Document text
ORIGINAL MSS. OR FIELD NOTES (Cheek one)
PUB. Living Lore in New England
(Maine)
TITLE Mike Pelletier, Frenok Canadian Pulp
a: Paper Worker)
WRITER Robert F. Grady
DATE 1M6. PP. 14
CHECKER DATE
SOURCES GIVEN (1) Interview
COMMENTS
Maine
Living Lore
Old Town 1
PERSONAL HISTORY OF MIKE FELLETIEE, FRENCH C-NADIAI!
PULP AND MUER MILL, VC RUH
Mike Pelletier, 86 years old, was born in Old Town, Maine in
1873. His father vs born in Sts Herbert, quebec. The latter came
to Old Town in 1865. Mike has a wife and 13 children; 8 boys and 5
girls. The girls are all married. The youngest boy, who works in a
CCC camp, is the only one of the ehildren not married. Albert worked
as a weaver in the woolen mill for a long time. When that shut
down be obtained work as a spare hand in the mill where his father
works. One boy works in a filling station in Berlin, N.H. One
works in a filter plant in Pittsburg, Pa* Another works in a plant
thst makes varnish out in some mid...western state* One, I think he
said, was a mail clerk in Pittsfield, Mae. Mike has lived in Old
Town all his life and on the same street. Mike started in at the
public school at the aze of 8 in 1878, and transfe2red to the con-
vent school in 18850 Finished his school education two years later
in 1887. Thus he went to school 9 years and stopped just short of
the hish school. lie is, however, a very well read man, and covad
pass for a ell educated person. Mr. Pelletier worked on the boJm
for one season after he finished school in 1887 and that fall when
the boom closed he went to work in the Great Works pulp mill where
he has wosked ever since. Mike is a Catholic. Be is about 5 feet
10 inches tall and probably weighs 185 pounds, has good teeth, thick
gray hair pasted on ',)ria4 side, and is one of those fortunate men who
never lose the enthusiasms of youth. He is a very interesting
talker, is 66 yore oLd, but looks to be 50 an adts as though he
wee 30. Both he and his wife look ss thovzh they get a lot of
honest enjoyment out of. living* Mike is the kind of man you would
call by his first name (Mike).
Maine
LivIqg LOWV
Old login 2
Mks Pollotler is a remarkably keen minded nan and radii a
rapid taker that It Is quite a tack to rsInembor all he says.
Once he vo -ae so many A.Europ and dates al: at once thrt 1 had
to ask him to co or thsA s,aln slowly so that I c,uld cot them
down. A stonaisrephar w.Alld surely Ix) a Lreat help t intorviewing
him.
Maine
LivLng Lore
old Toon
A VISIT TO TEL HOME OF MIRE PELLMTIBR„ 1RKCI1 CANADIAN
PULP AND PA 41iR MILL ViONN1.11
Mr. Pelletierts hi)ms sits very nr the road in fact I wee
told Oflc that his sun porch w r really on city property, and that
if the otty viehed to widen the street, he could be compelled to
remove the „Drays The h -uses sit close together there with only
driveways between, but the lote which run beck quit a wept, hae
plenty of space for gerdens. The house is a story and a half in
height. It is well pail-Aed and in in exeellent repair. Hardwood
flore inside covered with thick rue. The rooms are very nest and
clean and are well furnished. novelle a vide davenport in the 11v.
ing ro:Aa, two tables, two floor limps, four or five chairs, and a
piano. Asi atecordian rested on the floor near the piano. Because
the davenport wet against th hall door of the living myym we had
to co through -a lonc hall, into the kitchen, and back cilAn through
another d. z' into the front room. In the kitchen were Mrs, Nelletier,
a daughter who has been separated from her husband, and boarder named
Bill Rioux nous* an cad acquaintance or mine- is a FrenCh Cane 2ian
who worked for a long time--tOkbbe woolen m:11. 114 *snot worked
rinse the mill shutH down, but people ley ha wasslways a saving
person and can ef'ord to lord tz.s rest of his life.
I had gone over tz call on Nrs 1411etier In the aftirnoon, but
as I hee:.ed the house, Rioux, lithe wu j- et leavinti, told me that Mr.
