A Visit with Grampa - 14-16 December 1989
Part II
Sara Catherine Frank among her ancestors, Mountain View Cemetery, Auburn, 15 Jan 1989
Tom: You were working on the road at the time?
Grampa: On the town road, ya. And then when winter come on, I went to cutting wood. Cut cord wood, $2.00 a cord. And a cord and a half was a hard day’s work and a long day’s work and I had to hustle some to get that and I had to depend on the weather too. If it was a stormy day I had to stay home. Couldn’t work in a storm. That wasn’t very good income. So I went in debt quite a lot. It’s a hard job to catch up after you get behind you know. And we moved to Connecticut and I got a job steady on a farm there. For a year and eight months I was in Connecticut.
Tom: Sort of as a handy man on the farm?
Grampa: Ya. Milking cows and working with the farmer. Doing the same work he did, you know. He owned the farm and I got the wages. He give me $15 a week
Tom: That was after my father was born, right?
Grampa: Yes. Your father was born in the month of March when I was in the woods working then and I wasn’t making much money. I owed the doctor and I owed a lot of people.
Tom: Who was the doctor who delivered my father?
Grampa: Dr. Williams, Williams in Mechanic Falls. He lived until just a few years ago. He was in his nineties. [Dr. James A. Williams, 1881-1975, was born in Topsham and graduated from the Medical School of Maine (Bowdoin College) in 1914. He practiced in Jonesport for the first seven years and in Mechanic Falls for the next fifty years from 1922 to 1972.]
Dad: Williams delivered me?
Grampa: Yup, yup.
Dad: Oh, I didn’t know that.
Tom: What do you remember about Grammy’s pregnancy?
Grampa: Well, I know I was overjoyed. We both of us were happy because we had a family coming. And then after your father was a few months old I said, “I bet that’s the last kid we can have” because she wasn’t pregnant again right off. [laughter] By Jesus.... I was different than most other young men. I don’t know why but I was a dreamer. And I stayed a dreamer till I began to wake up when I was about in my thirties. Because I wanted fourteen kids anyway!
Sara: [gasp] Fourteen!
Grampa: What an idea! Jesus, that’s awful. You know, if everybody raised families like that the world would be so overpopulated!
Sara: Why did you want fourteen kids?
Grampa: Well, I says it’s a part of me that will live after I’m dead and more people, you know. I was so overjoyed when he was born and God’s sake I was happy. I couldn’t understand any young man that didn’t want a large family. So many didn’t want any! I says, “What in the world are you getting married for? Why, what’s the idea anyway? That’s what it’s all about. They thought I was crazy and I thought they were crazy. That’s why I was so much different.
Tom: Where did you live when you first got married?
Grampa: Right over here. I showed you that house. We moved in there.
Tom: You rented that house.
Grampa: Yup. Eight dollars a month.
Tom: For the whole house!
Grampa: Yup
Sara: Eight dollars a month!
Grampa: Eight dollars a month.
Tom: And what about furniture?
Grampa: I had the furniture from the old farm. And I took that up [when I went to live] with my mother and father. And it really filled the house too full of furniture but we packed a lot of it up in the attic and used some of it and of course when we got married I hired my neighbor’s hay rack and horse and loaded the furniture into it and moved it over here and at that time Louis Serfes was going around with my sister Emily. And he thought that I was taking that away from my folks you know. He said, “You’re a bad boy Roy. You’re a bad boy!” I said nothing. But he didn’t know that that was something I had inherited from the old farm down there. He didn’t know the story. He jumped to conclusions. Figured that I was just taking it away from my father and mother. I didn’t have to go out and buy any furniture. We had it all set. And of course, there was people that thought I should buy new stuff. But this was good furniture. All good chairs and good.... Why are you taking old second handed furniture for? Slurring. Finding fault, picking what fault they could find around the place. [Unintelligible].
Tom: And you liked living there?
Grampa: Ya, we liked it fine there. After your grandmother was pregnant her father and mother come down and younger brothers and sisters come down to live with us through the winters. Because your grandmother needed her mother to help her you know and give her courage and have somebody with her. I was away chopping wood, working all day, she didn’t want to be alone, she didn’t want to be up there all the time, so they came down to us that winter and most of the next summer. It was nearly a year. Elwood’s the only one left now, Elwood and Betty and Bernice, just three left and there were seven children.
Tom: In which room in that house was Dad born in?
Grampa: Well, the windows that are looking this way... [unintelligible]
Tom: What do you remember about the day that he was born?
Grampa: Well it was a cloudy, cloudy day in March. And we called Dr. Williams down. We knew it was going to happen. He had to stay till about midnight when your father was born. I was right there at the bedside with Dr. Williams, and as soon as I found out it was a boy, I went out into the kitchen and told my father-in-law, your great-grandfather Thurston, “It’s a boy, It’s a boy!” [laughter] Then in the morning, just as soon as it was daylight, I hustled down to Minot Corner and told my father. And I named him Hal.
Sara: After your father?
Grampa: Ya. And his mother’s family name, Thurston. All the boys got that – their mother’s family name. They’re entitled to that, I figured. I had the feeling always that a boy should have his mother’s family name.
Tom: I told Susie that I want all our children to have Smith as a middle name which is her last name.
Grampa: Yup.
Dad: And I said, “I’m a boy Dad, I didn’t let you down.” [laughter]
Sara: First speech, eh?
Grampa: The first words he ever said was a sentence, it wasn’t a word. A whole sentence.
Sara: Really!?
Tom: What was it?
Grampa: “I want ta go back ta bed.” [laughter]
Sara: A whole sentence. That’s so unusual!
Grampa: I know it. That was in Connecticut. He was tired. It was early morning but he got up with the rest of us, with his mother his grandmother and me. And I was getting ready to go to work. And he was just staggering around the house half asleep. And he says, “I want to go back to bed.” I said, “You better go back to bed with him.” [laughter]
Sara: A whole sentence, amazing.
Tom: And so, you lived in that house until when?
Grampa: In Connecticut on Tewsbury Hill ...
Dad in Connecticut, 1929
Tom: No, the house here.
Grampa: Oh, here. From September, almost a year till the next September. I left the stone crusher up on Harris Hill, I was getting good money there, but I knew that job wasn’t going to last but a few more weeks and then I’d be hunting a job again.
Tom: Stone crusher? So you stopped working as a woodsman and became a stone crusher?
Grampa: Oh ya. I worked on the stone crusher in the summertimes. There was more money in it, you know.
Tom: What did you do on that job?
Grampa: Just throw rocks into the crusher. It was quite a hard job and you would wear out gloves, a pair of canvas gloves, in a day! But I found a way to save those canvas gloves. I took an inner tube and cut it about the length of my hand and cut a hole for the thumb and put it on over the gloves and I could handle rocks and the gloves would last a week or two. The inner tube never wore out! It was awful uncomfortable and hot but still, it saved my gloves. And we had sharp-edged rocks and big rocks to handle. It would take quite a big rock that crusher would. It would take a rock pretty much as big as this here. I had iron hooks to grab them and head em down into the crusher and sometimes round rock, oh, bigger than that, half as big as this piece here, a round one, if it was a black rock and heavy or a brown or chocolate colored rock...you’d drop that in there, and if you didn’t have another heavy rock to put right on top of it quick, that would pinch and pop, right up in the air, right out of the hole, and it was dangerous. So whenever I got one of those black rocks, I’d holler to one of the other men and he’d get ready and get another one. Not a black one. One of the granite rocks. And the minute I threw it in there he’d throw the other one right on top of it and it held it down. And then I’d take a crowbar and hold that down. And it would crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, breaking, it sounded like glass. When that black rock would break up into pieces it sounded like glass. It would go down into a belt of buckets. And the buckets would go way up and into a big screen, cylinder screen, full of holes; coarse holes here and finer ones here, and finer ones here, and the last end would be just fine stone dust. And the first would be pieces of stone that size. And they’d go on the bottom on the road, on the state road, and then the finer stuff on top of that and tar on top of that. That’s the way this road was built here. That was a sandy dirt road when I started work on the crusher out there.
