Nine-year-old Doris Heal stood on the ledges behind the Center School, and looked up at the sky. The sun was directly over her head.

“It’s dinner time,” she said to her two cousins, Hester and Marjorie Calderwood. “You’ll be late if you don’t run.” The girls jumped up, and started across the field toward their parents’ farm half a mile away [995 Beach Road.]

Calling back over her shoulder, Marjorie said, “Can you come back after dinner?”

“I’ll try. Unless Mama wants me to watch Davey for her.” Doris lingered a few minutes more. She lived just a couple of minutes away in the Center. She picked up the birchbark “plates” and twig “forks” and hid them behind a rock. If the boys found their playhouse, they’d destroy it. Then the little girl trotted down over the ledges and across the road to home.

            She stopped for a minute on the dusty road and looked toward her house [228 Main Street]. Maple trees lined the road in front of it with a tall cedar hedge behind them. The house had a summer kitchen in the shed, a barn for the cow, a haymow, woodshed under the summer kitchen, room for sleighs and wagons, a pigpen and henhouse. Atop the barn were a handsome horse weather vane and lightning rods with pretty glass balls. Behind the house was pasture for the cow.

A perfect world, she thought, with everything a family could want or need. Inside Mama would have dinner ready, and here comes Papa walking up from his mill. [Dave Heal and his brother Russell had a sawmill across from today’s Breezemere Park]  Doris waved widely at him, trying to catch his attention, but Dave Heal was preoccupied, and didn’t notice his young daughter. Doris skipped ahead into the house to tell her mother that Daddy was on his way.          

Dave had a lot on his mind for a beautiful summer morning. First, there was the upcoming Socialist lecture at the Center Church in just two days.  As secretary of Lincolnville’s local Socialist chapter, Dave had a great deal of the responsibility for these events. He did have a committee to help with arrangements—A.I. Young and Rev. Harry Baker had been appointed at the last party meeting held in May. Dave had made the suggestion that the local invite James F. Carey to deliver a talk.

            Was everything in order? He ran through his mental list as he strode along. The leaflets had been procured, and the fellows were getting them out, each to his neighborhood. Mary would see that the women got together some refreshments—cake and lemonade would be fine. He’d better remember to open the windows of the church, to air it out the morning of the lecture, or it would be like an oven in there. He hoped a warm summer night would bring a good turnout, not like some lectures they’d had when few people showed up.

Once the Carey talk was over, he had to get busy with arrangements for the big Fourth of July celebration in Camden. The Town Band would play, of course, joining with Camden’s band. He wasn’t sure yet whom they’d gotten for speakers, but the national Socialist Party was pressing hard this year to recruit in Maine, and surely they’d bring in some good ones.

Sometimes Dave wondered what they were accomplishing. Their Lincolnville Local had been holding regular meetings for a couple of years now, generally twice a month at the old Rackliffe school house. They collected money among themselves to buy the pamphlets and other literature put out by the national Socialist Party, then distributed it throughout town. One good idea had been to form a food cooperative for families to buy their groceries wholesale. Trouble was, the storeowners got wind of it, and well, it was predictable. A food co-op would hurt the merchants, some said, maybe even put a few out of business, and then where would townspeople shop? Dave himself had some misgivings about that one but had gone along with the others on it. He had to admit good business practice wasn’t always good for people.

And what he liked about the party was its emphasis on what was good for people. He planned to start pushing the idea of graded schools in Lincolnville. The old district system with its many small one-room schools had theoretically been abolished in the state of Maine way before the turn of the century, yet in Lincolnville as in most other rural towns, it still held fast. If the local could get an article in the Town Meeting warrant to establish several graded schools to replace the one-room schools, Dave thought it stood a chance of passing. At any rate no one could accuse the Socialists of harming the town by such a proposal. Most thinking people realized the children needed a better education than they could get in a tiny, ungraded rural school. Would enough be willing to see their taxes go up to pay for better schools? Probably not, he admitted to himself, but they had to try.

Still, it was a good group of fellows who had joined together as the Lincolnville Socialist Party. Virtually all of the fellows in the Town Band counted themselves members of the Party, so all agreed to donate the proceeds to the treasury of the Local when they passed the hat at a performance. Several members’ young sons were coming along as well, delivering literature to prospective new members and otherwise helping out. There were even a few wives coming to meetings. Dave wondered sometimes what Mary thought of his activities. She was always amenable to having the meeting at their house when necessary. Don Heald’s young wife, Marian, had even joined.