Pelletier, who works by hi6ht this week, wv asleep, A. 11.:)ux and 1
walked back down the street I told hLm ec:Jithing of the work I am do.
in sit.d asked him if he thowht Mr. Pelletier wouci be willing to
tell AO a story.
rhino
Livi,.g Lore
Old ..20wn 2
"Sure he would." said RIOUX.• 112014 b la to and you couldntt
run aoroar a bettAr man to tell you. *bat you want to know.
At
mirhae MIA, and I were talking tha night Ix ape rigid and
jumped up to leaVe the romm.
"Ifil have to ze (own and close u thLt furmcc," bs said; Or
it' 12, drive us out of the room." He said he used coal in the furnace
and oil in kitchen range
when he came Ivek from the cellar be said, "My wife asked. me
who you were* ft* said she had. 8000, yzu s.>mewbcro, but ouldnft
exaotly place you.. I told her she ought to know you Bob Grady*
I know Albert, one of the boys, and a daughter, 1ors, by sight,
but to the beet of my knowledge I had never seen either Mr. Pelletier
or his wife ',..)efore tLat nijlt. As I hadnft mentioned my name
wondered if ale man had clairvoyant power, and out of curiosity
asked 11= bow be knew my name.
"snow your name?" he replic,d "I've known you evor s oe you
were ,>rn in that house :our father built over on perkina Avenue. 1
14new your .-4thers Hick* too* 144 worked down there In 0reit vorks on
the fitters* flick and I and the Hunts you remeuber this were
about t, only people who live down this way once. Yee indeed,
know ru all right*"
Mike said held Igo 1nd to have inecall again, but he didnft think
held have the opportunity to talk untii t MondayafOrmoon (the
30th). e said held be working from 6 a.m. to 12 noon ttweek and
wo' d have plenty of EA, in the afternoons end evening* Friday
evelant of this week (th 27th) he said ha had to attend a recetin
In honor of his gwand2islAhter till° is to marya claw named Oof:An.
Thit. Coffin, J,s'no also works In the Allp mill, becaliie a Catholic in
order to zi' y the in. Becauae of the larger n mber of cuect the
ii the
Living 1,..)re
Old 4Lown
reception rill be bald in tbe E 0
ball. e entioned come
aotivities be .ou4 be enga ed tn thst would prvent him from
granting me am intrview saturda7 or sunday evenInc• I ltink
he Ad be bad to atend a 1 .t5 :11 eLing ,Saturda7. I told him L.
•Ilat the later date vvuld sA.lit me farfestli beesure I had to writ
up :OA intervIew.
*Matte okay, then,* be raid' *You whip tst into shape, and.
we'll -et tozether an- next week.*
Aaine
Liv nt Loris
Old l'own w I
ThE LI1 OF 111143 e3V "AICH CAN. DIAN
(NXTRACTIOV), PULP AND yAemi mAran
MUM "Ay father lived on a ram in Canada. He came to Old
Town fro-.. St. Herbert Quebec, in 1865. The firt place he worked
Ivo In sawmill in "east° thet war owned by Amer:. Samuel yeasts
who built the o13 Veasie Railroad between nor and Old Town, That
Beagle road (he refers to the street now known as Policing Avenue
along which the railroad run, long after the tmcke were torn up
the throuchfare eue known as the *Yeast* Railroad"), 144 twenty
feet hieher than it is now when the railroad ren &lona: there. It
was much narrower at the top and wide encruiX only for the rails.
The rile in those days were known sr Istz.ap roils,' and they were
made of wooden timbers with stripe of iron nailed te the tops. After
the rails Wee taken up thereut down the rood bed to it precent
level aritl.lnind the dtrt to fill in *round that, part of the town
where you live (south Brneswiek Street). That used to be low and
swampy there, Down Uwe elmere my father lived (Pine Street) Iva
prfctioally in the woods. There .ueed to be drift .own bere re:me
winters fifteen feet/46h, -nd the only way they could cet uptown
vv.,: to use skis or snowshoes..
