Radio Script #942

Little Talks on Common Things
October 8, 1972

It is astonishing – the number of books coming from the press that have some references to this part of Maine. Benny Muskawski has called my attention to such a book, published two years ago in 1970 under the title of Plenty of Room – a Yankee Boyhood. The author was Emery Cleaves, whose boyhood, like my own, came just at the turn from the 19th to the 20th century, more than seventy years ago.

Although Mr. Cleaves grew up in Newburyport, Massachusetts, he had roots in Maine, where at least one of his ancestors had lived before the dawn of the 19th century. Mr. Cleaves’ book has, in addition to boyhood recollections, an account of a dozen or more conversations with his grandfather. We cannot identify persons in this hook because the author has concealed them all under assumed names. He himself is depicted as Percival Peaslee Perkins, and the grandfather as Captain Fred Perkins. Furthermore, there is no doubt that the grandfather’s recollections are grossly exaggerated, but they make rollicking good stories, though tall ones, for the author proves himself to be an accomplished writer of humor.

The first reference to Waterville in this book is in a chapter entitled “The Clock Man”. This is the way the yarn began: ”Many years ago, long before the Revolutionary War, at the time when the English colonists were shooting the backsides off the French, there was a clever fellow called Caleb Dow, who lived a way up the Kennebec River Valley in a place called Waterville. He was a clockmaker, and he would make a batch of clocks, hitch up his horse in a light wagon and drive all around the countryside selling ’em to farmers and loggers.”

The story goes on to tell how, on one fall day, in the 1750’s Caleb was driving up to Norridgewock with a load of clocks. Suddenly the horse shied and bolted, and Caleb saw an old man by the side of the road, all hunched over and holding his arms in front of him. Just as the horse started on a dead run, Caleb got a better look at the old man and saw he was really a big, ugly looking bear. As the horse ran on, the bear followed in big jumps. Caleb wound up all his clocks, while the bear gained on him. With one big leap the bear finally landed on the wagon on top of the clocks. Now let grandfather finish the story in his own words. He continued, “At that point Caleb started to say his prayers. Lucky he was that the horse didn’t stop and start praying, too. If he’d been a real Christian horse, he probably would have done just that, but he was so scared he couldn’t do nothing, but keep on galloping. The old bear was sitting among the clocks trying to get his breath before he started eating Caleb and the horse, when all of a sudden the clocks started to chime and ring and strike. Was that old bear surprised! Bong, bong, went the biggest clock right in his ear. He gave a mighty leap out of the wagon, sprawled in the dirt, lumbered to his feet, and shot off into the woods. Caleb had no more trouble that night. The horse kept up a fast pace til they got into Norridgewock. Next day, Caleb called on the blacksmith and swapped a clock for a gun that the blacksmith made. He was going to be armed when he travelled thereafter.”

Now that is a good humorous yarn of old times in Central Maine. Of course there wasn’t any road to Norridgewock in the 1750’s, there wasn’t a light wagon, only high-wheeled carts in Waterville, and among the few families then clustered in huts around Fort Halifax there was no clock maker. But we all know it doesn’t take facts to make a good story.

Another chapter in the book is called “The Liquor Business”. It is grandfather’s account of an ancestor who went to California in the Gold Rush. But that fellow found no gold. He went into business selling whiskey and had some hilarious adventures which grandfather duly recounted.

Waterville comes into that story at the very end. Let us have it in grandfather’s words. “Uncle Asa, for all his whiskey selling, was a prominent citizen in Sacramento. So, when he died, they had his remains put in a barrel of his own whiskey, and then shipped him ’round the Horn to Maine. So’s the sailors wouldn’t drain off the barrel and drink it, they labeled the barrel vinegar. Now Uncle Asa rests in decent respectability in the family cemetery in Waterville.”

On another occasion grandfather said to the boy: “A hundred years ago we amounted to something in Central Maine, There was old Judge Peaslee, my own grandfather, just the same as I’m yours. He was a soldier boy in the Revolution. After that he took a hankering for books and got interested in the law. He worked hard at it and built up a practice in Waterville. He started a poor boy, raised near a sawmill out in the woods. He started right at the bottom, in the poorest class, and when he died he, left land and houses, and his own house was full of fine furniture and books and oil pictures”, said grandfather, “That is what I mean by class.”

