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Take a trip back to the simple joys and small-town delights of growing up on the northern Maine border in the early 20 th century.
It was a time when a snowy field was a wintertime playground that provided endless hours of entertainment, ice hockey ruled, and young boys tried to avoid the police chief as they sledded down slippery town streets. It was a place where families with diverse backgrounds got along as neighbors should and where the community mourned whenever it lost one of its own.
Ronald Stewart grew up in that time and place and now shares his reminiscences with us all in Land of the Porcupine. Stewart writes fondly of carefree childhood games and high school shenanigans, of an aimless period at home after his discharge from the U.S. Navy in World War II, and then of becoming town manager of Madawaska, the first step in his long and respected career.
Everyone who lived through, or yearns for, a simpler time filled with good fun and good friends will enjoy Land of the Porcupine .
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About the Author Ronald Stewart was raised in the Northern Maine town of Madawaska on the banks of the St. John River. The son of a paper mill worker, he lived in the booming mill town while attending school across the border in Edmundston, New Brunswick. After high school, he joined the U.S. Navy during WWII. Stewart, who earned a master's degree in public management from the University of Maine in 1974, has been town manager of Madawaska, city manager of Brewer, administrative assistant to the mayor of Westbrook, city manager of South Portland, and city administrator of Saco. He has also worked as a sales manager and has been active in community life, including serving as Maine president of the American Association of Retired Persons. He and his wife, Shirley, who have four children, now live in Bath. He is currently the public member of the State Licensing Board of Podiatry Medicine. |
Excerpt from The Land of the Porcupine
“I was sixteen, beginning to notice girls, and learning to dance with them. My friends and I used to frequent a small dance hall and ice cream parlor in Frenchville, about eight miles up the St. John River from Madawaska. When one of us could get a parent's car, we had no problem getting there, but as the government began rationing gas, family cars were not available to most of us, so we needed another means of transportation.
We had discovered that the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad left unlocked handcars beside the tracks, and it was an easy task for three or four of us boys to lift the car onto the tracks and pump our way back and forth to Frenchville. None of the freight trains in that section of the state ever ran at night, so we saw no apparent danger or harm in borrowing the handcars for a few hours. Unbeknownst to us, however, the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad had been experiencing thefts from the freight cars left on the tracks. The war had recently started in Europe, and we were further unaware that the Fraser Paper Company had recently hired armed guards to patrol the property adjacent to the B & A Rails.
On the particular night that excited my father's wrath, Stanley Goodell, Billy King and I had just placed a handcar on the tracks when we were confronted with a voice saying, “Halt and put your hands in the air!” Billy froze, but Stanley and I jumped down the embankment away from the mill and toward the St. John River, which ran parallel with the B & A tracks.
Once Stanley and I reached the riverbank, we walked back up into town. We were standing at the top of Bridge Street when my father came along, having been to Bill Parent's Drugstore to pick up a copy of the Bangor Daily News . At the same time, the town's single police cruiser was racing down Bridge Street to the mill. My father inquired as to what was going on. Stanley and I wondered the same thing. We didn't know that Billy was now being held by the mill's armed guard. Billy, frightened by the guard's questions, admitted that he had not acted alone and revealed that Stanley and I had been his accomplices. Billy was immediately arrested and placed in the local jail.
Meanwhile, another friend, Don McDermott, came by with his father's car and picked up and drove us to Edmundston. When we returned to Madawaska, the police chief was waiting at the customs house and asked Stanley and I to get out of Don's car, which we did with trepidation. The chief questioned us, but for some reason, he did not arrest us.
At home, Mrs. King was raging with anger that she had to post a bail bond to release Billy from jail. She came to my house and asked my father to drive her to Van Buren, about thirty miles southeast of Madawaska, where the bail bond had to be issued by Judge McManus. Since neither Stanley's nor Billy's father owned a car, my father agreed to do what Mrs. King had asked, and took Stanley and me with him.
I failed to note in describing my father thus far that he found it difficult to say three words without two of them being “cuss” words. My mother defended him on that bad habit as well, claiming that he never took God's name in vain until he started working in the woods at Estcourt, Quebec, on his first job with the Fraser Company. I heard all of his swear words that evening.
On our way home from Van Buren, my father's limited amount of gasoline ran dry in St. David, and we had to walk the last four miles home. Stanley and I were subjected to a verbal tirade from my father over the last four miles, a tongue-lashing that I never forgot. It was well deserved and we accepted it in silence.”