Document text
WRITER Robert F. Grady
ORIGINAL MSS. OR FIELD NOTES (Check one)
PUB. Living Lore in New England
(Maine)
TITLE Like Pelletier, French Canadian Yulp
i-tper orker)
DATE WDS. PP. 66
CHECKER DATE
SOURCES GIVEN (9) Interview
COMIENTS
The Life Of Mike Pelletier, French Canadian
Pulp paper,
(As told by himself to Robert F. Grady)
(contintued)
Maine
Living Lore
old Town ----15
Mike: "Ali right, let's go. I wish those James folks
were here now. You'd get a lot about Oldtown from them. James
and his family were visiting us last summer, and we toot them
around to a lot of places in the car. He is the chief of poi-
iece in Valley Park, Missouri. He sat with me out there in
the sun porch with the windows open and a bteeze blowing in,
and he says to me, "Mike, the breeze from that pine wood is
wonderful 1 We never get anything like that in Missouri."
I'd been living right near that wood all my life, and I never
thought anything about it. We took them down to Bar Harbor
to the Thunder Hole, and down to the coast to dig clams."
Mts. Pelletier: "James enjoyed that clam digging: it
was something entirely new to him. We haa a clam bake on the
shore. He gets a big kick out of photography, and he took
a lot of pictures down there."
Mts. Pelletier stepped out of the room for a moment to
return with a box of prints and enlargements made by James,
In several of the scenes the entire group had been photographed,
and Mr. Pelletier explained that Tames camera was equipped
with a time arrangement that enabled him to focus the camera
and join the group before the shutter was snapped. The enlarge-
ments, which were about as large as sheets of typewriting pap-
er, were especially good. Among the prints was a picture of
Thunder Hole, several taken at the scene of the clam digging,
and one taken on Indian Island.
Maine
Living Lore
Old Town ---16
Mrs. eelletier: (pointing to the picture taken on the Island)
"It was very funny. Mrs. James asked one or the Indians if the
natives ever got wild. She meant, or course, if they ever went on
the warpath or scalped people. The Indian said, few of us do,
`madam, but only on Saturday nights.'"
Mike: "Tames thought living so near the hunting and fishing
regions was great. Be said they had to travel two or three days
to get a chance to hunt where he came from, and the season lasted
only three days at that. Be was pretty enthusiastic,about this
place, and he aid that when he started on his vacation next year
he wasn't going to stop anywhere enroute, but that he was going to
come straight to Oldtown."
Mts. relletier: "It's no wonder they liked Oldtown so well.
We were out there in saint Louis once. That is such a smoky city!
If you put your hand on a rail outdoors you get it sooty, and the
bricks in the buildings are not red, but black from soot. The
smoke doesn't rise like it does here: it settles down near the
ground.
"We liked the trip on the bus. Those drivers are such smart
young men! We never had to think about our baggage."
Mike: "I enjoyed watching those drivers cut around corners
in New York Uity with those big busses. We went on the Greyhound
Line. We went through the Holland Tunnel and across New Jersey,
rennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. On the way back we came by the
southern route through Virginia. At the end of the run I noticed
there was a mark on the back of the drivers coat where the back of
the seat had pressed against it.
Maine
Living Lore
Old Town ---l7
"And speaking of travel reminds me of something about Oldtown.
When the Maine Central first run here it was called -the Auropean
Aailroad. The Bangor and Aroostook was called the Bangor and Fis-
cataquis, and it run from Bangor to Greenville. Later they run the
trains to Bangor around the other way and the trains from Oidtown
connected with them at south Lagrange. That train was called the
Hump backed =press because the conductor, Jim Eider, was humpbacked.
The Bangor and Aroostook tracks were torn up five years ago, and
the people who owned lots along the right of way shared in that land.
They tore up three or the bridges up above here, and where their
roundhouse was in Hartwell there is now a trailer camp.
A. Grady: "Do you know anything about thclt old house that
Chester Aobbins repaired
Mike: "That old house on Chester Street used to be called the
Sawtelle house. George Barding's wife, who was a Getchell, inher-
ited that place, and Harding sold it to Robbins. Some people say
the land belongs to the Maine Central, and some say the city owns
it. The house was about ready to fall down, and every one thought
Aobbins, who has a lot of civic pride, was going to tear it down
to rid the town or an eyesore. But instead or unut he started to
repair it. He put an an expensive roof, built new foundations, and
put in new windows and so forth. I understand he intended to make
the place over into an inn, but for some reason he didn't complete
the repairs. Maybe he thought he'd lose money if he started a
11•111ft
hotel -there are so many overnight camps around here. That would
A
have been a good location for a hotel, though, as it's so near the
station.