Dad: Tell how you got your gold tooth.
Grampa: Oh yeah, I was loading rocks off a truck onto a stone wall before going down to the crusher and one of them was muddy, and it was heavy too, one of those black, heavy rocks and I had it up about this high and my hand slipped on the mud like that and instead of stepping back and getting out of the way, I stuck my face under it to hold the rock up there!
Sara: Oh no!
Grampa: And that’s what broke my tooth out!
Sara: Ooh.
Grampa: But I held the rock up and rolled it up on top of the road. And I didn’t realize that I had broken a tooth until I bit into a biscuit that night, then I saw stars! [laughter] I had to go to the dentist the next day and have a gold cap put on there.
Tom: What did the dentist charge you for that?
Grampa: I don’t believe it was very much. I believe it was fifteen dollars, something like that. Today it would cost you sixty or more.
Dad: Fifteen dollars! That was a week’s pay!
Grampa: Well not a week’s pay on [the stone crusher]. I got five dollars a day there.
Dad: You did, oh.
Sara: It costs a lot more than sixty dollars to get a gold cap Grampa. Hundreds now! Its real expensive. When did you get the tattoos Grampa?
Grampa: Oh, I was seventeen years old.
Sara: Oh, it was before Grammy, before you got married.
Grampa: Yes, [it was] while I was chumming around with her. I remember she was mad, I showed her that.
Tom: What inspired you to get those tattoos?
Grampa: Well the man that did it was covered with them and I admired them. I always admired tattooed people for some reason at that time. I don’t admire them so much now but for some reason I did then and I couldn’t take my eyes off of anyone tattooed. So, I said, “I’m going to get that done.” Of course my father wasn’t in favor of it and my mother didn’t like the idea either but they didn’t insist that I wouldn’t do it. Buster Giddens is the one that put that on. He used a ... let’s see ... Well Buster Giddens did it anyway. He’s dead now. Got killed on the road up here. He made a mistake there. He had a dagger that looked as though it dipped into his arm and came out and a drop of blood down the end of the point of it. But he wasn’t an expert artist and he goofed on that so it doesn’t really represent anything.
Sara: Well I’m kind of glad it doesn’t look like a dagger dipping into your arm! Aren’t you now, many years later?
Grampa: No. His was a pretty picture. That wasn’t so pretty. And that [pointing toward another tattoo] isn’t too pretty either but that’s better than [the dagger].
Tom: You’ve got a butterfly here and a star. And over here an American flag with a single star.
Grampa: Yes, with a single star.
Dad: Your arms were bandaged when you first had that done. Mom was pinching them and everything, she was mad.
Grampa: Yeah, she was mad. She’d slap em’ and pinch em. [laughter] I said “Don’t do that, you’ll spoil the picture. You’ve got to let that heal. And after the scab will come off it will be alright. She said, “You foolish thing.” She really abused me about that but after a while it healed up and she got over it.
Tom: I remember that I used to like those tattoos when I was a little one and you kind of discouraged me. You said, “Ah, you don’t want tattoos” ... but I did.
Grampa: Yup. It’s a wonder you didn’t get them. I remember old Tom Conroy that [unintelligible] said, “You better not do that Roy because sometime, you get into trouble, and they’ll chase you.” And I said, “I’m not going to get into trouble.” And “Oh, you will, you will.” But I didn’t! [laughter] Not in any serious trouble. No law forces were hunting me down. But he was saying that I would have somebody looking for me sometime and go by those marks.
Sara: He read too many novels.
Grampa: Well, I guess so, yup.
Tom: So, what made you head out to Connecticut of all places?
Grampa: Well, there was no money here. And the stone crusher was going to shut down in a few weeks, I saw it coming. And I looked for something that paid better. I looked in the New England Homestead for jobs around and I saw one that paid $15.75 a week and that was good money then. Steady, coming steady on the farm. And I says, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll try it first. I’ll go down and see if I like the man I want to work for. And if I like the man and he likes me and the farm is what I want to work on, then I’ll send for my family. And I went down and worked a week or so. And then I sent for your grandmother and I went back to Boston and met them. And he was just a baby.
Tom: And that was in 1929?
Grampa: Ya, ya.
Tom: The year of the stock market crash.
Grampa: Yup.
Tom: Do you remember that crash?
An issue of The New England Homestead from 1929
Grampa: Oh yes, yes. Hard times were coming just ahead. And I got home just before it really got tough. Got back here.
Tom: So how long were you in Connecticut?
Grampa: A year and eight months.
Tom: Until 1930.
Grampa: Ya.
Tom: And what was the name of the man you worked for?
Grampa: Olin Shearer.
Dad: And you have a picture of him around here.
Grampa: Yes, I did have a picture of him around here somewheres.
I don’t know where it is but it's around here. He was a good man. I liked him fine. One of the best men I ever worked for.
Tom: And what did you do for him?
Grampa: I worked with him on the farm. We had a herd of cows to milk and we had hay to get, you know. And in the wintertime, we had ice to harvest and wood to cut. And of course, cutting wood in those days, we didn’t have chainsaws, we had the old buck saw and the axe. It was harder work. And there in Connecticut they had a lot of dead trees. The blight had hit the chestnut trees and bark came off the trees and the wood was just as dry and hard as a flagpole. You couldn’t drive an axe into it at all, you had to use a saw and saw them down. That was hard work. All hard work. But I was young and able and it didn’t bother me. I didn’t call it hard work then. I couldn’t do it now. I’d try but I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t try very much either because I know better!
Sara: So what made you come back home?
Grampa: Well, I got sick of Connecticut. We didn’t like it too well.
Tom: Where were you living?
Grampa: I lived in Ellington, Connecticut the first six or eight months and then I left the farm and went down to Rockville for more money. I think it was $20 a week.
Tom: You gave up working for Olin Shearer, eh?
Grampa: Yup, I gave my notice and he says, “I’d like to have you work a week for me anyway” and so I worked a week and then I went down to Rockville and paid rent. By paying rent, I really didn’t gain anything. I made a mistake. I should have stayed with Olin. Because I got my rent, wood and milk working for him. Down there I had to buy my wood and my milk and pay rent, $8 a month. And I lived up on a hill in a big house.
Tom: Who were you working for?
Grampa: Down there I worked for F. W. Bradley. He was a lumberman. He sold lumber and he picked up the trash in the town of Rockville. We had to pick up trash and stack lumber. And unload train freight cars of lumber. And load freight cars. It was a good busy job. But I wanted to come back to Maine. I got sick of Connecticut. And I wasn’t getting ahead. I made that mistake and went down there. Paying all that money out. I wasn’t getting ahead at all so I said, we’ve got to get out of here. And it cost us a little over $8 to send what furniture we needed, what furniture we could send back. We had to have our stove and our table and a few chairs. The rest of the furniture I sold to a second-hand dealer down in Rockville, Connecticut.
Tom: Old furniture from the old farm, eh?
Grampa: That’s right. Nice stuff too. One chair was a big upholstered rocking chair. Leather upholstered. And it wasn’t hurt a bit. And the doctor, I was renting from a doctor, and the second-hand dealer come out and look the stuff over and I told him I’d let him have it for... I didn’t like to haggle... I never wanted to haggle over anything. I wanted to give em a price that they’d jump at you know and take it. So, I sold it for almost nothing to him. And that chair was worth more than what he gave for the whole thing. But he didn’t get the chair after all. The doctor, my landlord, come in and was looking the place over and I told him I was leaving and selling my furniture and he said, “You let him have that chair! You let him have all this for that money!” And I says, “Yup. I wasn’t going to sit around and chew the fat, I was going to let it go! I want to get it off my hands.” Well he grabbed that chair and went right upstairs where he had a lot of his furniture and brought back another old chair without asking. “Well, boy, that’s some nerve” I thought. “I don’t know what that second-hand dealer is going to say.” But when he come back after his stuff, I told him what the doctor had done he says, “It’s alright.” Probably, he owed the doctor quite a lot. I think the doctor knew him. I don’t think he’d have got away with that if he hadn’t known the doctor.
