The other day I heard about a man who asked the contractor who had bui It\u00a0his house 15 years ago what it would cost to build the house today. The contractor\u00a0to ID the man It wouId cost 3 times as much as it cost him in 1937.<\/p>\n
“And”, added the contractor, “you wouldn’t have so good a house”. It developed\u00a0the house had cost $12,000.<\/p>\n
“My goodness, as much as that?” exclaimed the owner. “I have never heard\u00a0even the biggest gripers complain that prices have gone up that much.”<\/p>\n
“Just look at the facts”, replied the contractor. ”When I built your\u00a0house, carpenters got 80 cents an hour, and the lowest rate in out <\/em>town today\u00a0Is $2.25, and I pay my men more than that. And don’t think for a minute the\u00a0carpenter gets all that difference intake-home pay. And the labor cost doesn’t\u00a0stop there. To it we must add the employer’s share in social security, liability insurance, compensation and other elements.<\/p>\n “And another thing”, went on the contractor, “when I built your house, it\u00a0was a game between the brick layer and the hod carrier to see who could keep\u00a0ahead of the other. The hod carrier tried to snow the mason under, The mason\u00a0kept yelling ‘more mud, more brick’, to keep his man jumping. Today they still make a game of it, but to see who can knock off first for lunch. The mason on\u00a0your house averaged better than 1,000 bricks a day and didn’t think he was overworked.\u00a0How many brick do you get today? And it isn’t because a good mason\u00a0doesn’t want to excel and show what he can do. The union rules won’t let him.<\/p>\n “Then you paid $24 to $36 a thousand for your lumber. Today that wouldn’t\u00a0pay the freight on it. As for the quality of material in your house, government\u00a0restrictions won’t let you get it today. Imagine building your house with the limit of 40 pounds of copper, which is all the government will now allow.”<\/p>\n “Very enlightening”, said the man who owned the house. “Guess I’ll go\u00a0home and go to bed, but I don’t think I’ll sleep much tonight.”<\/p>\n ”Why not?”<\/p>\n “I’ll stay awake all night trying to figure out how I can afford to live\u00a0in a $40 ,000 house!”<\/p>\n The Jackins family on Winter Street own a Kennebec County map published\u00a0earlier than any I have previously seen. It was the lithographing work of J.\u00a0Chase, Jr., who listed himself as of Philadelphia and Augusta, Maine. The map\u00a0was published and, like most maps of that day, was circulated by subscription\u00a0in 1856, a year easy to remember, because it was the year when the Republican\u00a0Party was born.<\/p>\n Most of the big surface of the map is taken up with an overall map of Kennebec\u00a0County, but around the margins are detailed maps of the county’s principal\u00a0towns, including Waterville.<\/p>\n It is the only map of Waterville ever to come to my attention which shows\u00a0both the old and the new cemeteries. At the corner of Elm and Church Streets-the latter is the old name of Park Street — Is a plot labeled “Cemetery”. This\u00a0of course is the old cemetery, abandoned before 1860. But what makes it even\u00a0more interesting is that at the south end of the city beyond the end of Summer\u00a0Street is another area likewise marked “Cemetery “. This was the beginning of\u00a0Pine Grove Cemetery, and shows that it was already in use before the old cemetery\u00a0was abandoned. The year that the map was made, 1856. was then the very\u00a0time when the transition was going on.<\/p>\n This old map settles another point I have been hazy about. I knew, of\u00a0course, that the Androscoggin and Kennebec R. R. entered town about as the back\u00a0road does now, and that the Somerset and Kennebec up from Augusta did not cross\u00a0College Avenue jn Waterville, but went up the bank of the river behind the college buildings. I knew also that the two roads were different guages, and that\u00a0therefore it was impossible for the trains of one line to run on the tracks of\u00a0the other. What I did not know was where the junction point of the two roads\u00a0was located. This 1856 map makes it plain that the junction was not in Waterville\u00a0at all, but in Fairfield, about where the present Fairfield railroad station\u00a0now stands.<\/p>\n You may recall that I once told you that the standard guage railroad is 4\u00a0feet st inches wide, which was just the distance between the ruts of the old\u00a0Roman roads, that is, the width between the chariot wheels. But some of the\u00a0earlier roads were wider than that. One such was the Androscoggin and Kennebec.<\/p>\n That first railroad into Waterville had a guage of 5 feet 6 inches, whereas\u00a0the Somerset and Kennebec up from Augusta was the standard 4 feet at inches.<\/p>\n Can some old railroad man tell me at what date the Androscoggin and Kennebec\u00a0was changed to standard guage, so that after that it was possible to\u00a0transfer whole trains from one line to the other?<\/p>\n Never has any subject mentioned on this program brought so many responses\u00a0from so wide an area as did our mention two weeks ago of the airship disaster\u00a0at the Central Maine Fair. Many persons still living saw that tragedy, and some\u00a0of them had a very intimate part in its aftennath. Out of the recollections of\u00a0these listeners we have been able to get a complete and comprehensive story of\u00a0the event.<\/p>\n The person with the most vivid and most detailed recollection of the tragedy\u00a0is Mrs. E. L. Hutchinson of Oakland Street, for it was to the house in\u00a0which she now lives, then occupied by her mother, that the injured aviator was\u00a0brought. In that house he died and from it his funeral was held.