Radio Script #871

Little Talks on Common Things
December 13, 1970

I am told there are no longer any factories in Maine for the canning of sweet corn. It was not many years ago that the state had more than a hundred of those canneries. In recent years the best known canners of Maine corn were Burnham and Morrill and the Monmouth Canning Co., the latter headed by my college classmate, Chester Soule. The corn factory baron in my boyhood town of Bridgton was Hall Burnham. He had come to Bridgton in 1865 to manage a corn cannery operated by J.W. Jones of Portland. In a few years Burnham bought the business and was its sole owner until his death in 1902, when the factory was sold to Burnham and Morrill.

In the canning season that place that we called the corn shop was a hustling beehive. The husking sheds were piled high with loads of green corn dumped there by the farmers, and one of the first paying jobs I ever had was husking corn at two cents a basket — and those baskets were huge affairs, containing two full bushels.

I never worked inside the corn shop, but I did observe the process. Cans were cut out of sheets of tin right at the plant, an operation that preceded the canning season by several weeks. The finished can had a hole in the top through which to pour the corn. After the corn was cooked and the cans filled, they were carried along a conveyor belt where caps were put over the hole. Then every can had to be sealed by hand. Men with sealing irons closed the tiny pinhole left in the cap. Then the cans were placed on large pans, each holding 96 cans. Those pans, five at a time, were put into retorts for a final hour of cooking. The pans were then lowered into tanks of cold water to cool, then spread out on a big platform to dry.

I do not recall the labeling done at the Bridgton corn shop, but many such canneries in Maine sold to various distributors, who sent their own labels to be put on the cans before they were shipped in wooden boxes of 2 dozen cans each. Because Bridgton’s railroad was a narrow gauge, one of Maine’s noted two-footers, it took more than two of those little freight cars to carry the carload of a thousand cases for the bigger Maine Central cars.

When Clarence Richard Johnson was teaching French at Colby about 1920, he told me something about Maine corn that I have never forgotten. Johnson had traveled widely before he came to Colby. He had spent some time in the Middle East and in North Africa. He said: “You hear a lot about the wide spread of the Singer Sewing Machine and the can of Standard Oil. But let me tell you that another product has wide use allover the world. In a shop in Constantinople, in a Serbian Village, even on a Sahara oasis, I have found a can of Maine sweet corn.”

Alas, with the horse and buggy of yesterday, has now departed the Maine corn shop.

Just a few years ago, at the age of 94, there died here in Waterville a remarkable woman, Mrs. Ellen Blake, who spent her last years in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Rogers. She was a much loved teacher at Waterville’s Myrtle Street and South Grammar Schools, having begun her teaching here in 1906. She was a native of Orrington, and late in life married a prominent man of that town, Leland Blake. Mrs. Blake was an accomplished writer, and her handwritten book of memoirs, recently shown me by Mrs. Rogers, is a gem. Few Waterville women ever had such an adventurous young life as did this Waterville teacher.

She came from a seafaring family that knew the great ports of the world. She wrote: “For four years my father operated a trading ship on the west coast of Africa. I never saw him until I was four years old in 1874. When he came home he brought a parrot that I want to tell you about.

“Before he returned, father asked what he should bring me. I told Mother to write him that I wanted a swearing parrot. Africa is the home of the beautiful gray parrot, with head. wings and tail of red. Dad bought six of them, but five died on the voyage home, so he landed in New York with only one bird. He put it in a cage and carried that cage in his arms on the stage to Orrington.

“Now Mother had told me tall stories about a parrot that swore, so I assumed Dad had brought me a swearing parrot. The bird was a female and we named her Gray Patie. She developed a great attachment to Mother. ‘Polly loves Mother’, she would croon, as she ran her beak over Mother’s face. She learned to talk, but she never swore. ‘Go to school, Nellie, you’ll be later whistle’, she would say when Dan puckered his lips. She would imitate the boys driving cows. ‘Wait for me, boys’, she would wail. She seemed almost human. We later had several brilliant South American parrots, but none so loveable as the little gray bird from Africa.”

Mrs. Blake’s narrative continues: “After his return from Africa, Father was given command of the schooner Fred Smith, running to the West Indies and the east coast of South America. In the spring of 1876 he wrote Mother: ‘Pack up the babies and meet me in New York. Bring Sam Conley with you, and I will sign him on as a second mate.’ Sam was my big sister’s boy friend. So Mother closed the house, and with her two daughters, aged 18 and 6, along with Sam, went to New York, of course accompanied by the gray parrot.

