Radio Script #900

Little Talks on Common Things
September 26, 1971

For 900 times, Little Talks has disturbed the airwaves, and amazingly people still seem to be willing to listen. Today’s 900th broadcast is honored by participation from the station and the sponsors Carleton Brown, president of the Kennebec Broadcasting Company that operates WTVL and Richard Hawkes of the Keyes Fibre Company are joining me in this 900th time on the air. First, Mr. Brown will tell how this program started nearly a quarter of a century ago. So let us hear now from Carleton Brown.

Thank you, Carleton. Now we shall hear from Richard Hawkes, vice-president of the company that has been our sponsor for 23 consecutive years, Waterville’s internationally known Keyes Fibre Company.

Thank you, Mr. Hawkes.

How did Little Talks turn into a program devoted to local and regional history, mostly about Maine and especially about the towns of the Kennebec Valley?

While there are a lot of common things besides babies and in its early days this program discussed many such things, their number is after all limited. On the contrary, old newspapers, account books, diaries, letters, and family documents are constantly turning up. Also, it was not long in that winter of 1948-49 before I discovered that my occasional mention of old time events and former ways of life in Central Maine attracted more favorable attention than any other topics. So, through the necessity of putting this program on the air week after week, to fulfill WTVL’s contract, I gradually became a sort of amateur indeed, very amateur local historian. As time went on, I became more interested, especially to seek answers to puzzling questions of local history.

In 1954 I decided the time had come to get some of the information into print. The result was the publication of Kennebec Yesterdays, followed in 1957 by Remembered Maine.

How did I find all this information? I didn’t. In most cases it found me.  Listeners began pouring in all kinds of printed and written material. They told me about material that I could then follow up. They corrected many a stupid error that I made. And then contributions have never ceased. They still come. Within the past week I have received two that some day I will tell you about. It would take at least ten tedious minutes, and bore you all into turning off your radios, if I should merely enumerate all the topics that have found their way to this program. But perhaps you can stand a list that gives one items from every letter of the alphabet, that during the past 23 years, had been mentioned on Little Talks. Here they are: Aroostook War, bicycles, Christmas, drug stores, epitaphs, fire fighting, guide posts, horse cars, ice industry, wagon jacks, Kennebec River, lumber, narrow gauge railroads, oxen, peddlers, quack doctors, Revere bells, schoolhouses, tin mines, upsetting axes, vacations, water supplies, X-rays, yarn balls, and zany tall stories.

So, as we continue into our 24th year of this program, we thank WTVL, Keyes Fibre, and most of all you who have so patiently listened and so generously contributed.

Year: 1971