Radio Script #83
Little Talks On Common Things
November 12, 1950
Faith — the sUbstance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen faith is reputed to be not such a common thing today as once it was.
Whether that is true or not, it is worthy of note that there is taking place in waterville right now a tribute to a man of unrelenting faith. The citizens’ committee in charge of the local campaign to complete the ~oving of Colby College to its Mayflower Hill site is making that campaign a personal tribute to Franklin W. Johnson.
Frank Johnson describes himself as an unrepentent optimist. He is more than that; he is a man of deep, persistent faith. The optimist may sometimes be like the postman on the old Jack Benny program, who used to reiterate in mournful tones, “Keep smiling”. But the man of faith knows there are plenty of times when he can’t smile, when optimism is not enough, when even grim determination and downright hard work seem fruitless. It is then that persistent, abiding faith sees its most effective hour. Without it defeat is sure.
Frank Johnson means a lot to waterville besides giving it the new Colby.
Nearly half a century ago he was principal of Coburn, and he has maintained active interest in that fine old school through all the years. Only a few days ago he attended a meeting of the school’s executive committee and helped lay plans for Coburn’s 1951 summer school and the ensuing school year.
He has had a prominent part in many community enterprises: the Boy Scouts, the Boys’ Club, the YMCA, the Thayer Hospital. He has probably served actively and ardently on the boards of more educational, religious and charitable institutions than has any other citizen of Waterville.
He was the first president of the Maine Teachers Association today the most powerful educational group in the state. He is a life member of the National Educational Association. Most of you know Frank Johnson as a planner of buildings and a raiser of funds, and he is that indeed. But I don’t want you to forget that he is also a teacher — one of Maine’s really great teachers.
And it is because he is a great teacher that he would never for a moment relinquish his determination and zeal for the new Colby. That beautiful site, those fine buildings, the increased endowment are all for one purpose — that boys and girls for generations to come may have the right kind of log for future Mark Hopkinses to sit on.
I want to congratulate the people of Getchell’s Corner on the restoration of the village church. Perhaps some of my listeners Who do not live in Vassalboro fail to recognize the name Getchell’s Corner. Well, that is What some of us have known only as Vassalboro Village, and in fact its post office name has long been Vassalboro. It is the original Vassalboro settlement on the banks of the Kennebec, between Winslow and Augusta, as distinguished from the later settlements of North and East Vassalboro in the same town.
The village church has long been falling into decay, and services in it became less and less frequent. A group of citizens decided that the community must not be without religious services. They have repaired th~ building, getting generous support not only from local people, but from many former residents now far away. And on the last Sunday in October, two weeks ago, they made fitting celebration of their success. More than two hundred people crowded into the little chapel to worship under the leadership of a man Who had been their minister thirty years ago. Rev. Arthur MacDougal, the noted fisherman pastor at Bingham, came back to Vassalboro for this occasion. In simple, appealing words he talked to them about the love of God, which, working through the lives of devoted people, assured just such results as the restoration of the chapel and the continuance of worship in the village.
If you think religious interest is dead, that the church has no message for our modern day, you should have been, as I was, at Vassalboro on the evening of October 29.
Our elder statesman, Hon. Harvey Eaton, quite rightly called me to task for not mentioning the pumpkin freshet on last week’s broadcast. Now the truth is I had heard of the pumpkin freshet but could not date it. My recorded information did not say which one of the many fall freshets was given that name.
Mr. Eaton assures me it was the fall freshet of 1869. He remembers it well because he was 7 years old at the time. The waters, not only of the Kennebec, but also of the Sandy River and the Carrabassett, rose suddenly to freshet height that autumn, while the pumpkins still lay unharvested in the fields. The waters swept through many a corn field, ripped the pumpkins from the vines, and sent them tossing down the swollen streams. Hence the name pumpkin freshet.
It seems that when I mentioned my possession of the saddle bags belonging to the murderer Coolidge, I had nothing to brag about. For in the home of Howard Simpson of Winslow is the very desk used by Coolidge in the office Where the murder took place. That desk stood in the second floor room over Shorey’s Tailor Shop at No. 27 Main Street on the evening when Ed Mathews drank the brandy containing the fatal dose of prussic acid. At that same desk the next mo:r::ning young Flint, Coolidge’s apprentice, whose testimony later convicted the doctor, saw Coolidge writing the item that he had loaned Mathews $200 the previous evening.
