Radio Script #146
Little Talks On Common Things
April 27, 1952
Have you been to church today? Of course you went two weeks ago on Easter Sunday. Everybody goes to church then. But did you go today? Now I don’t propose. To have any argument with the fel low who says he can worship God in the great out-of-doors just as wei I as he can in a church. I want him to ask what he would think likely to happen in our nation if nobody went to church. There may be a more definite relation between church attendance and pUblic morality than some of us like to admit.
It is not the existence of corruption and scandal in our government that offers The greatest danger. It is rather the fact that so many people are today taking it for granted that because corruption, graft and bribery do exist, There is something pardonable about those practices. No one ever got that Idea in church. The truth simply is that the church is sti II the great bulwark of moral ity in America. Entirely apart from the salvation of our personal souls, on grounds of public welfare alone, we cannot let the church continue to diminish in its influence for good. Old you go to church today?
My anonymous correspondent who gave us such complete information about 111 Cigarettes has written me again. Except that he lives in Augusta, and like myself has fond recollection of the narrow guage rai I roads, I have few clues to his identity. But I am sure you join me in thanking him for his help on this program.
In writing about the narrow guage roads this fellow makes a pretty good point. He says we find so many people interested in them today, not merely because they have now disappeared and there is a I ways a bit of nos ta I 9 i a oonnected with by-gone things, but even more because, when they were in their heydey, their very uniqueness gave everyone the urge to try at least one ride on the midget train.
Our informant also points out that, to avoid expensive excavation and grading, the roadbed usually went around even the smaller hillocks and straddled shallow valleys by means of pile trestles. Hence such names as “Meandered”, or the even more expressive “Little Wiggler”, given as a nickname for such a road. Then this 111 fellow, who stili conceals his Identity, reveals that he was once a regular commuter on a famous narrow guage I ine that I have not previously mentioned, because it was not one of the narrow guages of Maine. refer to the Revere Beach and Lynn road, which in its period of existence surely carried more passengers than al I the Maine narrow guages combined. Not on I y did that 0 I d road ca rry a lot of da i I y commute rs between Lynn and Boston and the way stations; it also had a lot to do with the development of Revere Beach as Boston’s Coney Island. My uncle was for many years a member of a group who made regular trips from Boston to the old race track at Revere, where some of the most noted harness races in New England were conducted. Those trips to and from the races were always made on the old narrow guage.
Our informant adds some information about the Kennebec Central, the narrow guage I ine from Randolph to Togus. He says that supplies for the National Sol~ diers Home at Togus were shipped by water, over the Eastern Steamship Line, to a wharf on the east side of the Kennebec River, opposite Gardiner, in the town of Randolph. There the goods were transferred to the Kennebec Central and carried over its I ittle two-foot track to Togus. We are told also that the Kennebec Central boasted of a nicely bal lasted roadbed — an unusual feature, because equipment of those “little wigglers” was so I igh-t that -thei r road bui Iders seldom paid much attention to ballast. Our informant also recalled that the Kennebec Central’s stations and other buildings were replete with gingerbread trimmings, and even its roundhouse was an orna~ mented brick structure. The locomotives too were lavishly adorned with heavy brass trimmings. Before the coming of the e lectri c road, passenger traff ic on the Kennebec Central was sufficient to require three coaches on every train. A remembered feature of the stations was the pot-bell ied stove placed in the middle of the waiting room floor, just as It was in the bigger stations on the broad-guage roads.
Our unnamed Informant writes: “Probab Iy you’ve heard that the roll ing stock of the Albion and Wiscasset R.R. at last reports was doing al I right on a cranberry farm on Cape Cod.” Now the Cape Cod road he refers to I s the famous Edavi lie R. R. at Carver, Massachusetts. Before the death of its bui Ider and owner, Ellis Atwood, about a year ago, I was honored with a life-time pass on that little Edaville line, simply because Mr. Atwood knew of my interest in narrow guage roads and that was born in the town where he got his track and most of his rolling stock.
Mt. Atwood bought enough of the rai Is of the old Bridgton & Saco River to lay the five mi les of track through his cranberry bogs. He got two of that road’s locomotives and several of its cars, including the old passenger car named the Pond i cherry, in wh i ch I rode many ti mes as a boy, and in wh i ch I aga in rode over Mr. Atwood’s little line in the summer of 1949. From the Sandy River and Range ley Lakes he got two coaches, a caboose, and the on I y par lor car ever used on any narrow guage road in the U. S. From the narrow guage at Monson he got two locomotives. His two snowplows, his flanger, and the one caboose came from the Bridgton and Saco River. Mr. Atwood’s own records show that the only item he acqui red from the Watervi lie, Wiscasset & Farmington (which our informant refers to as the Albion and Wiscasset) was the old No.3 coach of that line.