Sara: But the doctor didn’t give you a dime?
Grampa: He just swapped chairs. He brought an old wooden chair down instead of that nice one. He made a pretty good swap there.
Tom: I bet you wish you kept that furniture, eh Grampa?
Grampa: Well I would have liked to have kept it.
Dad: A lot of books you had to leave too
Grampa: Oh yes, a lot of books.
Dad: Mark Twain, [unintelligible]
Grampa: Yes, I had trucks full of books.
Tom: Why couldn’t you keep them?
Grampa: Because it cost so much to ship them on the railroad. Just the bare necessities that I had to have cost a little over $8 and that was a lot of money then.
Tom: Why did you bring them all down with you from Maine?
Grampa: Well, we thought we was going to stay, you know. And there would be no place to keep it anyway.
Dad: There was a picture of Thomas Frank you left.
Grampa: That’s right there was a picture ...
Tom: OH, you should have brought that back Grampa!
Grampa: I should have kept that album but I was in a hurry. In a rush and you might say [unintelligible]. I had to rush it up. Neglected a lot of things. Let a lot of things go that shouldn’t have gone. And we came up and moved into this place over here. Well first we moved into Minot Corner, I believe, yeah. Then we came over here.
[The following letters were written to Grampa by his mother, Bertha Ann (Winslow) Frank when he lived in Connecticut.]
Envelope
Postmark: Minot, Maine, 15 Apr 1929
Address: Leroy W. Frank, Ellington Conn., c/o Olin Shearer
Minot, Me., Apr. 13th, 1929
Dear Leroy and family,
I received your letters and Geneva's and am very glad you liked the things I sent. I thought the little cape too cute for anything. It came in a box and [the] name on the box was “Cutie”. For a June baby it is more suitable than a bunting.[1] I am going to send another box soon. Perhaps you will need the thing but it will be something that won't come amiss in any family. I am glad to help in this way and believe you will take it in the spirit which it was given. We have just had a heavy snowstorm and in the field back of the house Friday the ground was practically covered with robins and Saturday with a heavy blanket of snow. I am afraid many birds will die. Did I tell you that I had a pretty yellow bird, a very sweet singer? The one I had on the farm was green and named "Hobson" at the same time I had a cat named "Dewey." This bird I call “Don Pedro”. Perhaps I have written about this before, if so excuse a repetition. I can hardly keep my mind on my writing, there is so much going on here. Harry, Emma and Shirley are trying to see which can talk the loudest.[2] Have you had any good maple syrup this year[?] Oscar Pulkinin’s cousin brought us down some that was good.[3] Your dad has bought some wood of him which he will deliver soon. I guess Hal is just the right age to keep everyone busy to keep him out of mischief. I am glad his overalls were alright. He must be a big boy. What do you have to pay for the kind of shoe you got him? I am glad you had a Dr. in season, never hesitate because of the money out. You will save money by taking a thing in time. You are too heavy but warm weather will probably make you lose weight. Miriam, Emily and Lawrence are all getting too heavy. Strange where both mother and father are thin and of light weight. Hope you and Geneva and Hal are getting on fine.
Love and best wishes from Mother and Dad.
[1]
[2]
[3] Oscar Pulkinin (1912-1998) was born in Maine to a family of Finnish origin. Whether they were friends of the family or just neighbors is unknown.
Minot, Me.
Apr. 22nd, 1929
Dear Leroy and family,
We are enjoying another rainy Sunday. I and trying to memorize those lines "It’s not raining rain to me, it’s raining violets" but my rheumatism won't let me be very cheerful, so much dampness doesn't agree with me.[1] Speaking about making farming pay, I don't believe it is done unless combined with a sideline like retailing milk or market gardening, extensive poultry business etc. Plain farming does not pay.
Mirriam, Edwin and Shirley went to Norway for Patriot's Day and are coming back sometime today. Yesterday was fine here all day. Geneva, do you remember the Minister Buck at Mechanic Falls? Did you know that the Mrs. Smith there has been so much in the " Sun " about is Thelma Buck Smith? Miriam went to school when she did at the Falls. I only found this out a few days ago and it surprised me.[2]
How is young Hal? Is that leg as spry as ever?[3] I have to write one more letter to day and hope to get it done before Shirley gets back. Louise Rondeau Davis wrote to me and urged a reply.[4] I haven't heard from her since Shirley was a baby. The janitor in the apartment house where Mirriam lives is a cousin to the Rondeaus and at one time lived in a camp down by the river on their farm in Hardscrabble.
You inquired Leroy, if I knew what Bergeron paid for Mrs. Berry's place and that was there first I heard that it was sold. Tom is working somewhere and his children stay with their Grandparents and come up here to school.[5] Shirley is going to send you a postcard picture of the school and I will mark them so you can tell them. I must close now and get supper.
Lots of love,
Mother
[1] This is a line from "April Showers", a popular song with music written by Louis Silvers and lyrics by B. G. De Sylva. The song was introduced in the 1921 Broadway musical Bombo, where it was performed by Al Jolson. It became a well-known Jolson standard.
[2] An examination of the Lewiston Daily Sun from this period might explain these references to “Mrs. Smith”.
[3] This letter would have been written about four months after Hal broke his leg. Grampa related the story of Hal’s broken leg elsewhere in the narrative: "...he climbed up in a chair and pushed the screen out and he dropped fifteen feet, landed on a flat rock and broke his thigh bone up close to the hip. And we didn’t know he had broken a leg. [We] brought him upstairs and he used to stand in the crib and hang on to the bar, the railing of the crib, and bounce, jump up and down, jump up and down. But this time, when he jumped up and down, one leg was alright but the other was flopping. Your grandmother was pregnant at that time with her second child. And we had [Hal] and your grandmother in the hospital at the same time."
[4] Louise M (Rondeau) Davis (1875-) wife of Louis G. Davis and daughter of Samuel B. and Mary L. (Dunn) Rondeau. I believe the Rondeau’s were French Canadian neighbors of the Franks on the Hardscrabble Road. The story of Peter Rondeau’s manure pile is related in the text. Louise was perhaps 4 years younger than Peter and was probably his sister.
[5] Thomas John Bergeron (1900-1959) emigrated from Canada to Maine when he was ten years old. I believe he was a friend of Grampa’s.
Minot, Me.
Apr 24th 1929
Dear Leroy and family,
I am hastening to reply to your letter received today though mine will be short. Won’t it be glorious to have that moving bill settled? He was so good about trusting your honesty that if he doesn’t mention receipt I shouldn’t.[1]
Louis came up with Emily and baby yesterday and he went back today leaving them for a while. The baby is a miniature Louis.[2]
It is nice to have a pleasant day after so much rain. I have a lot to do so must close now and will write more later.
P.S.
Those snapshots were fine. We all think the same about them. Was very glad to get them.
Mother.
[1] This refers to the moving expense incurred by Grampa when he shipped all his belongings, to include the furnishings from the old farmstead which he had inherited from Walter, to Connecticut by rail. He thought he would settle in Connecticut forever but Geneva became homesick and they returned within a couple of years. He couldn’t afford to have his belongings shipped again and therefore sold or left most of them.
Minot, Me.
