by John Gould
Born Edgar Wilson Nye at Shirley in 1850, he left Maine as an infant to go to Wisconsin, and later to Wyoming. At Laramie he founded his newspaper, The Boomerang, and his writings were widely copied, bringing him more fame than money. His letter to the postmaster general acceping the postmastership at Laramie was soon followed by his first book of essays, and that in turn by his equally funny letter to Queen Victoria, in which he discussed royalties. In the meantime Riley, who was one year older than Nye, had gained a similar fame from his writings in the Indianapolis Journal, and their several joint tours across the country packed all halls along the way. When Bill Nye moved to the New York World he gained a bigger readership, and “. . . as Bill Nye says . . .” became common in American conversations. His History of the United States is an American classic, if forgotten. For one thing, it had the magnificent cartooning of the great F. Opper.
Bill Nye had some lecture segments that were not all that complimentary to his native state, and there were some Mainers who took offense. He told how a boy would bug potatoes all day and then take his girl for a sleigh ride at night, and he had several similar comments on Maine weather, customs, and geography. So the story goes that one day a selectman of the town of Shirley was in New York, and he called at the World office to speak to Nye. He told Nye that a sign had just been attached to the house in Shirley where Nye was born. Pleased, Nye asked what the sign said, and the selectman told him it said “Greenville—Six Miles.” That compensated for the cracks about Maine.
Oh, yes—I now have three granddaughters who know that Little Orphant Annie is not really a “comic” strip. And that Edgar Wilson Nye became “Bill” Nye when Bret Harte wrote his plain Talk from Truthful James. That’s right!
Abed and David
One of my Brice Booker stories (“How to Buy Wood,” from Twelve Grindstones) suffered the profitless indignity of going into an anthology of Maine literature, but I think that was not my best Brice Booker story. Descended from shipbuilding and seafaring traders, the three Booker boys were old Brunswick—Bill had a lumberyard, Emery was a banker, and Brice was a sharp trader who dealt in anything and always seemed to be running to catch up, as youngest brothers often must do. He was, as the yarn in the anthology tells, the wood buyer for the U.S. Gypsum Company, something which hardly interfered with whatever else he might find to do. He auctioneered, did some surveying, was an appraiser, and opportunity never knocked but what he heard. He was shrewd and needed to be watched, but his basic principles were honest and he never lied unless he had to. Bill and Emery were just a couple of Bookers; I preferred Brice and had many happy times with him while he enriched my background with anecdotes and folklore I could refinish and sell. So I think my favorite Brice Booker story has to do with the time he locked horns with Will Jordan and came off second best.
In their time, it was said that my grandfather and Horace Jordan each made a living trading off the other. It was somewhat so, and as one would stick the other, the other would contrive to stick back, and they went through life outwitting each other with cows, manure spreaders, woodlots, and whatever else made a good chance. Horace had a saying that was strictly his; it was like a trademark. It was, “Bigod you, Mister!” He’d say “Lovely mornin’, Bigod you, Mister!” Now this Will Jordan was the son of old Bigod-you-Mister Horace, and in his turn he, too, had a saying. He’d say, “Aye-yes, that’s the story of Abed and David.”
The “aye-yes” is probably a State o’ Maine development that came from the early Scots. Accustomed to saying aye, they would add yes in deference to the English and Irish neighbors, and (my guess) this came over into Maine coastal speech as our unique eyah. So Will Jordan took on the ancient aye-yes and added the story of Abed and David, whoever they were. He used it to mean that’s the way the ball bounces, the cookie crumbles; equivalent to the Frenchman’s “Ca va!” In the surrounding ten townships, make a remark about Abed and David, and everybody thought of Will Jordan. Now, in the early 1930s Will Jordan operated a portable sawmill on a lot near Allen’s Range Road in Freeport, and after he’d stripped the lot he moved the mill along, as was the defoliating custom of portable sawmill people of that day. A few days later in the First National Bank of Brunswick, Will was approached by Brice Booker, who made some overtures that didn’t fool Will Jordan one bit.
