[podcast]http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/scimport\/files\/2011\/02\/LT1000.mp3[\/podcast]<\/p>\n
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As Little Talks reaches its 1000th broadcast, it may be appropriate to mention some unusual things about Maine. I could tell about Maine items of today: our famous lobster, never to be confused with the less tasty crayfish; about Aroostook potatoes so big that one will make a meal for a family; about our giant industries concerned with pulp and paper, about Maine\u2019s famous shirts and her equally celebrated steel grandstands, known all over the nation.<\/p>\n
However, Little Talks has for a quarter of a century been concerned with Maine history. So let me tell you a few things about the State of Maine that may be new to you, not the kind of things told in the history books.<\/p>\n
Everyone knows that New England\u2019s first permanent settlement was at Plymouth in 1620. Now, the most authentic record of that settlement is a contemporary account written by the settlement\u2019s first governor, William Bradford and entitled \u201cBradford\u2019s Relation.\u201d In that book Bradford relates that, after that first terrible winter at Plymouth, as the snows began to melt, the little colony was one day entered and greeted by an Indian who spoke English. Bradford does not tell us where that red man learned his few English words, but subsequent research has made it clear that he leared it at Pemaquid on the Maine coast, where British fishing fleets had been drying their codfish every summer for many years before any Pilgrim foot stepped on Plymouth Rock.<\/p>\n
Bradford does tell us that, in the late spring of 1621, he sent the Pilgrim shallop to Pemaquid for supplies. Admittedly there were then no permanent settlement at Pemaquid. Why did Bradford think he could get supplies there? He makes it clear that he meant European goods, not Indian grain and furs. Bradford knew very well one or more British fishing fleets would be starting to dry their fish on the Pemaquid shore at about that time, and surely some of those ships could spare him supplies.<\/p>\n
The first vessel ever built on the North Atlantic shore of what is now the United States was built in Maine, the same year as the founding of the colony at Jamestown, Virginia, 1607. A British colonizing party had established a settlement at the mouth of the Maine\u2019s Kennebec River. It lasted only a year, but in that interval the colonists had built a sturdy sea-going ship.<\/p>\n
Why do folks coming to Maine from New York or Boston always speak of going \u201cdown east?\u201d Maine is north as well as east of Boston, and on a map north is always up, not down. Boston people invariably went down to New York and they still go down to Florida. Then why didn\u2019t they go up to Maine?<\/p>\n
The answer comes from the days of sail. Off the New England coast the prevailing fair wind comes from the southwest. In colonial days sailing vessels were thus driven \u201cwith the wind\u201d or \u201cdown wind\u201d to Maine. To go in the other direction Maine craft had to go against the wind, or up wind to Boston.<\/p>\n
Many competent historians, to say nothing of us common folk, don\u2019t know what was the first crop of early Maine settlers. It was ashes. The quickest way for a settler in the Maine wilderness to get land ready for sowing oats, the easiest grain to raise, was to fell and burn the trees, using only such wood as he needed to build cabin and barn and supply fuel for his fireplace. By one of those lucky accidents of history, the settlement of Central Maine towns coincided with the rapid growth of the wool industry in England. Wool had to be washed many times in its several processes from sheep to loom, and those washings took a lot of soap. Soap was made of potash, and potash was made from ashes. Enterprising men set up potash kilns at the larger settlements on Maine\u2019s big rivers, and to those kilns, in boats and canoes, on sleds and ox carts, the settlers carried their otherwise useless ashes, doing that for two or three years before they had any surplus grain to sell.<\/p>\n
Compared with the big states of Texas and Alaska, Maine is of course small; yet she is the largest of the six New England states, so large that all the other five could be put within Maine and still have a few square miles left over. Visitors to the Maine coast and the valleys of the larger rivers, as well as to the narrow strip of Aroostook along the New Brunswick border, seldom realize how little of Maine they have actually seen. Ninety percent of Maine is still forest, and in that wilderness are located more than two-thirds of Maine\u2019s thousand lakes. Despite two hundred years of lumbering, careful conservation and scientific reforestation has seen to it that Maine still has a tremendous supply of available wood.<\/p>\n
Some Maine products became known all over the world. Cans of Maine sweet corn have been found in the shops of Vladavostok. Maine canned blueberries could be bought in Istanbul. Today air express takes fresh Maine lobsters to the tables of London and Paris. Magazine readers have become familiar with pictures of the man with the eye patch, wearing a shirt made in Maine. Packages of fruits, vegetables, and eggs are on the shelves of supermarkets of a dozen countries, the trays all marked as made by Keyes Fibre Company in Maine.<\/p>\n
Maine\u2019s most notable product, however, is not things. It is people. In 150 years of statehood, Maine\u2019s population has reached barely a million because she has done so much to populate other states. Maine boys went not only to the gold fields of California in the middle of the last century; they went also to the prairies of Iowa and Kansas, on the Oregon Trail and to the Cinnamon Strip. In proportion to her population Maine did more than her share to develop the Great West.<\/p>\n
One generation of a single Maine family, the Washburns of Livermore, furnished governors of two states, and at the same time three of the brothers were representatives to Congress from three different states.<\/p>\n
Maine has never had a national president and one only vice president, though she has twice had sons come very near occupying the White House. However, near the end of the 1880\u2019s Maine enjoyed peculiar prominence in Washington. Walter Emerson tells about it in his book \u201cLatchstrings.\u201d He says that one day in 1889 a prominent Virginian, John Wise, burst into the office of the Speaker of the House, Thomas B. Reed of Maine, yelling out, \u201cWho\u2019s running this government anyway?\u201d Reed calmly replied, \u201cWhy, John, the great and the good are running it of course.\u201d \u201cWell then,\u201d said Wise, \u201cthe great and the good must all live in Maine. Here I come to Washington to do business with the Secretary of State, and I find he is Jim Blaine of Maine. I call to pay my respects on the President Pro Tem of the Senate, and he is Mr. Frye of Maine. I want to consult the Senate\u2019s majority leader and they send me to Mr. Hale of Maine. Then I must take up a tarriff matter with the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee of the House, and who is he but Mr. Dingley of Maine. Then there is a naval bill I am interested in, and who chairs that committee but Mr. Milliken of Maine. I have to see about an appropriation for a public building in Richmond, and who\u2019s in control but Mr. Boutelle of Maine.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, John,\u201d said Reed, \u201cthe great and the good and the wise. The country is still safe.\u201d And out they went arm in arm to have lunch with the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Mr. Justice Fuller of Maine.<\/p>\n
Maine has had its share of inventive genius. I could tell you about the Maxim brothers and their famous guns; about the Stanley brothers, who invented both the dry plate for photography and the Stanley Steamer automobile; about the Lombard Log Hauler, with its first successful caterpillar tread, forerunner of the farm tractor and the war tank; but time permits me to tell you about only one Maine inventor, Martin Keyes. Envisioning the possibility of throw-away dishes made from molded wood pulp, Keyes suffered many disappointments and frustration before in the first decade of this century, in a tiny mill in the little hamlet of Shawmut, Maine, he turned out the first usable and saleable dishes from wood pulp. That was the beginning of the Keyes Fibre Company, with plants now in five states and several foreign countries. Martin Keyes\u2019 half dozen sizes of PAPRUS plates have grown to more than a hundred items, including the famous CHINET line of disposable tableware.<\/p>\n
I take great pride and satisfaction in knowing that, after 25 years, folks can still listen to the weekly broadcast of Little Talks because of the generous sponsorship of the Keyes Fibre Company.<\/p>\n