Radio Script #282
Little Talks On Common Things
December 4, 1955
Last week I told you what happened to Thomas Flint, the young medical student who was the principal witness against Dr. Valorus Coolidge in Watervi I Ie’s first murder case in 1847. I told you how he went to California, gave up the practice of medicine, and became a wealthy rancher. Tonight I want to tel I you about visits to Maine by the daughter of Flint’s cousin and partner, Llewellyn.
Bixby. She became Sarah Bixby Smith, and when she was well along in years, edi ted F lint’s diary and wrote a book of her own ca I led “Adobe Days It. She was very young when she made her first two visits to Maine. The first time she was only two and a half years old, the second time only five. Each time she stayed about six months with relatives in Skowhegan: Anson and Norridgewock. She claims she picked up the Maine dialect, for she wrote: 7!Perhaps it was being there just when was forming habits of speech that has fastened upon me an unmistakable New England way of speaking that I sti II have in spite of my many years in Cal ifornia.”
On the first trip she was accompanied by both her father and her mother. She claims that even though she was not yet three years old, she remembers incidents of that first visit. In her book she wrote: “Maine was a wonderful place! The leaves on the trees were red and yellow, brown and purple.!’ instead of green, and when the wi nd b lew they fe II off. The dry leaves on the ground made a fine swirling sound when I scuffed in them. Mama gathered some of the prettiest, pressed them, and waxed them with a hot iron and a parafin candle. We took them back to California with us and pinned them on the lace curtains to rem i nd us of Skowhegan.
She goes on to te II about her first snow. “We had not been long in Ma i ne before the air fi I led with goose feathers, only it wasn’t goose feathers, but snow. Then came sleigh rides, a snow man and Christmas, with a piggy-back ride on grandfather to see the tree at the church.
She te I I s us that in Ma i ne she learned odors as we I I as sights. !! I knew the smel I of snow in the air, of pine trees in winter, of woodshed and barn, of an old house that had been lived in for long, long years. I came to know the fragrance of a cellar, of apples and butter, vegetables and preserves.!!
She remembers the big fireplaces and records a humorous incident connected with one of them. “Papa was taking care of me while Mama and Aunt were visiting neighbors. He sat in the big living room in front of a roaring fire and was having so good a time reading and smoking that I thought I would do the same. climbed up and took from the mantle a pretty twisted paper lamp-lighter, then seated myself beside him, put my feet as high as I could on one side of the fireplace, adjusted my newspaper, lighted my paper cigar, and mouthing it about, managed to set my front ~hair on fire. That attracted Papa’s attention to his job.
Two years later she made the second trip to Maine. This time her father’s business kept him in California, and the mother made the long journey with Sarah and her younger s i’ster’ Anne. I t must have been a hard tri p without a man to attend to the luggage and take other responsibi lities, but Mrs. Bixby was a competent and resourcefu I person. Her daughter says: “Mama invented for us traveling dresses of a medium brown serge, with bloomers to match, a whole generation before such garments came into general favor for little gi rls. The benefit to mother was fewer traveling bags and satchels; for me it was the privi lege of standing on my head whenever I felt like it, without being immodest.”
In Skowhegan she was given a beautiful dol I, which she named Elizabeth, and kept all her life. It is to this doll that she refers in the following tender paragraph in her book. Yilt was in the south yard that we bui It a big snow-man; it was there that the sleigh upset one day when we turned in from the street with too much of a flourish, and pitched Nan and me deep into a snow bank; it was here under the app Ie trees that we turned somersau Its; it was here that the horse stood on his hind legs to shake down apples from the tree. The same horse would come to the stone steo outside the kitchen door and rattle the bucket when he was thirsty. Here Elizabeth was packed in grandfather.Weston’s old clock case for her long ride to California, as if she were going in a coffin to heaven.
But the San Justo heaven I acked the great beds of I iIi es of the va Iley that grew under the trees in the Ma i ne yard.’! In the spring Sarah’s father joined them, evidently persuaded that one trio across the continent alone with the two little girls was enough for his wife to endure. So he came to take them back to California, staying long enough to visit al I the Maine relatives and take in the Centennial Exhibition in Phi ladelphia. That fact gives us the date of Sarah!s five year old visit to Maine; 1876.
Sarah Bixby had a wise, understanding mother. Sarah preserved into her own old age a letter which her mother wrote to her father during the early weeks of that 1876 visit. “Sarah’!, the mother wrote, “is the strangest chi Id I ever saw, so affectionate, yet wi I I not be coaxed. With super-abundance of spirit tempting her to try everything, she yet tries to remember al I the new rules of life.
She has lovely brown eyes. I hope those eyes wi I I not hold a shadow caused-by her mother misunderstanding her and crushing out by sternness anything sweet and beautiful. I would not want to love her so fondly as to make her a foolish, conceited woman~ but I am sure that is no worse than to give her life a gloomy start. If Sarah’s mother knew when and how to discipline her chi Id. On one occasion when Sarah had been what she calls “whining:’, the mother said Sarah was usually such a good girl that her throat must now be rusty or she wouldn’t whine so. Oi I was the way to cure a squeak, her mother declared. So she proceeded to grease the inside of Sarah’s throat with olive oi I applied to the end of a white feather.