"Father couldn't speak 4n&lieh vory well when he landed in Old
The French Canadians never had any t2euble getting t)bs around
hero, though. 4‘here were a lot of French to 11.1;7, then but with the
langusge, and a lot of the bosses were French. They Lot 41.50 a day
in the Lei mills in those days, and they had to work fifteen hours a
day. There weren't any lodges or societies around her than e not
for the French, anyway. After a man had worked fifteen Ilurs a day
atlut all be felt like joining wee a matl-es- Ther wits no labor
Maim
Liv!ng Lore
Old TOWD .0 2
saving machinery la eawmllla ton* you underetand $11 the work was
mum1140r* Nowadays lo s are fed to the j*n sta by aut'natio feed
robs, but in the old ti rle saw mils they bad to be udueds tialnat
tho save,
they had to .e -t their sdcr ai„.ainst the spuds and push
for all they were worth* (The "eudew sometl es used An woods work
now are probably the same ac those referred to by Mr* kelletier* they
arf used in rlace of cant dogs and are sections of tree trunks varying
in diazaeter'in proortion .o L servic they must. render* 'ley are
used se prys and may be apywhero from two to four L chse diameter.)
"They used rotary saws to cut dimension (2x4* 4x4* etc)* and gang
and single ears to cut boards* The single saws vic.xsc also Aiown as
imuleys.0 The 6anz, saws and the meleys wert Imrtical sews that run
up and down* 441ey were ?goved by a wooden arm and crank arrantement
thn got its peweetro a water wheel The 1uMbe they !weed in those
m ht have ben used anywhere w across the road or acroe the
ocan.
It we sold to any one wh. wanted to buy it no matter idler* he
we 1)cuted*
The people who worked fifteen hours a day in those saw mills
hhd blame little time or Lnelination to jant gardens* aa yo can
well inagine* Twety five or thirty les later* when they had to
work only ten or twelve hours* they began to mine st 1.ttle garden
ntuff16'
"Wager were low then* but so were 2ivtn. expenses. You cok.Ad
iLet a rent for :ram three. to five dollars a menth* $2.25 paid for a
cord of four foot wod* or you could go out hare and cut stumpage for
35 cents a cord* YOulkould get a barrel of flour for three or three
and a. half* and a quartar of bet r pork at four and a telt gents a
pound* The -.Aky those fellows did wrs totuy a lot cy: provisions to
Living Lore
Old Tem 3
last them throuchthe winter, and If they didntt want to 0 to the
woods, they cold sit back and smoke their ie untll spring with
the chance the$ they co '_14 to
hIiS they were waltinE for the maIs to open 1, tn. !4)rIng* TI.Ary
would bo broke when the winter wtpe over, but they wouldnit.owe any.
thins at 'oast w)t very much and they knew a :03 wa- in the of inz.
"The diseases they had in those days were about the name sP VO
have now, but the doctors had different names for them. Appendicitia
used to be es ].lid inflammation of the bowelsit and if you got that
there War olta chance for you. Doctors have or knowledge now than
they formerly had, and we don't have th-r, severe epidemics of chlera
and black dyptheria that used to cary away so many* aim !Ortier, wh
used to livo over here5 last six 441114n in a week because of black
d AheAs* There lw an epidemie of small -ox in Old 4:own forty years
sto. 1;hey hada p t housw out where the old trotinc park used to be.
The lat apidemA3 of lazto .430rtiona-that we had here occurred about
the time or the influenza epidemic durina the World War* There wasn't
a gr.st many deaths then, but itte safe to coy Ulat if it had happened
sixty years aolp ten tt2es as aany-people would have died. The doctors
have a lot of long names that nobody can understand for diseases nowt
but -when you (tem* to think of it edicIe has ce a lonE way in the
span of a lifetie* Hundredt of children coadnet die ww because
of a0 epidemic, and a ca'). of skl: endicitis wouldn't be pronounced In.
1
10 rable.
"That church on Water Stret was moved up there from Great works
in 1870, and that was all of Itan yecre.before ?ether Trude]. arrived*
Father rien was the priest Ii. r then* (Father Oullette said be,
't uht her,, was an Irish pi -lest here about that tl se") Nicoll
and 44spet were two other early prietEt. Wical, apat, and O'Brien,
'apple. few o4:1! jabs her- and there
Living Lore
Old Town w 4
bad more than one parish to look aier. Soaetimes they had to go as
far 1.1„;- es Hillinocket. Father Trudel did it, too. It wws Trude' who
built the piece on Lne trent end or that church. 114 christened me, too.
