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Maine
Living Lore
Old Town 51
(The Life of Mike Pelletier, French-Canadian Paper Maker)
(This evening I went over to interview Mike Pelletier. A young
fellow named Paul Cyr and Mr. Pelletier's son, Albert, were there
paying a visit. I knew both of them. Paul is a quiet fellow al-
most every one is when Albert is around. Mike is youthful and vig-
orous in spite of his sixty-eight years, and Albert resembles his
father. Both of them are interesting and rapid fire talkers, but
Albert, with the advantage of youth on his side, did most of the
talking. He's not a bore at all and he has such a pleasing and
forceful personality that people seem to like to hear him talk.
Bill Rioux was holding a three year old child on his knee when
I entered. They told me the child belonged to Robert Cust, a son-
in-law of the Pelletiers. The young fellow fell asleep on Bill's
lap shortly after I sat down, but whether it was a natural sleep or
a trance induced by the fumes of Bill's pipe would be hard to say.
The Child woke up a little while after his father called to get him,
and began to talk about wanting his ball back. As he had no ball
with him, they decided that he must have been dreaming about one.
If Albert had not been there I don't think I would have got nearly
so much of the incredible story that was told that night.)
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Old Town 52
Albert: "Hello Bob. I see Jo Martin is not with us any more." (He was
referring to a WPA worker who dropped dead today while waiting in a line at
the city hall for an allotment of federal food. Martin was fifty years old.)
"Did you hear about them °login' up Bosse down here: the fellow that runs
the White Cafe? Pretty tough for him: he'd just slapped down $20040 for a
license to keep open. There was a woman vent in there and told Bosse to send
her husband home: he was spendin, too much time there. Bosse wouldn't do it,
so she says, 'All right, Mr. Bosse, I'll have this olosed up.' She went to
see a lawyer and the next day Guy Moors (Old Town police chief) went in there
with some kind of a paper and Bosse had to olose his restaurant."
R.G.: "I heard that the government had closed up that moccasin factory."
Albert: "They ought to close that place up: it's nothint but a damned
sweatshop."
Mrs. Pelletier: "I don't think they closed them up. My girl works
there and she worked today."
Albert: "They haven't closed them up, but they're goin' to make them
pay people while they're learnint a trade. They made them work there five
weeks without a niokle."
Paul Cyr: "Yes and they get just as much for those 'A' and 1B' moccasins
as they do for the rest. They all go in together."
Albert: "Sure they do."
R.G.; "What about that old mill? Arthur Leblanc told me I mould be
surprised if I knew who was going in there."
Mike: "All I know is that they auctioned off the machinery and that
this fellow Smith, from Massachusetts, has an option on the plant until June.
That option cost $5000.00."
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Old Town 53
R.G.: "Loblano says that they haven't sold the machinery and that it's
going to reopen as a woolen mill."
Albert: "You'll never see no back there if they do. I have a steady job
now at Great Works and I'm goint to hang on to it."
Mrs. Pelletier: "Steady pay down there even if it wasn't so much, would
be better than high pay in the woolen mill."
Albert: "Sure it would. I hear some of the big fellows are Gamin' down
there tomorrow, and maybe we'll get back that out. That would help out."
Mike: "It sure would" T%."
Alberts "In that woclen mill I know how it you'll be. We'd work for
three weeks and then we'd get laid off for three months. No thanks."
R.G.1 "Is that Lincoln mill running now?"
Albert: "Yes it is and, believe me, that is some place to work."
R.G.g *I suppose Wilbur is there yet.*
Albert, *Oh yees Wilbur's there. He's got to stay there now, because
they've fired him everywhere else. The first night he worked in the now mill
(in Old Town) he had four automatics, with those time clocks on them, to run.
