Although no one expects early depression, there are already indications\u00a0of somewhat lower prices in 1953. That is good news for the consumer, and who\u00a0of us isn’t a consumer? It is not only increased oroduction that wi II brinq\u00a0this about, but also that much revi led characteristic of private enterprise,\u00a0competition. The increased supply of raw materials and the accompanving increase\u00a0in plant capacity lead to vigorous competition for markets in which to\u00a0sell the products. Improved efficiency also plays a part. 1\\5 factories tend\u00a0to turn out an ever larger volume of goods per man-hour of labor, unit costs\u00a0are lowered, even though wages increase. U. S. Nelf\/s and IlJor f d Report po i nts\u00a0to the automobile industry as a striking example of this trend, and predicts\u00a0lower prices for cars this summer.<\/p>\n
Nov>” let’s not\u00b7 forge-r that it is the American free enterprise system that\u00a0has bui It new factories, provided new machines, turned out more goods. !ndustry\u00a0itself is making possible the price breaks which government interference\u00a0nas done so much to prevent.<\/p>\n
F
\nAs -rhe years go by it is increasingly di fficult to bring to I ight a ionq\u00a0forgotten name. I want to know who were Watervi lie’s old time florists. tJlore\u00a0than that, I am try i ng to ascerta in who first made a bus i ness of ra is i ng and\u00a05e I ling f lowe rs i n th is commun i ty .<\/p>\n
Several of our older people remember a florist establishment seventy years\u00a0ago near where the C i tv Ha I I now stands 1 but none of those peop Ie cou I d reca I I\u00a0the florist’s name. After some half dozen of our elderly citizens had been approached,\u00a0it was Miss ,A,nnie Dorr I’\/ho remembered. She says the florist was\u00a0J irnmie Wendell. Mr. ahd Mrs. A. J. Drummond, as well as Miss Dorr, have helped\u00a0me establish the exact location of. that florist’s house,. garden Qnd greenhouse,\u00a0I had at first been to I d that it was located on Front Street bet\\’ieen the\u00a001 d C ityHa I I and Common Street. knew that was un like i y} if not down right\u00a0impossible, because I have copies of the deeds of land to the town of Waterville\u00a0both by Dr. Williams and by Abijah Smith, and a provision of each deed\u00a0Is that none except public buildings shall be erected on the land. The two\u00a0deeds together account for the land on which the City Hall nOvl <\/em>stands, the parking\u00a0lot behind it, and all of the park in front of it. So I knew the old\u00a0florist place could not be anywhere on what is nO\\>1 the park.<\/p>\n The Drummonds andfl1i ss Dorr are both certain that the entrance to the f 10-\u00a0rist’s was neither from Front Street nor from Main Street, but from the south\u00a0side. near the rear of the building long occupied by Sal Whitcomb’s grocery.\u00a0Many of you I isteners remember Harmon’s Cafe in a little building behind the\u00a0Whitcomb store. That would have been about Where one entered the florist1s\u00a0place. That place is remembered as consisting of a very small dwell ing , a\u00a0greenhouse, and an outdoor garden.<\/p>\n The earl jest defi n i te recollect i on wh ich dates that establ i shment goes\u00a0back to 1884. A \\vatervi lie woman remembers that in that year she went to that\u00a0fJ.orist’s -to buy flowers to wear at a college fraternity guest banquet, and\u00a0all she could get were cinnamon pinks. She wore those pinks ona dress oftur-,\u00a0quo i se blue nun! 5 ve i ‘i ng .<\/p>\n Was Jimmie 1!Jendell Waterville’s first florist? Ifnot: whopreceded him,\u00a0and where was hi s place?<\/p>\n Th rough the courtesy of rks. Po II ard of the Fi rs t Rangeway ~ who has p reviously\u00a0suppl ied other items. I have seen the catalog of trotting stock of\u00a0Sunnyside Farm for the year 1886. Sunnyside Farm was the breeding and training\u00a0farm of C. H. Nelson, owner of the farrous trotter Nelson, holder of the world:s\u00a0record when in his prime.<\/p>\n Some of you have heard me say before that Kennebec County, and especially\u00a0the area around Watervi lie was once \u00b7farrous for its breed of race horses. Some\u00a0of the finest animals of the American turf were raised in this community. So\u00a0it is interesting to see what Hod Helson had to say in that 1886 catalog, sev'”\u00a0era I years before the horse t~e Isonga i ned h is nat i ana I fame.<\/p>\n i’Sunnyside Farm!!, says the announcement, ‘lis situated in \\l\\fatervi r Ie, a\u00a0mile and a half from the railroad depot. There are nine stallions for service\u00a0this season, al I containing strains of the fashionable blood of the day. Gentle~\u00a0men’s road horses” trotters and fam; Iy steeds always on hand or furnished on\u00a0short notice. ParTies have good horses of the above description which they wish\u00a0to dispose of, please address the proprietor. Mares from a distance will be\u00a0carefully cared for, and taken to and from the railroad cars free of expense.,\u00a0and boarded by the year at from $75 to $100. All accidents and escapes wi II\u00a0be at owner’s risk. Mares at grass, by the week 75 cents”; hay and grain $2.50.”