Houlton residents and fair-goers throughout Aroostook County are familiar with Bob and Jane Bartlett’s collection of bright red Massey-Ferguson and Massey-Harris tractors. The Littleton couple has entered caravans of their restored red tractors in parades and fairs from one end of the county to the other, recruiting friends and relatives to be drivers.
In conversations with the Bartletts, writer Karen Donato discovered the story behind the hobby, and her article appears in the new edition of Echoes magazine released this month. With a row of red tractors stretching across both front and back covers, Echoes No. 102 marks the end of harvest season and anticipates the Christmas holidays.
When Mary Alice Horrigan of Dedham first admired wreath-maker Merrill Worcester of Harrington for adorning the graves of the nation’s war dead in Arlington National Cemetery before Christmas every year, she could not have known that one day her own son, born at Loring Air Force Base in 1965, would be among those buried in Virginia. With less than a week of duty left after 20 years of service in the U.S. Army, Bob Horrigan was shot to death in 2005 on a midnight raid as a member of the Special Forces in Iraq.
In December 2012 his mother made the journey she had read about years earlier, traveling with similarly stricken relatives and friends of war heroes from Maine to Arlington, where she laid a wreath on her son’s grave. She was moved to write about her experience and shares her story with readers of Echoes 102.
A new column on the history of skiing in Aroostook County also appears in the fall edition. A seasonal transplant from Michigan, Karla Wolters has researched Aroostook ski and will share her findings in a column titled “Past Tracks.”
In other columns, popular storyteller Glenna Johnson Smith takes readers back to her childhood in an essay about a woman in her village she could only view as “The Old Witch.” And John Dombek sets the scene for a story with a Christmas message on a snow-covered city street in “Christmas Eve.”
Lucy Leaf looks back on her efforts to live simply in “From the Cabin” and Dottie Hutchins helps genealogists find their relatives in her column “Tapping Family Trees.”
Readers who remember the Maine Potato Tie created by Lupo’s Haberdashery in Caribou will enjoy the tale that evolved when Dr. Harold Borns, Jr., of Orono gave such a tie to one of his colleagues from Great Britain. His amusing account is one of four life stories in the current Echoes. Martie Pritchard of Chapman recalls the unforeseen significance of a particular family portrait and Houlton native Bob Fields relives the day he shocked the sisters at St. Mary’s Catholic School.
Published quarterly from offices in Caribou and printed by PrintWorks in Presque Isle, Echoes is dedicated to rediscovering community and preserving values of rural culture at risk in the world today. For more information visit www.echoesofmaine .com.