Perhaps the best of all the yarns grandfather told to the boy is in a chapter entitled “Entrance to Heaven.” “Before I first went to sea,” said grandfather, “I was learning the undertaking business up in Waterville, Maine. One of the town’s leading citizens by name of Tewkesbury had died and we were driving the hearse to the cemetery at the head of the procession. There was quite a few folks on the street watching us as we drove down Elm Street. Just before we got to the corner of Silver Street, a couple of dogs got in a fight right in front of the hearse. Those dogs, growling and yapping, ran right between the horses and started fighting under their legs. When the horses bolted we nearly fell off. We didn’t but something worse happened. The casket shot off and fell right into the street. Some folks told a story that the body stood straight up before it toppled over, but that wasn’t true. The casket rolled over and spilled Tewkesbury out :u::o:t~ <.1.11 the flowers and 1-T1′:’eat! …. es. It took about a hundred yards to get those horses under control and turned back to the corner. The procession had stopped, and some of the passersby had gathered around Mr. Tewkesbury to shield him from more public gaze. The strangers were afraid to move Mr. Tewkesbury, so I had to demand help so we could get him tucked into the casket again, put on the lid and cover it with flowers. But anyhow, I always thought Mr. Tewkesbury’s entrance into Heaven was quite spectacular.”

Well, at any rate, untrue as they are, those are the stories Emery Cleaves claims he heard about Waterville from the lips of his grandfather. Our thanks for them go to Benny Muslawski.

A hundred and fifty years ago, not all almanacs were produced for commercial purposes; some of them were put out by religious organizations. One such was the Christian Almanac for New England, published by the American Tract Society with headquarters in Boston. A copy of their 1829 almanac recently came to my attention. Naturally the almanac boosted the society’s own program. It read: “Forty years ago, paganism reigned over three-quarters of the earth. Now there are more than 2,000 missionaries scattered around the world. Already 300,000 heathens have renounced idolatry. Our two associations in Britain and America have sent out 120 million tracts in many languages. Fifteen years ago, Sabbath schools were scarcely known in this country. Now a single denomination teaches more than 120,000 children.”

It was rare to find anyone concerned about the use of intoxicating liquors as early as 1829, but the publishers of this almanac expressed that concern. It said: “Although intemperance rages to such an extent in U.S. that 50 million gallons of ardent spirits are consumed annually, an average of two gallons a year by every man, woman and child in the nation, a society has been formed within the past two years, backed by public opinion, that has already

On observance of the Sabbath the almanac had this to say: “Although the Sabbath is profaned by travelling stages through all the principal towns, and by the passage of steamboats and canal boats, a band of ardent men has resolved to build again the fallen wall and restore Sabbath glory.”

What would those almanac editors think if they could see what happens on an American Sunday today?

When we know what dependence some people even today place on almanac predictions of weather, it is surprising to note the correct scientific view about such almanac predictions openly admitted as early as 1829. This is what that particular almanac said: “Some persons are so ignorant that they consult the almanac to learn what is to be the state of the weather on any given day. They do not know that all the information an almanac can obtain on that subject is pure guess, inserted at random, as often as not by the printer’s boy, who makes it up as he wants to. The man who makes the astronomical calculations for an almanac knows too much to pretend that he can predict any day’s weather as much as a week ahead. To predict it months ahead is absurd. We omit all such nonsense from this almanac.”

The book informs us on postal rates in 1829. A first class letter, sent not over 30 miles, cost six cents; from 30 to 80 miles ten cents; from 80 to 150 miles, 12 cents; from 150 to 400 miles, 25 cents. Every letter that had two pieces of paper doubled the rate, and every sheet beyond two doubled the rate proportionally. One postal statement seems curious today: “Every ship letter received at the office for delivery, six cents.” That referred to a common method of mail in the early nineteenth century, leaving letters with a ship captain to be delivered at his port of call. In the 18th century such letters were often left with a merchant who, sometime after long delay, got word to the addressees to call for their letters at his place of business. After the establishment of U.S. post offices, the ship letters were turned in at the post office in that port. The charge of six cents for those letters was paid by the receiver, for until the coming of postage stamps in 1847 that was the way all mail was paid for, by the receiver, not the sender.

I recall an amusing case of that kind. In 1830, a woman up in Anson had to pay double charge of 50 cents for a two-sheet letter received from her husband in New Orleans, only to have the letter tell her what a gay time the husband was having with the pretty girls at the Mardi Gras.

Next week I shall devote the entire broadcast to the Franco-American citizens of Maine. But now we must say goodbye until next week.

Year: 1972