<\/p>\n The oldest of Nelson’s catalogued stock in 1886 was a gelding named Black\u00a0Billy, foaled in 1874 and therefore already twelve years old. He had a track\u00a0mark of 2:37~. Next came a nine year old mare, Susie Owen. with a mark of 2:26.\u00a0Then came three year old Ne\/son who then had a good, but not sensational, mark\u00a0of 2:26 3\/4.<\/p>\n The catalog lists the farm’s nine stallions in order of what the owner\u00a0considered their relative worth. Number One was Nelson, Number Two Dictator\u00a0Chief, Number Three Colonel West; then came Wi lkes, i’4embrinsEghert~ Pluto,\u00a0Rolf Knox, Rolf and Onward.<\/p>\n He re is the ped i gree of the s ta’ I ion Ne f son. Reg is try n umbe r 4209. Sire>\u00a0Young Rolf (3518) 2:21t; Dam, Gretchen by Gideon. Grandsire, Tom Rolf (306)\u00a02: 33t. Great Grandmother, Pocahontas 2: 17\u00a3, by I ron Cadmus. Gneat-great\u00a0grands i re, I ron Cadmus (393) by Amer i can Ec Ii pse.\u00a0Nelson’s mother, Gretchen, wasadaughter of Gideon, who was a son of one\u00a0of the nat i on’s most famous horses, Hamb leton 1 an.<\/p>\n This is the way the catalog describes Nelson: !lNelsonis a bright bay\u00a0with black points, and has the rl ght ki nd of feet and legs, with nice mane\u00a0and tail, fine head and neck, and his general make-up is all one could wish.\u00a0His record is 2:26 3\/4 over a half mi Ie track, carrying 40 pounds. His gait\u00a0is like a piece of well balanced machinery, and he needs no weights or boots.\u00a0Nelson won the sliver cup for stallions of all ages at the Maine State F’air\u00a0in Lew i ston in 1885. If<\/p>\n I am sure some of the horse lovers of this vicinity must have cherished\u00a0recollections of the horse who once held the world trotting record. Send them\u00a0a long for this program, please.<\/p>\n Here are a few more of those boners we have been digging up lately~\u00a0William Tell shot.’an apple through an arrow whl Ie standing on his sonts\u00a0head. Philip was expected to marry Catherine of Aragon. He went .. to see her,\u00a0and history says he never smiled again. Mary, Queen of Scots, was playing\u00a0gol f with her husband when news was brought to her of theb i rth of her son and\u00a0heir.<\/p>\n Strange indeed is the course of history, as told on these student papers.\u00a0Another grim fact that we thus learn is that Sir Wa Iter Rale i gh died in James\u00a0I’s reign and started smoking. It Is not surprising also to learn in regard\u00a0‘.” ”\u00a0to a battle in 1760 that many Indians were ki \/led, which proved very fatal to\u00a0them. It is a little surprising, however, to find out that Abraham Lincoln\u00a0wrote the Gettysburg Address wh i Ie trave I ing from Wash ln9ton to Gettysburg on\u00a0the, back of an envelope.<\/p>\n There were some mighty powerful gentlemen in the old days, according to\u00a0these schoolboy statements. Copernic’usinvented the sun as the center of the\u00a0un iverse and thereby aided science. Shakespeare was born in 1564, supposedly\u00a0on his bi rthday. Shakespeare wrote tragedies, comedies and errors. t,1i Iton\u00a0wrote Paradise Lost; then his wife left him and he wrote Paradise PS\u00a3lained.<\/p>\n Another literary gem is thus recorded: At th is time humor was introduced into\u00a0the English drama, for example a wife wringing her husband’s neck. \u00a0vie <\/em>can understand what the pupi I meant who wrote: !iTwo straight lines\u00a0cannot enc lose .a space un I ess they are crooked. But one needs to know something\u00a0about a certain English poet to get the point of this one: “Shellev\u00a0was a blithe spirit who got washed up in Italy.’1 And any of you who ever read\u00a0Wordsworth IS I nt i mat ions of I mmorta Ii ty will be interested to knolll that Words\u00b7\u00b7\u00a0worth wrote Imitations of Immortal ity in youth.\u00a0ment i oned cana I s on +h is program a few weeks ago . Probab I y it is we II\u00a0for me to learn, therefore~ that the invention of the steamboat caused a network\u00a0of ri vers to spring up. You may like to know that two ch i Idren born to’geTher\u00a0are twins; three are culprits. Cheer UP — when a man has only one wife\u00a0it is called monotony. By the way, one pupil wanted his teacher to know that\u00a0Horace Greeley was the r:1ost defeated candidate ever elected. Believe me, we\u00a0mean no disrespect to an honorable profession when we quote a kid’s paper\u00a0which said “Rome was overthrown by the invasion of the Huns, the Visigoths and\u00a0the Osteopaths.