The white wooden war memorial standing by the side of Main Street is familiar to all of us in Lincolnville, familiar in the way that any roadside sign or structure is. It passes, usually, on the periphery of our vision as we drive through town, coming or going home, to school, to church. Once a year, on Memorial Day, it briefly becomes the focus, as the parade approaches and halts. The Color Guard stops, an aged veteran is helped across the shoulder to stand, salute, and lay a wreath at its base. Shots ring out, little kids stick their fingers in their ears, then run to collect spent shells. On command the Guard turns abruptly, rifles at their sides and the parade resumes.

One hundred and twelve names are lettered on little strips of wood, two hand painted furled American flags flank the rows of names. This is Lincolnville’s World War II Memorial, erected following the end of the war. Have you ever stopped and read the names? There are two Carvers, two Collemers, three Halls, three Heals and two Healds, four Lacombes, four Pattens, two Pendletons, four Porters, two Thurlows, and four Thomases; many are perhaps brothers, and in three cases, brother and sister. Chances are you’ll recognize nearly all the last names as most are still found in town today. Three were originally painted in gold: Aubrey Connors, Maynard Thurlow, and Samuel Ripley. These three men did not come home. Seven named are women. Two — Fred Heald and Alan Thomas — still live in Lincolnville; a third, Willard “Swiss” Hardy, is in the Maine Veterans’ Home in Augusta.

Here’s a story one of these veterans, Jenness Eugley and his wife, Mary Lou, told me:

The trip to Camden had been all planned out ahead of time. Mary Lou Eugley’s father-in-law, Irvin, promised her they could make it no matter what. She believed him, but as the spring wore on, or rather mud season wore on, Mary Lou felt twinges of doubt. She’d never seen so much mud. Pennsylvania, where she came from, roads were paved and there were sidewalks. The Eugley farm [originally at 210 Moody Mountain Road, but the house as since been moved to 5 Salamander Lane], like every other place in Lincolnville, seemed awash in mud—muddy driveways, muddy dooryards, muddy, rutted roads.

The baby was due at the end of April, and both Irvin and her mother-in-law, Agnes, kept reassuring her that by then the roads were usually drying out. They’d be able to get to the Camden Hospital when her time came. Still, as the end of the month neared, Mary Lou couldn’t see much improvement. She just hoped the car wouldn’t sink to its running boards like some she’d heard about.

And now it was time. She’d held off waking up her in-laws as long as possible, but finally there was no doubt. The baby was on the way. Irvin had gone out to start the car in the dark, and Agnes was taking the suitcase, the one Mary Lou had packed days and days ago. She stood at the window, watching Agnes, faintly lit by the little slits of light coming from the blacked-out headlights, and thought for the thousandth time—if only Jenness could be here! It was hard enough to be pregnant and now getting ready to give birth, but to be apart was just too much.

Her husband of barely a year was on the other side of the world, an Army signal corpsman in New Guinea. They’d missed most of the first year of their marriage together, and now he was going to miss the birth of their child. Self-pitying tears threatened to start if she kept thinking these thoughts, and this was no time for that. She pulled on her coat, though she hadn’t been able to button it for ages, and stepped out the door.

Boards were laid across the yard to bridge the mud, and Mary Lou teetered on them. Her balance wasn’t too good lately. If her foot slipped off, she’d be ankle deep, and have to walk into the hospital with a shoe full of mud. This baby couldn’t be born too soon for the expectant mother! Agnes was sitting in the back seat, and Irvin was holding the door for her. “You’ll be more comfortable in the front,” her mother-in-law told her. Mary Lou settled in the passenger seat, grateful she didn’t have to maneuver into the back seat. Irvin started slowly down the driveway, keeping the wheels on the high ridges between ruts, and Mary Lou closed her eyes to concentrate on something other than the labor pains that were coming periodically.

Hard to imagine how a little innocent flirting with a soldier on a train could lead to this middle-of-the-night ride over muddy Maine roads. Jenness had been so handsome in his uniform; he told her he was bound for Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, for the Army Specialized Training Program at Lehigh University. That wasn’t far from her hometown, and before they parted he had her phone number. One thing led to another and when he had a leave at the end of his program he invited her to come home with him to Maine.

Mary Lou would never forget her first glimpse of the Eugley farm at the end of the long drive in from Moody Mountain Road, the buildings clustered together—house, sheds, barn—with the hills for backdrop. Jenness couldn’t wait to show her around, starting with his father’s sauerkraut operation. With the Eugleys’ German background, sauerkraut- making was a natural. Since Mary Lou Hahn was of German descent herself, she was properly appreciative. Jenness explained how his father used to make kraut the old way, slicing it by hand on a sliding cutter, then packing it into hundred pound barrels which started fermentation behind the kitchen stove. Once the bubbling began Irvin would “walk” the barrels down cellar to finish fermenting.

