Radio Script #1001

Little Talks on Common Things
February 17, 1974

Last week was the 1000th broadcast of Little Talks on Common Things. Today let us note some of the things we have talked about during the 25 years that WTVL has produced this program every Sunday. The 1000 different broadcasts over those years do not include the summer repeats. During July and August there have been repeated a number of broadcasts requested for repeat by listeners.

Most popular of all topics has been the story of Waterville’s first murder in 1847, when Dr. Valorus Coolidge killed young Edward Mathews. What makes that story especially interesting is the mystery surrounding the murderer’s alleged death in the state prison at Thomaston.

Surprisingly popular was an account of the Central Maine Sanatorium at Fairfield, probably because many people still living were at one time or another associated with that institution.

Folks frequently mention several broadcasts made at different times on the Kennebec Ice industry. The first was in 1952, when there came to my attention a map showing all the big icehouses on the river. The most recent was three years ago, when I was asked to write the introduction to Mrs. Everson’s splendid book TIDEWATER ICE.

Favorable comments have been made on several broadcasts dealing with Arnold’s Expedition to Quebec in 1775. We should all be thrilled by the fine work being done by Arnold Expedition Historical Society under White Nichols of Wiscasset. Next year, in 1975, the society will reenact the expedition, using replicas of the notorious Arnold bateaux.

Half a dozen broadcasts have dealt with ancient Pemaquid, where Maine’s noted archaeologist, Mrs. Helen Camp, has unearthed ruins of old structures and has erected a museum filled with hundreds of artifacts. In 1973 Mrs. Camp was awarded a certificate of merit by the American Association of State and Local History.

Frequent reference to the country stores of long ago has aroused much interest. Unknown to many people today was their large sale of gingerbread. After a customer had taken a long ride, or perhaps even a five-mile walk, from his cabin to the store, he lunched there, not on crackers and cheese as my generation did, but on rum and gingerbread.

Listeners have been interested to learn how little money changed hands for business transactions 150 years ago. Not only was bartering common, so also were promissory notes, often for less than five dollars. The old account books are, moreover, filled with instances when a merchant let a customer have goods and charged them to a third person, on confirmation in writing by that person. What happened was that storekeeper Jones might owe Lumberman Smith. When Robinson worked for Smith, Smith would give him a written order to get goods at Jones’ store and charge them to Smith.

Often the promissory notes passed through several hands. An individual might take a man’s note for $100. After holding it for a year or more, and needing money himself, the holder would sell the note to someone else, usually at a discount. What he would get for the note depended upon the buyer’s opinion of the original signer. Sometimes the discount was as heavy as 50%. Seldom was a bank involved. In the early 19th century Maine people didn’t trust banks.

That is shown by the attitude toward paper money, especially after 1830, when President Andrew Jackson closed the Bank of. the United States, and placed federal funds in numerous local banks. There was then very little paper money issued directly by the federal treasury. Every bank was authorized to issue its own paper money, thus giving rise to calling such money “bank notes.” A strong bank would have its bills honored by merchants at par, a weak bank would have to take a severe discount.

A story is told about the notorious Continental currency circulated at the time of the American Revolution. Two boats met on the Mississippi. The boat going down river was loaded with wood, the boat going up was getting low on it. That captain yelled, “Will you sell me some wood?” The other captain replied, “What you got for money?” Came the answer, “Continentals.” “In that case,” yelled the down captain, “I’ll trade you cord for cord.”

During these 25 years I have often said that, if one wants to know how people in Maine lived in the first half of the 19th century, one will get the best information, not from news accounts in the old weekly papers, but from their ads. Those ads tell us about cargoes, received from England, from France, from the Azores, about runaway indentured servants, about pensions for soldiers of the Revolution, about routes and fares on the old stage lines and numerous other topics never mentioned in the news.

Surprising to many listeners has been the discovery that there is no mention of public celebration of Christmas in Central Maine earlier than 1858, when the Waterville Mail noted a Christmas party at the Baptist Church. Again, it is the ads that make it clear that Christmas giving was little practiced until after the Civil War. The old diaries make it evident that Christmas was not a holiday. As late as 1870 an employee in Boston was haled into court and fined for refusing to work on Christmas Day.

The fans of harness racing have been pleased to learn that, long before the Kentucky Bluegrass became the breeding ground of harness and saddle horses, Maine led the nation in the production of celebrated racehorses. Winthrop Messenger, General Knox, Gilbreth Knox and Hiram Drew were horses that attracted big crowds and caused heavy betting before the Civil War, and at the turn into the present century the holder of the world’s trotting record was Nelson, a Waterville horse.

Many persons still living remember well Maine’s narrow-gauge railroads. Because I was brought up at the terminus of one of them, they have been with me a favorite topic. Maine once had ten of those little two-footers, though five of them were later consolidated into the Sandy River and Rangeley Lakes. Others were the Bridgton and Saco River, the Wiscasset, Waterville and Farmington; the Kennebec Central from Randolph to the Veterans Hospital at Togus and the Monson built to develop Maine’s slate industry.

Of more than 200 items mentioned on the program there are some that bring back fond recollections to old timers Blacksmith shops and brick yards, bobsleds and bridle chains, buggies, sleighs and buffalo robes, circuses and chautauquas, livery stables and guide posts, the ice man and the rag man, trolley cars and wooden sidewalks, poor farms, snow rollers and yarn balls.

Little remembered, perhaps even unknown to many folks today, are three-dollar bills, barking irons, flails and snathes, cattle pounds, driving cattle to the Brighton market, itinerant peddlers, ox slings, potash kilns, and upsetting an axe.

Other topics on the program have been the systematic ringing of church bells, pumping church organs, Maine places with Paul Revere bells, old taverns and stage stops, high-wheeled bicycles, and the Year of No Summer.

At some length we have talked about Maine land titles deriving from the Kennebec Purchase and from Bingham’s “million acres.” And we dug out and put on the air the story of how Maine used its share of the unusual distribution of surplus in the federal treasury in 1837.

During the 25 years we have made only a few references to the Keyes Fibre Company, although without their generous sponsorship the program could not have been continued. Maine has many industries of which she may be proud, especially those dependent upon her greatest natural resource, Maine’s hundred millions of trees. One of the best known of those industries is the Keyes Fibre Company. More than seventy years ago, in 1903, Martin Keyes, after many frustrations, finally succeeded in making the world’s first successful dishes from molded pulp. From that beginning in the tiny hamlet of Shawmut, Maine, has grown today’s internationally renowned Keyes Fibre Company, with plants in many parts of the world.

Year: 1974