Radio Script #250
Little Talks On Common Things
January 23, 1955
This is the 250th broadcast of this program since its beginning in September, 1948. It is appropriate that I take this opportunity to thank the I itera Ily hundreds of peop Ie who have contri buted and are sti II contributing to th i s p rog ram. repeat what I have said before: not mine. You are the people who make it possible,
it is indeed your program, In all the six and a half years of this program, it has never crusaded for any reform. It is time we let loose on one subject that is often mentioned but has not yet come to any result. So here we go tonight with ardent support to the movement for reform of the ca lendar.
Perhaps many of our listeners have never thought much about any need to change the calendar, about which little has been done since the days of Pope Gregory the Great. But des ire to see a change is by no means new. For more than a century business leaders, clergymen, statesmen and scientists have been trying to do something about the calendar. A hundred and twenty years aqo an Ital ian priest, Marco Mastrofini, was struggl ing with the perplexing problem of fi tti ng weeks. months and quarters of the year into 365 days, For a wh i Ie he considered a five-day week, since 365 is divisible only by 5 and 73. But this would be very difficult to adopt, because firm religious conviction is attached to a week of seven days. So Mastrofini hit upon a hitherto unsuggested solution.
Just remove the 365th day from consideration in any particular week, treat it as ‘an extra hoI iday without any weekday name, and you have left a year of 364 days, which can be divided easily into 52 seven-day weeks.
Half a century after Mastrofini, in 1885, the Astronomical Society of France ran a contest for suggestions to improve the calendar. It awarded first prize to an astronomer, Gustav Armal in, who adopted Mastrofini ‘s blank day, then made the four quarters of the year all equal with 91 days each, by giving the first month of each quarter 31 days, and the other two months th i rty days each. Leap year was ta’ken care of by adding another b lank day in the middle of every fourth year.
In spite of revived agitation and considerable support, no meaningful action was taken to bring about these improvements unti I last summer, when the eighteen nations comprising the United Nations’ Economic and Social Counci I un’animously adopted a resolution asking all governments, whether U. N. members or not, to study the problem of calendar reform and present their views by ~1ay.
1955.
What is the calendar that is being most talked about? It is a twelvemonth, equal quarter plan called the !l11orld Calendar!!. In this calendar every year is exactly the same. January 1 is always on Sunday. Each month has exactly 26 week-days plus its Sundays. January, Apri I, July and October — the first months of each quarter — have 31 days. The other months have 30. Immediately following the 364th day of the year, December 30, is added the 365th b lank day, not assigned to any week. It wi II be called World’s Day, a world ho I i day. It wi I I not be cons i dared any day of the week at a II. Decembe r 30th wi I I be Saturday. The next or W day wi I I be assigned no week-day name, and the following year, just like the year before it, will have January first on Sunday.
Every fourth year, leap Year Day wi II be another blank day following June 30.
Next week I want to te II you some of the consp i cuous advantages of th is proposed new calendar.
When I recently talked about the closing of Waterville’s trolley lines, I mentioned Cascade Park and told you I would tell you more about that amusement spot some evening. Well, here it is.
In 1903 Amos Gerald, who had developed a small park on Bunker Island, proposed that a park with an outdoor theater, like the prosperous one at Riverton outside of Portland, be constructed on the slope at Swan’s Hi I I, close to the tracks of the trolley line between Watervi lie and Oakland. His p Ian was adopted and the theater was opened on Ju Iy 1, 1903. I t cons i sted of an open stage and a seating platform designed at first to take care of an audience of 500. The Cascade Park programs became so attractive that room had to be found frequently for 1,000 patrons, and on several occasions more than 1,500 crowded into the place. The carbon lights were powered by the trolley line.
A I though ac’;tua I I Y with i n the lim its 0 f the town of Oak I and, Cascade Pa rk could be reached from \1atervi lie by paying the trolley I ine’s half-way fare of five cents, and by Oak I and peop Ie for the same fare. I t cost two fares, or ten cents, to go al I the way from Watervi lie to Oakland. Admission to the show at the park was ten cents, with a reserved seat costing five cents more. The season ran from June to September, and for the fi rst three years the programs consisted only of vaudevil Ie. After 1908 moving pictures were combined with the vaudevi lie.
My only personal recollection of the park is of attending there on a June evening in 1910, near the end of my freshman year at Colby. I was then working for my board at Ma Jones’ Hanford Hote I. After the di ni ng room closed soon after seven o’clock, Nate Garrish, Corey Richardson, Irving Cleveland, Spike L’Osne and I went down to the corner of Temp Ie and Main Streets and boarded the trolley for Cascade Park. I can’t remember a thing about the show, but I do remember three special open cars with their attached trai lers waiting on the siding when the show was over, just as they used to wait on the even longer siding at the Waterville Fair Grounds during the week of the fair each year. Myevening at Cascade Park wasn’t very expensive. recal I that I had just forty cents when w~ left Watervil Ie and sti I I had ten cents when we returned.