Maine
Living Lore
Old Town ---18
The kids have smashed out most of the windows, and it probably wont
be long before it looks as bad as ever."
Mike: *That sawmill of General Veazie's where my father
worked was before my time. I know he worked there, but I couldn't
describe it. In the winters they never used to remove the snow
from the roads; they just broke them out. The people would just
shovel paths from the door to the road.
"At those kitchen breakdowns we used to have whatever kind of
music there was available. Somebody might have a fiddle, or maybe
it would be an accordian or a Jews harp. Sometimes we sang songs.
If there wasn't room for square dancinl, we'd dance clogs, We used
to have straw rides, too, but I guess they kind of went out when
the automobiles came in. About twenty of us -or ten couples -used
to fill a hayrack with straw, toss in a barrel of beer, and set
-1- lout for some farmhouse. I'v one on more than one of them out to
french Settlement -West Oldtown- or Pushaw Pond. When we went to
French Settlement some one would go out around to all the farms and
collect as many people as they could to join'n the fun. We sang
songs, danced, played games- like postofficW-drank the beer and had
a good time generally."
"I was out fishin' once with a fellow and we forgot to bring
any bait with us. We didn't know just what to do about it, but I
saw a snake witha frog in his mouth, and I says to my partner,
If we only had that frog it Maglat do.' 'Watch me get that,* he
says, and he pulled a bottle of whiskey out of his pocket and pour-
ed some into the snake's mouth. The snake dropped the frog, and we
used that for bait. Well, after we caught a few fish we started
Wine
Living Lore
Old Town ---19
to look around for some more frogs, and what did we see but our
friend the snake with two more frogs in his mouth that he was
bringin' to us.
"I told that story to Mayor Cousins at a Grange meetin', and
he says, 11.14MtMike, I d -d -didn't know you d -d -drank.' He's an
awful man to stammer. He's not so bad when he's with just one, but
when he's talkin' to a crowd he's pretty bad.
There's been just three changes in the work in the evaporatin'
room since I went to work at Great works. When I started work there
they use4 o burn the liquor by hand. Then they put in those three
rotary burners. The automatic burner they have now is the best of
them all.
"I've seen some bad accidents down there. To Gallant was down
in the basement when a digester started to blow. The collar came
off a valve and the digester blew right in the basement room. When
we cleared away that pulp we found To on his hands and knees against
the wall. His flesh was cooked so much that when we tried to pick
him up, the flesh came off in our hands. You probably remember when
old Henry Curran got his sleeve °ought when he was oilint a shaft.
Before they got the power shut off every bone in Curran's body was
broken.
"Those epidemics that used to carry off so many children could-
n't happen now because the doctors know more about takin' care of
sick people. They have serums that help to keep diseases from gett-
in' out of control now.
Maine
Living Lore
Old Town ---20
Old Doctor Folsom brought me out of the black diphtheria. Be used
to stamp around with that wooden leg of his. One of his legs was
cut off so that the stump was just long enough to strap the wooden
leg to."
"I never saw any trouble or fights in the woods, but I saw a
couple of bad accidents. They have men workin' around the blacks-
mith shop makin' Sleds, and one of these fellows had a sled runner
between his legs and he was hewin' away at it with an ax when the
ax slipped and cut his knee cap right in two. 1 saw another fell-
ow get his leg crushed with a log on the landin'. That was up at
Brandy Pond, about a miles above Costigan. They had to haul those
fellows out to the railroad station at Costigan, and from there they
took them to the hospital in Bangor. There wasn't much they could
do for those fellows in the woods except to do a rough job at sett
in' the bone and put splints on the leg, but I supose that had to
be done over again when they got the fellow to the hospita1.11.1With
that split knee cap !Ili they could do was to bind it up to stop
the bleeding, and get the fellow to Bangor as quick as they could.
"There was seventy five men in that crew where I was. On rainy
days the'd sit around playin' cards --poker, for matches or beans,
or high -low -jack. Sometimes they'd have some clothes to darn or
mend, and sometimes therd grind axes or make ax handles. I've seen
as much as a barrel of ax handles ahead. They made some pretty good
handles just with an ax and a jack knife and maybe a piece of brok-
en glass.
