Radio Script #53
Little Talks On Common Things
January 29, 1950
A lot of people now living remember Waterville’s great centennial celebration of 1902, but to the younger folks it is only a legend. But, believe me, it was a big occasion, lasting for three days from June 22 through June 24, with a variety of events to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of Waterville’s incorporation as a town. For it was in 1802 that waterville finally won its independence from the parent town of Winslow and started off on its own career.
We hear a lot about big parades in Waterville, such as that of last Armistice Day, but modern parades are tiny, insignificant affairs, compared with the gigantic and luxurious procession that marched through Waterville streets on the morning of June 24, 1902.
The city was crowded with visitors. The Maine Central ran special trains, and the little narrow guage unloaded hundreds of festive-bound passengers at its Winslow station. Recording the events, the Waterville Mail tells us that out of town people began to pour in almost at sunrise. A well-loaded wagon brought in a Vassalboro party at 4: 30 in the morning. Says the Mail , “The streets were filled with marching men, hurrying horsemen, floats slowly getting into line, and crowds of people everywhere. The noise makers were out in force. The country youth invested heavily in striped canes. City youths and even men of mature years wore gaudy decorations pinned on their manly bosoms.”
Then the Mail adds a provoking sentence: itA collection of the badges of 1902 would make an interesting display at the next centennial.”
Now the date for the 150th anniversary of Waterville’s incorporation is only two years hence. I wonder how many of those 1902 badges can be dug up for that occasion.
Let’s get on with the parade. The grand marshall was Dr. F. C. Thayer, and promptly at ten o’clock he set the long line in motion. Chief of the first devision was Dr. Luther Bunker and providing music was the Waterville Military Band under its famous leader, R. B. Hall.
There were scores of decorated teams, one of which was driven by Miss Marguerite Percival. Other young ladies rode horseback on spirited steeds.
The Waterville Bicycle Club was out in force with 2l decorated vehicles. The business firms vied with one another to produce the most lavish displays of floats and other items. Otten’s Bakery — do you remember his place on Lower Temple Street? — provided a huge float representing a baking shop, a Fleischmann’s yeast cart, six decorated delivery teams, and a National Biscuit Company display. S. A. Dickinson had three floats; Redington and Company had two; so also did Proctor and Bowie, one of them a representation of Fort Halifax.
H. L. Emery had a float with singing girls; Atherton Furniture Company displayed carpets on a specially made float of eight wheels; Miss E. L. Lovering’ s contribution, carrying the children of John and Frank. Webber, was a rosedecked pony cart. A float showing flat boat days on the Kennebec attracted much. attention. Other floats were provided by L. H. Soper, W. B. Arnold,. the Bay View Hotel, G. S. Flood and Company, Wardwell Brothers, and Green and Green, fuel dealers, and H. R. Dunham.
Hollingsworth and Whitney showed, on its float, samples of paper made at its mill, from a small sheet to a huge roll 140 inches wide and 40 inches in diameter. The Mail proudly announced that the roll of paper weighed 5,250 pounds, and if unrolled would stretch for 7i miles. Whitcomb and Cannon showed an attractive display of meats, with “Jimmie” behind the counter. Young and Chalmers had four teams, one of them showing how ice was delivered in 1850.
The Mail fairly went into ecstasies about the presentation of Clukey and Libby.
Said the newspaper: “Then came the float of the Clukey-Libby Company, one of the most elaborate in the procession. It was drawn by cream colored horses with white harnesses. It was beautifully draped, and in addition was ador:'”
ned by the young ladies it carried. perhaps no one in the line was more admired. Behind the float marched 24 boys, w,earing long, linen dusters and carrying red umbrellas, advertising the same firm.”
The parade concluded just as every parade I have ever seen in’ waterville, and my parade recollections here go back only to 1910. Of course you know what I mean. Last but not least in that long procession which took forty minutes to pass a given point came the Waterville Fire Department. And the last vehicle of all was “Old Boomer”, an imitation of the town’s first hand tub.
That, ladies and gentlemen, was a great parade. Of course there were sports on the Centennial Program. One afternoon was devoted to a baseball game between Colby and the Waterville town team. Waterville won by a sizable score, and why shouldn’t they? For the Waterville pitcher was a rangy fellow named Jack Coombs, who had just graduated from Coburn.
By the way, there will soon appear in the Colby Field House the Colby graduation picture of Jack Coombs, made by Sam Preble in 1906. This picture is a recent gift to the college from Chester Hussey of Walnut Street.
For muqh of tonight’s information about the centennial celebration I am indebted to a local man who has been my friend and fraternity brother since college days, Attorney Lewis Lester Levine. It was his loan to me of a copy of the old Waterville Mail which set me off on this subject of the centennial.
Among out of town guests at that celebration is mentioned a family that rings a clear bell of childhood memory. The Mail says I “Dr. and t1rs. F. E. Stevens of Bridgton are visiting friends here. They made the trip by the doctor’s automobile.”
Now by this time every listener to this program knows that Bridgton was my home town. I knew Dr. and Mrs. stevens very well indeed. In fact the doctor owned the building in which my father’s store waelocated. From my earliest recollection he operated what we called the drug store on the hill, and he installed the town’s first soda fountain. He was not the first, but very nearly the first Bridgton citizen to own an automobile. I wonder how long it took Dr. and Mrs. Stevens to drive from Bridgton to Waterville back there in 1902. Will anyone hazard a guess? That Bridgton couple were frequent visitors in Waterville, for Mrs. Stevens was one of the Redington sisters.
That June week in 1902 saw the first general reunion of what later was to be called Colby’s famous class of 1892. I believe that, of the enthusiastic young business and professional men, just ten years out of college, who assembled for that reunion, only two are now living, Frank B. Nichols of Bath and William N. Donovan of Newton Centre, both of whom attended Colby’s 1949 Commencement, 57 years after their graduation.