May 5th 1929
Dear Leroy and Family,
Though I neglected to write last week I haven’t’ forgotten you but with a colicky baby in the house there is no time to one’s self. Louis is papering and painting and the house is being cleaned while Emily and baby are here. Elsie Rowe took their pictures today.[1] If they come out good I will send you some. They cannot be better than the snapshots of you folks. Don’t get vain Geneva but you are growing handsomer right along. I never saw you so good-looking as in the last picture you sent.
I am returning your receipt. I rejoice with you, it must be quite a load off your minds. If you get in a tight place remember we can always help out a little and wish we could do more. Miriam and Eddie are looking for a rent and as soon as school closes Shirley will go with them.
I hope to take things easy this Summer. Your Aunt Em got through after a long sickness. Of course you saw her obituary in the Sun.[2] I shall try and not let your subscription run out. I mean to keep the date in mind but it is so easy for me to neglect things. Do you remember how old Hal was when he cut his first tooth? I think Arthur is trying to cut his. He will be three months the eleventh of this month.
You will hear from me again soon. Hoping this finds you all well, I will say good-night.
Lovingly Yours,
Mother
[1] Elsie L. (Kincaid) Rowe (1896-1979) lived in Mechanic Falls and was apparently a friend of the Frank family.
[2] Emily F. (Frank) Rounds (24 Sep 1848-2 May 1929). Grampa’s paternal aunt. She was the wife of Al Rounds and they had a son Burt. The Lewiston Daily Sun was a newspaper published in Lewiston, Maine. Established in 1893, it became the dominant morning daily in the Lewiston-Auburn city and town area. In 1926, its publisher acquired the Lewiston Evening Journal and published the two papers until they merged into theSun Journal in 1989.
Sara: Did Grammy think it was a good idea to come back?
Minot Corner, 19th Century
Tom: Who did you rent that from?
Grampa: I rented that from Harrison Yeaton, he owned it. He was the blacksmith. [I may have misheard Grampa here as I found a blacksmith living in Minot Corner by the name of Rufus P. Yeaton at this time]. That was his house and I paid him eight dollars a month. Eight dollars a month seemed to be the price of all the rents around. And we lived there a while. And then we found a rent up in Minot that was a little cheaper and more room and near farms where I could work on farms and I moved up there. And worked on farms. And let’s see where did we go... Oh we went over on Jackass Annie’s Road because the rent was cheaper. And I liked the place over there anyways because there were no near neighbors and you could see for miles and miles and miles, a beautiful view. And I liked the place but your grandmother didn’t like it at all.
Tom: What year did you move [to the Jackass Annie Road]?
Grampa: We went into that place around 1939 I believe it was.
Dad: 1936 Dad.
Sara: Where was that?
Grampa: The Jackass Annie Road
Dad: The Abbott place.
Grampa: Did you ever go up there?
Tom: I did.
Sara: We saw Jackass Annie’s place there were chickens running around in the house. Right in the house!
Grampa: Yup. The hens lay eggs on her bed.
Tom: That was Jackass Annie.
Grampa: Ya.
Tom: But not the house you lived in.
[Recorder clicks off]
Tom: Grampa telling some more stories about when he was a young man living up on the Jackass Annie Road.
Grampa: Yup. And I set there alone. The kids were gone, I guess they had gone with her, and I didn’t light the lamp. I set there in the dark. And all of a sudden the room lit up. And it was a time of year when no car could get within a mile of the place. That’s about as near as a car could get. But I looked out the window and the light that come in the room was coming from Shaker Hill, six miles away, shining across the valley, from a line of cars coming across the hill. Shone the lights right across into our window over there. And that’s a long way. But that house was all alone and no other people living there at that time.
Tom: Here’s Grampa telling how he came to rent the house on Jackass Annie Road.
Grampa: Yes, Jackass Annie’s Road was up in Minot. It’s the highest elevation of any road in Androscoggin County. Beautiful spot if you like solitude and altitude and that’s just what I like and my wife didn’t like it quite so well. She liked to be where she could see somebody and talk with them once in a while but we went over there and we got a phone so she could talk on the phone to people and for a dollar a week, we lived there. Good drinking water, right in the dooryard, you had to go into the dooryard to get it, pump out there. Pump it by hand, pump a pailfull, and carry it into the house. We had our drinking water that way and I could sit in the house and look out the window and see the roof of the place where I born down on the Hardscrabble Road, four or five miles away. And one night the house lit up as if a car was driving in the dooryard and a car couldn’t get within a mile of the place at that time of year. I was sitting in the dark there. I didn’t put on a light because I was alone and I just wanted to sit there in the dark. And when that light came in I went to the window to look across to see how a car could be so near as this and there wasn’t any car anywhere near… but six miles away they were coming down over Shaker Hill in Poland and threw their lights across the valley. That’s how high up we were.
Tom: And could you say how you had waited for the house to become empty?
Grampa: Oh yes, I had my eye on that place for a long time and as soon as I heard that Jake Piper had moved out I went to the owner of the place and asked him if I could have it and he said “sure, dollar a week”. So, I rented it.
Tom: How long did you live there Grampa?
Grampa: We was there about a year and eight months. And then I had to come down... I was walking about four miles twice a day to work eight hours and sometimes sixteen hours in the mill and that was a little bit too much, so I moved down near the mill where the scenery wasn’t quite as good but I didn’t have to walk myself to death.
Tom: Now when we went up to visit the house I remember finding an old pipe laying outside the house that you said you had brought up there.
Grampa: Oh, Yes, yes, that’s right. It was a boiler pipe, it was two boiler pipes welded end-to-end together so it was 32 ft long, they were sixteen feet each, and I told the firemen that I was going to take that home, use it for a sink spout. He said “You couldn’t take that from here to the state road! What are you thinking of Roy. You must think you’re a giant.” I said, “I’ll get that home, it will be home by tomorrow morning.” And he grinned. He knew I couldn’t do it. But I put a rope on it and dragged it, until I got on the crossroad, over the state road and on the crossroad, and dragged it out behind some bushes, where it wouldn’t be seen and left it there. And then I went home, walked home, and the next day, I borrowed a horse and a wagon, and came down and loaded it on, tied it on and hauled it home. And Freemont Wells said, “Well, how far did you get with that pipe?” I says “Its up there right in my house, and the sink water is running out through it.” And he says, “Go on!” And I says, “It is, and if you don’t believe it, come up and look at it.” So he believed me and he says “That Roy Frank is the strongest, toughest fellow I ever saw! I dunno how any man could take that up that distance, up that hill!” So I let him think so! [laughter] I was proud of my strength and I liked to elaborate on it and enlarge on it as much as I could. Let them think I was a giant. [Recorder clicks off]
End of Tape III
Tape IV
[Driving in front of Hartwell Pratt’s house]
Grampa
Grampa: I worked there. Yup. He’s got the car there. The Buick’s in the barn there.
Tom: And he’s lived there all his life, in that house?
Grampa: Yup, ya, all his life.
Letter written by Grampa to Uncle Freeman ca 1986 and subsequently sent by Freeman to Uncle Royal to reunite with the photo. Ad for 1915 Buick truck below.
Hartwell Pratt's Buick infant of Bailey Brother's store. Parked behind a dog sled circa 1920
Grampa: Oh, somebody’s lost a paper.
Grampa: Take a left down here at the foot of the hill, I mean your right down here at the foot of the hill.
Grampa: Here we are, the Hardscrabble Road. The night before last we was down here wasn’t we?
Tom: Yup.
Grampa: “Hardscrabble much deceives us by its name. Its farms are excellent their owners claim.”[1]
[1] This is a single line from a rather lengthy (ten page!) poem by Poland resident and poet J. Albert Libby entitled “1795-1895.” It was written on the occasion of the town’s centennial celebration and published in Ricker, Alvan B., et. al. Poland Centennial, 1795-1895, NY: Andrew H. Kellogg, 1896, p. 39.