Then Brice said, “See you’ve moved the mill.”
“Aye-yes, that’s the story,” said Will.
“Looks-if you left some good stuff in the yard. You going to clean it up?”
“Depends. What did you have in mind?”
“Well, I got a truck and a couple of boys, and I could set them to cleaning it up—must be a few boards and dimension stuff there worth looking at.”
“Aye-yes,” said Will. “Might be.” Will now knew that Brice was about to make an offer. “I ain’t looked around to see, have you?”
“Not really, but they’s always some scoots and scantlings—I’d be doing you a favor. How about ten dollars?”
“Aye-yes,” said Will. “ ’Twould save me the trouble, but I wouldn’t want you to lose money on it. See what you get, and ten dollars sounds about right.”
Brice told me about this long afterwards. He said he put the boys on the lot, and they got one good load of two by twice, several loads of fair boards, a lot of edgings, and all the heavy timbers out of the saw carriage foundation. Brice said his brother Bill took all the edgings and sold them in his lumberyard for kindling wood, and that alone took care of his agreement with Will Jordan. Then he saw Will again in the First National Bank.
“Mornin’, Will,” said Brice. “How-ya doing?”
“Just gittin’ by,” said Will.
Brice said, “Here’s ten dollars for letting me clean up that lot.”
Will feigned not to see any ten dollars, looking right over the money at Brice. “What did you find?” he asked.
“Some pretty good stuff.”
“Much?”
“About ten truckloads, some better than others.”
“Aye-yes,” said Will. “That’s the story. Ten loads. Let me see—ten loads at ten dollars a load. That’s an even hundred.”
Before Brice could say anything, Will went on, “Aye-yes. I distinctly remember our handshake. Ten dollars a load.”
Brice told me, “I gave him the hundred. I made enough so I was well ahead. But can you imagine anybody pulling a swindle like that? And didn’t that bahstid go and die right after that! Never gave me a chance to get even.”
“Aye-yes,” I said.
And Brice said, “That’s the story of Abed and David.”
Leaping Lobsters!
An Italian named F. Marvan has written a book called Legends of the Sea, and I have been wondering about him The book is translated into English by David Macrea, is published by Crown, and is printed in Italy—a gratuitous disclosure all literate nations will applaud, since in Italy typographical errors seem to run about five pecks to the bushel. Our local library bought the book thinking it would interest our three hundred-odd lobster catchers (some odder than others) but so far this seacoast village has shown little interest. The color pictures in the book of the ocean in many moods are delightful, but after a few pages of text the tide seems to ebb. Well, I guess that the author did not fare forth to look upon the ocean in its grandeur, but did his research in a library. Page after page runs to quotations from Homer to the goddess of the Norwegian sardine pack, and the legends are strange to ponder. Fairies come from sea-side grottos to steal sheep, and things like that. Early on we are told that classical writers knew nothing about the tide, as the Mediterranean has no significant ebb and flow, and then follow remarks about the tide by Pindar, Aristotle, Menander, Herodotus, Epictetus, Alcibiades, and more. And I insist the tide does not bound. Even with a bore, it doesn’t bound. I gave up on the page where it says in Asturias the fisherfolk say that when lobsters leap it is a prediction of foul weather. I should think as much. How pleasant to see a lobster burst into the air from the
depths!
Here in Maine where we know a good bit about lobsters and the sea which nurtures them, a leaping lobster is never regarded as a prediction at all. He’s just a comical cuss who got carried away in some submarine exuberance. The Maine word that goes with lobsters is “crawl.” Lobsters do swim, but not in the Maine dictionary. When you ask a Maine lobsterman if he had a fair catch, you will say, “Were they crawlin’?” He will respond, “Daow!”—this is an emphatic negative, but since no Maine lobsterman ever admitted he made a penny, it means he did very well. Then, if you open the subject, he will tell you that no lobster ever leaped. But a Maine salmon will leap, and if you see one leap it means the ice has gone out.
