Radio Script #105
Little Talks On Common Things
April 22, 1951
The persistent rain and high water of recent weeks have brought many reminders of the flood of 1936 and, to old timem, have aroused memories of earlier floods. In the Kennebec Valley ~ have been fortunate this year. The recently constructed dams and storage basins have done much to save us from overwhelming waters.
It is not so in other parts of the country. Before the recent devastating floods hit the Mississippi, the Red River of the North and other mighty streams, damage had been done in areas much nearer to Maine. On a recent trip I drove in ignorance into the little village of Mountain View, New Jersey, twenty miles north of Morristown. We were told that the bridge across the river had been open less than an hour, after being closed for three days. As we approached the bridge we saw the reason. Great lakes of water stretched out over the fields in all directions. Many homes stood with water up to the second story. Nmnerous motor cars stood nearly submerged. Trains crawled over rails a foot under water.
We were told that a thousand persons were homeless in that rural area, so extensive and so violent was the damage.
It is natural, therefore, that on this program our thoughts should again turn to old time floods on the Kennebec. Mr. Alex Herd of Winslow has shown me impressive photographs of the flood of 1901, a Kennebec deluge that happened half a century ago.
The Waterville Mail called it the womt freshet since 1832. You will recall that the 1832 flood was one I talked about a few months ago, when I posed the
question, which brought the highest water, the freshet of 1832 or the one 104 years later in 1936. At any rate, it seems likely that, of the freshets on the Kennebec in the last 150 years, that of 1901 was at least the third highest and one of the most devastating.
One of Mr. Herd’s pictures shows the plant of Edward Ware and Company with nter nearly to the top of the first floor windows. Another shows houses at the Head of the Falls half way submerged. A third shows a building near the junction of the Sebasticook and the Kennebec with all except its roof under water. Perhaps the best picture is of the old covered bridge across the Sebasticook showing the roachfay completely under water and the waves washing over the flooring of the bridge.
That 1901 flood came, not in the spring, but at the beginning of winter, just a week before Christmas. On December 13 — a fateful Friday, the 13th, it was — the weather tumed unseasonably warm. All day Saturday the snow melted fast, and there was a lot of it, because since Thanksgiving the snow storms had been frequent and heavy. Saturday night it began to rain, and for 48 hours a drenching downpour continued. The river rose suddenly and rapidly.
Mr. S. I. Abbott of the Lockwood Mills then told the Waterville Mail that the deepest water he had ever previously seen over the dam, in his 26 years with the company, was 13 feet, but on the moming of December 16, 1901, he measured 15 feet. The oldest residents declared that the island near the bridge was never so deeply under water since 1832.
The night of Sunday, December 15 had seen damage begin. Tm Ticonic footbridge went out at 2 :00 A.M. Daylight revealed that the approach from the foot of Temple Street to the toll house waS still intact, but at 7 :30 the toll house also started down the river. It started right side up and moved along in a dignified manner until it reached the railroad bridge. The floor of that bridge acted like a knife to cut the roof off the floating toll house, and ~ the time it reached the Ticonic Dam, it was a complete wreck.
By Monday noon the situation at the Lockwood Mill was serious. The entire mill was shut down, and the canal dam suffered bad damage. In even worse condition was Hollingsworth and Whitney, for the water had invaded their buildings in such volume that all work had stopped for two weeks.
As for householders near the river, the Waterville Mail said, in its issue of December 16: liThe residents of the Head of the Falls are suffering as they usually do when a freshet comes. People living on the river bank began moving out and getting to higher ground last evening. Before the foot bridge went out some of the tenements were in danger, and this forenoon two or three feet of water stood on the ground floor of most of them. One house was entirely surrounded by water several feet deep. It was fastened by a rope to a stout tree a rod or two up the river, though the tree stood as deep in the water as did the house.”
Flood conditions don’t trouble us much today in what we call the gully between Pleasant and West Streets, and on south, east of the lower end of Burleigh Street. The years have seen much of that gully filled in, . including a complete fill to enable Winter Street to cross it. But in 1901, when its old name of Hayden Brook was familiar to every resident, people who lived near the gully knew when there was a flood. Early Sunday aftemoon in that December of 1901 water began flowing into some of the houses in the Hayden Brook district. The culverts were entirely inadequate. The sudden flow of water was blocked, rather than carried off, by the culverts. Washouts resulted all the way from Ash Street to Western Avenue.
On the Messalonskee water was up to the floor of the Gilman Street bridge, and a crew of men worked all night to keep the bridge from going out.
On the Sebasticook the well known high water mark on the Bassett Store was covered by water. The store was entirely surrounded and could be reached only by boat. The covered bridge over the Sebasticook was moved from its foundations, but did not go out. Cars loaded with iron held in place the two railroad bridges.
In Winslow the Reynolds saw mill could be reached only by boat. Out of the mill yards no less than 300,000 feet of lumber floated down the river.