Who is it?
Grampa: There walks a man with an oil can
He is dirty, ragged and glum
The egg-sized lump within his cheek may be beech-nut, but not gum
If you watch him a bit you’ll see him spit a molasses colored stream,
And now and then he blows it out in a mighty burst of steam.
Now there’s many a man with a flashy car,
And the finest clothes in town,
Who would sell his soul for half the roll
That man has salted down.
Grampa: That was old...
Dad: Bill Cobb
Grampa: Bill Cobb, yup.
[Joseph William Cobb, 1881-1968]
Dad: He was the head of the mill.
Tom: Now would you recite that other one you wrote Grampa? The Androscoggin?
Grampa: You got [the tape recorder] all set?
Tom: Yup it’s all set.
He stretched and yawned and rubbed his eyes and scratched his scraggly noggin,
As the sunrise dyed the waters of the Little Androscoggin
He was seen to sway and they heard him say as he staggered by the brink
Good Lord, I can’t believe it, this stinkin’ stream is pink!
That day in awful horror, he sank down on a ledge
And with a pen in trembling hand
He signed the Drunkard’s Pledge.
Grampa: Yes that was a long time ago...
Tom: When did you write that Grampa?
Grampa: I was working in the mill at the time and between loads on the drier, I’d have four or five minutes before I had to get another load and I’d write a verse. It kept me busy and I didn’t have to set there...
Uncle Royal: There was a time when the paper mill in Mechanic Falls five miles up the river was dumping all the dyes in the river.
Tom: So it was pink?
Uncle Royal: And the EPA closed it. Shut em right up. They had big sinkbeds up there and they couldn’t take care of the sinkbeds. Sometimes the river would be purple. And I used to catch trout down there when I was a little kid. Now you can again.
Grampa: The sunrise was ... that morning ... along with the pink water.... [unintelligible]
Grampa would occasionally find old photos among the paper bales at the mill and this image of the bridge over the Little Androscoggin is one such. He described the photo on the back and sent it to the Lewiston Journal which printed it in January 1983
Tom: Grampa quoting one of Robert Service’s poems
And down her cheeks the bitter tears did flow.
And as I sadly listened I heard this tender plea,
'Twas uttered in a voice so soft and low.
"Please Mother don't stab Father with the bread-knife,
Remember 'twas a gift when you were wed.
But if you must stab Father with the bread-knife,
Please Mother, use another for the bread."
[laughter]
Tom: Grampa, could you tell me everything you know about my great, great, grandfather Aaron S. Thurston.
Grampa: He was a Civil War veteran, and he was born in Winthrop. When he came back from the Civil War he went to the town of Rome and took a farm and he worked farming all his life. As I understand it.
Tom: Do you know what he did in the Civil War?
Grampa: No, I don’t know what his rank was or anything about it. No.
Tom: Did he enlist from the town of Winthrop?
Grampa: I really don’t know. It could have been Augusta that he enlisted from. It probably was Augusta.
[Actually we know a bit more about Aaron Sanderson Thurston's Civil War experience as his pension record is on file at the National Archives].
103rd’s Company E Holds Last Roll Call
"From 1925 to 1928 I was in this Company. Dan Dexter was Captain, Casey Morin, Lieutenant and Scothorne was a sergeant. These men were later promoted." The clipping shows one Wilfred Scothorne as a former Colonel so, if the same soldier mentioned by Grampa as a sergeant, he was promoted quite a few grades over the course of his career."
Grampa. Miss. Burleigh. I went to work for her. And she give me seventeen dollars and a half a week, with my rent, wood and milk. But I had to chop the wood and of course I milked the milk from the cows and took all what I needed. She never even paid any attention to how much milk I took. I didn’t sell milk but I took home what we needed. And I remember one day I saw Miss. Burleigh, there was a crew working on the state road out front of her house. And she came over to the barn and talked with me and looked the cattle over and told me they looked good and I was taking good care of the cows, was well-pleased with my work and praised me up a little bit. And then she went out across the road, and I wondered why she waited until the crew left the roadside and went to dinner and they left their spades in the dirt, in the gravel pile beside the road, stuck in the road. She went down to the road and she looked up and down, nobody coming and she took one of the spades and gave it a toss over the hedge onto her lawn. And that afternoon I was mowing the lawn and I saw the shovel there and I just mowed around it. Didn’t touch it. And the carpenter that was working on her barn, he came across the lawn and saw the spade there and he picked it up and brought it into the barn. And the old lady came into the barn and said hello, where this spade come from Roy? And I says, Mr. Page brought it in. And Page says, “Yes, I found it on the lawn and I brought it in.” She says “You shouldn’t leave things lying around like that Roy!” Well I could have said, “No, I saw you toss it over” but I didn’t. I wanted my job and I kept my mouth shut. I said, “Yes, I’m sorry.” That’s all.
Dad: I remember Page.
Sara: She stole it! She stole that spade, huh.
Grampa: She [Netty Burleigh, Clara Burleigh’s sister] says, Roy, why don’t you talk to em [the cows]? I says “They don’t talk to me!” She thought that was ridiculous. But I didn’t talk to them. I took care of them. I fed em and watered em and kept in their pens and put them out to pasture and treated them all right. But I talked with people when I had a chance. [laughter] I said, “They don’t talk to me.” She didn’t uh...
Dad: Didn’t she call you a “brute.” Didn’t she say, “Talk to the animals, you’re a brute!” or some damn thing like that.
Grampa: She might have. I don’t remember. She was an old lady.
Tom: Who are you talking about here?
Grampa: Clara. Nettie Burleigh’s sister Clara. Another old maid schoolteacher.
Tom: And she wanted you to talk to the animals.
Grampa: Yes, she thought I should talk to the animals, ya.
Grampa: [I was on my way] home one morning and I stopped in to Clara’s with a quarter to buy a pound of butter, it only cost a quarter then for a pound of homemade butter, farm butter. And I found, I saw a chopping block, and an axe, and twenty-five chickens’ heads right around on the ground by that chopping block.
Sara: Ugghh.
Grampa: People had come up from Augusta or down from Waterville in the night and taken her chickens right out of the henhouse, chopped the heads off and took em home. So, she lost a whole flock of chickens.
Dad: Killed them right there in the
Grampa: Killed them right there in the dooryard. Yup. The old lady didn’t stay there at night. She went over to her sister Nettie’s and stayed. So that must have been somebody that had worked with her before and knew that nobody was there. So, they just cleaned that henhouse out. And they used to come up and rob the gardens too in the night. Hard job for people to get along there.
Tom: What do you remember about the Depression Grampa?
Grampa: Well, the Depression was no fun. We ate. We always had enough to eat. But we didn’t have any luxuries and I don’t know. It seems though the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer all the time. I told one old farmer I was working for...said “I’ll tell you it’s quite a problem.” I said, “I’d like to swap places with you. Why don’t you come over and live on the town and I’ll take your cows and run your farm?” But he didn’t take me up on that! [laughter]
Dad: Was that Bill Daniels?
Grampa: No that was old Tide Libby.
Dad: Oh, Tide Libby! Sure, he was a nice old guy, I always like him.
Grampa: He was alright.
Dad: I remember him and his son Carrol.
Grampa: Ya?
Dad: Ya. I had dinner over there, at least once over at the house. The old lady put a big spread on the table. All those old farm Yankee women did that. They had a helluva spread on the table. Hot biscuits and pies and Christ and... All home cooking.
Grampa: The only farmer that never set me up was Bill Daniels.
Dad: Oh that’s right Bill never did set you up.
Grampa: Bill wouldn’t let anyone eat at his place, no.
Dad: Oh, that’s too bad, ya.
Grampa: But I ate at Bill Thomas’s.
Dad: Bill Thomas yup.
Grampa: They fed me well there.