There are no Maine legends of the sea in that book. The purpose of Mr. F. Marvan, I think, was to be erudite and profound, whereas the true Maine legends of the sea run to the amusing. His legends are grim and dour. Haunted by the souls of drowned men who come to weep there, the casuarinas trees of Tahiti (Marvan says) “talk at night.” That’s not very good for a real bang-up legend. The Maine version, just as good but far more entertaining, has the talking trees on Rack Island holding a speaking contest every Friday afternoon. Odd that Marvan has nothing in his book about the Fundy tides—highest in the world.
Nice little legend about them. When Paul Bunyan was a baby, down at Machiasport, his large size made it imprudent to cradle him in the house. One lurch in his sleep and he’d knock down a wall. So his daddy and his mummy made a Moses cradle, boat-style, and moored him offshore every evening at beddy-bye. One night the tyke was restless and he turned and tossed some, and the waves he set up swamped fifteen British warships anchored down the bay. Those waves have never subsided, and account for the tremendous tides in the Bay of Fundy.
The Marvan book does considerable with mermaids, but the mermaids of Hancock Point are not included. These come up from the ocean once a year when the August moon is full, and they go into Lon Libby’s field and pick blueberries. Lon caught one in a purse seine one year and kept her in a rain barrel until Blue Hill fair, when he exhibited her in a tent.
Another story about the Hancock Point mermaids was told by Archie Macomber. Said he was hauling traps one day and he thought he saw one of these mermaids swimming by, a fathom or two under water. Thinking he’d like to have one, he jumped overboard and tackled her. Turned out it wasn’t a mermaid at all, but a porpoise, and there was Arch hanging on for dear life with a porpoise he didn’t really want all that much. A porpoise swims with an up-and-down motion, not like a fish, and Archie said this made it very hard for him to keep his hat on, but he headed the thing for the beach and finally got ashore. The Coast Guard brought in his boat the next day.
We have a wonderful legend of the sea right here in Muscongus Bay that would have done a good deal to pep up that Italian book. Has to do with Chief Norumbee of the Micmacs, who was spearing hake off the ledge on Muskrat Island one day, and his moccasin slipped and the poor joker went into the drink. Swallowed right up; last was ever seen of him. But if you go out to Muskrat Island at high water and stand on that ledge and stamp your foot and shout, “Chief! What are you doing down there?”—Chief Norumbee will answer, nothing.
Up in a Sling
When the president of the United Auto Workers got his name in the papers by saying the Japanese automakers should be required to build factories and make their product in the United States, Kendall Tweedie said, “Oh boy! Ain’t they got their arse in a sling, though!” This colorful, if indelicate, metaphor is easily explained. What Kendall meant is that by its own foolishness the United States auto industry has brought upon itself a certain just retribution, with the overtone that it has nobody to blame but itself. Kendall was thinking of the old days on the farm when an ox would be taken to the farrier to be shod.
The horse is better adjusted than the steer, and can stand on three legs. The blacksmith can lift one hoof at a time and fit shoes to a horse, but if he tries to pick up one hoof of an ox, the foolish thing will fall down. Shoes could be fitted to an ox in a recumbent posture, but that would be unhandy for the farrier and was never the answer. The ox sling was a kind of gantry, and a bellyband operated by a small winch picked the beast off the floor and suspended him for a fitting.
The ox is cloven-hoofed, and the shoe for each foot comes in two pieces, so it takes at least twice as long to fit an ox than a horse. So for twice the horse-time an ox would hang there in innocuous desuetude, placid and helpless, while the smith went around him. There is nothing more helpless, and little that looks so comical and stupid. And the ox has brought it on himself—there would be none of this indignity if he’d learn to stand on three legs.