The boss looked in about nine o'clock and there was Wilbur runnin around those
four looms and the time cloaks hadn't moved on any of them. 'Hey, Wilbur,' he
says, 'what's the matter with you? Why aren't these looms runnint?' 'There's
nothinl the matter with me,' Henry says, 'It's the damned looms: they wont
run.' We went up to Lincoln for a job and the boss says, 'Now boys this is a
different type of work from what you've been dein', and I'm not sure you under-
stand it. Do you know anything about double reeds?' 'Sure,' Henry says,
'SUR4WIE.1 'Well,' the boss says, fiNhLt are they?' 'I'll be damned if I
know,' Wilbur says. The boss explained the double reeds to us, and we went to
work. Those double reeds were two reeds clamped together. The front one was
twice as fine as the back one. Six threads came through a read in the back,
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Living Lore
Old Town --54
but those six vent through two in front. If an end broke out you had to press
those down to find which of the reeds had only two threads, and you had to put
that end through one of the roods in front, push it over and get it through
the book one. If a bit of flying got in there and started to build up on a
thread you had to reach down between those reeds. If you didn't know how to
do it, it would take you all day to get that out, but those weavers had a
special hook for that and they could get those things out in no time.
"That filling is so fine up there that when you fill your shuttles you
have fifteen minutes before they run out. If a bobbin is left with much filling
on it you have to out if off. It's so fine it would tfke you all day to pull
it off. Drop a little piece of that yarn and it floats down like a feather.
They have a smoking room right in the weave shop and you can go in there and
smoke anytime. If you get any grease on your hands you have to wash it right
off. When you get your warp out on a loam you go on another one: no cleaning
up. Somebody else does that and he spends about three hours on a loom. When
he gets done that loam is just the same as when it came from the factory.
"They have automatic worm takeups on those looms and the first time I got
a warp out I didn't know how to roll down the cloth. I didn't want to spend an
hour windin' that down by hand, and I know Henry Wilbur had worked on Knowles
looms, so I went over to him and asked him haw to work that gear. 'Henry,' I
says, 'how in the devil do you get that cloth wound down?' 'Damned if I know,'
Henry says. I went back to that loom and started to fool around with that take-
up and I notioed a little rover folded into a slot on the side of a gear. I
pulled that lever out and whir -r -r& that cloth wound up in a second. After that
I run across anything I didn't understand I didn't waste any time &skin' Henry
Wilbur about it.
S
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Living Lore
Old TOM 0. 55
*Nhen I got through there they were runnint just three days a week and
to hold the crew they made them work every other week. I got a double and
twist end through a wrong reed and the boss says, 'Albert, I've got to lay
you off for a week.' He said he was sorry but he'd got orders to lay off
weavers for a while when they made mistakes so they'd learn to be careful. I
asked him if I could get my pay and he says, 'No: you aren't fired you're
just laid off for a week.' 'Mello' I says, 'if you lay me off, you might just
as well fire me.' He told me that any time I wanted to come back the job was
good.
"I saw old man Morton the other day. He was tellin, ma haw near he aame
to gettint a job in Lincoln once. An old friend of his got a job up there as
the boss weaver, and Morton telephoned up to him for a job. The boss telephoned
back, Sure, sure, but I'll have some one else to make a place for you. Come
up in a week.' Instead of goin' up in a week, Merton waited two weeks. He
went up there and went in the mill and he saw a big fellow strutting around
the weave shop and he went up to him and says, Mister, can you tell me where
the boss is?' 'Sure,' the big fellow says, tappint himself on the chest, 'I'm
the boss.' 'Why, Dave says, 'I thought a fellow named Randall was the boss
herel' !Well, he was last week,' the big fellow says, 'but they fired him.'
If Dave had gone up when Randal told him to, he would have got a job, of course.
He said it was the nearest he ever came to gettint a job without conneatin.'
Old Dave doesn't have to worry, though he's pretty well fixed. He jest bought
a new house up here.
"Say, if you're writint something you ought to say somethint about those
eagles they saw out at Pushaw Pond this winter. 'Humpy' Moore was out there
fishin' through the ice with a couple of other fellows, and they saw those three
/1
eagles flyint around. There was one big one and two small ones. 'HU mpyl says
they sailed around up there for two hours without flappint a wing.
