GRANDUNCLE CLARENCE REMEMBERS PT3

((The last in my repost of the series in honor of Clarence's 120th birthday
on 18 Mar 2015. This was first printed in 2008.

This is the last part of my Granduncle Clarence West’s
memories as taken from “The History of Wilsons Mills-and-
the- Magalloway -Settlements” . The subjects range from
“squirrel whiskey” to grist mills and the cost of food.


“P.C. Ripley worked at the dam when they were building it.
He was the top blacksmith. He could make most anything.
He made wrenches and tools of all kinds for the crews.
Ripley used to say that Brown Company kept all the
ingredients to make `squirrel ’whiskey. You just mix up a
batch, then bury it in the ground to season it. When you dig
it up it’s pretty stout, but good. Just one drink of it will make
a squirrel go up a tree tail first!

That grist stone they took out of the river this spring was
the top stone. If you look at it you can see the holes in it.
There’s a thing goes through the hole in the middle to pick it
up by. Too bad they couldn’t find the other stone. It used to
take days to sharpen those stones. It was all done by hand
and they all had to be the same. They had a nice grist mill at
Errol Dam. They had two stones, one special for buckwheat
and one for flour. The top stone sets still and the bottom one
goes around. You had to be awful careful to keep the grain
running all the time.

If you heard the click of the stones hitting together you
knew you were going to get something hard on your teeth.
The grain went down the cellar to a hopper, onto a
conveyor, through a machine they called the `smut’ mill,
then back upstairs and into a rig they called a bolt. This
was a cylinder screen about 10 feet long and about three
feet around. It had different sized screens and it kept turning
over and over and the grain fell into a row of boxes under it.
When it was done you pulled out a drawer and filled your
bag.


“There’s sure some difference in the price of flour and meat
and everything nowadays. I can remember when Joe and
Martha Brooks had a little store over in Upton. Joe would
kill a cow and go and peddle it around for three cents a
pound. Milk was five cents a quart; butter was high,
twenty-five cents a pound. Eggs were one cent apiece.
When I was going to school, anytime I needed pencils or
paper or anything for school, I’d go out to the barn and get
a few eggs to trade for what I needed.


You know, I was thinking about it the other day, I’ve had
boats all the time I’ve been here, and that’s going on
fifty-one years, and I’ve only been to the head of the lake
ten times.”


Source: The Town of Wilsons Mills Maine, “The History of
Wilsons Mills-and- the- Magalloway-Settlements”
(Wilsons Mills, Me. 1975.) pp.96-97

GRANDUNCLE CLARENCE REMEMBERS PT2

((Another of three blogposts in celebration of Clarence West's 120th
birthday. First posted in 2008.)) 

Here’s part two of my Granduncle Clarence’s memories
of the construction of the Azicohos Dam as it appeared in
“The History of Wilsons Mills-and- the- Magalloway-
Settlements” including a wandering cow and Clarence taking
a shortcut across the top of the dam:


“Roberge cut the flowage. They used to bring the water
up to the works to keep the frost out of the north side of
the dam. When the water is low you can still see where
the steam pipes cooked the cement. Roberge finished the
flowage by cutting off the trees right at the top of the ice.
Brown Company’s tow-boats had quite a time at first.
Sometimes they’d make a mistake and end up in the woods,
or wind the tow-line up in the propeller, or knock a blade
off the propeller in the dri-ki(driftwood). Stan Wentzell was
the one who finally corralled the dri-ki by booming it in the
coves. Stan was a good man. When he told you something
you could believe it.


There used to be a quarry up in back of the barracks.
When Clarence Gray logged in there a few years ago he
cut trees out of it. That concrete pit up back was the water
pit. Water lines ran down to the houses, storehouses, cook
camps, etc. On one of the cottages the front porch was way
up high. When I had a cow, every time she didn’t come
when I called, I always knew where to find her. Under
that porch!


They used to have a telephone line run up from the top of
the dam to the foot of the sluice. You remember Pat
Crowley. It was his job to stay on the top of the dam and
stop the wood if anything went wrong. It took six feet of
water to sluice and the wood went nine-tenths of a mile in
three minutes. That sluice was the slickest piece of work I
ever saw. It sure took some figuring. George Freeman
designed it. He went to school with Paul Bean. He came
from Gorham, Me. After he left here he went to Chicago
to work on a hotel that was tipping over. Then he helped
build a railroad through the Rocky Mountains. After that
he went out to San Francisco and worked on the Golden
Gate bridge.


Bean and Harris came up one day to see about doing
something to the sluice gates. We drove around to the other
side of the dam and then Bean discovered he need the
blueprints that had been left over at the house. He was
going to send his driver over after them but I told him I
could do it quicker. There was about an inch of water
running over the splashboards but I went across and got
the papers. When I got back, Bean stood there with his
hands in his pockets watching me. He said `I didn’t like to
see you do that, Clarence!’ It wasn’t long after that they
put in the bridge above the splashboards.”

Source: The Town of Wilsons Mills Maine, “The History of
Wilsons Mills-and- the- Magalloway-Settlements”
(Wilsons Mills, Me. 1975.)
pp.95-96