"If that convent had been there when I started to go to school
my parents would probably have sent me there, but that place we:, put
up orly fifty-four ye re so. I was one of the firet scholars there,
but I attended it only two years By that time I had graduated from
the grammar grades*
°After I left school I worked on the boom unti it closed in the
fall. That waL in 1807* I rafted logs all summer for fifty cents a
day. A bewm is a long line of logs tied or chained securely together
end to end. The ends of such a boom may be tied to piers or to some
point on the shore. A boom like- this might have fifty different uses.
It could be used to ulde loco toward a mill popa, or to keep them from
drittin utaftov they got there. However when people used to talk
of working on the born they didn't mean a line of logs like that. By
tI.1 way a 'main boom," or double boom, was inae to two lines of logs
wedged together so that man wouldn't have to be an ortpert to be able
to walk along it. A beam that run along the shore wr,!? called a shore
boom" or short logs. What I was Eolng to say Wa.:- that the boom at Pea
Cove ww, operatd by the Penobscot Log Driving Association. Logs were
tloatec down stream from te woods during the spring drives and trapped
in a jam at Pea. Cove. Those logs were all aarked with the owners
special marks, and the job at the boom war, to sort out those togs end
raft the different marks together. The small joints' were ootabined
in long rats and floated down frAa the bbom to the mills of the v pious
owners. You might stat dlen river to Bangor wIth.a lunc rat, but if
some of the los were for mllis in Old Town or Orono, all you had to do
MALI*
L1.17..ng Lave
Old -eon
we kit* out the 111 ng end *hove
the roper otrta almir to vbor the le ,11 boom wod ,Lide them to
where they -41 stapposeed to r-ies am in the main raft would
be pul inc the eectione tOcethera*
ft.Q.!by the man Mike, the bees
other day whet
a ,-10 Irs, and I told him it we Where they kept the horses in
the woAds, Let r on 1 Ulouightlbatwss wrong, What about it?"
MOLL "If yAltd evr taken horsea to the linzle and left them
flight, the boss woud have 04,1ained what it wre the no t morning*
A dIngle is a storehouse or meats and provisions. You ster thinking
about the *hovel be wensan wa a ind of little *tore where to.
bloc°, socks, mit si thread, and stuff like that w V sold, The
tilekeeparo ws also this clerk of the venoms slept there, and there
*fps always a spars- bank for the main boss, 2he clot* and the coOkee bad
bw.ko n the cook room where the crew ate their meals* and the blaok.
smith *A the /pew filer, the sou441 the bead chopper1 the tileiteeper, an4
thec sealerfelt superior to the common woOdamons but if t_e7 were 041
fellows they tri4 not to slw it, If a Aan we c d, tholkho he wer
always rospeeted no mettr what he worked tit•
"Vb* I cult work on the boas .0 or rather when it cloud
a job Ln the vulva/11 in Greet Work*. That s titty-Wo years ace
and live been there wivr slaws,I worked in the yard for we years
and on the °hipper ter one year before I wont !Aside. Thatmall wee
a pretty *mall place then op -capered to Whist it is now
LAU "Some one told me yoLl helped io bend the rounlatione of
tha mill,"
a
Isg Lore
la TOmm 6
I didetp thy must have got
else. But I kliAs quit* a lot sib4.7ut It ;lot the s:me. Thor* *WO same
of ua standing *round doom there one day whom C3pp was there. 114 vas
the ownor of the mill and a mil.tonsIre-aoveral ties over. Mo ems
looking at a dryer and he says to Nontwort, (the ei,ori!tendent). II
w sh I could remember how lonz this dryer bee been in i•re. I supp41•41
1111 have to jet than to o ttweh tho r cords 1!) Boston to find ol;t.g
'There, n need 0 jong to that bothir, Ur. Clapp,* says,
airier w ;ut in there in the moor of 14 goo
Homomm. Glop say*. OT4u seem pret4 aure of your :sou young
'Ye.
ma to set the
mild it coot to 4o the w rk.