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Living Lore
Old Town 56
III was listeninv to a radio program last week advertisin' Sensation
cigarette. The nano of that program was Don't You Believe It. That announcer
told about a lot of things that people believe that aren't true. He wouldn't
name the town, but he said there was a place up here in Maine where people
thought the devil had left tracks across a ledge of rock. 'Don't you believe
it,' he says, 'The devil never left tracks anywhere. Those marks were made
by the action of the water washint against the ledge.
R.G.: *Why, that's the story you told me, Mike, a couple of weeks ago,
about the tracks of the devil left in that ledge dawn below Wing's Mill."
Mike: "Those marks weren't made by the river wetiz2r: it never *ante up
that high. They were the prints of feet in the ledge. I've seen them myself.
There was a dog's tracks right alongside of them. But how do you suppose that
story ever got on the radio?"
Albert: *H -m -m, that is funny-oonie right after you told Bob about it.
I suppose, though, other people besides us knew about that. That program came
from a New York station. That same night he mentioned that gravestone down in
Buoksport where a woman's leg is supposed to appear on the stone. He didn't
say IBuokspert,' he said 'somewhere in Maine.' That was another of his 'Don't
you believe its. He said there was no magic about that: it was just caused
iby a fault in tlm rook. A friend of mine told me he saw two perfect rabbits
onoe on a gravestone. They painted them out, but they kept Gamin' back. They
were caused by a fault in the stone. He told me about another stone he saw
that had a Inman with a babe on it."
(Robert Oust cane in about here to get his child, and in discussing the
closing of the White Cafe, Oust said that the trouble started when Bosse at-
tached the wages of the husband of the woman who took notion against him.)
Albert: "Oh, no, no. You're wrong there. You can't attach any body's
wages unless he getsmore than twenty dollars a week, and that fellow doesn't."
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Old Town 57
Oust: "Well, mayae he was goinl to have the fellow jugged for not payin'
him. Do you know you can have anybody put in jail for the debt of a dollar
if you want to pay the state a dollar a day for the fellow's board. Say, they
sans near puttint my brother in jail for a debt he didn't reblly owe. He was
managing a basketball team up here, and the boys wanted suits. There were
eight of them and they went down to Bangor, and Kenny went 'with them. (Kenneth
Gust, his brother) The boys each had five dollars to pay on their suits, but
Dakin (of the Dakin Sporting Goods Company) didn't want to open eight accounts.
He thought those young fellows might not pay him, and he knew it would be
easier to collect one account than eight. Those suits cost #17.00 apiece.
They had the regular pants, blouse, and sweat shirt. Kenny let them put the
account in his name, but of oourse he wasn't gettint any suit. Those fellows
never paid Dakin a cent. Kenny was workint up here in the woolen mill and one
day Pelletier (a policeman) and Guy Moors came in with a paper. Pelletier
asked Kenny if he'd like to go to jail for a while. W brother went to a lawyer.
about it and the lawyer says, 'Oust, you've got yourself in a jam, all right,
and there's only one way you can get out of.it besides pay -in' this bill: by
takill the pauper's oath. Do you know what that it?' Kenny said he didn't have
a penny and no prospeets of ever gettint one. He says 'You're word will be no
good anywhere, you can never get trusted again."
Mike: "He'd be a sort of an outcast."
Oust: "That's the idAa. That bill wasn't big enough to go through bank—
ruptcy for, and of course Kenny didn't want to take any pauper's oath. He had
to pay it. He had to pay for all those basketball suits or go to jail. He took
that receipt and went around to see those fellows. He says to Applebee, 'Look
here, Buds I've paid for tha basketball suit of yours, and if you don't want to
pay me for it, give ne the suit. 'The heck,' Applebee says,'Ilve sold that suit.'
'Okay,' Kenny says, 'give me the money then,' Applebee says, 'I aint got
any money.' 'Well,' Kenny says, 'you better get scme pretty soon. You fellows
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Old Town 58
would have stood back and let me go to jail, and now you're either goin' to
pay me or go to jail yourselves.' Applebee paid him and so did Haley and the
rest. It goes to show you can get slapped into jail for a bill you don't owe."
R.G.: "Isn't a bill outlawed in a certain length of time?"