Mr. Atwood a Iways regretted that his interest In bui Idlng a narrow guage road came too late for him to acqu ire the biggest narrow guage looomoti ve ever bui It. That was the Sandy River No. 23, which was scrapped when that road folded up in 1935. once told you my own tal I story about getting off the old Bridgton and Saco River to pick neyflowers, whi Ie the train backed down from the grade to Bridgton Junction, in order to get another start to enable it to reach the top of the grade. Th is fe II ow whom I ca I lour 111 correspondent has a better yarn, and in tell ing it, by the way, he reveals his age as 57. He says when he was 14 years old in 1909, he was one of a group of kids who tried to slow down the Kennebec Central by sitting on the steps of the rear coach and dragging their feet in the coarse grave I 0 f the road bed. “S uff ice I t to sayll, he wr I tes, “we were only successful In kicking up a huge cloud of dust. That quickly brought the brakeman to the rear door, and reluctantly we scrambled back into the coach and exam I ned our bad I y scuffed shoes.”
Mrs. Edna Parsons, who I ives on the east bank of the Kennebec above Hinckley, near where the CarrabassettStream enters the ri ver, gi ves us . very interesting information about the so-cal led French Settlement in that neighborhood. Mrs. Parsons says that, while she can find no proof that a settlement of French immigrants ever existed near her present home on the Kennebec, the age and persistence of the legend that there was such a settlement leads her to beIleve that tangible evidence about it wi I I some day be found.
Mrs. Parsons was born near her present home, attended Good Wi II High School and says that at a very early age she often heard the term French Settlement and wondered what it meant. She says her father to I d her some Frenchmen once lived there. When Mrs. Parsons returned to Hinckley as a school teacher, she became in,… terested in the question allover again. What her father had told her was evidently not a fact known to him, but only what he had heard a generation older than his sometimes say. Mrs. Parsons did a lot of research about early habitations near Pishon’s Ferry, and worked this material into a pageant given in her school. Her father is sti I I living. Though of advanced age, his mind is active and his memory keen.
Time and again he has gone over the list of people who lived on what was called the French Settlement, now called Oxbow, and he cannot recall a single French name. There were Rowes, Rickers, Burri lis, Barretts and Eldrldges. Some of those names go back to the beginning of the English-American settlement at Pishon’s Ferry in 1792. Was the little place above the ferry called the French Settlement before or after that date? That is a point which puzzles both Mrs. Parsons and me_
It is known that the Pishon fami Iy was of French extraction, of Acadian stock from Nova Scot i a, descendants of those peep Ie who we re ex i led from the I r homes in Evange line days. Mrs _ Parsons says most of the present rHfnck ley and Skowhegan peop Ie discredit the idea that there ever was a real French settlement above Pishon’s Ferry, that there is not a scrap of evidence that any French people lived in that region unti I about 35 years ago, well within the present century. Yet ~~rs. Parsons’ aged father says that, when he was a,1 ittle boy living at Pishon’s Ferry, the old people always called the Oxbow region the French Settlement. A II the 01 der peop Ie knew where it was, but no one remembered how it got its name. The only French person whom Mrs. Parsons has ever known personally as a res i dent of what is ca lied the French Sett lement dese rves ment i on in his own right, for he has made a discovery that connects with an interesting item in the industrial history of the Kennebec. This man is Simon Gagnon, and he has apparently found the source of iron used by the old operators of the forge that was worked on the Carrabassett just above its entrance into the Kennebec~ about a hundred years ago. Farmers In the area stJ I I P low up 01 d charcoa I pits where the charcoal to run the furnace was made. Unti I a few years ago the location of the forge was recognizable by the refuse slag, but today even that has been pretty thoroughly cleared. away.
I fear this program must take the blame for a calamity. Hearing my remarks some weeks ago about General Kendal I and the Emery HI II Cemetery, one of our women listeners decided to take a look for herself. Quite justly she now calls me to task for fai ling to mention a very important fact; namely, that the Emery Hi II Cemetery is teeming with poison ivy. The good lady writes: “I found out the hard way because I am now covered with ivy poison. The next time you talk about these old cemeteries~ please find out if there is poison ivy around. I know what poison ivy looks I ike, but who can keep an eye out for it and examine tombstone inscript-ions at the same time’?”
It- is too late now to do more than wish the lady a speedy recovery from the ivy rash. My profession has kept me much In ivy-covered hal Is, but now 1’1 I have to be watchfu I for ivy-covered graves and i vy-f i lied ce II ar holes.
As a final item tonight I want to know who can tell me the year when the ai rship caught fi re at the Central Maine FaJ r. It was before the day of airplanes, because the picture I have seen is of a cigar-shaped dirigible on the ground, and another picture of it in the air. It was called the Strobel Air Ship. I understand, whi Ie showing at the Central Maine Fair, this dirigible caught fire and burned, but with what results to its one man crew’ do not know.
Who can te II me just what did happen and in what year’?
Year: 1952