The snow kept falling, flights were canceled and Merrill “Bill” Rummel was scrambling to corral all of the freight packages piling up on the tarmac.

It was February 1969 and Rummel, a Waterville native, was working as a forklift operator for an air freight company at Boston’s Logan International Airport, which had closed because of the storm. His boss told him to clear the packages, even the ones where the labels had fallen off from the moisture, as there was no shelter for the freight.

Rummel placed one wooden, 3-foot-by-4-foot crate without a label in the trunk of his 1962 Chevrolet Impala Super Sport and, after three straight days and nights working at the airport during the historic, 100-hour storm, he drove home to his apartment in Medford.

At home, he opened the crate to an extraordinary find — an original 1967 painting by world-renowned artist Pablo Picasso titled “Portrait of a Woman and a Musketeer (or La Madamoiselle et Le Mousquetaire).”

Rummel, 25, a former U.S. Coast Guard member, was struck by a sense of unreality, mixed with both excitement and fear.

His brother, Whitcomb Rummel Jr., at the time a student at Tulane University in New Orleans, remembers the phone call he received from Merrill after the theft.

“He said, ‘I got a f—— Picasso,'” Whitcomb Jr. recalled. “I’m thinking, what the heck is he talking about? He said: ‘No, honest, it’s really a Picasso, signed and everything.'”

The brothers had many capers growing up in Waterville in the 1950s and ’60s. Their father was prominent businessman Whitcomb Rummel Sr., who owned Rummel’s Ice Cream on Silver Street and the Silent Woman restaurant on Kennedy Memorial Drive.

He had gotten the boys out of plenty of scrapes, For Whitcomb Jr., the most memorable of which was when he was 11 and was caught shoplifting. Police took him to the station and called his father, who convinced police to let him go, promising to discipline him his own way.

“I remember getting in the car afterward and breathing a huge sigh of relief,” Whitcomb said Monday in a phone interview from his home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

A filmmaker, screenwriter and now novelist, Whitcomb Rummel Jr., 78, said he was deflated when his father laid out the shoplifting consequences: He was not to enter any store for a whole year.

“The hardest part was going to Levine’s clothing store downtown and my mother would go inside and shop for me,” he recalled. “I had to try on clothes in the car.”

Yes, their father always got them out of predicaments. So when his older brother called in 1969, asking for advice about what to do with the Picasso, Whitcomb Jr. recommended he call Whitcomb Sr. By now, the FBI and the Boston mob were looking for the painting.

I tell this story because Whitcomb Jr. called me to say he has written a book about the Picasso fiasco, co-authored by art crime expert Noah Charney. “The Accidental Picasso Theft,” will be published Nov. 13 by Bloomsbury Academic, part of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc.

I think Waterville area residents will find the book compelling and endearing, as much of it is about the Rummel boys growing up with an imaginative father who took them on many adventures. The book contains old photos and Morning Sentinel clips, details the history of Rummel’s Ice Cream and the Silent Woman and recounts the fire that destroyed the retail and ice cream operation, but spared their attached house, which remains today next to Gifford’s Famous Ice Cream.

And, of course, the book lays out the plan Whitcomb Sr. hatched to return the Picasso. I won’t go into detail so as not to reveal the outcome, but it has all the intrigue and suspense you might expect from a heist movie — except this is all real, and true.

It seems the Rummel family saga just keeps on giving. You might recall a story I wrote 10 years ago about the discovery of a bronze plaque under a pile of rubble in a contractor’s garage in Benton. That plaque honoring Whitcomb Rummel’s maternal grandfather, Lorenzo Eugene Thayer, a former Waterville mayor, had been stolen many years before from the bridge over Messalonskee Stream. A ceremony was held in 2015 to honor its return to the bridge, and Whitcomb Jr. attended.

He and Merrill both named their sons Whitcomb. Sadly, Merrill died in 2015, so he did not get to read the 2023 New York Times story about the Picasso theft, nor was he to learn of his brother’s book.

But as its publication date nears, Whitcomb Jr. dreams of it becoming a feature film or limited series. There are many surprises, twists and turns in the story, which details Rummel’s pursuit to learn where the painting is now, as it was sold by its first American buyer. You might say the book represents Whitcomb Jr.’s labor of love and admiration, both for his father and his hometown.

“My love for Waterville and my memories of Waterville are still so crystal clear,” he said. “There’s no place I’d rather be than in Waterville, and I really mean that.”

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.