Albert: "No, they changed that law. They can collect a bill no matter
how old it is."
Cust: "Bills for personal services are never outlawed. If you awe a
doctor, for instance, for services rendered he can collect anytime." (Oust
left.with his child about this time.)
Albert: "Say, dad, you wcnt to tell Bob about Jojountain's sister."
Mike: "Say, there's a story for you."
Albert: "I'll say it is a story for any onet You shonld have been here
last night when Anna Fountain MRS here. You know Anna Joie wife. She was
tellin, us some stories about Jols sister that died up in Canada. She died two
years ago, but they never got a chance to bury her because she disappeared from
the room she was laid out in. They found that body two weeks ago and her fleah
was just the same as it was right after she died. The body turned up in a
friend's house, and nobody knows haw it got there. Now this is not something
that happened seventy five years ago. The body turned up two -weeks ago. Anna
sat right in that chair last night and told us about it."
Mike: "There's some people up there now investigating that. They're gain'
to put out a book about the girl, and when that book is tablished, people will
have something to read& Wasn't that in Montreal that woman lived?"
Mrs. Pelletier: "No, that town is half way between Montreal and Quebec.
I mitt remember the name of the place Saint Something. But Anna knows it."
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Old Town 59
Albert: "This woman was 42 yhen she died. She had been tempted by the
devil ever since she was a child. Her mother died when the girl was young,
and when they took her up to bury her over, they found that herflesh hadn't
changed a particle. The girl pulled some flesh out of the side of her mother's
neck and they put that piece of flesh in a covered jar on a mantlepiecm. When-
ever they take of. that cover a sweet perfume fills the roam. Anna said she
and Jo were up there after they found the body. She said there were 200 people
in the house, and for lunch they had a ham. Anna said she sliced the ham her-
self to make sandwichos for those two hundred people, but the ham didn't get
any smaller. She out off slice after slice and still remained the same size."
Mike: 14114 like to get a hold of a ham like that."
Albert: "It'd be all right if you didn't get what want with it. That
girl used to disappear. Once they found her in the woods, and once they found
her frozen in ice and smilin" up at them. They used to find'her looked in her
room with the door looked on the outside. Once she was in a room that had a
cross over the door. The door wasn't looked, but they couldn't get it open until
they took down the cross and thun the door opened itself. Onoe when she was in
her bedroom and mattress of her bed disappeared and they finally located it up
in the attic. There was only a small hole to get in that attic-, and it was too
small for the mattress to go through. The door of her room detached itself and
went up the stairs and then the mattress came down and appeared back on the bed.
Then they heard the door cone down and it attached itself to the frame without
any screws. You can see that door up there now. It iorks like any door except
that there's nothing holding it on."
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Old Town 60
(It can well be imagined that by this time I was beginning to be just
a trifle flabbergasted. I knew that Albert was a great practical joker,
but I knew, too, that nobody could think up such incredible tales on the
spur of the moment. He had no idea that I was going to call that night at
his father's house. I knew that my suspicions were entirely without founda-
tion, but nobody could listen to stories like these without expressing in-
credulity: I asked him and Mike if they were telling those stories in a
joking way to see how much I would swallow. Mike and Albert both assured
me that they were merely repeating the stories that they had heard from
Anna the night before. "The stories are unbelieveable," said Mike, "but
nobody Anna Fountain, me-, or may one else could thing up suoh yarns,"
Mrs. Pelletier and Bill Rioux also assured me that Anna had told the tales
that Mike and Albert were repeating. "Well,* I said, "what about the Fountains?
Why are they suddenly telling about this girl? It seems as though they should
have said something about herolong before this.")
Albert: "You don't go arouhd tellint stories like those to everybody:
they might think you were crazy. But he often told me about that girl when
we used to work in the mill. The reason Anna brought it up last night was
because the had just came down from there and the was tellin, us about haw
they found the body of her sister in law.
"The devil used to slap that girl in the faoe and burn parts of her
body. She had hearts burned on her wrists, and the Blessed Sacrament burned
on her breast. Once there was a oat appeared on the sill of a small window.
