\nWhile nobody wants to go back completely to the good old days, many people get a thrill out of restorations of certain old time things. Thousands every year ride the narrow gauge trains at Carver, Mass. and at Boothbay Harbor, Maine. Other thousands enthuse over the marvelous collection of old trolley cars at Kennebunkport. My own particular thrill comes from the revival of the old Songo River steamboat line.<\/p>\n
The town of Bridgton, where I spent my boyhood, borders on Long Lake, which is connected with the larger Sebago Lake by the Songo River. Because the big lake is lower than Long Lake, it was necessary, more than a hundred years ago, to construct a lock on the Songo in order for large boats to make the journey from the head of Long Lake at Harrison to the foot of Sebago Lake where it empties into the Presumpscot River.<\/p>\n
More than thirty years ago the last steamer made its way through Songo Lock, and the huge wooden gates fell into disrepair. Now the old lock has been made a national historic site and has been carefully restored. What is even better, a new stern-wheel steamer has been built to make the run over the lake and through the lock. The boat is called the Songo River Queen, and she carried hundreds of passengers last summer.<\/p>\n
The Songo River is so crooked that, when I made the trip on the old steamers in the first decade of this century, a spectacular feature came when the up boat and the down boat met on the river. Just before the meeting, if you were on one boat, you could look across a narrow strip of land and see another boat traveling in the same direction. In a few minutes you met that boat coming toward you. What you had first seen was the other boat around one of the hair-pin bends of the Songo. One old fellow in Naples used to say: “The Songo is the only river in the world where you can meet yourself going back.”<\/p>\n
At Naples, the boat passes through a hand-operated drawbridge that spans U.S. Route 302 from Portland to the White Mountains. The old stage coaches that met the boat at Plummer’s Landing in Bridgton are no more, but new wharves enable the Songo River Queen to stop at several places along both lakes.<\/p>\n
The first steamer to ply the lakes was the Fawn, put on in 1847. In my boyhood, the Hawthorne and the Mount Pleasant made trips twice a day over the lakes, and by the time I graduated from high school they had been succeeded by the Goodridge, which operated for more than 20 years. The Goodridge was owned by the man who ran the Bay of Naples Inn, a hotel that in its day was in the class with Poland Springs, the Rangeley and the Samoset.<\/p>\n
So, if you want a real thrill this summer, take a ride on the Songo River Queen, through that stream so winding that you meet yourself coming back.<\/p>\n
I hope that, during the past two years, many of my listeners have visited the archaeological excavation at Pemaquid and have seen the collection of items found by Mrs. Helen Camp’s industrious diggers. During the past summer careful examination of the uncovered buildings revealed that one of them was used as early as 1650, probably as a jail, then 130 years later another building of a later settlement arose on the ruins. At one corner was uncovered an Indian fire pit filled to nearly a foot with ashes. In the new museum near the site there are now a number of painted murals depicting historic local scenes. One shows a naval event of the early 17th century. The “Angel Gabriel” was a vessel built for Sir Walter Raleigh that made several voyages to the New World. In 1635 she left the port of Bristol, England for a New England landing. Aboard were immigrants and supplies for the new, struggling colonies from Cape Cod to Pemaquid. On August 14, the ship anchored off Pemaquid Point. That night the worst hurricane in New England history hit the coast. Tidal waves of twenty feet battered the shore. The Angel Gabriel was slashed to pieces on the great rocks at Pemaquid Point. Fortunately, only a few lives were lost. Most of the passengers and crew were able to get ashore during a lull before the vessel broke to pieces.<\/p>\n
One of the mysteries at the archaeological site, which is near the fort at Pemaquid Beach, not at the Point, is what appears to be a street of paved cobblestones, now overgrown with sod and grass, but only a few inches below the surface. It was built so long ago, probably before 1700, that there is no record to explain it. Why did the settlers of that crude fishing and trading station build a cobblestone road? While no one knows the correct answer, one theory makes good sense. Pemaquid was a landing place for European fishermen long before the Pilgrims settled at Plymouth. There is even some evidence that Basque fishermen annually visited the site a hundred years before Columbus’ famous voyage. Anyhow, in the middle of the 17th century it was a prominent fishing station, visited each summer by numerous ships from England, Holland, France and Italy. The cobblestone pavement may not have been a street at all, but laid down as areas on which to dry the fish.<\/p>\n
