It’s amazing how fascinated we can be by stories about those who came before us. Because I remember seeing my great-great-grandmother, Mary (Cummings) Bennett Lord, the Greenville-born artist who lived to be 95, any little bit of information about her is enthralling to me.
And you can guess how excited I was some years ago to get a phone call from one of my dad’s World War II shipmates from LCI-565, the 157-foot landing craft that was their home in the Pacific. I was flabbergasted to hear this old sailor tell me that he got so tired of hearing my dad play his “Danny Boy” record during their time at sea that he broke the record and threw it overboard, with my father retaliating by throwing overboard his records. My dad confirmed that the story was true.
Recently I received a handwritten letter from Dr. Marc Chasse of Fort Kent, sharing a memory about Frenchville’s Roadside Diner from his teens some 60 years ago. “We used to go there for a hot chicken sandwich with french fries overflowing our plate. With a Pepsi — the whole thing would cost us 45 cents!”
Even then, the restaurant on Route 1 owned by Willard and Rose Anna (Chamberland) Saucier was known as Rosette’s, and we are so pleased that Chasse’s recently published “Les belles histoires de Fort Kent, Maine USA” includes Rosette’s among its 112 stories.
The tales include potato-picking stories and railroad stories and military stories and shoe-shining stories and even Alberie Nadeau’s “Six Brothers from Fort Kent Who Served in WWII.” They were Alberie, Ludger, Lucien, Odon, Zephirin and Valmon.
The term Fort Kent is used regionally here, as the stories also reference St. Francis and Wallagrass and Waterville and Madawaska and St. Pamphile and Biddeford.
I especially enjoyed Ken Plourde’s story about Coles Express, the company for which he drove trailer trucks for 45 years beginning in 1944. During the Cole Land Transportation Museum’s “season” from May 1 to Veterans Day each year, I enjoy giving tours to students and others who visit the museum in Bangor. Back in the late ’20s and early ’30s, company founder Allie Cole used snowplows and trucks — and sometimes trucks pushing snowplows — to open the roads to Aroostook County in the winter.
“Trailer trucks were so new in our area that people thought that any trailer truck was automatically a Coles Express,” Plourde told Marc Chasse. He related the time that an O’Donnell’s truck went off the road in St. Francis, and people called the police to say that there was a “Coles Express” in a ditch because that’s how they referred to any big truck.
That kind of story resonates with me because I remember in the late ’60s and early ’70s that many of us in Maine used the term “Skidooing” to mean snowmobiling regardless of the make of the “machine.”
A book like this is a treasure on many levels. First, it brings together memories of a variety of people, an effort which might not take place if someone didn’t do it.
Chasse has printed 1,000 copies, with proceeds going to the Fort Kent Historical Society once the printing costs have been covered.
The compilation is such a wonderful project, and one which will be a gift especially to the next generation, those too young to remember all these people and places and events.
The cost of the book is $20 each. Add $5 mailing for one book, $2.50 for each additional book to the same address. Checks may be sent to Marc Chasse, 155 East Main St., Fort Kent, ME 04743. If you want to order several or pick them up, email marcprischasse@gmail.com.
“Les belles histoires …” will make not only great Christmas presents, but the kind of gift a grandparent could stock up on and distribute at graduation or similar celebration.
In addition, reading these little stories should prompt us to think about memories we could write down to share with our own generation or the next. When my younger son, Tony, was still in college, he and I took a three-day trip to Quebec to see the churches and villages and farmland that were the roots of his Franco ancestry in Canada.
The day we arrived, we ate at a little restaurant that served poutine, french fries with gravy on top. “They make Memere’s fries,” he said in awe, referring to his grandmother, Rosette Saucier.
Indeed, they do, Tony.
For i nformation on researching family history in Maine, see Genealogy Resources under Family Ties at bangordailynews.com/browse/family-ties. Send genealogy queries to Family Ties, Bangor Daily News, P.O. Box 1329, Bangor 04402, or email familyti@bangordailynews.com.