“We boarded the Boston boat at Hampden, took the train from Boston to Fall River for the boat to New York. There Dad met us and took us aboard the Fred Smith. That ship was our home for the next four years.

“The Fred Smith was well arranged for a family. The large after-cabin was divided into two sections, one a dining room and pantry, with two adjoining staterooms. Think of it — a cabin for the captain’s family with living room, two bedrooms and bath. We were very comfortable.

“The crew consisted of the first mate, William Bisbee, a Maine man; second mate Sam Conley, only 18 years old; Cook L.F. Andersen from Copenhagen, Denmark and four seamen from Norway. Father always preferred Scandinavians for sailors. He found them honest, faithful and fearless, and well accustomed to the sea.

“Our first trip was to the island of Jamaica. We later visited Havana, Porto Rico, Port au Spain, Trinidad, Barbados, three ports of Venezuela, Georgetown, Guava, and Pernambuco, Brazil.”

That six year old girl’s favorite among the crew was the cook, Ludwig Ferdinand Andersen. She tells us about him: “Ludwig was born in Denmark in 1843. At the age of 18 he arrived in the United States just as the Civil War began. He served for four years as a cook in the Union Army. My father met and hired him as a sea cook soon after his army discharge. Ludwig was alone in the world. He became much attached to us all, especially to me, the littlest person on the ship. He once gave me a blue dress in Boston, had me put it on, took me to a photographer, then had the photo colored and framed. He gave it to me for my ninth birthday.”

Amusingly Mrs. Blake told about her childhood experience with tobacco: “In Havana Harbor, when I was seven years old, I was leaning over the rail, watching the lighters loading bags of sugar into the hold of the Fred Smith. Small supply boats, called Bum Boats, were dashing about. Presently one of them came alongside, and a brown hand extended to me a pack of Sweet Caporal cigarettes. A pair of brown eyes looked into mine, and a sweet voice asked ‘Cigarette, senorita?’ I gazed into the face of a small boy not much older than I. ‘Gracias, senor’, I piped in my best Spanish, reaching out to accept the pack. Eagerly I carried them to cook’s galley. ‘Give me a match’, I demanded. I lighted a cigarette and calmly proceeded to smoke it. I puffed cigarettes all that day.

“The next day the same boy came with another pack. This continued all the time we were in the harbor. At last Mother saw me smoking. She complained to Father, who said: ‘Don’t mind it. All Spanish ladies smoke. She will soon forget it.’

“We left Havana and were out at sea when my cigarettes gave out. I was desperate. I went to Father’s desk, opened a box of big Havana cigars and lit one. When I emerged on deck with that big cigar in my mouth, the crew was convulsed with laughter, but Mother asserted herself and I was led down to the cabin in disgrace, and believe me something then happened (never mind what, but it hurt) that convinced me I never wanted to smoke again.”

Then Mrs. Blake tells about Peter the pig: “In November, 1878 the Fred Smith was in St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica. Captain Brown, my father, went on shore and returned carrying a bag. He opened it, and out rolled a tiny pig. If you have ever been months at sea without seeing a living thing, except what is on board, you can imagine everyone’s interest in that little animal.

“‘This is for our Thanksgiving dinner’, Dad announced. ‘Cook can roast him and stuff him. He will taste mighty good. We haven’t had any fresh meat for months.’ How my heart sank. Roast that dear, little, pinky-white baby? Never. I was only eight years old and I wanted that pig for a playmate.

“Mother came to the rescue: ‘If we eat fresh pork in this climate’, she said, ‘after living for months on cured meat, we will all be sick. Besides, he will make only one meal now, he is so small. Let him grow a while.’

“So we fixed Peter a comfortable home on the chain deck, but he had the run of the ship. He became a perfect pet. Everyone fed him, and he would even nuzzle pockets. He played hide and seek with me like a puppy. He loved to stand under the pump while a sailor scrubbed him with a broom. He liked to hide under coils of rope, and squealed with delight when he was found.

“Months passed while we made several trips to the States with cargoes of sugar. Once we encountered a heavy gale. Three times we sighted Cape Hatteras, only to be driven each time out to sea. Our food gave out. We had no meat left and only a little flour. Finally Dad said, ‘We must kill the pig’.

“Not a man of the crew would kill Peter until finally the second mate said.

‘If it has to be done. I’ll do it.’ While Sam did the job, we retreated to the cabin and stuffed our ears. The day we were towed into Delaware Bay, cook baked the last of the flour and fried the last of Peter. Mother always said, ‘Father saved Peter’s life, then Peter saved ours. ‘”

It is indeed a mighty interesting manuscript that carries the girlhood memories of Ellen Blake.

Year: 1970