Maine
Living Lore
Old Town ---21
"To play poker if you didn't have any money you could go to
the wangan and get a can of amokin' or a plug or chewin' tobacco.
The banker in the game would give you ten or fifteen beans for that,
and if you still had the beans at tue end of the game, you could
get your tobacco back. A bean represented one cent in merchandise.
The men were supposed to boil their clothes every week or two on
Sunday, but some of them didn't bother. We used to build a bon fire
down by the brook, and put the underwear in a boiler full of water
over the fire.
There was always SOMB one sems11, that collected spruce gum that
they kept in a cloth bag. They'd make a dollar or two seliint the
gum to some drug store when they got dawn river in the spring.
"Beans were cooked in bean holes mostly on the drives, but some-
times they cooked them that way in the woods. You see on the drivws
the men were always on the move, and they couldn't very well carry
a stove with them and keep takin' it down and settin' it up all
all the time. They knew where the bean holes were along the shore,
A
and all the cook had to do when the rear went by was to hop into
a boat with his pots and pans and provisions and row down to the
next bean hole.
'We used to cook about ten quarts of dried beans a day for
those siventy five men4 and that would be twenty quarts of cooked
beans. The bean hole was about two feet deep and three feet square,
but I've seen them four feet square. We lined the hole with rocks
to hold the heat, and then we threw in some wood and got a good
fire going. When there was plenty of hot ashes and coals in the
hole we raked them away from the Middle and set in the bean pot.
Then we raked the coals and ashes back over the iron pot.
Maine
Living Lore
Old Town ---22
That pot had an iron cover that fitted on tight. We never had to
add any water because that cover kept ail the steam in. We filled
the hole in with ashes. The beans cooked in about twelve hours and
they had to soak about twelve hours before they were put in the hole.
We used about a pound of pork to a quart of beans, and about a cup
of molasses, to color the beans, to ten quarts."
Nike: The only fruit we ever had ror the table in that camp
was stewed prunes. We had salt cod and p.Lenty of beef. Sometimes
we had pea or bean soup or beef stew. We always had doughnuts,
and sometimes the cook wouldn't use the bean hole; he'd just cook
the beans on top or the stove in the iron pot.
"On those cimin' trips we always brought a little something
to eat along with the clams. It might be bread, crackers, cake,
pie -anything that any one wanted to bring along. Green corn, on
the cob, is pretty good cooked along with the clams. You just cook
it right under the seaweed. You always have to take something along
to drink for there's no fresh water down there at the shore. A lot
of people make tea or coffee when they're cookint the clams. You
don't have to pay anything to dig clams —just fina a good place
and go to it.
"They have clam hoes to dig the clams with, but I always used
a garden spade. One of those, you know, with four prongs on it.
The way we baked the clams was to find a flat rock and build a
fire on it of driftwood to heat it up. When the rock is pretty hot
you rake the ashes off and just lay the clams on the rock with some
seaweed over them. I suppose the clams are really steamed because
there's a lot of water in them and the steam forces the shells open.
The water drops down on tha hot rock and makes a lot of steam too.
Maine
Living Lore
Old Town ---23
Mike: "When I started goin, to school there were just two sch-
ools here: the McKinley School up there next to the city hail, and
that little one down on Main Street that Mitchell made over into a
house. There was just two rooms and two classes in that schoo (on
Main Street): one upstairs id one down. The McKinley school,
where I started in, was a lot bigger. They had four big rooms,
two up and two down-ana the hallways and coat rooms were big. There
were two grades in every room except one where there were thwee.
Those were what they callea the intermediate graaes-- 3, 4, and 5.
There were two teachers in that room one was eannie Murphy. Frank
Averill's sister, Gertie, taught in one of the rooms upstairs for
a long time before she went to work in the postoffice. That McKin-
ley School was a two story, wooden building with a brick and gran-
ite basement. They USA(' coal in the furnace to heat the school.
There was fairly modern plumbing in the basement, but there weren't
many houses in town then even the best ones that had sewer conn-
ections. There was no drinkin' water piped inside, but there was
a good well in the yard. There was no fire escape on that building,
but it would be a pretty modern school even today. The seats were
about like what they have nowaaays, ana everything was hardwood in-
side. That McKinley School burned flat soon after they built that
big Helen Hunt School on Brunswick street. That was named for a
teacher that taught here for a long time. Now they have that Helen
Hunt School and the Herbert Grey School and a high school in Oldtown,
besides the convent and a school in Great works (ward 5) and one
on French Island. Of course there are a lot of little country sch—
ools outside the sity.
