This is the story Warren Frohock, in his 90s at the time I spoke with him, told about the winter of 1919-20 when he and his parents lived with his grandparents in Lincolnville, where the country air “would be better.”

Young Warren Frohock lay on the rough, frozen ground waiting for his father to come. He tried to keep from crying, but his left leg hurt so bad he could hardly stop himself. Mrs. Carver had stayed with him while Willy Clayter ran to get Rodney Frohock, his dad. “I doubt it’s broken,” she was saying. “Your cheeks are too red; you’d be pale as a ghost if a bone was broke.” Warren had no opinion about that; he only wished his father would hurry.

It had been a stupid accident. Willy, three years older and bigger, was pulling him along on his skates over the frozen brook, the boys holding onto either end of a pole. But they’d gotten into the place behind Francena and Bert Carver’s house [263 Ducktrap Road, corner at Slab City Road] where the brook made little falls that had frozen into a bumpy patch. Next thing Warren knew he’d tripped and fallen, and because he’d held on tight to the pole, he’d pulled Willy right on top of him. Willy had landed on his leg hard. And right away, Warren knew he was hurt bad.

His father finally arrived, picked him up gently and carried him home. The leg still throbbed, but once back at his grandparents’ house [161 Ducktrap Road, corner at Tanglewood Road] he was tucked in with blankets and hot drinks and lots of attention. His grandmother, Ada Frohock, looked the leg over; she doubted it was broken, but even so, she made a splint and bandaged it carefully.

As a neighborhood nurse and midwife, Ada’s opinion held some weight, especially in her family. It would be days before they could get the little boy to the doctor. The snow was so deep—over four feet, and more than that where the road dipped down to cross the brook—that even Rodney’s excellent horse, Girl, couldn’t get through.

         Rodney fashioned a pair of crutches for his son out of some ash that he split and steamed. For the next four days Warren hobbled around with his homemade crutches. Finally, they were able to get to Camden where Dr. Green pronounced the leg broken. Warren felt vindicated, especially since his grandmother seemed to think he was a bit spleeny. Best of all, school was out of the question.

Warren secretly rejoiced when the doctor told his parents he mustn’t take a chance of falling again while the leg was healing. Getting to and from the Beach School was hard enough in the winter on two good legs; a boy on crutches could never manage. It was the best news a nine-year old boy could have received, in spite of the still-aching leg. No more school!

He hadn’t felt that way back home in Hallowell where he had lived with his parents since birth. There he’d actually liked school, and was a good student. But here it was different. Lincolnville, where his father had grown up, felt like home to Warren, for he’d spent many, many week-ends and summers here. But now they were here full-time, and he dreaded each day at the Beach school. The family was living with his Frohock grandparents this winter, and he was enrolled in the school because of the flu.

Last winter his father had been sick with the Spanish influenza, the disease that killed millions of people all around the world. On the doctor’s advice Warren’s parents kept him home from school last winter, then made him stay outdoors as much as possible to protect him from getting infected. It felt strange to be outside as late as 9 o’clock at night in the middle of winter, supposedly playing. Thank goodness his Papa recovered, but then the doctor told him he couldn’t go back to work.

Rodney worked in the American Glue Company’s sandpaper mill in Hallowell; the quartz sand for the paper was mined in the area. That mill was a dusty place, and with lungs damaged by the flu, a dangerous place for Rodney. The doctor asked if he had any family, perhaps living in the country where the air would be better. And so that’s how the Frohocks came to be spending the year in Lincolnville.

From Staying Put in Lincolnville, 1900-1950

Read the rest of the story to find out why young Warren hated the Beach School.

Another Lincolnville family affected by the Spanish Flu were the Packards, William, Gertrude Wampler and their eight children. They, however, were far from home when the flu hit, following the gold and silver itch in Montana. The Historical Society has documentation showing that many native Lincolnvillians traveled west, hoping to strike it rich in a hole in the mineral rich ground of the Rockies.

