Radio Script #350
Little Talks On Common Things
October 13, 1957
This is the 350th broadcast of Little Talks on Common Things. On 349 Sunday nights these little, inconsequential programs have been on the air. It al I began nine years ago on November 14, 1948 when Carleton Brown, president of the Kennebec Broadcasting Company and managing head of this station WTVL, asked me to fi I I an empty spot on Sunday evening for three weeks. These three weeks have extended into what is now the tenth annual season of the program. That has been possible only because enthusiastic listeners have themselves provided the evermounting material.
One of the commonest things in man’s experience is words, and in the very fi rst broadcast we began to ta I k about words and expressi ons pecu liar to the older generation in Maine. We found a lot of people interested in the origin of such expressions as “not worth a Hannah Cook” and “leaning toward Sawyer’s”. And that is how we got started on the general subject to which this program has been consistently devoted throughout its 350 Sunday nights, lore, especially that dealing with Central Maine, with towns and people of the Kennebec Valley. the subject of Maine the olden days of
One night we asked how many covered bridges were sti I I standin9 in Maine, and at once the information began to pour in. As a result, the Maine Develop~ ment Commission published an attractive pamphlet on Maine’s covered bridqes.
We were thus led into the intriguing subject of transportation. With the help of information from more than a hundred listeners, we talked about the first blazed trai Is through the forest, the roads that could be traversed only in winter on sleds, then the first roads for carts, and on to the turnpiked highways and the early tol I roads. Then we turned to water transportation -the sai I and steam that made maritime history on the Kennebec, the launching at Vassalboro of the Ocean Bird, a ful I-rigged ship that brought to the United States the first peanuts from Africa. We told how there had once been planned for Maine a complicated system of canals, only a few of which were ever bui It, because the new invention of the iron horse intervened. And when we got to ra i I roads, we just had to devote a lot of time to fvla ine:ts:p’ri de:~ i ts:~ I LttTe-; two-foot, narrow guage li nes.
In those talks on narrow guage roads we told some tal I stories, but I assure you at I least one of them is true. When I was a young fe II ow, I actua I Iy did get off the train and pick mayflowers whi Ie that Bridgton and Saco River narrow guage train made three attempts to climb the grade from Bridgton Junction to Rankin’s Mi I Is.
We discussed the electric trol ley lines, of which in this reqion Amos Gerald of Fairfield was the chief promoter. Of course we could not iqnore the Kennebec floods, and we aroused quite a debate as to whether the flood of 1832 or that of 1936 was the highest ever seen on the river. We gave a lot of attention to the old time schools and their teachers, including those frank. published reports on the efficiency of both schoolmasters and schoolm’ams.
What a time we had with the grocery stores, especially those of 1900, which my own generation remember so wei I: stores with common crackers and big barrels of di I I pickles, with Lydia Pinkham’s and Father John’s, with plugs of Battle Axe and double-thick B. L., with cards of Portland Star matches and quintals of sa I t poll uck, and pervadi ng ita I I the mi ng led sme I I s of gri ndi ng coffee l’ pungent spices, molasses and kerosene oi I. And of course we didn’t forget the bi g, pot-be I I ied stove i surrounded by up-turned nai I kegs: where the men of the vi I lage solemnly discussed the nation’s affairs.
Through these 350 broadcasts we have talked about more than 200 distinctly different subjects, and if we include what the statisticians cal I sub-heads, there have been more than 500 SUbjects. We have included stage coaches and mai I routes, newspapers and almanacs, high wheeled bicycles and buckboards, widow’s walks and Paul Revere bel Is, cattle pounds and tin mines, church suppers and one-ring circuses. Of course we could not omit the old time blacksmith shop with its ox-slings, nor the peculiar art of ringing church bel Is. We took a nostalgic look at Maine’s famous race horses, and we noted an Augusta editor’s prejudice against stoves, when they first came into common use.
We had a few words for livery stables, log cabins and lotteries; for patent medicines, peddlers and paupers; for Maine Mormons, Masons and Mi I lerites~ for saw mi I Is, singing schools and snow rollers; for town meetings and Thanksgiving; for watchmen, wolves and witchcr-aft.