I be I i eve I saw Cascade Park in the very I ast year of its operation. According to the old trolley records, the Park closed for good at the end of the summer of 1910. The Park’s first manager was George Perry, an employee of the Centra I ~1a i ne Power Company for many years.
Many famous vaudevi lie performers played at Cascade Park. Severa I years before they rose to circus fame, the Ringling Brothers appeared at the Park. as did the comedy team of Kenney and Hoi lis. The show was changed every week, and the average cost to the park company was $300. Every fourth week they brought in a special show costing $500.
The law did not permit Sunday shows durl ng that fl rst decade of th Is cen-.:’ tury. BUT the park was kept open on Sundays, and to attract patrons to the trolley Ii ne, free band concerts were provi ded.
The promoters of Cascade Park never hoped to do more than break even on the theater operaTions. The i r profi t came from the tro Iley patronage, and for seven years, from 1903 to 1910, that patronage justi fled the venture.
A few days ago Hon. Blin Page sent me a welcome addition to my collection of old-time iTems of the Kennebec Valley. It was a strip of tickets for fares on the electric railway between Skowhegan and Norridgewock. Each ticket bears the facslmi Ie signature of Amos Gerald.
Let us now get In a few words about certain old schoolhouses of Winslow.
Perhaps the most famous of all the schools in that town was what came to be known for many years as the Fort School. At a town meeting in 1814 the Winslow voters decided “to rei inquish to School District No. 2 so much land opposite the south-wesT corner of the Meeting House lot as wi II accommodate said district, to erect a schoolhouse of sufficient dimensions for a town school and yard, to be occupied for that purpose so long as that district shal I keep a good schoo I house i n repa i r the reon” •
According to the records that was the fi rst schoolhouse ever bui It in Winslow. Across Lithgow Street from the Congregational Church, on the left bank of the Sebasticook just before that stream enters the Kennebec, that schoolhouse was used continuously for 95 years, from 1814 to 1909. It/hen the old high school was burned in 1915, the venerable bui Iding was again put to temporary school use unti I the new high school was bui It. The bui Iding still stands, though remodeled and now used as a dwelling house.
In 1914 the town meeting warrant contained Article 30, which read as follows:
“To see if the town wi II vote to dispose of certain school bui Idings not now in use in the districts named: Fort, Hayden, Files, Wall, Howard and Keay”. On that warrant the town voted to authorize the selectmen to lease or sel I, in their best judgment, any of these properties.
Fortunately, like many another town, Winslow has always had prominent citizens who are conscious of the value of preserving historical sites. Such a man was George Paine. Protesting against the destruction of the oldest school bui Iding in the town, he succeeded in arousing enough feeling to secure a town vote that the Fort schoolhouse should never be sold or moved away, but should be held by the town forever. Subsequently the bui Iding passed into the care of the Fort Halifax Chapter of the D.A.R., along with that even more important histor i ca I object, the 0 I d blockhouse of Fort Ha I i fax.
Another old schoolhouse in Itlinslow stood near :the I ine between the Howard and Lewis farms on the Augusta road. When it was built is uncertain, but it was standing when Sidney Howard bought the farm in 1847. The story is told that when Sidney picked his fal I apples his first year on the farm, he threw a basketful into the entry of the schoolhouse, making the school mistress so angry that she picked up one of the apples and with true pitcher’s aim hit Sidney in the stomach, whereupon he departed without further arg·ument. That’s all we know of the story. We hope the ch i I dren, not the teache r, got a chance to eat the app les •
That schoo I house was I ate r moved to the top of . a kno I I on the Lew is fa rm, and finally in 1914, no longer In use as a school,. it was sold under the same vote that wou Id have di sposed of the Fort Schoo I, if George Pa ine had not i ntervened.
Store employees who think they have to work hard these days should consider the conditions under which their predecessors worked a hundred years ago. Here are the ru les posted in a Boston store In 1855:
“This store must be opened promptly at 6 A.M. and remain open unti I 9 P.M. the year round. Store must be swept, counters, base shelves and show cases dusted, lamps trimmed and fi I led and chimneys cleaned, doors and windows opened. A pai I of water and a scuttle of coal must be brought in by each clerk before breakfast if there is time to do so and at the same time attend to customers who ca II.
“Any employee who Is in the habit of smoking Spanish seegars, getting shaved at a barber shop, going to dances and other such amusements, wi II most surely give the employer reason to be suspicious of his integrity and al I-around honesty.
“Each emp loyee must pay not less than $5 a year to the church and must attend Sunday School every Sunday.
“Men employees are given one evening a week for courting purposes, and two if they go to prayer-meeting regularly.
“After fourteen hours of work each day in the store, the leisure time of each employee may best be spent in reading good literature.”
I suspect, after those fourteen-hour store days, Ie isure ti me was best spent in sleep. The posted rules provided no time off for female employees. The men had an evening off to go courting, but hOI did the girls in the store
get any “time to entertain their suitors?
Nex”t week· I want to te I I you why the Co I by ath let i c mascot happens to bethe wh i te mu Ie •
Year: 1955