Radio Script #1022

Little Talks on Common Things
October 20, 1974

Many listeners tell me they like occasionally to hear on this program reference to things of by-gone days that have now nearly or completely disappeared. So, as we get well into the 27th consecutive year of this program, let us start today’s broadcast with two subjects very familiar half a century ago, but that we seldom see today. Those subjects are tramps and gypsies.

Every Maine village, however small, fifty years ago, had its warm weather visits from professional hobos, whom Maine people always called tramps. Even in Maine, as well as in the metropolitan centers of our country, the larger towns and cities had one or more tramp jungles, places where the hobos congregated, cooked their meals and liquefied the canned heat that they often use for alcoholic beverage.

When I was a boy in the early grades, I recall that every year spring housecleaning was usually accompanied by the back-door call of the season’s first tramp, asking for food. He always got something, much as my mother grumbled about “those darned tramps”.

I was in high school before I ever saw any of the so-called tramp information signs. In our town, especially in the Village, they were not often marked on the house, where they would be too easily detected and erased by the owner. The marks would appear on a light pole in front of the house, on the corner of a fence, sometimes on a tree. I never learned the exact meaning of the different signs, but they would be something like this (though I may have the particular symbols quite wrong). A crow might mean No Good. You won’t get anything here. A circle might mean the opposite. Good feed here. Two notches, perhaps representing teeth, might be warning against a biting dog. Anyhow, whatever the signs were, they were information for other hobos coming to town.

While all tramps were held in contempt by most people, some folks came to recognize great differences among those wanderers. I remember one who, despite his badly worn clothes, always looked surprisingly clean, and was always polite. He never asked for a free handout. He would say, “Madam, do you have any work I can do for a meal?” He seemed to take a special liking to my grandmother, who lived on the same street with us, but in her own house. She always had some chore for him, which he would perform honorably, then sit down to a big meal.

Out in the country, the farmhouses were often visited by tramps in pairs, but in our village they soon found such visits unprofitable. If several arrived in town together, they would break up and visit different homes individually.

As everyone knows, a common method of transportation for the tramp was riding the roads, that is, taking the dirty, uncomfortable and dangerous ride reclining on the underslung structure of a railroad freight car. They couldn’t get into our village that way, because our railroad was the Bridgton and Saco River two foot narrow gauge, whose freight cars were slung too low and were too narrow to provide such a ride. So into our town the tramps came on foot from broad gauge railroad stops such as Norway on the Grand Trunk, or Brownfield on the Maine Central. They often sought overnight lodging in some farmer’s barn outside the village, but many took advantage of a large building long unused – called the milk factory. If a tramp was so lucky as to get unseen into an empty freight car coming into town, (and some of the tramps did do that) they would get off very near that old abandoned building. It had been part of a plant for canning condensed milk. The venture was not successful, so the building was abandoned while still structurally sound. Isolated, at the end of a dead end road, it was an ideal refuge for the tramps. About once a year, the town fathers would be concerned about it, especially for fear of spreading fire, and they would gather the sheriff’s deputies to clean the tramps out. But the hobos were soon back again.

What stopped the annual influx of tramps? Was it public welfare? Was it more active control of vagrancy? Perhaps both. Perhaps other reasons. Does anyone really know?

Now let us turn to the gypsies. They traveled in what were called caravans – big covered wagons. The men were bent on trading horses, the women on telling fortunes, and they practiced all sorts of tricks to get the unwary to part with a few dollars. Some towns tolerated them, at least for a few days and indeed they showed no desire to stay long in anyone place. But other towns didn’t want them inside the boundaries and hustled them out. Such a place was Waterville in 1901, according to an account in the Waterville Sentinel of June 3 of that year. Perhaps the best way to tell you about it is to quote exactly what was printed in that Sentinel 73 years ago.

“The troop of gypsies who have been making so much trouble in other parts of Maine landed in Waterville, but remained just 20 minutes and if City Marshal Farrington had not been at dinner when they arrived, their stay would have been even shorter. Word came that they had reached Vassalboro, where they camped and took down some wooden fence for fires. when the owner complained they set dogs on him. The owner then notified Sheriff Getchell in Augusta, and deputies were sent to move the gypsies along. They came as far as Winslow and camped there, and four of the women came across the river just before noon.

