MEDDYBEMPS COTTAGE WAS IN OUR FAMILY NEARLY FIFTY YEARS

My parents purchased our camp on beautiful Meddybemps Lake,Maine in 1946. They bought our camp(this is what cottages are called in downeast Maine) from "Donkey" Smith of Calais. There was just our camp and Tommy Denyer's cottage right next to Reynolds Beach. Dad painted our place the color "Red" so from then on, we were known as "the red camp" near the beach. Cliff Reynolds owned the beach but our family had beach rights. Mr Reynolds also owned the camps on our right side and he had them all rented during the summer. Cliff had quite a business with the beach,his camps and boats to rent. He had a place for people to tent and campout in his field opposite the beach complete with a hand pump for drawing well water, a snack bar and a place to launch boats. I used to dive off our pier growing up there in front of our red camp and I would swim diagonally all the way out to the beach raft. It was usually crowded on that float,especially on a hot summer's day. It was fun being a kid in those days. Dad worked in a paper mill(St Croix Paper Co) in nearby "Woodland" in Baileyville,Maine. When the Woodland schools let out for summer vacation, we Sprague children and our mom would move right out there to Reynolds Beach and stay until Labor Day. I could swim all day, fish and go boating. Guess I never realized how lucky I was at the time. I could jump in the boat and drive to the town dock. I'd tie up to the dock and walk up to Palmeter's store. They sold gas there and I could get candy and ice cream or a few groceries. The Palmeter family were always friendly. There was Curtis "Chub" Palmeter and his wife Alberta, daughters Betty, Maxine and Myrtle and a son Curtis Jr. Charlie Bridges worked there too and was a good guy. The store was a gathering spot for Meddybempsters and the summer campers. There were guides and caretakers like Cecil Ward and Ronald Cousins. Richard Dwelly helped us put in a septic line and tank so we could have indoor plumbing and didn't have to use the outhouse any more. I enjoyed seeing Howard Allen there at the store and I'd sometimes visit him at his nearby house. I hung around with Mark Ketchum,Dale Sherrard,Johnny Hanson,Jeff Orchard,Roger Holst,Jon Mahar and a few others. Sometimes,mom would have me do errands. I'd go to the post office in Meddybemps which was just a short walk from the store, over the bridge by Harry Smith's Dam and Lottie Lombards store to the the PO which was in the Everett Gillespie home. Once in a while, I'd get a glimse of his two pretty daughters, Nancy and Frannie. Later, the PO moved further down Rt 191 and Lotties store was also closed. Lotties used to have lots of baskets hanging in her store. I can still remember smelling the sweetgrass from all those indian baskets. In later years, doing geneological research, I learned that Lottie had been distantly related to my own family. The Palmeter store remains today as a friendly part of past days on the lake. The village also has a little white community church, a bubbling brook and lots of blueberry fields. After leaving the Palmeter store, I,d head back to the dock to fetch my boat and return back to the cove and then motor to the camp. Dad always had a power boat to use growing up and when I got a little older, I built my own hydroplane which I enjoyed skimming across the water.Kip Kineap also had a hydroplane but it was a lot faster than mine. Since we only had one car, in those early days,dad would bring bags of groceries he purchased at Coulter's store in Woodland. On the weekend, we might go into Calais to shop or get food from the A&P or IGA. My favorite store was Western Auto and Todd's hardware but there was also a 5&10,W T Grants, Bernadini's Peanuts( They were large peanuts and cashews always hot and the bags were always a little greasey) but they smelled great and usually didn't make it all the way back to the camp. We ate them! Other stores in Calais were Woolworth's,Fishman's,Downeast TV and a few other places we liked to go. No Walmarts in those days. Manmouth Mart, Kings and then Ames had not yet arrived on the scene. Rich's didn't come until much later. Sometimes dad would take mom, me and my sisters to the St Croix Valley Drive-In Theatre in Baring. We would always burn a circular green smudge wick in the car becauce of mosquitos and black flies. In those days, the theatre had the speakers on a pole which you would have to put inside the auto. No tuning to a radio frequency in those days. A few other times, we went to the movies in St Stephen, New Brunswick at the Queen Theatre. The Canadian border was only about 16 miles from our camp and