To the editor:
The Pioneer always provides an interesting sojourn back home. The June 1 issue gave me the history of the Unitarian Church building, the only church I ever attended regularly. The date of the fire that destroyed the church in 1902 happened to be the birthday of a friend, born years later. All those years the death date of the church has been on my list of birthdays.
Perhaps the Shaw lot belonged to someone related to Ransford, who fathered Herschel, father of another Ransford, all lawyers in a suite opposite my parents’ portrait studio upstairs at 57 Main Street. Ransford II played chess with Porter in the studio. Another chess player was Oscar P. Benn, OPB playing opposite OBP.
The architect for the church, Edwin A. Lewis, started his own business in Dorchester, Mass., in 1887, when Porter was 2 years old, a year before he was taking off from home every day to visit the school across the street. All those years attending church, I was unaware that the design dated from medieval England.
In 2000, back home on a visit, I toured the church, courtesy of the minister. I shared my memories with him, of other ministers, of being in the choir (I could not sing), of taking a teaching course at Star Island, of teaching the Sunday School class for 6-year-olds, of my wedding on June 10, the day after high school graduation, and of church suppers with a dish-to-pass and huge pots of coffee with an egg cracked in each pot to keep the grounds together.
Details of Peter Hurd’s life in his obituary brought him back for a bit, to the times he stopped in at the cottage when Leonard and I were sorting things out after Ina’s death, of a visit to his display at school with him explaining how it worked, of dinner with him and his family in Danforth. Also, I never knew that his birthday and Leonard’s were the same day (different years).
The Houlton Police Log gave me the present, but the anonymous complaining animals (my take on “animal complaints”), left me very curious. If they printed “64-year-old Houlton male,” why not more detail about an animal on Smyrna Street, Mill Street, Second Street? Dog, cat? Domestic, wild? Same animal on all three streets? I shall never know.
While home on a visit one year, I called animal control about a mother raccoon with two babies, but was told no help available; a moose up on the North Road had beat me to it. The man on the phone said, “Raccoons are related to the bear family, so you could borrow a trap and put fishy cat food in it.”
A From Our Files 1916 item about “this big circus” one day only on Monday July 3, took me to a circus years later. Porter was carrying me, as we left Ina at home with Leonard, who was too young to go along. When we returned, I had a balloon in my hand.
From animals of today in the streets to those in the circus, then Ricker’s final commencement in a Files 1966 item. (In 1917, when Ina graduated at age 17, her graduation photo was taken by Porter. I attended the college for three semesters in 1950-52 before transferring to the “U of M” in Orono.) Now, I should end with RCI’s motto, “From an End, a Beginning,” as I leave the Real World in Maine for the Other here. Thank you for the visit and meaningful memories.