arAl I wont on to tell• him how ln1 it to
4 iha the toes of LA* crew was, and what they
Gosh* 'C1ap seys, lither4ilt no meld dkeeping moor s as lane
as you stay hart.,
'I t At h14' a lot &oro a& out 4ifsrent thinrs In the a 111 he
wan ed to know about ,M he copied it all doom in a wok. After that
vhabover he wanted to ow ytn oblut lsoe, he always OTWO
ms,
°Mere ..4tpo tor ntwort vs
Lowinc him Jar0u tbc scl, and evi4po
where 1 w e at work. You must romombor re
that intt..rvi'w in the
!sow Mot g:issled veterant•thut the reporter ep,*4 *bout woe mti*
(1 eouldnit remakliber the interview when Mr. Polletier mantiozed
it, but Utter I did. It lour an eaeotmt by Henry Buxton of en interview
with Walter tworth. and it muat Liave opourred late ir Juno or eLrly
in JV"h romembe,ted it partioulsAy because a look or VW110 afterimrd
I into:
"ea Mr Wentworth at his home to cet some material far the
Main
Liv tj. Lore
Old 7
*Lexicon of Trade Jar mto and Buxton's interview wee mons,
tionedo Wentworth was amused by Buxton's referenoe to the *horse and
buc:y days." Uro Wentworth la a familiar fl4iure on Old Towel streets
where he may often be seen sittin4:, primly erect in lila bu&I while an
employee, who drivels him to and from the mall, holds the reins.)
*Wentworth says to me, 'How 1 n& have 31,,Ai worked herki. WiketP
'Fifty one years. sir,' I says.
'Well ell the reporter says, 'that doesn't look as thol4h
the.y fire people who eve over forty five ilereil
44. *I thouisht I had hoard or all the room in that sall, but
the evaporating roam is one I can't places ifhlt do they do there?*
am" *Well that is where the water is taken out oftbo'llquor
that has been usAl in the: digesters,. When that re-,orter (Bunton) Wile
in there last sum or Vientworbh ay.Atiod me to show 1111'1 some of the water
that w s removed. I dipped some out in a dlp2er and handed it to the
reivrtero
ho says, it loAcs clear enough to drink. DO you mean to
say this water came from that black liquid down threti
'Yes air,' I says, 'the vater has to e taken out before we can
burn what- is left.,
"That liquor is made up in the soda ro m and d to the dl&es..
tees whe!:e it *bongos the wo4 ehipe into pulp. From the 81-gostore
the liquor ANSD to the wash room, then to the *vapor t;:mg. roam and
bao,k to the soda rom wleve it is used owe ain, TOL see it keeps
vine. *round and swou do Durinz the evapor5tinz process the carbon
Is burned out of the liquor, and thc lit:Wild that rune out of ttier to
go back to thosoda roln looks jat lie molten led.
That work usti to be dons 1 the three are rotary burners.
(1 remoMber now seelmg thov. burners, The hree of them, one next to
the
bot3.os of lane hme. t lc ozio
or 2.crer than As. the
They wen hea
fires um4spuesthil and they werv: always r:-volving
liquor appeared I aide as a Whitelot molten owe 1 *leap
thought they were rotary furnaces.)
by coal
burning
%rat winter they iLstalled a ew type burner that reylaeed
the three old rotary*. That new burner *oat a cuart:Jr of alai:140n
dollars and it ewes the colony 000040 a fees* Operating emote*
It produeoe 40,000 pounds of stem Ln an hour, so 7ou can see there
in quite a saving right there. In this new burner the fuel used
is the liquor itself and that payee in fuel cost, It is nly the
Carbon in the ,1
arid, to be yawl
th!t burne• me rest of it pen back, se I
aine
Living Lore
Old Town
NW; *Let's see, the first time you were _erc I told you =IF
father came to Old Town fro quo_ tlo in 1865, but I didn't tell you
how he CAM. 114 Ind his wife and their fo%rteen children dame down
fr-fml St. Herbert in a covered wagon s,=ethin 111:e the ones used by
the old forty nIners. It war hooped and 00y0r5 canvas. You
used to see one of those around here once in a whIle. They came
down through River du Loup, Mdmundston, and Madawaska.