Dad: I always liked Tide. I don’t know why. Of course, I remember once he came to the house, and one of the things he was saying to Mom, among other things, he was talking, I don’t know what the hell he was there for but he said “I like kids!” he was saying, big smile on his face. And I kind of took to him when he said that. I was about six years old, six or seven you know.
Grampa: Well Bill Thomas had another house besides the one he lived in. And in that house, he had his hired man lived in that.
Dad: That was Ezry Brown.
Grampa: Ya, Ezry Brown lived there. And then there was other hired men that lived there. And I would like to have had that rent you know. I’d like to have moved in there. But Ezry didn’t have any children, he and his wife, and every family that lived there was just a man and his wife, no children. And at the table at home your mother said “Why can’t you get that rent at Bill Thomas’s and be right there on the farm, right handy to work. I says, I’d like to but Bill won’t let me have it, he gives it to someone else all the time. And I said, “Maybe it’s because he don’t like kids.” And I think I said, “That must be it.” And one night Bill brought me home and as soon as I got out in the dooryard your mother was out there, and all you little kids was out there, and Freeman runs up to Bill Thomas and says “You don’t like kids!” [laughter] And Bill said to me the next day, “What made that kid say that?” And I told him, I said, my wife and I was talking and we wondered why I couldn’t get into your rent here and I guessed perhaps you don’t like kids because I noticed that every man that lived there had no children. Well Bill says “I like kids alright but” he says “when I had a family here with children once,” he says, “I couldn’t find a damned thing on the place. They were always taking tools away and harnesses away and I never knew where anything was and I figured I’d get along without that.” [laughter]
Dad: Bill didn’t have any kids either, did he?
Grampa: Nope. He and his wife didn’t have any children.
[Depression life continued]
Grampa: Well I don’t remember only I worked on the town road and we didn’t get much pay per hour but we did get some. Enough to buy our groceries. I always had enough to eat. We always had plenty to eat but we didn’t dress the best and we took a lot of hand me downs, you know. I never refused anything that was coming my way if they’d give it to me but I didn’t go out and steal it. And that was about it. And things got a little better after Franklin D. Roosevelt got in they started the WPA work and then we got more wages. We worked only eight hours. I couldn’t believe it. I says, that’s the shortest day’s work I ever did. I’m going home and nothing to do all the rest of the time. Only eight hours! Yep, that was really living.
Sara: Gee, that’s funny. Nowadays I think it’s really hard [to work eight hours].
Grampa: [We worked from when] daylight started until dark and sometimes the stars were shining when we were done. I’ve worked in the woods from just as soon as it got daylight until the first stars shone in the evening and carried a paper bag with lunch. Set down and eat that then get right back to work again. And I have eaten when it’s so cold that the biscuits froze solid! Nothin like being young! [laughter] If I tried that now I’d die before the day was over!
Tom: Who’s the first President you remember Grampa?
Grampa: The first President I paid any attention to was Teddy Roosevelt. Well, no... he’s was out of it. He was out of it but they were talking a lot about him and there was a lot in the papers about him and we had books about Teddy Roosevelt and he was the first President I read much about. But the first President I think I remember was Woodrow Wilson. I remember him. And he was in the papers a lot of course and I was beginning to notice the papers because I’d see my father and my uncle reading the papers and sometimes I’d watch em. And sometimes they’d be laughing and sometimes they’d look serious and I’d watch the expressions on their faces and I’d wonder, how can they stare at that so long and look so interested! But after a while, I was doing the same thing! [laughter]
Tom: You remember some Civil War veterans, don’t you?
Grampa: Oh yes. Grampa Winslow was a Civil War veteran and N. R. Brown, he was an officer. I don’t know what rank he was but he was a Colonel I think. He lived at Minot Corner here at the top of the hill, on the Woodman Hill Road. And he was a pompous, important-acting fella. I never liked him very well. He had a driving horse. And he always like to chew some soldier out. I used to see the parades in Lewiston and Auburn on Memorial Day and Fourth of July, you know, and N. R. Brown would be on horseback, riding his horse, and head in the air, and every chance he got he saw a soldier he could bawl out, and enough people watching, oh he’d card that poor guy down and give him hell just because he was an officer you know. Oh, wouldn’t I love to give him a good, rousing kick in the rear end!
[Nelson Russell Brown, (1849-1933), may have put on a good con. He was never an officer, though he might have had such rank in the Grand Army of the Republic, the Civil War veteran's organization that used to participate in parades and ceremonies in the decades that followed the Civil War. Brown lied about his age to enlist and served as a private during the Civil War in Company G & Company B of the12th Maine Infantry. I had a patient named William Throckmorton when I was in Germany. His brother had been Commandant of West Point and he claimed himself to have been a retired Colonel. Only after his death did l learn that, although his brother had indeed been a well-known General, "Throck the Rock" as we called him, retired from the Army as a Staff Sergeant. He lived his life as a lie. But he was a kind and jovial old sort. He certainly had a better personality than that which Grampa attributes to "Colonel" Brown.]
Tom: What do you remember about the First World War Grampa?
Grampa: I was a little fella, and I was about seven or eight years old, and I remember we used to, us boys get together, and tell about what we’d do the Kaiser if we could get hold of him. The kind of tortures we’d put him through and so forth. Oh, we were... children are savages, little savages you know. And we were dreaming about getting hold of the Kaiser.
Dad: He wasn’t a bad man at all.
Grampa: No, No.
Dad: Grandson of Queen Victoria.
Grampa: Yes, and my uncle had books [published] … before the World War, First World War, and [they] showed Teddy Roosevelt visiting Kaiser William in Germany. And they were interesting, lots of pictures in em. We had a lot of fun. But we always was interested in war. [We] wondered how we were going to come out. And I remember when it ended. That day I [told Uncle Walter that I] wasn’t going to go to school. I said, “I don’t feel good, I’m sick.” “Well if you’re sick you better go to bed.” And I said, “Good” and I went to bed. And I says, “Unc, Give me that book up there will you please? I’m reading a good book up there.” And he says, “You’re not reading one today, you’re sick. You, remember, you don’t feel well.” And I was beginning to be a little bit sorry I said I was going to stay home. And pretty soon I heard a whistle blowing from Lewiston and Auburn, (the wind was blowing in that direction) and I could hear whistles and bells and the kids come home from school. Middle of forenoon [my friends] rapped on the windows and said, “Roy, Roy, get up. The War’s over!” And I says, “Uncle, hear those whistles and bells and the kids are coming home from school? The War’s over!” “In that case,” Uncle Walt says, “I guess you can get up.” [laughter]
Dad: I remember you telling that! I remember that story.
Grampa: ..... We’d go out and do calisthenics.
Tom: Who was this you were with?
Grampa: Henry Dexter Johnson, Jr. He was my cousin.
Grampa: He was having a good time out there. We had a calf. We called him Sambo. And we’d let Sambo loose every morning to go get some milk from his mother. And he was rough, oh boy. He’d fairly lift that cow right off her feet getting his breakfast, you know and we had to tie the cow so she couldn’t kick him too much and get him out the way. She should have been weaning him you know and he wasn’t going to be weaned if he could help it! We called him Sambo. And Henry Johnson liked to down there and, that’s the only work he did do, he liked to go down and let that calf loose and watch it go down and get his breakfast you know. He’d say, “I’ve got to go down and suckle Sambo.”
Dad: Ya, but on this calisthenics bit...
Tom: What other world events do you remember Grampa? What other events that were important in the news do you remember striking you when you were a kid growing up or when you were older even?
Grampa: Well I had written down here on a piece of paper somewheres I had forgotten all about it but I read of thousands of people that were killed in a train crash, no hundreds of people that were killed in a train crash. [Looking at his diary] And I don’t remember…
Dad: I heard you say something about that. Where’s is the paper?
