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Maine
Living Lore
Old Town ...I
(The Life of David Morin, French Canadian)
(As told by himself to Robert F. Grady)
Dave: el worked out in Salem only six months. If you had it dawn two
years, you made a m'stake: it was just six months. It wasn't on,y me the
whole family w nt. It was right after the saumill shut down in the fall,
and we all came back in the spring. If we hadn't rented our house for the
wint r we would all have come right back. W. had the winter's wood in the
Shed, and we sold that to the family that route the house. My father was
a stone mason and he couldn't find any work in Salem. Re cams back here with
Ovid* and Lawrence, and they all went up in the woods.
'That was quite a big cotton mill in Salem where I worked. It burned down
same years azo, but they built it up again oi the old foundations. I think
there were three cotton mills th,re then. There was a out one thousand people
worke in that mill ate e I learns to weave, and they were neatly all French.
A lot of them couldn't /peek English, and lots of times the boss came around
to get me to tell eoebody something in Rngliih. They run all the way from
one to four looms it dependedoon haw much experience the had. I run two
looms. What they made in that mill was wide shoetinz. I wasn't married then
I ma, only eighte3n. If you co down to Salem ycu can still see that mill. I
was back there just once since left. My brother was going down in the car,
and he took me with him. stayed at my sisters a few days down there. (rr.
Merin was rather vague in regard to that mill in Salem. if. couldn't remember,
for instance, what type of looms were use
*When I come back to Old Town in the spring, I want up on the boom for
fifty cents a day including board and I worked ther all sum-er. That fall
I had a chance to co up in the words for $13.00 a month, but my father says,
'No, don't you take that: you can do better than that around here.' 1 cot a
job in the box mill that winter, and I worked the'- until I got that job for
my brother in the pool room.
Maine
Living Lore
Old Town *.le
*Superstitions/ Pocht haven't any of those. I've heard some of these
common ales, but they don't bother as. My knife dropred and stuck in the floor
the other day, and I says to my wife, 'Come one's coming to see us,' but I said
that o.ly for a joke I didn't believe it.
"There was eometh:ng happened to us in tho box will Pros, though, that's
as true as I'm standing here. (Re go i to his feet temporarily) run a planer
there, and you knew how fast the halt goes on that rechine. There was some
beams overhead, and there vas t plank between two of them over the bolt. We
had to get up on that plank when we oiled the uprer pulley. I got up there
one day with the oil can, and had just cot my foot on that plank when I
heard the words 'Co Back!' The machines -vivre makin' a lot of nbise, and they
were runnint around and singins and hollerin' down below, but there was nobody
near enourh so that I could user the words as plain as I heard those, even if
they had spoken than. I got down off that plank, and I happened to lark up when
I was puttin0 back the oil can, and I saw thet the other end of the plank was
just hanging on the edge of the beam. If I had walked out there, when I got to
the middle of the plank it would have as red just enough to slip off the beam.
I would have gone right into the- belt, and yal en imagine what that would do
to anybody. Who spoke those worki? It was nobody that worked in the box mill.
You can't tell we that dasth is the end, for I know better. There is a lot that
we don't se
"or course I've had some ambitions, but they were never very big ones. I
nelrer wanted much mooey two or three tho4scnd was ell I ever wanted. I vented
to own my hcuse and to educate my ehi,dren. I vented thm to have a Dotter Chance
than as, end they've had it. I've done about all I set out to do, but a man's
ambition is never dead. There is always solething be looks forward to.