Maine
Living Lore
Old Town ---24
"About the only story I can think of right now about when I
went to school is about a boy named Fortin. Be was pretty wild,
and they had to expel him for actin' rough and swearint. Be threw
a book and hit Miss Edgerly right in the face. She was a daughter
of that Dr. Edgerley that used to be here. George Sewell was the
superintendent of schools then, and he came down and expelled For-
tin.
"I don't think anybody carried a lunch then because we all liv-
ed right in town. The kids that lived out in the country had their
own little schools then, but they've closed some of them because
it's cheaper to bring the scholars in to town in busses than it is
to run the little schools. That would have been pretty hard to
bring the kids in sixty years ago because they had no big, fast
busses or good roads like they have now.
"The convent is the only wooden school they have now right in
the city. I went there the last two years I went to school. They
had no plumbing in that then, but they have now. They had a pump
in the yard too, but they did away with that. The city condemned
most of those wells some years ago, but the city water is treated
A
chlorine and it's all right to drink.
One of my chums, Freddie King, was killed when he was seven
years old. Be was out swimmin' and he dived in and struck his head
on a rock under the water. I wasn't there when he got hurt, but I
went to his fundral. Be lived just three days and his head swelled
up to twice its proper size. Charlie King was his father.
Maine
Living Lore
Old Town ---25
"I never had a bicycle when I was a boys -I was afraid to get
on one. Ali they had here then were tricycles and those with a
big wheel in front. pu could get an awful flip on one of those things.
There was just that small wheel behind, and if it struck a rock,
you were apt to get tossed right over the handlebars."
R. Grady: I thought those bicycles went out long before you
were born."
Mike: "No: they had them around here then.
"I was the oldest boy at home, and I helped quite a lot with
chores around the house. I shoveled paths in the winter and help-
ed some in the garden in the summerOttrried in wood, and brought
in water from a pump in the yard. Father always raised some tobacco
every year. Some of the leaves on those plants would be 18 inches
long. Be used to cut the tops off so the plants would spread out
more. Be started them in a hot bed so they'd have a little longer
growin' season.
"When I was ten years ola I used to go out in the woods with
father to help cut the years wood. We -book our lunch and stayed
all day. We'd build a fire at noon and heat up whatever we had.
It was usually meat or egg sandwiches and some kind of pie or cake.
We used to carry a bottle of tea that we'd heat up out in the WOOdS
in a big tin can that we kept for that. We cut ten cords every
year that's what we used in the house. What we cut one winter,
we'd use the next.
"When I was a kid I was too busy to have any ambitions. I
had some younger brothers and sisters, and 1 had to help father to
support them. When I got that job in Great Works the only ambition
I had was to stay right there as long as I could." (BA's been there
for 53 years.)
Maine
Living Lore
Old Town --26
R. Uradyl, "You evidently had an ambition to get a pretty nice
house for yourself."
Mike: "Yes, I got this house, such as it is, and it's all paid
for, too. I own two lots across the street where my garage is, and
I generally have a garden over there every year. I got a Doge car
in 1928 and last year my wife swapped it for a new Plymouth. She
made the deal and i didn't know a thing about it. We took a trip
up to Oanada that year to see a cousin of mine who runs a garage
there, and about a week after we got back this fellow drove into
the yard with a new Plymouth. 'Is that your car," I'says, when we
were sittin' here in the kitchen. 'Not, he says, 'that's yours1
and she's a sweet runnin' baby.' 'Nine?' I says, and he says, 'sure,
and he told me how my wife had arrangea to turn in the Dodge when we
were up in Grand Isle. (I(m not sure now whether he said Grand isle
or Grand .bells: it was either one.)
"That Dodge was in pretty good shape. Of course it pumped
oil, but all it needed to stop that was new rings. When he left
here to go home in the Dodge he says, 'Do you suppose I'll make it?'
We got a postal from him that he mailed the next day. He left here
at nine in the morning, and he got to Grand Isle at 5 o'clock
that night, so the old Dodge must have traveled right along.
like this Plymouth though. You can get th,A up to sixty miles an
hour and it rides smoother than the Dodge used to at thirty. i
never run a car in the winter, and i guess that Plymouth will last
me as long as I live.
