\nWhen, last week, I told you about the diary of George Simpson of East Winthrop. I did not have time to include some of his later entries for the years 1873 and 1874. When we left George, he was teaching school at Manchester, Maine. not far from his East Winthrop home.<\/p>\n
Evidently taking a bath in winter was such an event that George had to record it. Dec. 7 – “Took a bath this forenoon. Ed Freeman and I skated on the lake to John Marrow’s and stayed for supper. After I got back, I attended prayer meeting with Grandma.”<\/p>\n
It was not unusual to move buildings in the 1870’s. Dec. 14 – “Aunt Eliza Perkins has sold the blacksmith shop on her place to Charles Wing, and he hauled it away today.”<\/p>\n
Dec. 20 – “Went over to Marrow’s hill to see Isaac Carr and Gus Rowe dig out a fox.”<\/p>\n
Dec. 25 – “Christmas Day. Went up to Jackson’s and stayed all day and late in evening. Took both dinner and supper there. I played Seven Up. Virgil and I played against Sam Jackson and Everett Leavitt. They led us one game when we closed. Got a present of a lead pencil, hung on the tree at Jackson’s.”<\/p>\n
There was a lot of snow that winter of 1873-74. Dec. 29 – “Father started to carry me to school. Got as far as Chris Hamond’s and could go no farther with the horse, because the drifts were so deep. I walked the rest of the way, reached my school at 8:45 and taught all day. The attendance was good in spite of the storm. Cliff Seavey had said he would come on the stage to pay me a visit. I went to the Corner to meet him, but the stage had not come; so I went on and met the stage on Richard’s Hill. Cliff was on it, and we reached my boarding place about seven.”<\/p>\n
The only trouble George had at his school after Christmas was the discovery of a broken hinge on the school house door. He said: “Mr. Fifield, the school agent, and I went down and fixed it after school.”<\/p>\n
Much was made of funerals in those days. Feb. 1 – “Lizzie Whiting’s funeral in the church. The gallery was heavily draped in black, as the deceased was a member of the choir.”<\/p>\n
More snow came a few days later: “Snowed all night and drifted badly. I could hardly get to the school house. Present were only four boys and no girls, so I decided not to have school.”<\/p>\n
Feb. 6 – “After school I started for home on foot and met Will Thompson coming after me to attend a sociable at James Barker’s this evening. We had a nice time. Will carried Hattie Parlin home, and he told us to wait and he would come back for us. We waited a while, then started on foot. When we heard him coming, we hid in the pines and let him go by. He went all the way back to Barker’s, then had to turn around again. He overtook us near Sarah Packard’s, where we stopped and euchre until midnight.”<\/p>\n
We think of people going to bed at sunset and up before sunrise a hundred years ago. But young people were just as active and just as confident nighthawks then as they are today. The following entry is typical of many in the diary: “Attended a dance at the Manchester Town Hall. Got home at 3 a.m. Went straight to bed and did not get up until 1:30 p.m.”<\/p>\n
Evidently in March, George Simpson had some money in his pocket: “Took dinner at the hotel in the Village. Bought Mother a calico dress.”<\/p>\n
On April 14 George put in quite a day: “Went to the meeting house and took up the carpet and cushions. Carried them to Mr. Leavitt’s. Brought home the footstools and hymn books. Then went to a dance at Manchester.” The next day was Fast Day, but George does not say whether he fasted after his night at the dance.<\/p>\n
People got into trouble 100 years ago just as they do now. May 18 – “Took the cars for Haverhill and reached there at 6:30. Stayed at Aunt Carrie’s, where I learned that Frank had been sent to Lawrence for drunkenness that morning. I went next day to the police court and saw him.”<\/p>\n
In June George got a new suit: “Mrs. Ann Woodbury is making me a suit of clothes for $3.50.”<\/p>\n
June 15 – “The Maine Baptist Convention meets here this week. Many of the ministers and delegates came today. A half-crazy man calling himself Rev. John Hughes came to the house this afternoon. He got mad and left about six o’clock because we would not have supper as soon as he wanted it.”<\/p>\n
July 8 – “Went to Lewiston and had my picture taken.” And there ends the diary of young George Simpson, written nearly a hundred years ago.<\/p>\n
Several times during the past year I have culled some items from old Waterville town and city reports, and have told you about them. Now let me add a few more from the year 1898, when Carroll W. Abbott was mayor of Waterville.<\/p>\n
It had not been a good year for local business despite the spurt given nationally by the war with Spain. The mayor, much concerned about city finances, said in his report: “We must adopt one of three courses: increase the tax rate, reduce appropriations to the departments, or stop all public improvements.”<\/p>\n
Mayor Abbott did not say which alternative he preferred. The time had at last come when Waterville had a mayor bold enough to recommend closing the city liquor agency. In his report Mayor Abbott said: “Waterville is or should be a temperance city. We must do our best to suppress the liquor traffic, and running a city liquor agency is no way to do that.”<\/p>\n