They couldn't get that eat off from there so they sent for the priest. He
read some prayers and sprinkled some holy water around and that oat vent dawn
through a register in the floor something like that one there.
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Old Town 61
"The devil did all sorts of things to annoy herb If she sat down to
do some crochet work, when she got it neatly finished, the work would all
unravel. She had a oanary that disappeared from its cage. By and by it
reappeared. It was very tame and when she took it in her hand to pet
it, the devil crushed it.
*There was a picture of her mother on the wall and she used to stqnd
before that and pray. Sometimes tears would roil down from the eyes in the
picture. They collected some of those tears and took them to a chemist to
have them analyzed. He said it was the purest 'gator. Tell him about those
worms, dad."
Mike: "She used to fill up with worms, and they'd oome out of her body,
her mouth, eyes, anywhere thousands and thousands of them. Some of those
worms had black heads. Scars used to appear on her body, and once one of
her fingers dropped off. After her folks died she went to live with an uncle.
They loaded some of the household goods on a truck and she got into the seat
with the driver. On the way to her uncle's house all kinds of things happened.
The Wheels flew off and the goods kept fallin' out of the truck and they had
a hard time to keep the truck on the road. There was a galvanized roof on
her uncle's house, and as soon as she got inside the house they thought that
teof was comint off. All kinds of rappin' and poundin' came from up there.
Sometimes she'd complain that some one was chokin' her or squeezin' her, and
when she complained of being choked, white marks used to appear on her throat.
They found the marks of the devil's claws on her waist.*
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Old Town -62
Albert: "I slept all night after hearint those stories, but
talk about dreams: I'd carry in a lot of wood and when I got
through I'd find it all outside again. The clapboards started to
fall off my house and they kept fallin' off as fast as I could
nail them back on. It was like that all night. I was all in, in
the morning."
R.G. "I'm interested in that occult stuff. I read an account
of a spiritualistic seance a while ago. Bells rang, the table
jumped around, balls of light floated around -the room, and spirits
drew their hands across people's faces. I often thought I'd like
to attend a seance. The trouble is, of course, it's all done in
the dark: you can't see what's going on."
Albert: "They could see what was goin' on up there in Canada,
all right. I went to a spiritualist meeting once, but they didn't
turn off the lights and they didn't pull off any of that stuff you
mentioned. There was some funny work there, though, just the same.
I went to see what they would do, and I told my wife if he could
name me I'd think he had something.
"She was afraid we were goin, to be late. She had a whole
dish pan full of dishes, and she says, 'Dear me, I've got to wash
those dishes, and if I do we'll be late for that meeting.' I just
took that pan full of dishes and shoved it under the sink. 'Bother
the dishes,' I says, 'we'll do them after we get back. I don't in-
tend to be late for that shindig.' There were about sixty people
there and by and by he called out my name Albert Pelletier. He
told me I was a happy-go-lucky guy and a lot of stuff like that, and
then he says, 'Now I'm goin' to tell you something that'll surprise
you.'
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Living Lore
Old Town— 63
Well sir, that fellow described my grandmother just as well as I
could do it myself. Then he says, 'Your wife is a very neat and
careful housekeeper, but you did something tonight that didn't look
very good.' 'Good night,' I says to myself, 'he's going to tell
about those dishes.' And that was just what he did. He called
Elise up then and told her she had had a lot of sickness. He told
me to quit worrying about getting my house finished, and to not
spend any money on it because I could get the work done for nothing.
I thought there wasn't much danger of my spending any money fixing
up my house because I didn't have any money to spend. A few days
later a fellow came over and told me he had a little building stuff
I could have and that he'd come over and help me put it on. I got
that work done and it didn't cost me anything.
"He told Neil Fox he was going to get into some trouble with
two other boys, but that he'd get out of it all right. Well, of
course we know Neil did get into that trouble and the other two
fellows went to jail, but Neil got off because they couldn't pin
anything on him. That fellow's name was Strout, and he came from
Portland."
R.G. "Where were those meetings held?"
Albert: "Oh come now: I won't tell you that. He ran away
with Gray's wife."