Mostly, though, men left their families or their sweethearts behind while they adventured far from home. The Packards, however, went as a family; the baby, Cloyd, was only two when both his mother, Gertrude and his seventeen-year-old brother, Vinal succumbed to the flu. Bill Packard brought his brood home sometime after this, to their house on Youngtown Road [at the corner of Maidens Cliff Road]. Two daughters, Lil and Bessie, married Hardy brothers, of another large Youngtown Road family – Si and Herbert. Perhaps you knew Swiss Hardy who worked at Rankins for many years. Si and Lil were his parents.

My own dad claimed that he never learned long division because of the Spanish flu, the influenza pandemic that ravaged the world in 1918-19. As the one member of his family to remain healthy, he was kept out of school for most of the year so he could care for the rest of them, and that was the grade where long division was taught.

The influenza epidemic swept the country, running its course in Lincolnville as elsewhere. Whole families were sick for weeks and weeks while those not yet sick, or already recovered, cared for their deathly ill relatives. Children missed whole terms of school caring for the sick at home.

Dad lived in Evanston, Illinois, Warren’s family had been living in Hallowell, Maine, while Gertrude and Vinal Packard were somewhere in Montana. The Spanish Flu traveled the world, helped along by the crowded conditions of World War I soldiers, an eerie precursor to today’s Covid 19.

We should have known. Oh, wait. We did.

We should have had a plan. And we did.

We should have followed it. But we didn’t.

The other front we here in Lincolnville are fighting this summer is the dreaded BTM, the brown tail moth. Although relatively new to us (most of us never heard of the critter until last year) it arrived on a shipment of roses in 1897 in Somerville, MA. Within the next few years it was showing up all the way to Nova Scotia. Saima Sidik, who grew up in Lincolnville, daughter of Jean English and Dennis Sidik, is a scientist working in a lab; she writes a science blog and last year posted “Maine Moth Mania” about the brown moth caterpillar and her hometown. You can follow her blog where she regularly posts her observations, thoughts and knowledge about science and the natural world. I was excited to learn about Saima’s writing; check it out!

The other day, looking through some old photos at the Schoolhouse Museum I came across a folded up and tattered document: it was a notice to Lincolnville landowners from the Board of Selectmen instructing them to search their fruit trees and shade trees for brown tail moth cocoons and destroy them. The date was 1912; if the landowner failed to do so, the town would do the work and add the charge to their tax bill.

So here we are in 2020, dealing with a couple of plagues – one deadly and the other exceedingly annoying. And it all happened before.

If you waste time on Facebook every day, as I’ve begun doing this summer, you’ve probably seen this:

CORONACOASTER

Noun: the ups and downs of a pandemic

One day you’re loving your bubble, doing workouts, baking banana bread and going for long walks and the next you’re crying, drinking gin for breakfast, and missing people you don’t even like.

Election Day

The polls will be open tomorrow, Tuesday, July 14, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the Lynx gym at the school. There probably will be a light turnout of actual, in-person voters as the town as already sent out hundreds of absentee ballots, the vote-by-mail option being hotly debated around the country.

If you received an absentee ballot and haven’t returned it yet, get it in to the Town Office today or tomorrow, take it to the polls. It has to be received by 8 p.m. when the polls close.

I voted that way for the first time, and was pleased to see my name and personal barcode on the envelope I returned the ballots in. Having worked as a ballot clerk and counter for many years, I’ve always had confidence in the security of our vote here in town.

But no annual town meeting this year! All the warrant articles are included in the ballot, so instead of raising our hands, instead of standing up, stating our name and where we live, then asking a question of the moderator, we simply make an X, yes or no on a piece of paper.

Town Meeting was always a big deal, held on a Monday in March until a change in our fiscal year a couple of decades ago moved the annual meeting to June. The March meeting made a lot of sense. For one thing, people had been cooped up all winter, and Town Meeting Monday was a chance to get out and see one another. Tranquility Grange was the location when we came to town, as it had been for many years.

The women put together the noon meal downstairs in the kitchen while the men carried on the town’s business upstairs. I’ve seen no mention of if, in 1919 when the women got the vote, they began coming upstairs to participate. I do remember a conversation with Carl Carlson, an old Beach character (self-styled, not my designation) about Town Meeting.

“I stopped going when the women got the vote,” he told me, watching for my reaction. I’m sure I obliged, properly indignant, thus satisfying both of us.