I am sure there are any number of people in the country today who would say they remember this or that and why. Well, let me say there is no difference here. I can be thinking of aliens and UFOs and all of a sudden an aroma or sound will trigger a memory.
The fall season has an aroma all its own. It could be the leaves that have fallen from the trees in the woods or the leaves that someone has raked up and began burning them or even the smell of fresh turned earth where a farmer has just plowed.
We took a quick trip to Bangor last week so I could drive my son’s U-Haul truck home on his last leg of a trip that began in St. Louis, Mo. Driving down Route 1, we passed a potato house that had a modern ventilation system in it and it was working well. As we passed this building, I caught the odor of potatoes that had only been stored for perhaps a month but the system was exchanging the air in the storage and with that exchange, the smell was now outside. That odor brought back memories of the large strings of potato houses that were usually placed along side of a railroad spur or siding so that the spuds could be shipped by rail. Of course, this was well before the time of the large super-mechanized beasts the farmers use today to harvest, and roughly 90 percent used hand pickers to bring in the crops. But all these potato houses had a certain smell that I absolutely remember.
I remember seeing the barrel trucks lined up to unload and the men in a cupola well over the truck would drop a rope with a grapple on it to hoist the barrels one at a time to the attic of the storage, and then roll those barrels along planks to dump them into a chute and fill the bins from the bottom to the top. In the bottom of the storage house there was an alleyway between the bottoms of the bins that the men would work in. In this alley, they would use a potato fork to shovel the potatoes and fill barrels that would be hoisted to the packing floor, where they were dumped into a sizing machine that in turn shuffled the potatoes to a rack where the bad ones and stray rocks and debris were taken out, then to a hanging rack where the bags, eight 10, 20, 50 or 100 pounds, were “hung” to be filled, weighed for proper weight and tied.
When I say tied, I mean just that. One man would hang and tend the bags being filled. He would put them on the scale after they were filled, and a good man hanging could be within the weight of one or two potatoes of the correct weight all the time. Once they were weighed, they were passed to another man who would take a length of jute thread and a huge curved needle, and he would make an ear on one side of the bag end and then sew 4 or 5 loop stitches across the top of the bag and make another ear on the other side when he tied off the thread. Now they use sewing machines to seal the bags.
Once the bags were tied, then the bag was put on a conveyor or a hand truck to be taken out to the waiting rail car or tractor trailer to be piled inside for shipment. That and shoveling into the barrels was the hardest part as there was lots of bending, lifting and heaving to get the job done. This whole process contributed to the smells that came from the potato storage.
All of this said, for about two miles down the road after we passed that farm, I had a curious smile on my face as I was able to smell the aroma of yesteryear and Remember When . . .
This week is Thanksgiving week and I would be remiss if I didn’t thank you, the readers, for your kind words when I have met you face to face and some of you have sent messages through social media that if I let it, could make my head swell. Thank you so much for your comments and for reading the musings of an old man and his memories. May God richly bless you in the next year and the years to come.
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.