Through it al I we have mentioned a lot of Maine people. Most of them wi I I never get their names in the formal books of history, but they and their deeds are the stuff of which local history is made. Jim Jackman, hurrying completion of the Canada Road to get the silver through. Solyman Heath, patiently recording in his diary each day of a hazardous journey across plains and mountains to the gold fields in 1849. Elihu Bowerman and his stalwart wife, struggling through the starving time of a bitter winter in their log cabin at North Fairfield.
Deacon Simpson of Winslow, whose charity saved the val ley after the Year of No Summer. William Bryant, commenting in his Fairfield diary on the e fecti on of Pres i dent Buchanan, ~~Let us wa it and see”. Sy I vanus Cobb, the Universali st, joining with Timothy Boutelle, of no church at all, to persuade the Maine legislature to provide $1,000 a year for the little Baptist college at vJatervi I Ie.
In this period of more than nine years, with 350 broadcasts, what have we been trying to do? Has there been any rhyme or reason to the program? Has it been prompTed merely by nostalgia, by a casual and useless turning up of old time lore? Not at a II. We have never contended that the old days were the best days. On the contrary, we have repeated I y sa i d we wou I d not exchange I i vi ng now for Jiving then. But we definitely believe that Maine has a rich and important heritage, that from gl impses of the way our forefathers met and “solved their problems we can secure much needed help in facing the problems of our own day.
We hear a lot aoout tTthe glory of doing without”. Maine pioneers learned the hard way to do without, but they never gloried in it. They strove with might and main to have something to do with1 to make +omorrow a I.ittle better than today. We can at least do the same.
Not for a moment should we forget what has made possible the continuance of th is program for a II of the ten years — its unfa iii ng year afte r year sponsorsh i p by the Keyes Fibre Company. On the first b’roadcast of the p resent season, a month ag01 I pointed out something which think you listeners especially appreciate. Little Talks on Common Things is one ofa very few long-established, ponsored radio programs that has never been interrupted by advertising, Each Sunday night, as the announcer introduces the program, he te lis you that the broadcast comes as a pub I ic service of the Keyes Fi bre Company_ You are ne;.;. ver urged to buy anything, never told in grim prose or in singing commercial that your hea Ith and your very desti ny depend upon someth i ng like Kyson i te f i 1- terse When Keyes says that it sponsors Little Talks solely as a public service, the company means exactly what it says. It is my earnest hope that, during its 350. presentations, Little Talks on Common Things has in some measure rendered the public service which Keyes expected of it, and that as we go on into future broadcasts we may continue to enlighten our fine people of Maine on the wealth of our state’s historic lore.
We II, after thi s review of the proqram’s past, we have on Iy a little time left for new items. So let us take up just one of them, the story of a Maine man’s part in the famous Boston Tea Party. In 1840 there was sti II I i vi ng in Be I fast a man named John \vyeth, who tol d to a loca I reporter what he reca lied about that Boston ep i sode that preceded the Revo I uti on. He was a rrember of a sma I I group in B:>ston, who used to meet every night duri ng those troub Ie some days. The arrival of the hated tea ships was the first signal for that group to act. TJ-ey decided to risk the time necessary to throw the tea overboard, rather than do the quicker work of setting fire to the ships, because they feared the flames woul d arouse the town and cause the fi res to be exti ngui shed before their job of destruction had been finished.
John Wyeth said that, at an appointed time, the group, dressed as Indians, faces smeared with grease and soot, met at Hancock’s wharf, where one of the ships was moored. The two other ships lay only a few feet away in the harbor.
Boarding the first ship, they ordered captain and crew below decks, rigged up a tackle from the hold, and set to work. Some of the group jumped into the hold and passed the chests of tea to the tackle. As they were hoisted to the deck, other men knocked the chests open with axes, whi Ie others lifted them to the ra i I and dumped the contents overboard. At the seme ti me other rrembers of the group were carryi ng on the same procedure on the other two shi ps.
A II thi s took some ti me, and the townspeop Ie collected in I arge numbers. The tea-dumpers made no attempt to disperse them because they knew wei I that the spectators” sympathies lay with the actors.
When it was a II over, John Wyeth was especi ally proud of the fact that the secret of the groups’ identity was sacredly kept. Not a single name was ever revealed to the British governor or to his Tory sympathizers. Said Wyeth:
!fA II rema i ned in Egypti an darkness.”
With that account of a Maine man’s part in one of New England’s best remembered historic events, we must say good night for old times’ sake.
Year: 1957