"I was twelve years old when i learned to play the accordian,
and Home sweet Home was the first piece i learned. i played the
harmonica when i was ten. rather played the violin, and Lewis and
George played thedgarmonica.
Maine
Living Lore
old Town ---27
Lewis played the accordian some, too. Some of those old pieces we
used to play you never hear now, and I don't know where anybody cou-
ld get them, if they could at all. There was Pe k- o Rock -a -bye
/I
Baby, man in the Moon, Speed the Plow, and a lot more like Over the
Waves and Turkey in the Straw that didn't die out.
"We used to have a lot of parties in those days, ana we gener-
ally had a good time. The expense was so small that it wasn't worth
mentionin'. vie used to play rostoffice Spin the elate, play the
Cushion, Uatch the Rat, Blind man's Bluff and The Turn Over Caine.
In that last one two of them used to lay down on the floor head to
head and on their backs, and lock legs together and try to turn
each other over. The girls used to play it, too. They'd wear
bloomers or put on an old pair of pants, and some of theme were
pretty good at it. I've seen them turn some of the men over. Spin
the Plate, Blind Man's Bluff, and Catch the Rat were kissin' games.
They'd take a plate and stand it on edge and give ita spin. If you
could catch it without knockin' it flat, you could kiss the girli
but if you missed the plate, you had to take a turn spinnin' it.
In Catch the Rat they had a handkerchief tied up to represent the
rat and you had to pick out the one that had the handkerchief.
Everybody knows how to play Blind Man's Buff and Postoffice. In that
cushion game they used to put a sofa cushion on the floor behind some
one. The game was to sit down before some one could pull the cushion
away.
"We used to have candy pulls, too, and molasses candy was a great
favorite. They used a cup of molasses to a half cup of sugar, a little
salt, some vinegar, and a spoonful of butter. After that cooked a
while they set it on the back of the stove to cool off a bit, and
Maine
Living Lore
Old Town ---28
then they stirred in some soda to make it fillg up.. Then they'd
A
take it out and pull it until it started to harden up. Some peo-
ple used butter on their hands durin' that pullin; and some used
flour. That pullin seemed to make the candy grainy and less glassy.
It had about the same effect as kneedint dough, I guess. Sometimes
at those parties we had ice cream, and we always made that at home
in a freezer; it wouldn't have seemed like a party unless we die.
They used to make maple sugar around here, too. George Gard-
ner has a sugar house now out near his cottage on the road to Push-
aw Pond. They had big pans to put the sap in, and they'd build a
iire under than to boil the sap down. Once they started sugar makin'
they kept it up day and night until they got throught. There were
three stages in that boilin' process. They got maple syrup from
the first- that's what George Gardner makes, mostly- soft maple
sugar candy in the second, and maple sugar in the third. They
had moulds in the shape of banks, churches, dolls, and so forth
that they used in makiat maple sugar candy.
A
"You were sayin' something about superstitions the last time
you were here... About seventy years ago there used to be a brick
house down near the river below Wings Mill. That was a 'bad'
A
house, and there was a ledge along side of it that ran right down
to the water. Some people named Niles lived there. My father
said somebody told him they looked in through a window one night
and they saw old Niles, with black gloves on his hands, dancin'
around the room. The queerest part of that place was the tracks
in the ledge that led from the door down to the edge of the water.
/a"
Maine
Living Lore
Old Town ---29
There was an awful deep hole in the river bed right there. I've
seen those tracks myself and I've walked barefoot in them. They
were the tracks of a man and you could see where a dog had walked
alongside of him. Right near the edge of the water there was a
place scooped out of the ledge so that it looked like a seat in the
rock. I don't know how that got there. It couldn't have been
worn by the water because it was too high up for that. I'ts
pretty hard to account tor those tracks in the ledge, too. They
were all of three inches deep, and I've seen them myself. That
was all of sixty years ago 4 That ledge is all covered up now with
dirt and saw dust. reople used to say that it was the devil that
walked across there.
"Then there was the old Burnham house on Main Street, half
way between here and Great Works, that they said was haunted. No-
body lived there, but at night people said that sometimes you could
see lights goin' from one room to another.
I've heard my father tell stories about Canada, and some of
them were facts.
"When they started.a new village up there they used tp bury
g»
peopie under the church until a cemet,kry was made ready. There
A
was a girl died up there, and her folks noticed that her flesh
stayed soft. She was buried under the church, and when it came
time to dig her up to put her over in the cemetery, her mother
said she'd like to have the coffin opeted so she could see her
daughter again. They opened that coffin and they found that the
girl had turned over on her face, and that most of her hair had been
pulled off and the/ ends of her fingers had been worn down to the
bone.