If, perchance, there is anything more stupid and more comical, it is a horse in a sling, and that happened, too. Blacksmiths had ways to persuade reluctant horses, some of them downright, but when a nag came along that needed one, the ox sling was waiting and up he’d go. No credit to him, because he was a horse and could stand if he’d a mind to. His predicament, like that of the auto workers, was ridiculous. Thus slung, horses had a tendency to kick and squeal—oxen were less rambunctious—which just made things worse. Farriers, in extreme instances, would just let the cussid ding-ding hang there until he cooled down. Up in the lumbering country, where there was an urgency to keeping a horse at work, blacksmiths often saved time by slinging a horse that might have been cajoled in another way. One reason, I suppose, for less slinging in the villages was the great clamor of a slung horse, and the concomitant vituperation of the blacksmith. But in town or in the woods, the ox sling was almost always used on the “green” horses from the West.
Nobody has ever explained to me why all the horse people were mad at the State of Maine. For a hundred years, no Western horse ever arrived here that was kind and courteous. If the West did, now and then, manage to produce a decent horse, great care was taken to send him someplace besides Maine. The green horse was a wild animal that had been rounded up and driven into a boxcar, and he’d get off the train here in Maine mad at everything and looking for trouble. Now and then a farmer would need a new horse, and would dicker and haggle, but in the woods the green horse came in bunches and had a season. Lumber was harvested on snow, so lumber camp horses put in the summertime lolling about at a “farm.” In this sense, farm has a special meaning. It was a place to grow hay, a pasturage and a base or “depot” camp for a timberland area. Pittston Farm, Grant Farm, Michaud Farm—the names persist but the need for the old-time “farm” has passed. So, in the fall a crew would make a lumber camp ready for winter, and the horses would be brought from the farms and stabled in the “hovel.” It was always necessary to replace some, and along with whatever veterans came through the summer in good shape would be enough green horses to make the total. And, the very first thing that had to be done with a green horse was to shoe him. The opening week or so of a camp was always called “starvation days,” because the cook hadn’t organized things, but that opening week was also hard on the ears, as the blacksmith slung green horse after green horse and the things chimed throughout the forest.
I speak from personal knowledge, and I understood exactly what Kendall Tweedy meant about the United Auto Workers. I had a boyhood brush with a green horse. Gramp had picked her up because she was cheap and because he needed to start haying. He was an old hand at “breaking” a horse, and would do that soon enough—but first she had to go to Craig’s blacksmith shop. Somehow he got a halter on the creature, with a rope, and then he threw a blanket over tractable old Tanty so I could sit up horseback and lead the new cyclone to town. She followed Tanty along all right, and I had no trouble. But Jim Craig, the smith, decided he didn’t want his shop kicked apart and he slung her. She kicked and squealed and everybody came to see. Jim tied a rope to each of her legs and had two-three men hold on each, and from across the street I could look in the big door and see him working.
And Salted Down
This is a good time to eulogize Richard M. Dorson, who died in Blo
omington, Indiana, on September 11, 1981. I owe him something. Dr. Dorson was professor of history at Indiana University, and an authority—perhaps the authority—on American folklore. As a pioneer in this fertile field he ticked me off on folklore (The Jonesport Raffle) and amused me for years as he sought the Mother Lode and elevated my bread and butter to new depths of academic culture. He could take an ancient Down East doozie that State-o’-Mainers keep on tap for the summer complaints and bring it off on the equal of Hamlet and Paradise Lost, winning additional grants to make further study. Dr. Dorson was editor of the Journal of American Folklore and swiped quite a few of my yarns.
In pursuit of this topic, our own University of Maine at Orono (that’s Or-no) took up folklore, and as something of a tribute just about the time Dr. Dorson was laid to rest brought out a handbook on Maine folklore. Our professors researched well, and then fed the “get” into a memory bank. Get? The get is what folklorish fishermen call the catch. I hope—I plead—that somebody in this hurtling world is sensitive about putting folklore into a memory bank. Anyway, a button was pushed and the computer wrote a book about Maine folklore. The impropriety of this seems not to have offended anybody except me, although perhaps Dr. Dorson’s trailblazing conditioned people so they are no longer sensitive.