That same week saw, on the Colby campus, the celebrating of the 50th anniversary of the Delta Upsilon fraternity. The anniversary poem was written and read by none other than Maine’s poet-novelist, Holman F. Day, and the fraternity history was given by Charles E. Gurney, who was later to be chairman of the Maine Public Utilities Commission for many years, and for even longer years secretary of the Colby Board of Trustees.
An international event of some importa.nce, about to be held in 1902, filled several columns of the Mail, in spite of its absorption with the Waterville Centennial. That event was the coming coronation of England’s new king, Edward VII. It was indeed a gala event for England, because thousands of her people had never seen a coronation. England had had none for 65 years. Edward’s mother, the great Victoria, had been crowned in 1837.
But an ironical twist of fate postponed Edward’s coronation for many weeks, and the Waterville Mail got the news just in time to give it a couple of inches of space and a headline in that issue of June 24, 1902. The item said, “The coronation ceremonies have been indefinitely postponed. King Edward was operated on this morning for appendicitis, and at two o’clock was resting satisfactorily.”
With the centennial behind them, Waterville people had other entertainment ahead. On July 5, 1902 Pawnee Bill’s Wild West Show hit town. It was advertised as “headed by the famed guide, scout, U. S. interpreter and Oklahoma hero, Major G. William Lillie (Pawnee Bill). The hero’s 19 year old daughter, Miss May Lillie, (Why didn’t they name her Calla?), was heralded as the champion girl horseback rifle shot of the world. A grand street parade would set the town kids gawk-eyed at ten o’clock.
Just think of some of the food prices of 1902. Flour was $4.75 a barrel, tea 35 cents a pound, sugar twenty pounds for a dollar. Lard was ten cents a pound, canned corn three for a quarter, rice four pounds for a quarter, red salmon two cans for a quarter, and pink salmon ten cents a can. Compared with the inflationary prices of 1950, W. P. Stewart then advertised best mocha and java for 39 ,cents a pound, Boston blend for 23 cents, Excelsior blend for 16 cents, and two pounds of Rio for 25 cents.
Among the classified ads was one for a girl to do general housework at two dollars a week. P. P. Hill wanted two honest young men of good habits to learn the jeweler’s trade. An establishment on Temple Street offered window shades for 22 cents, including fixtures and pull. And Atherton’s agreed to store stoves during the summer months for a modest fee.
We have often talked about words on this program, but I do not recall that we have ever mentioned the emotional power of words. Words in themselves, entirely apart from their context, carry tremendous emotional power. A mere word is capable of arousing us to anger and hate, zeal and ambition, thrill and ecstaSy.
Plenty of words have low emotional power; they arouse very little, if any, emotion. Such words as table, coat, walk, addition, percentage do not stir us up very much. But notice what happens inside of you when you hear any of the following words: honor, glory, death, dawn, sunset, stars.
The poet knows what he is doing when he uses words of high emotional import. Shelley, writing of his fellow poet Keats, dead at the youthful age of 26, might have said, “Adonais is dead and I long to join him.” But, instead of that, he wrote, “The soul of Adonais like a star beacons from the .abode where the eternal are”.
The politician and others who seek to sway public opinion know very well the power of emotional words. It was not by accident that Roosevelt and his advisers hit upon the phrase “New Deal”, and, knowing perfectly well the favorable connection of the word “fair”, the Truman administration adopts the phrase “Fair Deal”.
Another of those powerful emotional phrases is “Welfare State”. Because everyone, high or low, rich or poor, native-born or immigrant, wants to enjoy in America a state of welfare, have enough to eat and to wear, a roof over his head, and be sure of the freedoms of speech, religion and movement, it is easy to confuse state of welfare with welfare state.
That phrase “welfare state” is now glibly used by thousands of people, but it is difficult to get any two persons to agree on just what they mean by it. A few weeks ago Dr. Gallup tried to find out what the term meant to people. His pollsters learned that 64 per cent of the men and women questioned had no idea at all of its meaning. Three per cent thought it meant some kind of government control; five per cent said it meant socialism; about one person in every five said the welfare state means that the government takes care of the people. In spite of the fact that the term meant nothing to two out of every three persons, it may be significant that to one out of every five it is equivalent to the hand-out state, the government that is all give and no take, that provides for the citizen a rosy bed of privileges with no thorns of responsibility.
Now I have just used another of those emotional phrases. You heard me say “hand-out state”. That is an expression just as loaded with prejudice in one direction as “welfare state” is loaded in the other direction.
Stop and think a minute. Every one of you has had some experience with the power of labels, the word tags that people pin on one another in praise or blame. In 1920 all one needed to do to damn a person was to call him a Bolshevik.
In 1950 the corresponding label is Communist.
Think of others of those damning labels: plutocrats, malefactors of great wealth, robber barons, tycoons, crucifying mankind on a cross of gold. Then think of how much we used to hear about the forgotten man, the more abundant lif.e, the century of the connnon man, two chickens in every pot, two cars in every garage, the honest dollar, the full dinner pail.
Just consider some of the phrases that greet you in every daily paper.
What do they mean, those glibly used words like inflation and deflation, high velocity money, deficit financing? We have even encountered the words reflation and disinflation. Such is the confusing gibberish that plagues us. No wonder Dr. Nourse, former chairman of the President’ s Committee of Economic Advisers, expressed complete discouragement “over the possibility of using ordinary words in the English language to carry meaning from one mind to another”.
So let us beware of slogans and labels, of tag words and emotional phrases.
On the subject of you and your government, whatever the slogans you most readily accept about it, one plain truth is worth remembering. That truth is this: what the government gives away·,”itmust~irst … take away.
Year: 1950