shadow, but he tries not to look back. He reports he’s been sober 25 years and joined AA when he moved to Northampton. “That culture is tight,” he says. “I made a lot of friends there.”
The future was uncertain back then. “I hadn’t figured out how to live an eclectic life. I was in the Coast Guard for two years. I built railroad for two years. I could have made a career out of a lot of things. But I need to change the channel all the time.”
That’s because of his ADD, he says.
“I don’t want to be stuck inside. To punch a clock would be a death sentence.”
Bombard loves the work he does — and the work that’s yet to come. He mentions a dream he’s harbored for a while now: working as a fishing guide around the Valley. “I could take people out for the day with a boxed lunch, show them how to fish, and tell them all about the history of the area.”
A few days after this interview, Bombard is at Ode Boutique, organizing storage in the basement and recycling stacks of boxes.
Kristen Kelly, the owner of Ode, has known Bombard for four years. When she was first visiting town scouting locations for a store, he walked up to her at The Haymarket and shook her hand. Since then he’s been doing what she calls “freelance” work.
“I would ask for his help every once in a while,” she says. “And then I realized I was calling him a lot. So now I ask him to check in on a weekly basis. He stops by every few days.”
Kelly calls Bombard “the big brother of Ode.” She admires his respectfulness and grace. “He works really hard, but he treats everyone equally.”
He’s also promised to teach Kelly’s daughter Marlowe, who’s not yet a year old, how to fish someday.
“He’s put together a life that works for him,” she says. “And it’s a way of life that wouldn’t quite fit anyone else.”•
Hunter Styles can be reached at hstyles@valleyadvocate.com