In the late 1920s, Jenness said, his father bought the kraut machine they were still using. She inspected it with interest, its seven spiral knives, the whole standing on legs on the concrete cellar floor, and powered with a gasoline engine. They planted an acre of cabbage, the early Copenhagen Market and for a keeper, Danish Ballhead. The Eugleys were making five tons of kraut a year, and demand was still going up. Irvin sold it all over the place, Jenness told her, from Belfast to Thomaston, delivering it in 50- and 100-pound barrels. Later during her visit, he’d pointed out the green and black “Eugley’s Kraut” cards in store windows. The grocer would dip out whatever the customer wanted from the keg in the store’s cooler.

The Eugleys grew almost everything they ate, and planted plenty of surplus to sell at the Camden markets like Carlton French’s. Irvin grew all kinds of vegetables, and had a big strawberry patch. Jenness told her about shipping berries to Boston on the steamboat. Too bad it had stopped running nearly 10 years before, he said; she would have loved it. Every afternoon there was a mad scramble to pack the boxes of berries into the back of the Hupmobile, the family’s touring car, and then they’d “drive like hell” to Camden to make the boat.

Later, after they were married and Jenness had been shipped overseas, Mary Lou got to take part in the strawberry harvest, and could watch Agnes in the tent she’d set up on the edge of the field where the pickers brought their filled boxes. The crew was made up of young people, as well as mothers and their children. Agnes kept count of how many boxes each picker brought in, paying them two cents a quart, the going rate. Each day she made a big kettle of lemonade or ginger water for the workers. With the demise of the Boston boat in 1935 Lincolnville farmers shipped their berries to Boston by truck, a much less satisfactory way since the delicate fruit could get damaged during the jostling ride.

During that first visit Jenness took her on a tour of the farm, showing her the barn, chicken house and pigpen, through the garden where they grew every vegetable imaginable, and the orchard. Apparently, the farm once had dozens of apple varieties, but a big freeze the year Jenness was 11 killed many of the old apple varieties in Lincolnville. He remembered the state’s bulldozer coming along to knock down all the dead apple trees. Only the Ben Davis and Northern Spies had survived. Now the orchard’s biggest contribution was cider and cider vinegar.

Jenness took her out to the road to show her the Wiley School where he’d gone until the ninth grade. The building was closed up for the summer with a padlock on the door, but they’d peeked in the windows, and he showed her where he sat. Mary Lou had never seen such a tiny school. He told her how his mother felt he was too young for high school, and had insisted he spend ninth grade here, as well. Wiley may have been little, but Jenness got to play bass drum in the town’s school band. It was organized by teacher Lena Rankin for all the students in town, and they practiced at the Center School.

He’d been spoiled with the Wiley school practically across from his own driveway. Getting to high school presented the same problem it did for everyone else in town; each student had to find his or her own transportation. Jenness ended up walking more than a mile and a half to Hope Corner to pick up a ride with Bill Hardy or Raymond Ludwig. On Fridays he could ride with his father on the weekly sauerkraut delivery run. Senior year he had his own car, though as often as not he had to take a barrel of kraut to deliver along the way.

He told Mary Lou how he’d managed to get the tuition money for the University of Maine. During high school he’d heard that Westinghouse was running a competition through 4-H to interest farm kids in the ways electricity could be used on the farm. He did an analysis of their own farming activities, and how electricity could improve their efficiency. He sent in his entry and then proceeded to win both locally and at the state level. So he went to the National 4-H Congress in Chicago in the fall of 1939, and ended up one of five national winners! The prize was a two hundred-dollar scholarship, enough money to pay for two semesters up at Orono. When sophomore year came around his father paid him $200 for his summer’s work on the farm, and he was able to finance his second year.

Jenness joined the enlisted reserve corps while at the University; when he took the Army’s aptitude test he tried his best. Mary Lou thought that was one of his best qualities. Because of his high score he was chosen for the Army Specialized Training Program that sent him to Lehigh. And thus to her.

By now she was completely enthralled with both Maine and with this young soldier. It only seemed natural to both of them when, a few days later, standing by the falls above Camden Harbor, Jenness asked her to marry him.

They married in 1944, and Mary Lou was soon expecting a baby. She wanted to wait for the baby’s birth on the farm with Jenness’ parents. The family saw him off to the war, and Mary Lou settled in on the farm. What a lot she had to get used to! The winter of 1944 was bitter cold, and she had to master chamber pots and outhouses, water pumped from a well and a wood-fired stove.