All day Monday Waterville was cut off from telephone communication with outside communities. Water backing into the power plants put out all of the city’s electric lights, stopped the wheels of the street railway line, and disrupted the facilities of the Union Gas and Electric Company.
People waited in vain for mail and passenger transportation. Not a train could get into Waterville over any of its connections for three days.
What the 1901 flood did to the town is revealed by the very form in which the Waterville Mail published its issue of Monday, December 16. TheMail was, as most of you know, an evening paper, of full newspaper size, usually of eight and sometimes twelve pages. This flood issue of December 16, 1901 is a little four-page sheet, 11 by 8~ inches. For the size and format, the edi.tors gave the following explanation:
“This morning we gave up all idea of getting out an issue today. The electric company informed us that they were practically dead to the world and would not be able to turn a wheel before Tuesday, perhaps much later. Finally the largest job press in our office was rigged up for foot power, and we decided to publish a paper in this abbreviated form. It will be noted that it contains no advertising at all. For that omission we ask the indulgence of our advertisers.
We hope to get out a regular edition tomorrow, but we make no promise about it.”
Very seldom do I recommend a book on this program. That is not because I do not encounter a lot of books I should like to recommend. I t is, rather, because I realize that reading is largely a matter of taste. In choice of books, as in almost no other field, one man’s meat is another man’s poison.
Nevertheless I cannot refrain from recommending the newest book about the man whom, in the early days of this program, I called the greatest man Maine ever produced. I refer to the man who was until recently the constant summer resident of his old home village of South China~ Dr. Rufus Jones.
The best biography I have read for many a day has come from the press during the past month. It is called, “Rufus Jones, Master Quaker”, and was written by David Rerishaw. lifelong intimate friend of Dr. Jones. Like his subject, Herishaw is a Quaker and a graduate of Haverford College. Unlike Rufus, Reds haw hailed from Kansas and chose journalism rather than teaching as a career. Herishaw is yotmger than Jones, in fact was a student of Rufus I at Haverford, graduating from there in 1911, whereas Dr. Jones’s own class was 1885.
With great understanding Herishaw depicts the South China background that had such life-long effect on Dr. Jones; the tremendous influence of father, mother and aunt; the determination to go to college; the decision to be a teacher; and the even more momentous decision to lead the Quaker people tMay from ascetic avoi.dance of the world into application of Quaker principles to world affairs.
In one chapter Mr. Herishaw tells the thrilling story which I once heard from Dr. Jones’s own Ups, how he and two other members of the Friends Service Committee faced. the Gennan Gestapo.
After repeated rebuffs they finally were received at the chief offices of Hitler’s secret· police. They were escorted through seven corridors, past cordon after cordon of armed guards, and hearing each door locked behind them. Dr. Jones presented a document, saying the Quakers had no political aims, only a desire to feed hungry Jewish children. The Gestapo officers read the document and seemed impressed. Then their leader said, ”We are now withdrawing to report to our chief. In about 20 minutes we shall tell you his decision.”
‘1l e Quakers were then left alone in the bi.g room. v..”hat did they do? They did a typically Quaker thing. They held a prayerful period of complete silence.
It was lucky they did, for they later learned that a concealed microphone would have informed the Gestapo of any conversation.
Dr. Jones and his fellow Quakers won their request. They found the way opened for extensive relief among the suffering German Jews. Dr. Jones always contended that he could never fully explain the inconsistency and the mystery of that decision.
Why should Hitler’s Gestapo, which was itself deeply involved in causing the tragic situation the Quakers sought to relieve, why should that hard-boiled gang receive Dr. Jones. listen to his plea, and actually grant his request? Dr. Jones often said he could think of only one plausible explanation. Perhaps some of those Gestapo officers had been among the very children whom Quaker relief had fed and kept alive after the first World War.
Next week I propose to devote a part of this program to the Quakers of the Kennebec.
In all that we read and hear about the Kefauver investigation of crime in the United States, we hear much emphasis about what government ought to do, and very little about what you and I ought to do. I wonder if all this emphasis isn’t a symptom of the way we have been turning for the past twenty years. In almost every phase of our lives we increasingly expect the government to take care of us. Less and less are we willing to face responsibility for ourselves. We want the govemment to feed us, house us, tend us. bury us. And when we see something wrong in the nat ion, we look to the government to fix it.
So it is small wonder that we shriek for legislation to stop the great crime rackets that the Kefauver Connnittee has uncovered.
We need to be reminded that legislation of itself never cured any evils. We had better place the emphasis in another place. It is wrong-doing, evil. what our grandparents used to call by the no longer fashionable word “sin”, that is the root of the trouble. Just so long as individual American citizens patronize the numbers racket, place their bets on the horses, or play the slot machines, human greed and natural ingenuity are going to provide the racketeers. Let more of us have the courage to stand up and say that gambling itself is wrong.