Maine
Living Lore
Old Town ---30
She evidently had woke up out of the trance she was in, and as
long as the air held out she struggled to get out of that grave.
There was another story about a woman that died, and when they
were havint a funeral service in the church she sat up in the
casket, and then got up and walked home. The undertakers never
used to embalm anybody then, and I suppose the doctord didn't
know so much as they do now, either, and sometimes people got
burned alive.
"There was a story about two brothers that livea some dis-
tance from the village store. One of the brothers was down at the
store one night, and when he was there the other one told his
mother he was goin' down the road a ways to scare him when he was
comm' back. Be was a kind of wild actor, and he got an old cow-
hide with the horns on it ana pulled it on over his head and wait-
ed behind a tree near the road until he maw his brother comin' home.
The other brother saw this figure with the horns comin' to meet
him and he picked up a fence rail to defend himself. Be hit his
other brother right between the horns and laid him out on the road
and then he ran hone and told his folks that he had killed the devil.
The old folks had an idea of that had happened and they ran down the
road to look. They found their son laying there with his head smashed
Accordin' to the old story they weren't able to get the horns off
the boy's head, and they had to bury him that way. He'd played
the devil so much that he finally turned into one.
"There was another story my father used to tell that he thougilt
couldn't have happened, but with what we know now about radio waves
we can see that it could have been possible. Sounds are carried
Maine
Living Lore
Old Town ---31
around the earth now on waves of electricity, and there's no
reason why they couldn't have been then. Accordin' to the story,
some people were sittin' on a perch one night, and they heard the
sounds of oars in rowlocks. it sounded as though some one was
rowin' a boat up in the air. Then they heard a Shout: 'LOOK OUT!
THERE'S A ROCK AHEAD! Now the people in that boat might have been
a thousand miles away, and the sounds they made might have been
picked up and carried along by electricity in the air and attracted
to that spot by some natural magnet in the rocks. Back in the old
days they said things like that were the work of banshees
(On a previous visit to Mr. relletier's home I asked Mike
to describe the improvements that had occured in his room since he
started work there. He described three processes in detail, but,
as I said before, I couldn't remembery any part of them. This time
I asked him to describe only the first one. He did that but he
went on and described the other two as well, so I was just as bad
off as before. Guess I'll have to ask him to write out the accoun6
or those processes.)
"That work is a lot easier now. When I started in there I
had to work ten or twelve hours a day for only #1.25. Now I
work six hours and I get three times as much pay. My wife went
down to Bangor today to some sale and Bill Riolx is uptown, so I'm
all alone. However I put up my own lunch anyway. My life used to
ask me if I didn't want her to get up and get my breakfast, but I
told her to stay in bed. I could get breakfast and put up a lunch
just as well as she couid. There was once I was puttin' up six
lunches includin' my own.
',my wife and 1 are goin' to play at a grange meetin' in
Maine
Living Lore
Old Town ---32
Bangor Tuesday nigh t, but we'll have to use our old accordians. I
sent for two new ones to Montgomery, Ward, and Company, but when
they got here I found they weren't matched. When we play on those
old ones you'd think it was just one instrument, but I knww the
minute I touched the keys on those new ones that they were different.
keys. The keys, are supposed to be stamped bn a little tag that
goes on top of the accordians, but those didn't have any. However
I should think they would have known out there that the two weren't
matched. All they had to do was to press down on the fifth key.
That gives the key to the accordian. I suppose song shippin' clerk
saw they laaked alike and thought they were alike, but if you
played two like that together it would sound pretty bad. I like
a C or a D because they go better wit+piano".
(1 reminded Mike that he had promised to pl ay the aceordian
for my other boy if 1 brought him over, so he obligingly led the
way into the living room and picked up one of the instruments. Be
played the lively Turkey in the Straw and than he told the boy
that he had time to play just one more before it would be time for
him to get ready to go to work. "My boy," he said, "I know you're
tired of listenin' to old Mike tell stories, and you'd like to be
home playin', so I'll play one you'll be glad to hear ---good old
Home Sweet Home 2")
Maine
Living Lore
Old Town ---33
Mikes, "I guess the reason father left Canada to come to
Maine was because a lot of other people had left there and he had
heard that there were more jobs over here and better pay. I never
heard him tell or any unusual experiences on the trip down. That
took about five days. I remember now he did say that one night
one of the kids felt scared because the place where they stopped to
sleep was in the woods. Mike said before thatIthey haa come down
in a covered wagon.) The roads were pretty bad then. That country
wasn't built up very much then and a lot of the route lay through
woodland.