The excavators now working at Pemaquid hope to find definite evidence of what has been duly recorded as an historic event there. That was the attack on the settlement and the destruction of the fort by the pirate Dixie Bull. That raid added insult to injury, because before and after it, the place was in almost constant danger for more than a hundred years by attacks of the Indians, and later by Indians and French. One after another the Pemaquid forts were burned. The present stone structure, Fort William Henry, is less than a hundred years old.<\/p>\n
The plight in which early Pemaquid settlers often found themselves is illustrated by petition made to John Palmer, the absentee owner of Damariscove Island in 1687. Written by one John Sullivan, the petition said: “Whereas your humble petitioner and his deceased predecessor have been living on Damariscove for 27 years, and at the rebellion of the Indians did lose a considerable estate in fish and cattle, as well as house and fishing stage; and whereas the restoration of these parts was made one of the first plans presented to England, whereby I brought here a stock of sheep and cattle and again constructed a building, all amounting to more than $50. On arriving here, Mr. Patishall did promise that I should have half of the island with him having the other half, and there was no need for me to make appearance before the magistrate. Now I am informed that, unless I personally appear, I am likely to lose all my right in this place. Your petitioner therefore humbly pleas that he may not be dispossessed of what I have bought and paid for many years since. Your petitioner would long ago have asked for this redress, had it not been for the persuasion of Mr. Patishall.”<\/p>\n
Another instance shows some of the things that caused the Stuart kings to lose public support, culminating in the execution of Charles I in the middle of the 17th century.<\/p>\n
John Sullivan of Pemaquid was so discouraged by his treatment from the hands of the Duke of York’s agents, when that royal gentleman got control of Maine lands,that he finally gave up all attempts to redeem his rightful property. He took to drink and became a terror to the community. He threatened to kill one of the Duke’s surveyors and was hailed into court in 1686. One of his neighbors, John Tooker, testified: “I saw John Sullivan at his house a little after sunset, and by his language and behavior I knew he had been drinking, but I cannot swear he was drunk. I do know he was mighty mad at the King’s men.” Faulty as Sullivan may have been, his case was all too typical of those who had spent toilsome years clearing the land only to be deprived of everything by the arrogant authorities in England. It all gives us a glimpse of why the Stuart government in Britain became intolerable and why Charles I lost his head.<\/p>\n
This year’s successful petition to have the people vote on retention of the state income tax reminds me of what was said in Waterville 62 years ago, when Maine first passed a law permitting popular referendum. Of that law in 1909, the Waterville Sentinel said: “The people of Maine are now having their first experience with petitions for referendum. One petition calls for a popular vote on the appropriation of $350,000 to build an addition to the State House. Others ask for the people to vote on the division of the town of York, on the opening of Bar Harbor to automobiles, and on changes in the charter of the city of Portland. One might think this last would be considered a local matter and perhaps also the automobile issue on Mount Desert. But the people of Bar Harbor had asked the legislature to pass an act barring automobiles from the island. The legislature complied, and that made the matter a state issue. A lot of people are determined that Bar Harbor and the legislature shall have to back down. Hence the petition for another referendum. Two years ago a similar referendum failed to allow autos on the island. Perhaps this time a man may be able to drive his car into Bar Harbor without fear of arrest.”<\/p>\n
We understand that in every election there are many spoiled ballots. It was that way in 1908, when the voters of Waterville were presented with a plan to set up a police commission, so as to take the police out of politics and stop the existing practice of changing the police whenever party domination was changed by an election. Politicians put up such an active campaign that the plan was defeated 626 to 389. The Waterville Sentinel made this comment: “Even with so simple a ballot many votes were thrown out as defective. Some voters wrote the words Yes or No in the spaces provided for the crosses. Others signed their names to the ballot. Still others put a cross in both squares. How stupid can people be?”<\/p>\n
This is the last broadcast of our 23rd season. During the summer, just as we did last year, we shall select a number of former programs for rebroadcast. When we have done this before, we have found that a number of people are hearing it for the first time, while others seem pleased to hear it again. In September we plan to open another season of Little Talks for its 24th consecutive year.<\/p>\n
Year: 1971<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #897, Broadcast on June 13, 1971<\/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":[42946,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9172"}],"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=9172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9172\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}