Grampa: There was an eclipse of the sun we heard was coming and we knew when to look for it, and the chickens … they told us it would happen and it did, the chickens went to roost in the middle of the day and the rooster started crowing as if it was early morning.
Sara: Wow, really?
Grampa: Oh yes. Well here, [Grampa reading some newspaper clippings from his scrapbook or diary] “In 1958 a thirty-nine-year-old woman has a child one year after she lost eight children in a car crash.” And in ’61, “Radar tower 80 miles off the coast of New Jersey vanished with twenty-eight men aboard.” And “net pay [in the mill] for 1969 was $5,308 dollars for the year.”
Tom: That was working in the mill?
Grampa: That’s working in the mill, yes. And in ’66, “Cindy was here this week. She misses her parents and cries when she thinks of them. And she looked at the toaster, saw her face [reflected] in the toaster, she was crying and said “Cindy’s crying because she can’t see her father and mother!” [laughter] Then [continues reading diary] … “I talked with niece Shirley on the phone.” That was January 16, 1980, and I was going to talk to her again today and tell her that so many years ago today I had talked to her but I didn’t get to it. She may be in bed, I’m not going to bother her now. And in ’85 “I paid Dr. Holler $53 to test my hearing. He said I was a candidate for a hearing aid.” Now that’s an appropriate name for an ear doctor, isn’t it?
Sara: Dr. Holler!
Grampa: Dr. Holler, H-O-L-L-E-R!
Sara: That’s good!
Grampa: I wondered if that was a fictitious name. I don’t know. And “I got an egg from the hens on a zero day” and that’s in unusual thing. Chickens don’t lay when it’s cold.
[Recorder turned on]
.... I’m tired of doing chores I’m going to have a smoke. And I took [Walter’s] old pipe and it was strong, and I scraped off as much of the damned char and stuff out of it as I could and dumped it out of the pipe, and then I loaded it with tobacco and started puffing and I got a great big cloud of smoke and I puffed and puffed and by and by I felt bad. And it was zero weather, real cold, but I said I’ll get out and get some fresh air and maybe I’ll feel better. And I went out and laid down in the snow and looked up at the stars and I still couldn’t get over that sick feeling in my stomach and I don’t remember whether I kept my supper down or not but I know I didn’t want any more pipe!
[What do you remember about my father when he was a little boy Grampa?]
Grampa: Oh, he was a cute little cuss. The neighbors all liked him. They used to come over and visit us just to watch him run around and play before he got old enough to talk. And when he was about nine-months old he was walking, he walked early. And I remember he climbed up in a chair and pushed the screen out and he dropped fifteen feet, landed on a flat rock and broke his thigh bone up close to the hip. And we didn’t know he had broken a leg. I went to the window to look down and see how he landed, but I had hardly got to the window when his mother was down there, she went down those stairs, she flew down there, and picked him up and brought him upstairs and he used to stand in the crib and hang on to the bar, the railing of the crib, and bounce, jump up and down, jump up and down. But this time, when he jumped up and down, one leg was alright but the other was flopping.
Sara: Oooh.
Grampa: So your great-grandmother [Gertrude (Chase) Thurston] was there visiting us that summer. She wanted to be with her daughter when the baby was born. Your grandmother was pregnant at that time with her second child. And we had [Hal] and your grandmother in the hospital at the same time. And he was right in the next bed to his mother and everything was okay but he didn’t like the doctors too well. And when they’d come to see him he’d say “Good Bye, Good Bye”. He thought that would send them away you know. He’d wave to them.
Sara: (To Dad) Do you remember the hospital?
Dad: No, no. I remember Connecticut [as my first memory].
Grampa: And that’s when the first daughter was born, over there, Gertrude. She died in Vassalborough. I don’t know, she picked up, she came down here to stay with the folks, with her grandparents, and we didn’t hardly know her when she come back home, she was so happy and looked so good. It didn’t last long though. Your grandmother wasn’t well and she had a lot of work to do and Hal kept her pretty busy and it was too much for her. She wasn’t really stout and strong enough to have babies so fast. I think that’s what the trouble was.
Dad: There was me, there was Trudy and there was JoAnne.
Grampa: Ya. There was three, that’s right. Three babies to take care of. And she never got out much. The doctor came to see us. His name was Dr. Payne. A good name for a doctor.
Sara: Dr. Payne, Dr. Holler [laughter]
Dad: There was also a Dr. Hendy we used to have.
Grampa: Yes, we had Hendy and Dr. Payne. Dr. Payne was the one that came that time. And he says, “You know young man, you get out. You get away from the house. You go over there and take care of the cattle. You see people. But she’s right in here just like in a jail all the time. It’s like a jail. She’s got to get away from these children and get over to the barn or get somewhere and get away for a few hours every day. She can’t stand it.” So, I told Miss. Burleigh about it and she says “Well alright” and we paid a neighbor girl to come over and stay with the kids so she could get away from the children and come over to the barn. But it didn’t last very long. Miss. Burleigh suspected she was stealing things. In fact, your mother was [stealing]. Your mother said “Well, if she expects it, I’m going to have some apples.” And she’d fill a [unintelligible] full of apples and take em home and things like that and the Old Lady Burleigh knew it. Oh, she was sharp. She was watching all the time.
Dad: Sure. If you suspected theft you’d be watching for it.
Grampa: Yup, yup.
Dad: Well, who was the neighbor girl was it one of the Nedow girls?
Grampa: Nedow, yup.
Dad: Which one?
Grampa: Helen.
Grampa: I remember Helen and I remember Fred her husband. And I remember Mary, that old bitch. And I remember Florence, she was a young girl, and a cousin they had there named Cor...[cuts off].
Grampa: Do you remember the rooster on [Ms. Burleigh’s] farm?
Dad: Yes I do. I remember chasing that rooster around all that afternoon and you kept trying to stop me from doing it but I wouldn’t stop. And I’d catch that rooster and I’d slap it and everything.
Grampa: And grab it by the neck... and pretty soon the rooster died.
Sara: Ohhhh!
Dad: It was a sick rooster.
Grampa: It was sick, yeah. It was about my age, the rooster was, and it happened to him just as it would to me if some young fella yanked me around.
Sara: Why did you kill the poor rooster?
Dad: Look, I was a little kid and this was power.
Sara: What a mean little thing, mean!
Dad: Well, I don’t know. Dad kept trying to stop me. I don’t remember actually killing it. Mom said I ripped its wings.
Sara: Oh, Good Grief!
Grampa: The rooster died anyway. I know I was too damn busy to give him a spanking and make him quit. It wasn’t worth it. I’d just speak to him once or twice and I had to keep on the jump all the time to get my work done.
Dad: And I remember doing it and Dad trying to stop me from doing it.
Sara: And who’s rooster was it?
Dad: Miss. Burleigh’s rooster.
Sara: I hope she gave you a good spanking.
Dad: I didn’t get any punishment at all for that.
Grampa: And I tell you another thing, if I did give him a spanking and your grandmother see it, I’d be in trouble for it. War, war, war. I liked peace and quiet as much as I could get it. I couldn’t wail the kids out very much, not very much. She was their protector.
Dad: [laughs] But I didn’t … there wasn’t any feeling of cruelty, it was power.
Sara: Alright, alright...I don’t want to talk about it....
[Recorder clicks off]
Grampa: We went from one schoolhouse to the other, cleaning out the old-fashioned backhouses. And Phil [Dunn] was ashamed of that kind of work. I figured a job is a job, it didn’t make any difference. When we was cleaning out the Minot Corner backhouse, Phil would say, “We’ll get this truck around out of sight, in the back of the building.” And “don’t go up there where they can see you, people going by.” Ah, Hell, that didn’t bother me. I didn’t care...
Dad: He didn’t want his kids to know he did that kind of thing.