         Mary Lou opened her eyes. The houses of Camden’s Mountain Street were dimly visible along the blacked-out road. Ahead was the Camden Hospital, 19 Mountain Street [now a residence.] Irvin pulled up in front and peered at his pocket watch in the light from the dashboard. “Five minutes to midnight. Hmmph. They’ll charge you for a whole day if you go in now. Can you hold out five minutes more?”

        Mary Lou tried to answer, but a sudden contraction took all her attention. Sure, she could hold out for five more minutes.

This story is from Staying Put in Lincolnville, Maine 1900-1950, available at Sleepy Hollow Rag Rugs, Western Auto, and Lincolnville Fine Art Gallery.

        The wooden War Memorial has been maintained over the years in part thanks to a fund the late John Pottle set up. Note that John and his brother Howard are both on the Memorial. Just last month that fund was transferred to the town to be used in a restoration project to save the structure. In spite of repainting and other repairs, though, as you might imagine, some 70 years standing out in the weather has taken its toll. If one day you drive by and the familiar old Memorial is missing, don’t be alarmed. Plans are to carefully remove it and have it restored this winter.

         A town committee has formed to establish a Veterans Park next to the Library/Open Air Museum complex. The restored World War II Memorial will be erected there, possibly under an along overhang to protect it. The brass plaques listing all Lincolnville war veterans from the Revolutionary War to the present will eventually be replaced with new ones; funds are only available at this time to restore the wooden memorial.

         After school activities keep children busy during these cold winter months, activities that include basketball, Garden Club, Chess Club and Lego Club. For those looking for extra help in Mathematics there’s Math Support every Wednesday after school for individuals and small groups with Mr. Eichenlaub, Middle School math teacher. “All are welcome to drop in; advance notice is not necessary. Just bring a willingness to work hard and any math questions that are troubling you.”

         I love reading the weekly Lynx Newsletter. If you don’t have children in Lincolnville Central School the Lynx is a great way to find out what goes on in school these days. I recommend checking it out.

Library

        Everyone is invited to join the library book group this Tuesday, January 19 at 6 p.m. to discuss “The Nightingale” by Kristin Hannah, a novel about two sisters in German-occupied France during World War II . We will also take time to chat about other books people have been reading, so please come if you’re interested, even if you have not read this book. The choice for next month is “The Art of Racing In the Rain”  by Garth Stein, a story of family, love, loyalty and hope told from a dog’s perspective. This book comes highly recommended by people who have already read it. 

         This Wednesday evening, January 20 at 7 p.m., the first Winter Presentation of 2016 will feature author Kristen Byrer and musicians Castlebay. Contact Rosey Gerry, 975-5432 to reserve a seat!

         Saturday morning, 10 a.m. to noon, Julie Turkevich will have the makings for Fairy Houses and Dragon Castles for children and any adults who want to give it a try. Julie’s Saturday morning craft programs are free and a lot of fun. Hope to see some of you there….

Right in the middle of Saturday’s snow storm Lincolnville’s fire trucks were rolling; once again, someone had cleaned the ashes out of their stove and, in this case, put them in a plastic bucket and  left the bucket inside. Sometimes it’s a paper bag or a cardboard box, but, as Fire Chief Ben Hazen told the Pilot, coals can smolder in ashes for up to 10 days!  This time the fire was in one of the Camp Tanglewood cabins. The bottom of the bucket eventually melted, setting the floorboards and insulation burning. Firemen were able to get at the fire from underneath, and it sounds like damage was minimal. You can’t be too careful with the ashes in your seemingly cold woodstove. Everyone who burns wood should have a metal can with a tight lid, and it should be kept outside, away from structures. I’ve heard of fires starting in vacuum cleaner bags and even in the pipe leading to a central vac when hot ashes were inadvertently sucked up. Wood burners have to be compulsive about disposing of their ashes!

Condolences

There are so many good things about living in a small place where everyone knows (or thinks they know) what you’re up to. Our snow blower died with the first inch or so of snow that fell a couple of weeks ago, so Wally took it up to Western Auto where Danny had to order a part for it. When the latest storm was predicted, Wally checked on his snow blower; Danny had his eye on the weather, too, and knowing we’d need it, put aside other work to get it ready for us.

         When the fire engines went screaming down the road the other morning, the phones started ringing. “Where is it?” “Did they go down your road?” “Anyone know what’s going on?” Then Facebook and the Lincolnville Bulletin Board picked it up. When someone with a scanner checked in, the whole round started again.