They got a truck, and a dozen or more of the men from the Beach piled into it, with one or two who were slightly inebriated clinging to the top of the cab. They were headed to a special Town Meeting to be held at the Grange, but the road [Beach Road] was so bad, even in late May, that they had to go by way of Camden.  — Story told by David Nichols

Maine Supreme Court Justice David Nichols was a young boy in 1928 when he watched the above-mentioned truck leave his father’s garage at the Beach. Lincolnville was on the brink of splitting in two over how to spend the annual $100 state road appropriation, though surely the feud between the Beach and the Center had deeper roots.

The unwritten agreement had been to spend the allotment at alternate ends of the road, starting one year at Drakes Corner (still Drakes today) in the Center, and at the Beach end the next, until finally the improved sections would meet somewhere in the middle. But the plan had gone off the rails; all the money had gone to the Center end of the road.

With nothing in writing, the Beach felt betrayed.

The town was run by three elected Selectmen, the system put into place at Lincolnville’s incorporation as a town in 1802 when two neighboring plantations (as unincorporated entities were called) Ducktrap and Canaan, joined into one town. Ducktrap included Frenchs Beach, essentially all the shore, and would, over the years, become known as The Beach. Canaan covered the vast interior lands (did you know Lincolnville has 39 square miles?) and would become The Center.

By the way, in case you’ve always wondered, our town is named for General Benjamin Lincoln, a Revolutionary War general greatly admired by Henry Knox, the owner of the Waldo Patent of which Lincolnville was a part. Apparently, the choice of naming their new town wasn’t offered to the residents.

Back to the story. At the annual Town Meeting in March, 1928 the balance of power shifted with the election of a Beach resident, George Nichols, father to the future Supreme Court Justice, to the Board of Selectmen. George joined two Center members, Lawrence Rankin and Joe Mullin. The Beach now had a vote, and as it turns out, a powerful voice.

With a majority of twelve, the Beach prevailed and the $100 went to their end of the road that year. Apparently the truckload of rambunctious Beach men swung the vote their way.

And what were the underlying tensions between the Beach and the Center, between a population of mainly mariners and merchants and one of farmers? We can speculate, we can guess, we can look to our present day conflicted populations, but in the end, maybe it’s just human nature to distrust the one we don’t understand. Walking in another man’s moccasins and all that.

Anyway, George Nichols either had political ambition all along, or developed it when he became Selectman. By the time his son was 16, George was deep into politics, eventually becoming the Waldo County chairman of the Republican party. David was pumping gas the day Representative Clyde Smith and his young wife stopped by Nichols Garage (today’s Beach Store). The congressman went inside to talk politics with George, leaving his wife, Margaret Chase Smith, in the car. She struck up a conversation with David and was impressed with his intelligence. A life-long friendship between the two ensued.

David, by the way, had finished eighth grade at the Beach School at the age of 12 and gone on to Camden High School. He graduated from Bates College, served in WW II, and got his law degree from the University of Michigan. He returned home to live over his father’s garage and practice law in Camden. He later moved to the house just behind the post office where he lived the rest of his life, just down the hill from the one-room school where he started.

Again, back to the story. The road appropriation dispute played out in The Camden Herald, most vocally in the town correspondent’s weekly column. In those days Lincolnville had two and sometimes three correspondents representing the Beach, the Center, and occasionally, West Lincolnville.

Nellie Brown lived at today’s Bay Leaf Cottages and wrote her column from the Beach for many years, through the 1920s and 30s. Unlike most of these town correspondents who filled their columns by reciting who visited them that week, Nellie actually reported what was going on in her section of town. She found her voice, loud and clear, around the road appropriation controversy and its fall-out. When a petition was drafted to divide the town in two over the issue, Nellie let it rip, ending with this king of all run-on sentences:

“…a small number of citizens seem willing to work diligently to carry through with this scheme, but to sum it all up we would have the state and the county tax to pay, salaries of all the officers, two schools to maintain, several miles of town road besides our part of the expense of maintaining the Atlantic Highway with but half the usual tax money so how could the tax rate be lowered by the change and the people better think twice before signing any petitions.”

Phew.

Ah, but my point. When I first heard the story about packing a truck with Beach voters from David Nichols, I went to the newspapers, the bound copies of old Camden Heralds that each subsequent owner of that newspaper had carefully preserved. In this day of archived, digital articles, when a Google search for a couple of keywords brings up the most obscure reference, it’s hard to go back, to manually search out a story. I’m not sure if those papers are still in existence or if they were scanned and microfilmed and then thrown out. That’s the fate of most “hard copies” as newsprint degrades and crumbles and takes up a lot of storage space.