<\/p>\n As for certain weird definitions, we read that a tantrum is a bicycle for\u00a0man and wife; posthumous is a ch i I d born after the death of both of its parents;\u00a0a seminary is a place where they bury the dead,: a tonsure is a priest\u00a0shaving his head instead of cutting it off; quinine is the bark of a tree,\u00a0canine is the bark of a dog; an extrovert is an animal with its spinal column\u00a0on the outs i de; a bamboo is an I ta I i an baby; an a rti.san is one that never\u00a0runs dry,; a fossi I is an extinct animal, the older it is the more extinct it is.<\/p>\n i have wondered how long the school reports continued to give outspoken\u00a0criticism of teachers by name. About a year ago I showed you how caustic were\u00a0some of those reports from Kennebec Va Iley Towns in the 1870 1s.1 now know That\u00a0this sort of thing continued up into the 1890’s.<\/p>\n In 1894 G. S. Getchell, supervisor of The Winslow schools, put these\u00a0statemenTs into his report to the town: llin District 5, under [“1iss !vHflie\u00a0vie <\/em>I Is, some progress was made by the pupils, but government was rather lenient.\u00a0In DistricT 6, iVliss Belle Tibbetts began under favorable circumstances in a new\u00a0SChoolhouse, but her efforts as a teacher were not very successful. In Dis\u00b7 \u00a0trict 8. under f”liss Annie Storey, I anticipated a good term. But near the\u00a0close I was aware that friend Iy fee I ings between teache rand schol ars di d not\u00a0prevail, In District 16 Miss Winnie Jones is a good instructor, but a little\u00a0better discipl ine would have made a better school.!!<\/p>\n The next year, in 1895, J. M. Taylor was supervisor. He was high in his\u00a0praise of a teacher whom many Winslow people .rernember fondly. He wrote: ‘lIn\u00a0District 1 the winter term was taught by Miss Jennie Howard~ a teacher so well\u00a0and favorab Iy known that no words of recommendation are needed,li But Mr. Tay”.\u00a0lor was not so kind to lvlissJones in District 6. Of her he wrote: “The term\u00a0opened with the school quiet and orderly and the pupils stUdious. But for\u00a0causes unknown to us, at the close of the term the scholars manifested little\u00a0interest and the teacher had fast control.<\/p>\n So far as Winslow was concerned, the last of those critical school reports\u00a0appeared in 1895. Beg inn i ng with 1896 the reports conta i ned me re I y the names\u00a0of teachers and the enrollment statistics,\u00a0Take a look at teachers’ salaries in “linslow as late as 1898. E. E. Kid~\u00a0der got nine dollars a week; r~ary Holmes $7.50; Emi Iy Garland $6.50.\u00a0It is interesting to note the relative expenditures for schools and for\u00a0roads made by the town of \\Inns low between 1893 and 1898. I n1893 the money\u00a0spent for schools was exactly haff that put out on the roads, $1,500 compared\u00a0with $3,000. In 1894 the school money was cut down to $1,450, whi Ie the road\u00a0money went up by 33 per cent to $4 ,000. By 1897 it was ad j f fe rent story.<\/p>\n Road money was back to $3,000, and school money had advanced to $2~300, and\u00a0there it stood in 1898.<\/p>\n Now let y s have a few more facts about our State of Ma ine. The length of\u00a0Maine’s highways exceeds the circumference of the earth. In Lafayette National\u00a0Park onp,1t. Desert are the highest mountains directly on the Atlantic Coast\u00a0anywhere north of Hio de Janiero. In spite of continuing lumber operations\u00a0for more than a hundred years, fl.1aine’s sti II standing spruce and fir are est;.,..\u00a0mated at 25 bill i on board feet.<\/p>\n Before the deve fopment of the ! umber industry in our Paci fi c Northv\/est,\u00a0Bangor was the largest lumber market in the world. At the turn of the century\u00a0the annual log dri ve on the Penobscot frequent Iy reached 200 ,000 ,000 feet. By\u00a01930 it had dropped to 25 million. As late as 1925 tl;aine had 518 miles of el ..\u00a0ectr i c ra i I way. I s any of it left today?<\/p>\n At the ri sk of sti rring up sti II more controversy about Ma ine mounta ins,\u00a0must venture my opinion that our most picturesque mountain names are Chairback\u00a0tJlt., Good-Eye M1-., ~10unt Misery, Mosquito Mt., Ragged Jack Mt., Sparrow\u00a0Hawk ~IJt., Tear Cap f\\1t., Tir ’em Mt., and 11aterspout tvlt. And I have just dis~\u00a0covered that old Pleasant fvlountaln between Bridgton and D3nmark, where f hunted\u00a0sheep on New Years Day in 1911, is actually higher than the much more cele-\u00b7\u00a0brated ~~t.Kineo.<\/p>\n Year: 1953<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Read the script for “Little Talks” program #170, broadcast on January 11, 1953<\/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":[740,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7361"}],"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=7361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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