“As soon as our Marshal learned what was going on, he located the leader of the four women and told her they would have to leave the city. She protested, ‘But we ain’t been here but 20 minutes.’ Said the Marshal, ‘That’s twenty minutes too long. I’ll give you just 20 minutes more to get out. If you’re not gone by that time, I’ll have you in court and you’ll get ninety days in the county jail.’ The women soon disappeared.

“This is a tribe of gypsies new to this region. Some people call them Brazilians. Even in their twenty minutes here they caught one victim. One of the women asked a citizen to let her see what small change he had in his pocket, saying she would use it to tell his fortune. That was the last he saw of the money. From reports we got from other towns, those gypsy women call at stores and offices to get their hands on valuables and make off with them. In some places they got away with it, but not in Waterville. Their first move here is an immediate notice to get out.”

There are other bits of nostalgia in that Sentinel of three-quarters of a century ago. Colby had won a baseball game with Bowdoin, and the Sentinel carried the story about the evening celebration.

“The Colby boys celebrated last evening. The celebration would have been held last Saturday, right after their victory over Bowdoin, but it was postponed because of the death of Parker Gillis Cates.

“Last evening a special electric car and a big supply of fireworks were secured. The Colby baseball team and the Colby band were loaded on to the car, and behind it on foot were all the male students of the college, carrying torches of red fire, and letting off a stream of Roman candles. They made the round of all professors’ houses located on the car line, with a long stop at 33 College Avenue, the home of the Colby president. Of course a stop was made at the office of Dr. F. T. Hill, the city’s foremost booster of Colby teams, and the genial doc tor responded to demands for a speech. At the Sentinel office, two men were cornered in the news room and compelled to make speeches.

“Altogether it was a grand night for the Colby boys.”

In 1901, many veterans of the Civil War were still living, and under the auspices of the Grand Army’s William Heath Post, Memorial Day was gallantly celebrated. After a morning spent in decorating soldiers’ graves and suitable ceremonies at several cemeteries, the afternoon saw a big parade. Forming at the corner of Temple and Main Streets, it went down to Silver, and through that street to Redington and up Summer Street to Pine Grove Cemetery, then up Grove Street to Silver, and via Silver and Elm to Monument Park. There was no oration at the Park as became customary later. That feature was reserved for the evening, when another, shorter parade formed on Common Street and escorted the speaker to the Opera House. Led by GAR veterans, followed by Garfield Camp Sons of Veterans, a group of Spanish War vets, ladies of the GAR, Daughters of Veterans, the local Second Regiment of Maine National Guard, all led by the Waterville Military Band, they marched into the Opera House.

The lengthy program would be unthinkable today. No one would sit through its 2-1/2 hours, which were patiently endured 73 years ago. After music by the band, Rev. A. D. Dodge of the Free Baptist Church gave the invocation. A chorus of school children sang lustily three numbers. Mayor Frank Redington spoke for 15 minutes, followed by a speech of the same length from GAR post commander Frank Lowe. The post adjutant, N. S. Emery, then read the General Orders for Memorial Day, and John Nelson, H. S. principal, gave Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Then at last came the guest orator, the Hon. Humphrey Webster of Damariscotta, who spoke for an hour. We wonder if anyone was still awake to hear Rev. Cyrus Simpson of the Congregational Church pronounce the benediction.

It is difficult for young people of today to realize what Waterville was like in the pre-automobile era at the turn of the century, the time we have just been talking about.

The present Post Office, now about to be abandoned for a new building up the Avenue, had not then been built. The Elmwood Hotel was still standing and in front of it not a filling station, but a neat little park with a fountain. Where now stands the Central Fire Station were two ancient residences, one with the date 1792 marked over the fan-topped door.

On the east side of Main Street where are now the Professional Building, the Levine Building and other tall structures all the way to Temple Street, was a row of low, false-front buildings much like what the movies show in western mining towns a century ago. Down the middle of Main Street ran the trolley tracks. Where is now the Mayflower Hill campus of Colby College, there were only farms and orchards. Burleigh Street had just been opened with only one house on it from Morrill Avenue to Winter Street. Where is now the Junior H. S. was cow pasture, and the high school at that time was the location of the present Pleasant Street School. And with this rewrite of changes since 1901, we must say goodbye until next week.

Year: 1974