R.G., "I mean were they held in a hall or in a private dwelling.
Albert: "Always in private homes. I can't tell you that fellow's
first name, but he had just one hand: that is$ he had an artifical
hand."
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R.G.: "Say, do you fix motors? I have one over to the house that wont
run. It belongs on a washing machine."
Albert: "Fetch it over and I'll look at it. They bring me all kinds
of stuff to fix. Old Charlie Hutchinson had a chime clock that he wanted
fixed. 'Albert,' he says, 'thrt's a fine cloak and I hate to see it standin'
idle, but if I take it uptown they'll want more than it's worth to tinker with
it.' I like to fool with clocks and I told Charlie that /Id take the olook
home and fix it and he could pay me whatever it was worth to him." (Albert
told us here something about clocks in general and about how Charlie's chime
clock differed from ordinary ones. He told us what the trouble was and haw
he fixed it, but it was all too technical for me to remember.) *nen Charlie
came up to get it a week later the four o'clock woolen mill whistle was just
blowinl. That clock was setting on the mantlepiece and the hands pointed to
just four. 'Charlie,' I says, 'you see that clock? It hasn't lost a minute
since it was fixed.' Charlie says that clock is running fine now.
*Adolphe Leblanc you know the fellow that goes around selling things
come up to the house once with a bag in his hand and he says, 'Albert, I've got
a clock here that the kid took apart. If you can put life into that I'll say
you're good.' I looked into that bag, and sayt it was just a collection of
springs, wheels, and screws. 'I'll bet you a dollar you can't put that to-
gether so it'll run,* he says. 'Is ev,rything here?' I says, 'I'll guarantee
all the parts are there,' he says. I put that clock together and everything
was there but one of the wheels and a few sorews, but I happened to have an old
clock that had just the parts I needed. The nett time he called the clock was
running."
Mike:
*That reminds me of the experience of a fellow that took a clock
apart to clean it. He put it together again so it would run, but he had a
handful of gears tilt he hadn't found any place for in the clock."
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Albert: "I fixed one clock for a fellow that he had been tryinl to fix
himself. There were some long screws in there that he had lost the nuts for,
and he had bent over the ends of those screws so they'd stay in. Now there
was no need of doin' that: it would have been much better to have just pushed
the screws in and left them like that. The trouble with one clock that a
fellow brought me was that it kept stoppinl at twenty minutes of eight. He
thought the hands were catching, and he had twisted them all kinds of ways."
(Albert gave me some more technical details here, but I couldn't remember
them. The trouble was, he said, that a hen's feather had gotten into that
clock and got wedged somewhere so that. the clock would stop at 7:40. The
hands could be turned by, but the spring wasn't strong enough to run the wheels
by the feather. He said he noticed the feather as aeon as he opened the clock,
and that all he did was to take a pair of long nosed pliers and pull the feather
out. "The fellow thought my fixin' that clock was something of a miracle,"
Albert said, "but I never told him what the matter was with it."
Miket *That was pretty near as bad as some trouble that I saw Johnny
Haines fix once. (Haines ran a jewelry repair shop here about forty five
years ago.) I was up there in his shop and a woodsman came in with a watch
that had stopped on him. It was one of those old fashioned key wind matches
with two oovers on the back. You had to open both covers to wind the watch.
I have one in my pocket, right now, that I've had for fifty years. Johnny
opened that watch and screwed a glass into his eye and started pokie at the
works. By and by he let the woodsman take his glass so he could see what the
matter was. 'Come over here, Mike,' Johnny says, 'I want ybu to see this too.'
I took that glass of his and looked in at the hairspring and there was a dead
lcuse wedged in there. I suppose the woodsman opened the watch to wind it and
that louse got in there and got caught. Say, With Johnny's glass that louse
looked to be inohes long."
sr
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Albert: "That's something like the one about the fellow that took his
watch in to a jeweler to find out why it stopped, and the jeweler found a
dead bed bug in the works, 'Look here,' he says to the fellow, 'no wonder
this watch wont run: the engineer is deadt'