Tom: Phil Dunn didn’t.
Dad: Phil didn’t want his kids to know it. So one day, one Sunday I had to go over there for some other reason, some errand, and it was Fall again, getting toward time for school to start and time to clean the backhouses again. So, Phil Dunn says to me, “Tell your old man, I’d like to have him start helping me out next week. It’s a fancy job.” [laughter]
Dad: We cleaned one out up at the Abbott place on the Jackass Annie Road.
Grampa: Our own backhouse, yup.
Dad: Oh, I was sick. He pulled a goddamned big shovel full of putrefied shit. Must have been there five years. There were some rags in it as I remember... and yeach... ooh yeach.... And he said, “Take a look at that!” and held the goddamned thing up.... and I hated those people that lived there before us. Oh I hated them. They were the ones that left it there. Oh Christ! [laughter]
Grampa: Yeah, he gagged and almost puked. [laughter]. But JoAnne and Tim cleaned out one down Minot Corner and they both wore handkerchiefs over their noses.
Dad: JoAnne and Tim cleaned one out?
Grampa: Yup, she worked with Tim. They cleaned out for Clarence Harris.
Dad: Oh Jesus Christ.
Grampa: Clarence wouldn’t do it. He wouldn’t clean his own out.
Dad: I don’t blame him! I wouldn’t clean...
Grampa: He paid those kids to do it. They were sick. They didn’t like it and they put handkerchiefs over their noses. I couldn’t do that because I couldn’t breathe and work too with anything over my nose and mouth.
Dad: [Laughter]
Grampa: But it was an unpleasant job.
Sara: [Laughter]
Grampa: The last time I got into anything like that, I was tearing Frank Field’s barn down and bringing the boards up here. And his backhouse was out in the barn and I’d forgotten all about that. And I stepped right into it, almost to my knees, one leg, I broke through into it. And oh, what a mess! God that was terrible. [Laughter] Dennis and Scott were working there for Phil getting hay on Frank Fields’ place and they saw that happen. They laughed, and they saw me slump down into that mess. [Laughter] I told Frank about it he says, “Oh, I forgot to tell you about that.”
[Tape clicks off]
“Long lines of cliff breaking have left a chasm; And in the chasm are foam and yellow sands...” That starts off a poem that’s a real well-known poem. Can you imagine who wrote it? [Tennyson]
“I have no doubt at all the Devil grins, As seas of ink I spatter. Ye gods, forgive my literary sins --The other kind don't matter.” [Robert Service]
End of Tape IV
Tape V
Grampa relating a story about his grandfather Peter Whitney Frank
Grampa: Yes, my Dad was only a little boy about eight or nine years old, maybe ten, and he was working in the hayfield with the rest of them, he was raking up scatterings with a hand rake and he saw a nest of field mice and they interested him and he bent over and looked at the field mice, watched them, and a rain was coming up, there would be a shower in a short time, and they had to hurry to get that load in the barn before it got wet, and Dad didn’t realize that, but the old folks did, and his father, my grandfather, spoke to him and said, “Come on there, get busy” and my father didn’t even hear him because he was so interested in the mice. And old Whitney supposed that he was being ignored and it made him mad and he flew off the handle and swiped the big ox goad right across the poor little boy’s rear end just as hard as he could swing it. And after he’d done it he walked around in circles and said “Oh I hit that boy too hard, I hit him too hard!” [laughter]
Tom: Here's Dad telling another story about Whitney Frank.
Dad: Oh, you want me to tell it?
Tom: Go ahead.
Dad: Alright. It should be Dad though to tell this story. Well, it was Dad’s Uncle, Walter, he was a little bit on the lazy side I guess. He wasn’t too fond of work around the farm and he was helping his father, Whitney Frank load hay one hot summer day and he decided he’d like to get away from it all for a while so he said “I have to shit father”. “Alright boy. Go over there behind the stone wall and afterward you come back here”. So, he went over behind the stone wall and he was gone for a good long time. Finally, Whitney went looking for him. And he came up behind him, behind that stone wall, and he had a whip in his hand, horsewhip or a bullwhip, something like that, and he raised it over his head and he said “Now boy, you shit!” [laughter]
Tom: Alright Grampa, what was the favorite expression of your Aunt Emma?
Grampa: Well Aunt Em used to say, “That man is meaner than turkey turd tea!” [laughter]
[Recorder clicks off]
Grampa: I was going down Hardscrabble Road and Rose Gilman had just died and the boy that lived there comes running out when he saw me and “Come in, come in, Roy, I want you to take a look at Mrs. Gilman, she died the other day.” And I wasn’t curious. I says I don’t believe I want to go in. And he was a little bit offended but I didn’t care about looking at a corpse so I went along finished my trip home and didn’t bother with him.
Grampa: I was about 12 years old and Joe and I went down to Barn on Minot Avenue and were looking around and out back of the barn was a manure pile and a little ways from the manure pile was where it drained off and it formed a, it was on a hollow place in a ledge and it formed a kind of a pool of drainage from the manure pile and it crusted over and looked like solid ground but Joe knew it wasn’t and we stood close to it and he give me a push and I went down into that soft stuff over my head. I paddled out awful fast. And the woman that lived there scraped most of the dirt off best as she could with a shingle but my shoes went “squish, squish” every time I stepped and I had a good suit on and it was soaked with that barnyard drainage...
Sara: Yuck.
Grampa: So that was my first swim in a manure pile.
Tom: And that was Joe Leveque?
Grampa: That was Joe Leveque. And Joe knew it wasn’t a good idea to stay around after that. I started for him he went way up on the big beam in the barn to get out of my way. [laughter]
Dad: Oh, I thought you were after him in the first place, you were chasing him and he led you across that?
Grampa: No, we were standing there and he got me in a good position where he could give me a quick shove and I’d go in.
Tom: What did your father say about that?
Grampa: Well my father wasn’t there, it was my uncle and he didn’t say anything.
Tom: Did you wear that suit after that?
Grampa: Well I had to, after it was washed of course. Once it was clean, it was in good shape.
Tom: Tell me about the running water in the old homestead.
Grampa: Oh, we had the only running water on tap in the buildings on the road. Other people had to carry their water in pails from the well but we had the windmill over the well and pumped the water up into a big reservoir up on the hill and ran down into the buildings gravity feed. All we had to do was open the tap. We had water aplenty for a herd of cattle and the family. And another family on the same road had a windmill that they used to saw wood with.
Grampa: This is Robert Service, "The Spell of the Yukon."
[Grampa read this at Sara’s request]
The Village Blacksmith – Longfellow
Here’s Paul Revere’s Ride... [Longfellow]
Here’s the Children’s Hour... [Longfellow]
Now what’s the next one...?
When Lish played Ox.... [Holman Day]
Grampa: When I was a boy, fourteen or fifteen years old, we lived on a big farm and evenings it was real quiet, that’s before the days of radio and TV and it was quiet because we all liked to read. And we had our different tastes in reading and we had all kinds of things to choose from. And it would be just as still as it could be, and no one would say a word, we were just sitting there reading, all enjoying ourselves. We would probably read till ten or eleven o’clock some nights.
Tom: And the house was filled with books?
Grampa: And the house was filled with books. All kinds of books. I had a cousin who was a schoolteacher and she used to enjoy her vacations there at the farm because it was so quiet and she had all kinds of reading...
Tom: What was her name?
Grampa: Her name was Ethel Johnson.
Tom: What poets do you like?
Grampa: Edgar Allen Poe was the most musical poet I think we’ve got. I like his poetry.
Tom: And what other poets do you like? Do you like Longfellow?
Grampa: Oh yes. Longfellow and Burns and Poe and Robert Service. And let’s see now... Holman Day was a good Maine poet and he wrote novels as well as poetry. King Spruce was one of his best novels.
[Tape clicks off]