"We travel a lot in our car in the summertime. Out in Missouri
that time we went to see the Lindberg trophies in the memorial build-
ing in Saint Louis. Say, about everything you could imagine was theret
diamond pins, watches, cups, and the Lord knows what else. All given to
Lindberg by admirers of his. There was so much stuff that he co-
uldn't possibly keep it ail and he left it in this memorial build-
ing. Anybody could spend all day there just looking overithet4e
things. It doesn't cost anything to go through there.
"We go out berry pickin' every year. Last year we got sixty
quarts of raspberries up at the Jordan cuttings. They used to be
thick a few years ago over at the radio line, in Bradley, but that
place is all growed up now. It's pretty well growed up too out at
Pushaw Pond. Those places last only about three years. We always
take out a few sandwiches for a lunch and a little drinkin' water.
We could have got along without a lunch last summer, though, out
at the Yordan cuttings. I never saw such big berries. We filled
our pails in no time.
Maine
Living Lore
Old Town --34
Mrs. Pelletier: "It took me longer than that, though, to put
them up.
"Nike and I played over at the convent at a social Sunday night.
That was given for Father Oullette."
Mike: "He's a fine man, and well liked here."
Mrs. Pelletier: "We played the accordians and there was violin
and piano music. There was no dancing."
Bill Rioux: "There'd be no room for dancing in a school room."
Mike: "VE11, they wouldn't have danced, aiyway, on Sunday night
There was a few speakers, and after that we had some light refresh-
ments in the shape of cake and coffee."
Mrs. Pelletier: "There was some dancing, though, down in Hamp-
den Monday night when we played at that grange meeting. We didn't
get home 'till rour oclock in the morning and it was five before we
got to bed."
Nike: "That dancing was just to keep warm. I played the accord-
ian for about an hour while we were waitin' for the bus to come
along and pick us up.. There was about 300 grange members dpws there
and I guess the feature of the evening was the clam chowder."
(I mentioned that I had seen Mr. and Mrs. Pelletier's names
in the paper after they had played at the Father Oullette social
but that I didn't recognize the names at first because "Michael" was
spelled "Magliore.")
Mrs. Pelletier: "Mike's name is really 'Mitchell'. lye always
spelled my name 'Pelletier,' but he spells his 'Pelky.' It's funny
up on the voting lists they have me down as Mrs. Catherine Pelletier
and him as Mike relky.
Maine
Living Lore
Old Town ----35
I heard that aid mill(the Oldtown Woolen mill, which has been
shut down for two years) has been sold. They say they're going to
junk some of the old looms and put in automatic worsted looms. I
heard, too, that it was going to be a powder mill and an aeroplane
factory. T wish that mill would start it would be such a fine
thing for Oldtown. But believe it two weeks after it starts up.
(Albert came in about here to tell about the accident to his
wife, and Mrs. Pelletier left to go over there.)
Mike: "They don't have any of those straw rides and breakdowns
like I told you about the last time, now. They went out when the
automobile came in. The young folks, now, go to dances and the movies.
The older people go to bridge and whist parties. Some times the young
folks have parties where they play postoffice. Those old games like
'Spin the Plate, would make a hit with them. I know it because we've
tried it out right here.
"We go to card parties once in a while, but I don't believe
we've been to the movies twice in the last year. Those 'love
pictures' are no good, but I like a good western. I don't read much
now, but I used to like western magazines and stories. When 1 was a
kid 1 never got enough of those wild west yarns. In the Bangor News
I like the sports pages and 'smile s for breakfast.' They have some
good jokes there.
"About the only woods work around the state now is pulp cuttin:
the big stuff is gone. When they used to cut that big stuff the
A
head chopper would spot the trees ahead of the sawyers by euttin a
little spot of bark off on the side that the trees were to fall.
Then the wawyers would saw them down. sometimes they'd get two or
Maine
Living Lore
Old Town 36
three logs out of one tree. The head saamper planned the direction of
the roads, and swampers would out the trees down as near the ground as
they could. They'd throw the brush to one side and fill in holes in
the road with short logs. The logs that the sawyers out were hauled
to yards and piled up there. One sled tender always worked with every
teamster. After the logs were yarded they were hauled on sleds to
landings near the brook or river that would carry them down to the boom
in the spring. Woodsmen and log drivers worked from daylight 'till dark.
