Fireside Chats offers a fascinating look at life in the early to mid-1900s in rural Waldo County. The interviews, by Jeff Shula, were originally published in the 1990s in the Waldo Independent. And I have to thank Belfast Historical Society and Museum for recently publishing Fireside Chats, the first time all 18 interviews were put […]
Earlene Ahlquist Chadbourne’s book, A Child’s Life 90 Years Ago, is a fascinating look back at the lives of her father Earle and his sister Florence, as they grew up in Scarborough, Maine, on a rural farm from 1923 – 1946. Earlene has a talent for putting you right there, experiencing life without indoor plumbing, […]
Deborah Gould has written two books that help us experience life in rural Maine from 1820 to 1920. Published by Maine Authors Publishing, The Eastern, Books One and Two, focus on rural Pittston, Maine and surrounding towns, where farms were plentiful until the 1900s when kids started moving away for better jobs. Throughout these great […]
Roy Dudley was a real Maine character who hung out at Chimney Pond just below Mount Katahdin from 1890 to 1942. And Roy was well known for his very entertaining stories, many of them focused on a very strange character called Pamola. Pamola was a giant with wings and antlers and the illustration showing him […]
It took a lot of wood to make Great Northern in Millinocket the largest paper mill in the world. And in his new book, Logging Towboats and Boom Jumpers, published by North Country Press, Roger Moody gives us an interesting account of how O.A. Harkness built a specialized inland navy to get all that wood […]
You don’t have to live in Waterville to enjoy Earl Smith’s wonderful history of that city. Water Village, published by North Country Press, takes us through that fascinating history from 1498 to today. Boy, he must’ve done a lot of research! I found a lot of the stories to be fascinating including the fact that […]
A Story of Maine in 112 Objects is a fascinating history of Maine, from prehistoric to today, told through the amazing collections of the Maine State Museum, published by Tilbury House Publishers and edited by Bernard Fishman, the museum’s director. This is a substantial book and probably the heaviest book I’ve ever held. You’ll need […]
Gary Dumond began flying float planes when he was in high school, flying his dad’s Piper PA-11 over to Eagle Lake to visit with Maine Warden Pilot Jack McPhee. Jack encouraged Gary to train as a military pilot and then to return to Maine and seek a position as a Maine Warden pilot. I must […]
Thank goodness West Quoddy Head Lighthouse in Lubec is not haunted like the many in Taryn Plumb’s intriguing book, Haunted Maine Lighthouses. Well, it would be kind of neat to have a conversation with my great grandfather who was the keeper at West Quoddy from 1900 to 1932. Maine has the second most lighthouses in […]
Kristin Krause put me right in that small boat drifting across the Pacific Ocean for 43 days with very little to eat and drink and almost no hope of surviving. Krause’s book, Last Voyage Of The Hornet, tells an amazing and troubling story about the clipper ship Hornet that caught fire and sank in the […]