Dave caught himself in the middle of his reverie, standing stock still in the middle of the road in front of his house. He sheltered his eyes against the sun to study the hillside behind the school. Where was Doris? She usually met him halfway, and they walked home hand in hand. Maybe she’d gone ahead. Better hurry in; Mary would be waiting dinner.

[Read another story about Dave, Mary and Doris, “A Home Wedding” in the January 12, 1915 PenBay Pilot http://www.penbaypilot.com/article/week-lincolnville-how-weddings-used-go/46531.]

This story of Dave Heal and his young daughter, Doris, (from Staying Put in Lincolnville, 1900-1950), is based on both the memories of Doris’ daughter, Joan Sawyer Tibbetts and on the written record of the Lincolnville Socialist Party. Joan recalls many stories her mother told of her childhood, for instance playing house with birchbark plates and twig forks on the ledges behind the schoolhouse with her Calderwood cousins. The description of the house “with everything a family could want or need” is Joan’s own description of the house she herself remembers, her grandmother Mary Heal’s home on Main Street.

Of course, the Centre (that’s the way they spelled it in the early years) Schoolhouse is today sitting across the road, where it’s now called the Lincolnville Community Library. The school closed in 1947 along with the remaining five one-room schools at the time, when the new Lincolnville Central School, the “graded” school Dave Heal wanted, finally opened on Hope Road, the site of the present LCS.

The Lincolnville Socialist Party Local and its several members, including secretary, Dave Heal, was a forgotten chapter in our town’s history, swept away with the disappearance of the national Socialist movement in 1917 when the U.S. entered World War I. Until, that is, a small notebook containing several years worth of Lincolnville Socialist Party meeting minutes turned up in a Thurlow Road house during renovations some twenty years ago.

Town Office

The Monday meeting for the public to provide input on the Five Town CSD 2016-2017 budget has been postponed due to the snow. The meeting has been rescheduled to Wednesday, March 30, 6 p.m. in the Lecture Hall at Camden Hills Regional High School.

            The Midcoast Solid Waste Corporation, known fondly by most of us as the Dump, is facing a decision that will affect the four towns that comprise it (Camden, Hope, Lincolnville and Rockport). PERC or the Penobscot Energy Recovery Company’s contract with us expires in 2018. So MCSWC, exploring what other options will be available, wants to hear from the public on the issue. Monday, March 21 a public hearing will be held starting at 7 p.m. downstairs at the Rockport Opera House.  Lincolnville Selectman Art Durity is the chairman of the board of MCSWC.

           Nomination papers are now available at the Town Office for the following elected positions:

Board of Selectmen – one 3-year term

LCS School Committee – one 3-year term and one 1-year term

Five Town CSD Board – one 3-year term and one 2-year term

Budget Committee – three 3-year terms and two 2-year terms

Nomination papers must have at least 25 valid signatures, but no more than 100, and be returned to the Town Office by 5 p.m., May 2, 2016. Contact the Town Office if you have questions.

Lincolnville Central School

Basketball Awards night will be held Tuesday, March 22 at 6:30 p.m.

Kindergarten pre-registration is starting. If your child will be five  years old on or before October 15, 2016, he/she is old enough to start kindergarten. Contact the school at 763-3366 to pre-register as soon as possible.

            An interesting article on Impulse Control http://www.fivetowns.net/lcs/newsletter.cfm?newsletterId=498

 for pre-schoolers is posted on last week’s Lynx newsletter

Window Dressers

            Have you heard of Window Dressers? They’re a volunteer-driven, non-profit dedicated to helping Mainers reduce their heating costs.  By installing their window inserts – wooden-frames wrapped with a clear film – heat loss through windows is lowered dramatically, particularly if you have drafty, ill-fitting windows (and if you live in an old house you most certainly do!). Each window costs about $28, though if you are low-income a $10 donation gets you up to 10 inserts.

            They measure your windows in the spring and then build them in the fall. Here in Lincolnville ours are built at the Belfast Boat House over a couple of weeks in November. This is the time to sign up for spring measuring: go to their website http://windowdressers.org or call 230-9902.

Senior Festival of Art

Easter Services