-*I wee three raanths old when my father moved over here to Pine
Stre t. 'hen you came over here tonight the ro had been plowed
txt down almost to its surface an so had the sidewalk: you didn't
have to wade thrcluch snow. In the old days there wz no sidewalk
and soMetimes the snow iltif six or eight feet deep on the level. More
than once I've seen mrfather coe up t at road dra, ing a homemaae slei
on which he had a barrel t:les ].our. He hauled it all the way from
upton. The road was nar-o, and scrub :Anse birch, and alders that
grAir close to it, made an arch ovcrhead. They didn't have am strett
plows in Old Town then: they use to lvtch a short, heavy log behind
a sled and let it roll along to break out the road. The best side.
walks win made of ,lanks. te,walk Hain Street was fairly wide
in the busines!, section, but ,r.4.1 the lower and down to Great Works
it es only twc Aanks wide, and they were set fnr enough apart so
that people could pass w,thJut gett.in of the planks. Sidmwalys
that weren't anked were pretty bed when the frost came o_ t in the
spring. The roads were bed, too, at that tame of the yrv.r, especial:y
in the low places. We used to see tems on Main Street deep in muddy
ruts. In the suaer the roads were smooth enouJI„ but they were
covired„ in s me laces, w::,th Just two three inches deep.
Maine
Living Lore
Old Town 10
"my father worked in different saw mills around here. One of
them was built right across the river between the lower and of
French Island and Old Town* All those* rocks that make the current
rough there, ar,, what is left of the foundations of that mill. It
was burned thirty four year ago* Shad Rips, on the Milford side
of the island, got its name from the shad that used to run there*
The people used to ctch them with aeines* The shad don't run there
now because they can't get over the dame.
"Where Jordan's Mill is now on Water Street there used to be
a small machine shop run by Tim Chapman, the f,ther of Fred. When
Chapman moved his business across the river to where it is now,
Moss Jordan started to saw "headings" in the former maccAne shop.
Headings are the tops and bottoms of barrels. Across the street,
over the store where Morin had his pool rooL.1, Strickland and Pearson
had a moulding mill* Bill Page was the foreman. Jordan kept in.
creaEing the size of his plant until it included a saw mil box
mill, a casket factory, and a movlding mill* They started making
wooden bouldings about the time Strickland and Pearson went out of
business.
"If you interviewed Ovid. Morin you know that he lives on Boo.
worth Street, but do you know how it came to be called that? Bos-
worth is not a French name* Old Charlie Bosworthes father you
remember Chsu lie, the fellow that had the wooden leg? used to
make caskets over on that street and they bamed it after him. The
caskets he made weren't very fancy affairs; they were made of soft
wood and they sold for six or eight dollars. If you wanted s:Jmething
a little better in hardwood, it would cost you a little more. George
Dr per, I remember, kept a place over ther: called 9The Old Tavern.'
Maine
Living Lore
Old Town 11
"Water Street w,s a prtty -Aid place after the drives came in.
Those ftivers used to rail* down from the head of Indian Island. The
redskins had a carman over there and when that wild gang got in sight
the Indians used to fire it off for a signal to the whites. A lot of
people used to gather on the shore to watch them land. There were
eight in a boat and when those boats hit the landing some of them
wou d go nearly all their lenjth up On the shore. The drivers made
for Water Street the first thing but they had to :.:(1t by some people,
like 'Humpy' Mischou first, that were trying to drag them in to sell
them suits of clothes. 'Humpy' worked for Fred Allen and he wee
quite a character.
%EMS
%MOM
"I've seen freer ov11 fights going on on Water Street all the
way from the bridge down to the last saloon. T:hose fellows would
get drinks and they'd start to remember words that had passed in the.
woods'. Every word had to e accounted for. About all the police
could do was to stand back and let them fight it out.
"I can remember quite a few of these old river Tleas the Sweet
boys, Jo Nichols, John Latno he waAlex,' the ex.mayorNi father.
They were arou d fir ty years ago and s me of them could do things
on logs you wouldn't beliexe could be done. I've seen Jo Nichols
take -a 'clapboard cUtv and spin it end for end in the water. ("Spin-
ning a junk" was described in an article on the boom that I wrote
last fall.) A clapboard cut was j st a thick log as long as a clap.
board. They used to cut clapboards from. The log wasn't rolled in
the ordinary way, y understand; they used to spin them end for
end. Once they got it started, they'd keep it going.
Main
Living Lore
Old town 4. 12
*There usod to be a saw mill in Great Works. It was right
where the company power house is now. I've seem more than one.
driving boat go through that sluide and strike the white water at
the other end. People used to go down there to watch the rafts go
through; it war quite a sight. They used to think it was great
sport to ride the rafts froll Old Town down the rier to Bangor:.
