Radio Script #296
Little Talks On Common Things
March 11, 1956
I read regularly two British newspapers, the weekly ainnai I, overseas edition of the Manchester Guardian and the regular edition of the London Sunday Times. The Guardian keeps me informed of British opinion on world events in up-to-the-minute fashion, because the air service brings it to me only fortyei ght hours after pub Ii cati on. But I va I ue a Iso the Sunday Ti mes, wh i ch I receive two weeks late, because it has some of the finest and best written articles to be found anywhere in contemporary print.
One of the Times’ roving correspondents, who is likely to tum up anywhere in the worl d, is the famous Briti sh nove list and pi aywri ght, Graham Greene. His brilliant dispatches to the Times from Kenya during the Mau Mau troubles and from Indo-China just before the French capitulation were outstanding examples of interpretative reporting. Recently Mr. Greene has just returned to England from several weeks in Poland and has written a series of articles,describing conditions in that Soviet-dominated country. If you enjoy clear, easy, pungent Engl i sh, you w;i II app reci ate the exce I lence of Mr. Greene’s sty Ie. So, not on Iy for its meaningful content, but also for its use of our rrother tongue at its best, I isten to this brief extract from one of Graham Greene’s articles on Poland in the London Sunday Times.
“The ancient editor-in-chief of the French Communist newspaper L’Humanite was leaving Warsaw. They put flOttiers on him as you put flOttiers on a tomb. The smooth managerial types stood around and kissed the nicotinous yel low cheeks.
Then they shoveled him aboard the pJ,ane. One pushed from behind, another tugged from in front, another took the hat off his long white locks, another caught his flowers. Thus the Conrnun i st edi tor- i n-ch i ef went aboard.
“My own fe I low-passneger was young wi th a blue-gray puffy face, and when he took off his hat you saw a shaven skul I. He too had been seen off, and by his Country’s representative, who had succeeded after seven years in fishing him out of a Polish prison where he was serving a long term for espionage. He wouldn’t talk, for another of his countrymen lay in the same jai I; but he ate, how he ate! There was more thick bread than anything else in our meal, but his tray was empty before I had eaten more than one sandwich; so he cleared my tray as well and emptied my briefcase of all the biscuits and chocolate and sandwiches with which kind friends had stuffed it.
“The old Communist editor dozed in his seat, out of touch with the problems of L’Humanite, and I couldn’t help smiling to think of the many readers who have asked me why I sometimes write thri Ilers, as though a writer chooses his subject instead of the subject choosing him. It does indeed seem as though our whole planet had swung into the fog-belt of melodrama. But perhaps, if one doesn’t ask questi ons, one can escape the know ledge of the route our worl dis taking. Perhaps it is enough merely to note that a venerable old man with long white hair and long white moustaches says good-bye to warm-hearted friends, and after life’s fitful fever he sleeps wei I; and a young man, as young men should, has a healthy appetite. The world is sti II the world our fathers knew.”
Mrs. Charles Nickerson of Oakland Road assures me that I was not dreaming when I mentioned the significant premiums people used to get 50 years ago with tobacco tags. She says her family still has a big bookcase secured with those tags, of which the fami Iy, then storekeepers, collected at one time enough to fi II a half bushel measure. The bookcase, says Mrs. Nickerson, held 175 good sized books, had swinging glass doors leaded in a pattern design at the top. l-bw many tobacco tags it took to get that bookcase we do not now know. Perhaps it took the who Ie ha If bushe I •
For some time I have wondered whether there were ever any cases_ of alleged witchcraft in Maine. Because Aunt Hannah Cool was a kind of herb doctor, and mixed various medical concoctions in her kitchen, back in the early years of the nineteenth century here in Watervi lie, people called her a witch, but no one ever accused her of black magic, which is witchcraft intended to harm other peop Ie.
Recently ran across an interesting account of witchcraft in the Maine town of Union. This is the story not of a bewitched person, but of a bewitched horse. It seems that in 1813 Henry Esensa sold a horse to Samuel Daggett. Mrs. Esensa, Henry’s wife, had the reputation in town of being a witch in league with the Devil. She believed her husband had been cheated in the trade with Daggett, and told her neighbors that the horse had always been a plaguey pest and would never do the Daggetts any good. It was not long before the horse was discovered mysteriously untied in the barn. No device was sufficient to keep the animal tied. John Tobey, a sea captain, fami liar with every kind of sailor’s knot, warmed a new rope, made a horse-knot, and put it around the horse’s neck in approved fashion. He went to the barn, bored several holes through the planks, passed the rope through the holes, made half a dozen overhand knots, then carried the rope to a brace, where he made it fast with three round turns and a couple of half-hitches. After a short stay at the house, Captain Tobey decided to go home, but decided first to take a look into the barn. To his amazement he found both horse and rope gone. A search located the horse in a remote part of the barn, with the rope coiled securely around him. At another time the horse was on the haymow, with the rope stuck so far into the hay that it requi red two men to pu I I it out.
No one could account for these repeated escapes. The horse was tied and the barn doors nailed. Snow was sifted around doors and windows and founda- Tion openings so as to show the tracks of anyone entering the barn. Nevertheless the horse was found untied, and once he crawled out under the sil I of the barn, leaving the marks of his shoes, where it was considered impossible for so large an animal to get through.