For nearly a century the desk has now been in the possession of the Simpson family.
Did you know that Vassalboro once had a newspaper?
Next week I intend to tell you about it.
More than a year has passed since I last saw one of those weekly newspapers from rural Scotland, and I feared I was not going to see any more of them. But a few days ago my friend John Burgess again handed me three issues of the good, old Peebleshire News for August 11, 18 and 25 of this year.
It is evident that the Peebleshire folk, good Scots that they are, don’t like the ways of the Labor government of Britain. They are especially irked by the delay, red tape, and non-performance that follow the fine promises from London.
It seems Peebles folk have long been promised a new bridge over the Tweed.
The government hemmed and hawed about the national share in this project. So a native of Peebles, now resident in South Africa, came forward with an offer of five thousand pounds toward the cost of the structure. Then the government wanted to know whether the bridge would be used primarily for business or pleasure, and decided that it ranked a low priority on steel. Finally London said they would allow a pre-stressed concrete bridge, but it would cost 20% more than steel and the town would have to pay the difference. Peebles had been promised the bridge to be completed in 1949. In August, 1950 the editor of the News was still calling the government to task for its continuous hedging. The editor commented ruefully, “We still hope the bridge will be built while the present generation is still alive.”
We’ve been talking about many old things on this program — things that happened a hundred, or, as in the building of Fort Halifax, even two hundred years ago. The events we’ve talked about — the Coolidge murder trial, the founding of Ten Lots, the incorporation of Winslow — seem a long; long time ago. But they were recent compared with something that made contemporary news in that Scottish newspaper last August.
At Broughton, near Peebles — and Peebles, by the way, is just about as far from Edinborough as Waterville is from Augusta — at nearby Broughton restoration has just been completed of a building that dates back not 100 or 200 years, but 1,400 years.
The restored building is called a cell, for it was first used as the home of a hermit monk of the fifth century — a time when very few Christians had come to Scotland. It is a small structure, 14 by 8i feet and 8 feet high. It had of course fallen into ruin with the years. In the fifteenth century, when its walls were already a thousand years old, it was made part of a Norman church. By the time of the Reformation in 1560 this church was already badly in need of repair.
In 1805 it was abandoned entirely. So when Scottish antiquarians carefully examined the ruins and dug down to the original foundations, they found one end of the building much older than anyone had suspected. Experts identified it as a monk’s cell of the fifth century, and it has now been carefully restored.
The editor of the Peebleshire News is a good friend of the United States. In all three of those August issu.es he was carrying on a hot debate with one John MacKay. MacKay began it by writing to the editor, protesting against the united Kingdom’s expenditures for armament and defense. When he got on the subject of the United States, MacKay really let loose. He wrote: “Why is this country hitched to Wall Street, that great American institution of money-lenders and war-mongers?
Are the youths of Scotland to be sacrificed for American dollars? America seeks world domination, and our government is prepared to help.”
The editor replied rather mildly by saying: “Mr. MacKay deplores aggression, but he shuts his eyes totally and completely to the major cause, not the American dollar but the attack on South Korea by North Korea. Mr. MacKay is perfectly aware Which is the mightiest armed force in the world today, and until that country will cooperate, we must keep our powder dry.”
MacKay came back the next week with more than a column of print, revealing at last What he had had in mind all the time: –“HOW can Russia be looked upon as the enemy prepared for war against this or any other nation?” That question was the burden of his song. “The North Korean Army”, he wrote, “crossed the border in self defense, because the South Koreans were all ready to cross in the other direction. ”
When ~tr. MacKay had thus revealed himself as a Scottish spokesman for the Kremlin, the Peebleshire editor felt called upon to speak more sharply than he had done the week before. He wrote: “Mr. MacKay indulges liberally in quotations from the pro-Soviet press. That does not make the quotations true. Take Mr. MacKay’s own closing statement, ‘The enemy of mankind is not Soviet Russia but American ±mperialism’. Any person similarly minded could quote that statement; thousands even might quote it. But the statement would still remain just what it is, an unsupported opinion, the invention of Mr. MacKay.”
It is heartening to all of us, and especially to the many loyal Americans of Scotch ancestry in this vicinity, to know that across the seas by the banks of the River Tweed in bonnie Scotland, are men who can still rise to the defense of America when she is scurrilously attacked.
Year: 1950