SOME THOUGHTS ON UNCLE CLARENCE'S MEMORIES

I meant to post these comments yesterday but sleep won out.

The blacksmith P.C. Ripley that Clarence mentions was Percy
C. Ripley who apparently is a local legend. He ran away to sea
as a boy for three years and then on his return spent four
years living with the Indians and learning how to trap and
live in the woods. He settled in the Magalloway area where
he worked as a guide and blacksmith and had quite an
illustrious career befuddling the local game wardens who
sought to catch him hunting and fishing out of season.

The mention of the Brown Paper company brings memories to
me of our own visits “up home”. We’d pass through
Berlin, N.H.where the paper mill was on the Androscoggin
River and there was the faint smell of rotten eggs in the air,
caused by whatever process was used to make paper.


Reading Clarence’s stories of his time at the Azicohos Dam
made me go back and read my Aunt Dorothy’s memories of
her childhood there. The quarry “up back of the barracks”
must be the one Dot mentions as being home to a bear.
The log sluice that Clarence thought was the “slickest piece
of work I ever saw” may the one at whose end my Dad
liked to fly fish.


And Clarence’s final comment about rarely using his boats to
visit the “head of the lake” only ten times in fifty one years
brought to mind Dot telling how she napped in the boat
“Kiko” while her father was still building it, and of its state
when she saw it years later as an adult.

I’m fortunate to have their accounts of their lives in Maine.
How I wish some of my other ancestors had left behind some
of their own accounts as well!