People Ake the Smiths, the Rogers, and the Hiqks, idth plenty of
money, used to bring lunches down in boxes and board rafts for the
sail down river. Nobody objected, least of all the people who
worked on the rafts. It was just ,00d company for them. Going over
the dam wn where -thy ,Tot their biggest thrill. The rafts, of
course, didn't go over the falls: they could have been broken up
that way. The boats down through the sluice, but the mete
went by way of the apron. The mem part of the dam droved off
sharply and the current ran pretty fast through the sluice, but
the. apron sloped down very gradually. It wtls quite a sight to see
the rafts of shipmaste go through. They were about seventy feet
long, and of course they had to be rafted lengthwise. They used
bitch poles in rafting the shipmate bees se they had to be careful
they didn't break apart. There was a lot of money tied up in one
of those rafts.
!It wasn't only logs and thipmasts that were floated down.
The sawmills used to make 11 rafts of dimension, and on those they
would. pile boards and smaller stuff such as clapboards, laths, and
bunches of sh.Lnles. Ihey irre floated down to the docks in Bangor
'hove they Were broken up and loaded on to vessels. .'lhen the water
wac hi h early in the year they.cquld make the rafts bigger and
heavier. I've seen them 150 feet long and 50 feet wide. A raft of
thot size represented a lot of money
Maine
Living Lore
Old Town 13
"On the dimension rafts that earr,ed the smaller stiff, they
used to bore two boles at the front end and drive in posts that
kept an Bx8 from slipping off* This piece of tiliber ran along the
front end and the boards livre piled with one end of them resang
on that.. It had the effect of .4.ppiL:L up the front end. The rafts
were steered, with sweeps fol,rteen feet long and tapered up to a
point at one end.
"You used to see a lot of logs 'hedgehog edl along the shore
in the fall. Sometimes ther, would be as much as 10,000,000 feet
ahead. Those 1 gs stayed there all winter, anC. in the spring the
mills used them be run on until the ring drives started to come
in. The o ly drives we tee around here now are pulp wood drives.
They used to dry all the wood they used here (to make pulp), but
now they use the wet staff,
*Spe6iking of the apron 12 the dam reminded me of a queer sight
any one can take th down near the Waste Dam. Those sea Lulls will
alight on the wstr about fifty feet svA,ve the dam amid let the cur,
rent carIl them down the runway* Just before they get to the rough
water thorn go up in the air and fly back to where they started
from. They are like a bunch of kids, sliding* I've stopped a couple
of times over on the Bradley road when I wap driving down to Bangor
to watch them.
"It'S funny that I've lived here all mir life, but my boys are
scattered all over the co.untry. That picture on the wall thsre is
on of Rudolph, my oldert boy.. Be is in Mi.tvouri now working in a
varnish plant. He was on a terpedo boat in the navy -/uring the
World War. He was over there when the German fleet surrendered to
the British* That photograph on the piano is one of my youngest boy;
he graduated from the high school last year. yet.:.r he is at a
Maine
LivIng Lore
Old Town 14
CCC camp. When the boys get finally settled, maybe they'll take after
me enough to stay put.
have belonged to the Catholic Forsters for the last thirty
yetl.:, and my wife and I have been in the Grange for twenty.five
yeas. When the Knights of Columbus got their charter here I was
too- old to be anything bvt a charter member in that so I never
joined. it. I have a life insurance policy in the Prudential, though.
"Those accordians tndey the table belong to me and the wife.
We played at WZBZ when that station first started an maybe wed be
playing ther now if it wasn't so f r from home. Accordian MUffic
w s-methLng of a novelty on the radio thent people liked it. We
played at the fist Auto Show in Bangor, and whenever the Grange' has
8n en-i,ertc,inment, I gues!-- they'd think it strange if we weren't there
to .lay. Guess Uve played the accordian for fifty years. If I
gave 7411 a. list of the songs v;e played, it would be a lang one. We
could probably play all night without having to repeat anything.
We always played the music of thc: day* 4:hosir I played fifty years'
co were songs such as Over the Waves, Turkey in the Straw, The
Utah Walthermoman„ and others of thnt type. Any music is good if•
it's played right at the proper tiLe. I like all of it.