By Guy Woodworth
That day in 1990 when we got to Patten, and turned toward the Logging Museum, my brother was amazed further still to see a hay field right in the town. I told him again, “ You ain’t seen nothin’ yet brother!”
Well we turned into the museum parking lot and got out and checked in at the main building. They also had a gift shop and I told Bill to wait ‘til we had viewed the exhibits before he decided what trinkets to take home with him. We visited the logging camps that they had set up in back of the grounds and we looked over some of the sleds that they had. Bill was thoroughly taken by the steam- and gas-powered Lombard Log Haulers, more so as I explained how the boilers operated and told him what I knew of the controls. I knew about boiler construction and operation because that was my specialty in the Navy.
After the log haulers we then went back to the main building and we actually were treated to the mock up of a fire watch tower much as you would see on many a mountain top back in the day before airplanes were the superior method of fire spotting.
The real treat for both of us was yet to come as we entered the building where the hand and power tools of the logging trade were on display. We were in the building, simply looking at all the power and hand tools and dreaming what it must have been like to work in the winter forests of northern Maine back then. There was a diorama of a logging operation from standing timber, to log floats on the river, to cut and stacked lumber ready for sale.
I saw that day, what so many people of the “now generation” don’t see. I saw the look of pure delight on a man’s face who had never encountered anything of this nature.
Guy Woodworth of Presque Isle is a 1973 graduate of Presque Isle High School and a four-year Navy veteran. He and his wife Theresa have two grown sons and five grandchildren. He may be contacted at lightning117_1999@yahoo.com.