Mayor Abbott also wanted to do a better paving job on the streets. He said: “Something must be done on Main Street from Temple to Center and on College Avenue to the upper railroad crossing. Those streets are not only bad, they are actually dangerous for a person to drive on in a light carriage. In 1896”, the Mayor continued, “Main Street above Center to the railroad crossing, and College Avenue as far as the lower crossing were graveled and are now our best streets. Now they must be made more permanent their entire length. Augusta has a stone crusher she will let us use.”<\/p>\n
The city auditor considered Waterville badly in debt. The excess of liabilities over assets, he reported, was $262,000. The year’s total receipts had been $135,000, while expenditures had been $153,000, an operational deficit for the one year of $18,000. No wonder the Mayor was worried. Part of the trouble lay in uncollected taxes. The total committed to the collector in 1898 had been $105,590, but at the end of the year he had been unable to collect $29,970 of that commitment, or one dollar in every four.<\/p>\n
As in all those old reports, the long list of miscellaneous expenses in this one contained what seems, 72 years later, to be odd items. A street sprinkler had cost $260, the estate of Samuel Appleton had collected damages of $500, and the city had paid $55 rent for the land on which stood the city jail, then referred to as the lockup. Wiring for the band stand on Monument Park cost $16, teams furnished to carry disabled Civil War veterans on Memorial Day came to $20, food for prisoners in the lockup cost $10.25, and someone got $2 for removing a dead horse from Main Street. Use of the public watering trough cost $3.<\/p>\n
In 1898 the old poor farm had taken on the more dignified name of the city, Almshouse. At the end of the year it had 25 inmates, two of whom were of American parentage, one Irish, and 22 French-Canadian. Support of the poor outside the almshouse cost $8,841, yet no one family received a large amount. The trouble was that the number assisted were so numerous. Many Waterville people were out of work in 1898.<\/p>\n
For years, the single largest cause of police arrests in Waterville had been violation of the liquor laws. But in 1898 it was exceeded by the arrest during the year of 400 tramps, while liquor arrests were 160. It was a bad year for tramps allover the country. Many men, unable to find work, joined the ranks of the hoboes and rode freights from town to town. As a major railroad junction, Waterville got more than its share of those wanderers.<\/p>\n
The city had met with no serious felony during the year, although there were a few cases of petty larceny.<\/p>\n
Electricity was bringing trouble, as well as convenience to the city. The police reported six cases of wires down in the streets, which by mere coincidence was exactly the same as the number of stray horses the police had rounded up. In these days of fast cars, it is interesting to note that in 1898 two men were arrested for fast driving of horses on College Avenue. The city marshal noted with some chagrin that women were being picked up more and more frequently and put in the lockup to sober off. He said the time had come when Waterville should have a police matron.<\/p>\n
In 1898 for the first time Waterville had a milk inspector. He reported: “More than 400 cows are kept by our milkmen, who sell $60,000 of milk every year in this city. There is no article of food more liable to contamination or more apt to contain germs of disease, and no article of food is so commonly used uncooked, especially by young children. I recommend that our citizens buy milk only in glass jars. At present our chief source of contamination is delivery of milk in open cans.” Who was that alert inspector of milk? He was Veterinary Surgeon A. Joly, father of Judge Cyril Joly and grandfather of former Mayor Cyril Joly, Jr.<\/p>\n
So much for that city report of 1898. Now I want to close this broadcast with some very clever verses that appeared last fall in the Journal of Teacher Education. I hope you get the point of these verses:<\/p>\n
“Remember when Hippie meant big in the hips,
\nAnd a Trip involved travel in cars, planes and ships?
\nWhen Pot was a vessel for cooking things in,
\nAnd Hooked meant what grandmother’s rug might have been?
\nWhen Fix was a verb that meant mend or repair,
\nAnd Be-in meant simply existing somewhere?
\nWhen Neat meant well-organized, tidy and clean,
\nAnd Grass was a ground cover, normally green?
\nWhen Square meant a go-degree angle form,
\nAnd Cool was temperature just short of warm?
\nWhen Roll meant a bun, and Rock was a stone,
\nAnd Hang-up was something you did to a plume?
\nWhen Cat was a feline, a kitten grown up,
\nAnd Tea was a liquid you drank from a cup?
\nWhen Swinger was someone who swung in a swing,
\nAnd Pad was a soft sort of cushiony thing?
\nWords once that were sensible, sober and serious
\nAre making the Freak Scene like Psycho-delirious.
\nIt’s Groovy, Man, Groovy, but English it’s not
\nPerhaps our whole language is going to Pot.”<\/p>\n
Year: 1970<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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