The drivers had a longer day because the days were longer in the spring
and summer. They slept in tents, and sometimes they rolled up in the
blankets with their clothes wet. It was a hard life and men had to be
plenty tough. They never had colds. You know we were talkint about
bean holes the other night. You could generally find one of those near
'rips' for the drives were usually slowed up in those places, and they
were generally where the jams occurred.
"On those brook landings sometimes they'd pile logs right on the
toe, and sometimes they'd pile them along the shore. I've seen logs
piled fifteen feet high against two trees. In the spring they'd out
those trees down and let the logs roll into the water."
Bill Rioux: "I've never seen that done, Mike."
Mike: "Well, I have. Right up here on Beaver Brook."
Bill Rioux: "It must have been a job to cut those two trees down."
Mikes It was dangerous work. In the spring those logs were floated
down to the boom and the work of raftint began. Two or three hundred men
and boys worked there when I did, but the number kept dwindlint dawn every
year unti, finally the work stopped altogether. There was a lot of logs
piled up in a jam back of the gap, and a lot of different companies owned
them. All the companies had their awn marks and they used a different
Maine
Living Lore
Old Town 37
kind of mark for every kind of log; that is, pine, cedar, hemlock, and so
forth. Those marks were out on the logs up in the woods, and the logs
were suppossed to be rafted with the marks up. Those marks were something
like the brands they put on cattle out west. 'Diamond, rabbit tract;
flyinl goose; cross two notches, and so forth.
"There was an openinl in a boom in front of the jam that they called
the 'gap, y and the logs were pushed down through that gap and rafted along
a double boom they called the 'shore logs that reached down the river half
a mile or more. All the rafters had to do was to raft the logs together
with wedges and a rope. The checkers stood out on little jiggers made of
three or four short logs wedged together and hooked with a short rope to
a line that stretched from one end of the boom to the other. Every checker
had his own 'beat' and every beat was made up of 'joints,' or rafts. The
checker rolled
ones that were
were rafted in
the logs while they were floatint by him and pushed out the
suppossed to be rafted on his beat. The logs they missed
a 'stray raft' at the end of the boom, and pulled back up-
stream when the raft got large enough. When the rafts on the different
beats got large enough they were 'dropped off'
handled the swings didn't do anything else.
"All they have now on the river is pulp wood drives,
in a swing.' The men who
but they're
nothing like the old ones. The pulp wood is cut four feet long and peeled
in the woods. The boom is a thing of the past. Last year about 40,000
cords of pulp wood came iawn the river to Great Works, and 60,000 oame by
train. They haul it all the year around in trucks. They used about 500,000
cords last year. You see they have 50,000 cords in just one yard, and they
have several yards down there.
Mains
Living Lore
Old Town 38
"Say, I thoudht of sommthin' sinoe the last time you were here. I
guess it would come under the head of superstitions. When I was a kid
they used to have treasure seekers here. The story got around that there
was treasure buried somewhere along the river, and people used to pick
out likely places to dig for it. There was a medium over in Bradley* here,
and some fellows got the idea that she might help them. They vent over to
see her and she went into a trance and finally described some place where
she said there was some treasure buried. Those fellows found mhat they
thought was the place and started to dig. Finally they unearthed a pail
with a metal cover, but when they got the cover off all there was in the
pail was something that looked like a lot of leaves. They were pretty
sore and they threw the pail away and went back and told the medium about
what happened. 'You fools,' she says, tone of you broke the spell. You
had the treasure in your hands, and you threw it awayll According to the
story if any one spoke before they got the treasure in their hands, it
turned out to be morthless, and that's what the medium meant when she told
them that one of them broke the spell.
"Those stories were all about the same pattern. I've heard a lot of
them. Some men went down the river a ways to the tide water and started
to dig there. They came to a chest and one of the man shouted, 'WE'VE GOT
IT:' That, of course, broke the spell, and they found the chest was empty.
Pretty near the same story was told about a party that dug up here near
Eva's Point, opposite Indian Island."
Bill Rioux: "I remember hearin' about that. It happened about
seventy years ago."
Mike: "I guess nobody'll ever dig up any treasure around here, but
there must be alot of stuff buried here just the same."