Many years afterward, when relating the incident, Sarah said: HDo you wonder that itwas years before I learned to like French salad dressing? It reminded me too much of that five-year-old greasing.”
Even to this day an impressive sight awaits one who for the first time crosses the twin bridges at Skowhegan. The view, now partially ob’structed by bui Idings, must have been even more imposing in the 1870’s. Of it Sarah wrote:
“Wheneve r we went to town on an errand or to ch u rch, we crossed the b r i”dges , under wh i ch the great river rushed to pour over the fa I Is be low, a never fai ling wonder. On the far side of the island the water turned the wheels of cousin Levi Weston’s sawmi I I, an interesting place, but one where Mama insisted it was too da nge rous for me to play.”
It comes to us as a surprise that in the 1870’s Sarah’s home in California had a genuine bathroom. The way peop Ie took baths in M:line was a new experience for the ch i I d. Th is i s what she wrote about it: “To have a bath ina wash-tub by the kitchen stove was a lark for a I ittle wild-westerner who had known only a modern bathroom. The second time we were at “,grandfather’s there was a curious soft-rubber pouch for a tub, which was set up when wanted before the fireplace in the north bedroom. The bottom rested on the floor” whi Ie the sides were held up by poles, resting on chairs. After a week-end bath in this tub, Mama and I would say together:
f!How pleasant is Saturday night,
When a f I the week “ve been good,
Said never a word that was cross,
And done a f I the good that I cou I d.”
With sadness, Sarah Bixby tel Is us what happened to the old house in Maine that she learned to love so we II: “Soon after we left for our return to Ca Ii..;. fornia, the old home was sold, and grandfather and Aunt Martha moved out west with us. The man who bought the place cut down the beautiful trees, tore down the house, and bui It two smal I ones in its stead. But though the original house is gone, it wi II live in my memory always. could draw its floor plan.
think I could set every piece of furniture in its correct place.”
And that, listeners in the Kennebec Va Iley, is the story of how a ( itt Ie girl from California, eighty years ago, fel I in love with Maine.
Now let us turn to another subject. Do you remember the little picture cards That used to come inside the packages of various products, ana now We youflgs;-4drs useo TO’ collect them fifty years ago? There were birds and animals and flowers, and the trick was to acquire a complete set.
There were other cards that came nOT in the packages, but were ci rculated in various ways to advertise the prodUCTS. One such product was thread.
Clark’s Mi Ie-End Spool Cotton issued a series of geographical cards. One such shows The square at Saint Peter’s in Rome with an inset photogr~ph of King Humbeb rt of I ta I y •
Harris, Gage and Tolman of Portland advertised luncheon beef with little cards remi ndfu I of modern mil k ads wh i ch picture the b u I I Elmer and the cow Elsie. The male bovine in one of the luncheon beef pictures is helping The lavishly dressed female on with her cape, whi Ie she is drawing on a long-sleeved glove. On the back of the card is printed: !1Luncheon beef, delicately prepared for tab I e use. A pa I atab Ie prepared I uncheon for clubs, hote,Ls, restaurants, families, tourists, travelers, picnics, for armies, navies, merchanT ships, mines, the territories, and the frontier. NeatlY’packed by Armour Packi ng Co., Kansas Ci tv, U. S. A.!T STickney and Poor, of whose spices and extracts I sold quantities in the old Bridgton store, advertised its vanilla with a picture of a little sun-bon- neted girl trying to induce a dog to eat an apple which she has taken from a big basket at her side.
Long before the days of mus i ca I commerci a Is on the radi 0, the little cards used verses. One of these, advertising Clark’s thread, shows a girl looking up at an ow I perched on a branch. The verse reads:
til want to look wi se, said Maggie one day,
I want to look clever and wise.
Oh ho!, sa i d the ow I, as he sat on a spray,
And b linked as in so lemn surprise.
You had better by far remain as you are,
For you’re sitting, my dear, on a prize.
If you use Mile-End Cotton you always will be,
And not on I y LOOK, very wi sa .”
You’ve guessed it. The picture shows Maggie sitting on a big spool of C I ark’s thread.
Another thread company, J. and P. Coats, advertised their best si Ik cord thread for hand and machine by a card depicting three old ladies having tea. The women are caricatured in a manner remindful of Grant Wood’s paintings.
Loca Idea ters were prone to humorous cards. A Boston restaurant that advertised “Dining and Lunch Room, meals at all hours, lager beer and cigars, fine wines, liquors and ales, newspapers and magazines, come and see us lf , shONs a picture of a man be i ng butted by a cow, over the capti on ‘:’gi vi ng him a Ii ftl!.
vii th women some of the most pop u I ar cards we re the baby pictures. C I ark’s thread had a whole series of those, blue-eyed babies, dark-eyed babies, dressed babies and undressed babies, but al I of them, of course, smi ling babies. Beside each baby was dep,j cted a spoo I of C I ark’s th read, and every picture bore the same ti t Ie, “Mother’s Two Treasures”.
And with that we must say good night for old times’ sake.
Year: 1955