But the whole story, the one that started with an old man’s recollection of the day he watched the men of his neighborhood crowd into a truck to travel some 15 round-about miles to a meeting on a May day, was fleshed out in Nellie Brown’s passionate defense of common sense.

Her readers surely believed her, though not everyone saw it as significant. The week after the vote an anonymous poet sent this to the Center’s correspondent:

Well, the last town meeting’s over, 

And some of us are glad,                                                                                                             

For we’d like to sow some clover,

Even if the roads are bad.

But the gladdest of us aren’t as glad

As some of us are mad.

The Third Class road will soon be built,

‘Twill start down at the Beach,  

And it will save us many a jolt   

When a clam we try to reach.                                                                                                        

If when they started this Third Class road                                                                                 

Quite a few years ago,                                                                                                                     

If they had but shaped it in legal code,                                                                                    

‘Twould have saved this town some dough.                                                                             

 For when it gets right down to facts,                                                                                          

This fact just hits the eye,                                                                                                              

You must not trust in verbal pacts                                                                                            

 And expect them to get by.

Read more about David and George Nichols in Staying Put in Lincolnville, available at the Lincolnville General Store and at Sleepy Hollow Rag Rugs.

The Parable of the Hens and Chicks

So it seems that the our latest flock, the Pearl White Leghorns we raised from day-old chicks this past summer, are using their privileged status (they currently outnumber the other races, er, species in the henyard) to run rough shod over those gentler breeds, who as it turns out, actually got there first.

We did notice last spring the high mortality rate among the other chicks, the broilers, which, though they were all the same age, were slower and heavier than the PWLs, perfect fodder to be bullied. Then one day we caught a Pearl White chick red-handed, or should I say, bloody beaked. We’d suspected some sort of cannibalism, but the evidence spoke for itself: the broilers weren’t doing it to themselves after all.

The broilers are long gone (in the freezer), and it seems those Pearl Whites have now turned their meanness on the quiet Buff Orpingtons, the Barred Rocks, the one Rhode Island Red, picking at their tail feathers and generally molesting them. Even Broody, grandson Jack’s name for the most maternal of the Orpingtons, is being harassed by the PWL as she sits all fluffed up on her one egg.

We need to distract them, we say, find something for them to do. Perhaps a beach ball in the coop or hanging some shiny aluminum pie plates will turn their attention away from their more passive neighbors. Suggestions anyone?

Election Day

It’s hard to miss, but tomorrow is Election Day. Lincolnville’s polls will open at 8 a.m. in the school gym and close at 8 p.m. The town website has links to the following information:

State of Maine General Election Ballot Nov 2018 Sample  
State of Maine Referendum Ballot Nov 2018 Sample  
State of Maine Citizens Guide to Referendum Election Nov 2018  
State of Maine Treasurers Statement Nov 2018  
Town of Lincolnville Municipal Ballot Nov 2018 Sample  

After you’ve voted, be sure to stop by the United Christian Church’s popular Election Day bake sale table. Proceeds from this one day sale go a long way to paying the church’s winter oil bill!

School

The PTO (Parent Teacher Organization) meets Wednesday, Nov. 7 at 6 p.m.

Students will be released early on Thursday, Nov. 8, right after lunch at 11:30 a.m. so parent-teacher conferences can begin.

There will be no school Monday, Nov. 12 in honor of Veterans Day.

Anything Goes!

Don’t miss it – the CHRHS fall musical that is. Two more performances, next Friday and Saturday, Nov. 9 and 10, at Strom Auditorium. You’ll laugh and clap and love it!

Library

Tuesday from 4 until 6 is Knitting Workshop for beginning knitters and those who need a bit of expert advice and encouragement. Experienced and patient knitters will be on hand to guide you to better, happier knitting. This workshop is offered on the first Tuesday of every month. And it's a fun group, too!

Wednesday at 4:00 is Watercolor Journaling. This two-hour gathering has been quite the hit! Bring your own supplies: paints and brushes, pencil, fine line permanent pen, small container for water, paper towels or towel scrap, and journal. There is no instruction, but participants will share their progress and tips before quiet time to work on the journals. The group usually meets every first and third Wednesday.

Midcoast Waste Watch

A trip to the dump, or rather the solid-waste facility, can be a challenge, trying to figure out where to put all those recyclables we’ve collected. It’s a little like going through the self-checkout line at Hannafords; it’s a puzzle to solve, and can make that trip to either dump or supermarket a little more fun. This video ought to clear up any confusion (about the dump, not the grocery store!)

Holiday Craft and Gift Show

Mark your calendars for the annual Holiday Craft and Gift Show at the Community Building, Saturday, November 17. It’s a fun day with some wonderful handmade and selected crafts and gifts. The school’s PTO will be selling wreaths at the show as well.