<\/p>\n It was on September 2, 190a when Charles Oliver Jones made his last flight\u00a0and went to his death at the Central Maine Fair. A folder, advertising the Jones\u00a0flights, carefully preserved through the years by Mrs. Hutchinson, reads as\u00a0follows: “Grand American Tour. The Jones Airships. The only continuous overland\u00a0flyers. The Boomerang — America’s most famous and practical passenger carrying monster — operated by Charles Oliver Jones, aeronaut and constructor.\u00a0Not an acrobatic performer, but a scientific demonstrator of the practicability\u00a0of aerial navigation.”<\/p>\n Jones contracted to exhibit the Boomerang at the Central Maine Fair in\u00a01908. At that time he was 43 years old, and he and his wife were parents of\u00a0three children, a boy of eight, and girls of four and two years.\u00a0The Boomerang was housed in a big tent, where a charge of 25 cents for\u00a0adults and 10 cents for children was made to look it over. Then on each afternoon\u00a0of the fair, Jones proposed to show the crowd what his aircraft would do.\u00a0Jones’ Boomerang was a dirigible, consisting of a cigar-shaped, gas-filled\u00a0bag, 95 feet long and 20 feet in diameter. It was made, claimed its operator,\u00a0of 7,360 blocks of silk. Its gas capacity was 1,800 cubic feet. Beneath the\u00a0bag hung a wooden crate-like frame, 54 feet long, on which the operator worked\u00a0and on which he carried one or more passengers. The craft had an eight cylinder,\u00a0air-cooled, 30 horse power motor, weighing 150 pounds.\u00a0Jones guided his huge craft from left to right by means of a rudder; he\u00a0guided it up and down by changing his own position forward or backward of the\u00a0center of gravity on the wooden frame.<\/p>\n Jones had made no fl ight on Tuesday, September 1, 1908. Such a terrific\u00a0wind whipped the fair grounds that several of the agricultural tents were blown\u00a0down. To take the Boomerang into the air was unthinkable.\u00a0The wind blew hard all the morning and early afternoon on Wednesday, but\u00a0by four 0 ‘c lock it had died down sufficiently for Jones to insist on putting\u00a0the Boomerang into the air. The Waterville Sentinel tells us there were 27,000\u00a0people at the Fair that day, and even the Kennebec Journal, ever ready to discount Waterville figures, admitted to 25,000.<\/p>\n Jones, assisted by his ground crew, put the big craft into the air. As it\u00a0passed over the crowded midway, Jones gally waved his handkerchief to the\u00a0thrilled spectators. He steered the ship in a northeast direction over the\u00a0east end of the grandstand. Rising to a height of about 500 feet, he skimmed\u00a0the treetops at the northeast end of the fair grounds.\u00a0As Jones tried to maneuver the ship into a higher current for return to\u00a0the midway, the watching crowd heard a sound like the opening of a bottle, and\u00a0saw a tiny burst of flame. The aviator, in his position on the wooden cradle,\u00a0seemed unaware of any danger. In a few seconds, however, a greater burst of fire\u00a0seemed to encircle the whole bag, and Jones was seen to go into rapid action.\u00a0He climbed far out on the under rigging, trying to point the nose downward to\u00a0deaden the shock of the fall. But the big ship, dropping slowly at first, suddenly took a quick dive as the bag emptied completely of gas, and with a sickening side-swoop disappeared beyond the trees.\u00a0Jones had crashed on the Frank Chase Estate, now the property of Mt. Merici\u00a0Academy. When assistance reached him, ones was lying motionless on the\u00a0ground. The Waterville Fire Department, under Chief W. W. Berry, promptly extinguished\u00a0the blaze, while physicians E. E. Goodrich, John Towne and J. F. Hill\u00a0ministered to the Injured man.<\/p>\n The newspapers of September 3 stated that Mrs. Jones and one of her children witnessed the tragic flight from the grandstand, and from that spot she\u00a0was rushed by a kindly attendant to the scene of the crash. The Oakland Street\u00a0family in whose home the Jones family was boarding at the time Ins ist that the\u00a0newspapers are in error. Mrs. Jones, believing that the strong wind would prevent\u00a0a flight, had decided to stay at home and catch up on her washing. She was\u00a0Just finishing that task when the neighborhood realized that somethIng serious\u00a0had occurred at the fair grounds.\u00a0Mrs. Jones started for the grounds, and on the way learned that the airship\u00a0had come down on the Chase estate. Kind friends rushed her Into a buggy\u00a0and carried her to the scene. Breaking through the crowd, she knelt beside her\u00a0stricken husband. Jones, terribly injured but still conscious, feebly grasped\u00a0Ms wife’s hand.<\/p>\n About 5:30 that afternoon the Redington ambulance removed the injured man\u00a0to the home of Mrs. Georgia B~ie on Oakland Street, where Jones and his family\u00a0were boarding during their stay in Waterville. There, half an” hour later, the\u00a0daring aviator died.\u00a0The Kennebec Journal of September 3rd stated that Mrs. Jones would take\u00a0the body to Hammondsport, New York, for Interment. Such, however, proved not\u00a0to be the case. On September 4, 1908 the body of Charles Oliver Jones was laid\u00a0to rest In Pine Grove Cemetery here in Waterville, and there it has remained to\u00a0this day.<\/p>\n What caused the airship to catch fire? 11- was apparently filled with a\u00a0highly inflammable gas, and at least one Waterville man, the late Dr. Boyer, is said to have called the aviator’s attention t0 the fact that his intake for\u00a0gas was perilously close to the exhaust of his motor. Jones laughed at Or. Boyer’s\u00a0apprehension. Not long after that warning, Jones was dead.<\/p>\n Year: 1952<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Read the script for “Little Talks” program #148, broadcast on May 11, 1952<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[787,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7325"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7325\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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