That Union horse became quite a celebrity.
Waldobor.o and Thomaston to see the phenomenon.
dred people assembled at the Daggett place. Mr. People came from Searsmont, On some nights fifty to a hunDaggett would take them to The barn and let one of them tie the animal as securely as Captain Tobey had Tied him. Then al I who could get inside would crowd into the house, where Daggett would entertain them for an hour with stories of his experiences in the Revolutionary War. Then all would return to the barn, where on every occasion the horse would be found untied.
Finally, to put an end to the witchcraft, the tip of the horse’s ears were cut off, and to the bleed i ng ends was app lied a red-hot shove I. That tough Treatment drove off the witches. The mystery was never solved, but the less ignorant folk in Union always contended that the Daggetts knew more about the matter than they were wi II i ng to te II.
Speaking of Union, that is the town where they once had a plague of frogs, somewhat remindful of the plague of frogs that smote the Egyptians when the Pharaoh wou I dn ‘t let the I s rae lites go.
In 1820 a terrific July thunder storm brought a torrent of hai I. It ruined crops, broke glass, and pi led up against stone walls in heaps that lasted a long time. If much of it had not melted as it struck, the hail would have covered the ground a foot deep, says one reliable historian. Thirty hours after the hail had fa lien, Andrew Suckfort found ten inches of it where it had rolled agai nst a north wall. Dr. Jonathan Sibley wrote, in a letter to a friend in Portland, that three days after the storm he saw a drift of the hail six inches deep and a dozen feet long.
No sooner had the hai I melted from the fields than the frogs appeared. They were thicker than summer grasshoppers. Millions of little frogs swarmed over the hai I-ruined fields and along the shores of the streams. They moved, like western locusts, steadi Iy forward — some toward the river on the east, others toward the untouched wi I derness on the west. Noth i ng cou I d stop them.
Various conjectures were advanced to account for the frogs. Some people were sure they fell from the clouds with the hai I. Others said the unusual weather had caused a phenomenal growth of thousands of tadpoles that usually meet an early death. But to informed naturalists the cause was apparent. They came out of a mi I I pond in the cedar swamp west of Appleton Ridge, driven out probably because the big storm had swept away much of their flOod.
Union’s plague of frogs was of short duration~ but people remembered it for many years.
Among the old papers once in the possession of the late Jotham Hobbs is an interesting document concerning the care of the poor. It is an acknowledgement Signed in Watervi I Ie by James Stackpole, Jr. in 1852 and is addressed to the Selectmen of Fai rfie Id. It says: “I n rep Iy to your letter to the Overseers of the Poor of Watervi lie in regard to the c I aim for the support of Joanna Rowe, wi II say that the claim, as lodged with me, is for board of said pauper paid to Isaiah Varney, from March 8 to May 17 — ten weeks at 50 cents per week, $5.00. To which is to be added her board from May 17 at such rate as may be right. Yours, etc, James Stackpole, Jr.”
In the early days of the rai I roads, goods got rough handling. Only seven months after the first ra i I road line reached Watervi I Ie from the west, J otham Hobbs’ grandfather, Jotham P Hobbs, had a bi II receipted for rai I road freight. It seems that Hobbs had shipped a load of shingles from Watervi I Ie to Portland.
The bi II, dated July 23, 1850, is apparently only the 18th freight bi II made out at Watervi lie, if we may trust its number, which is 18. That means that only 17 freight shipments out of Watervil Ie on the new rai I road had preceded thi s load of sh i ng les. The bi II reads: ffJ. P. Hobbs, to Androscoggi n & Kennebec Ra i I road Company, debtor, for transportati on from Watervi lie to Portl and of ten thousand pine shingles, $2.50.” Then is written in parenthesis the tell-tale words, U i n broke n con d i t i on” •
A few weeks ago I was tel ling you about mining that once went on in Maine.
now have more information on this subject. I chanced to see an old pamphlet printed in 1853, which is the report of A. P. Robinson, civi I engineer, of his survey of the proposed route of the Portland and Oxford Central Rai I road from Portland through Mechanic Fal Is to Rumford. Much of the report is concerned with freight possibi lities for the projected line, and that accounts for the following paragraph: “At Rumford Falls there is a limestone deposit of great abundance and value, sufficient to supply the demand for many years, and easy to quarry and burn. The rock is very pure and makes strong I i rna of good qua I ity.
In the town of Rumford there is also a paint mine, capable of being worked for the manufacture of red ochre, since the quantity is large and is constantly replenished by gradual deposition from the water of a spring. There is also a supply of bog iron ore sufficient to keep a smal I blast furnace going for ten years. It wi I I yield fifty percent of iron, is easi Iy smelted, and makes good cast iron. Charcoal can be obtained in any quantity desired for six cents a bushe I.”
Here’s a good story about the edi tor of a Ma i ne week Iy newspaper a century ago. In his town was a woman whose sharp temper was matched on Iy by her untidy appearance. One day she rushed into the newspaper off ice boi ling mad. “You think you can get away with printing stuff about my fami Iy?” she yel led. nYou’ll find out I’m not just a wishy-washy woman.” “Now I wouldn’t say that”, was the editor’s calm reply. ”You may be wishy~ but you’re certainly not washy”. And since that washes us out for tonight, we’ll say good-night for old times’ sake.
Year: 1956