Calais didn't have a theater for years after the State Theater burned down. The movie playing the night it burned was "A hot tin roof". We enjoyed ourselves. It was a good life (when things were simple.) We had company most all summer long plus Cliff's cottages brought plenty of friends to play with. Many of his camps had the same tenents year after year. Most stayed two weeks at a time. In later summers, I had my "Ham" radio gear and my sisters had boyfriends. We played cards on rainy days, water skied on hot days and swam nearly every day. Meddybemps Lake attracted a lot of people from Maine and other eastern states. The lake is quite large in size being 8 miles long, 7 miles wide,with fifty-two islands. Some had nick-named it Calendar lake.There were cottages on most of those islands and most had big boats. I was always a little envious of the Islanders. One boat I remember as a small child was called the "Dixie Clipper" owned by the Graham family. I had heard they had something to do with the dixie cup company. That was never verified to my knowledge. It might just as well have been a rumor but that family were quite well off just the same and had a huge cottage and a mile of shorefront. Some of the boats on the lake were more designed for ocean use,I thought. Meddybemps was deep water in parts but was also known for it's many rocks. There were quite a few boats and motors that were damaged on that body of water. I soon learned where most of the rocks were. Many of these bolders just below the surface were soon marked with paint or buoys but every once in a while, we realized that some of them were overlooked. I managed to shear a few pins over the years and had to fix the outboard motor numerous times. We had a lot of rain at the lake. I can recall bailing water out of the boats many times. I also remember the seaplanes that would land on the lake and sometimes we got to take a ride up above the lake. Ed Ketchum had a plane and so did Ed Arbo. Of course, so did the fish and game warden so we had to make sure we had our license with us at all times and measured the length of our catch. Dad liked to go fishing after work and we'd generally have a fishfry 2 or 3 nights a week. It seemed like there were more fish and larger in size in those days. We'd fry, bake and barbecue them. I had the honor of filleting and cleaning the perch, bass and pickerel on occation. The latter species usually ended up in a fish chowder. Mom was a good chowder maker and dad was known for his homemade clam chowder. Mom was also an expert pie maker. We ate well at the lake. Berries were also numerous. We would pick wild strawberries in July and raspberries and blueberries in Aug. At the end of summer, this part of Maine had fields of bluberries to rake and be winnowed and sent to Stewards or Wymans factories. There was lots of work for us children for at least two full weeks. We could earn enough money to buy our own school clothes or anything else we wished. I would usually work for Howard Allen or Forest Sadler way up on Conant's Hill. I could rake a lot of berries but my back was always sore at the end of the day. If you wanted really clean berries, they were hand picked elsewhere. Strawberry shortcake and blueberry cake were my favorites although they were also good on cereal or with cream. On Lake Meddybemps, we had the best sunsets too.Thunder storms were intense with bolts of lightning crashing down on the lake. The white caps would be streaming down lake. It was a sight to behold although some were afraid of the noise and feared being hit by lightning. I once saw a bolt come in the window and bounce off the black kitchen stove. Another unique thing there was the sky was pitch black at night and you could see every star in the sky. Eventually I had a telescope but I admit it pointed at the beach on some occations. We rode bikes on the camp road and had some baseball games in Reynold's field. Another interesting thing about Meddybemps Lake was that everyone waved to each other out on the water, even though we didn't know most of them. It was just a friendly gesture we all did. The lake was plesant and even the elm trees were pretty and welcoming around the village. Eventually, the dutch elm disease took it's toll on those trees. Soon bright street lights were installed around the shore and on the highway. Upon Cliff's death, his son erected his new home on the beach. Unfortunately, life doen't stand still. However, I still proposed to my wife on that beach under a stary sky one summer evening. Later we bought the red camp from my folks. One of the first projects was to paint the camp another color. It was now the blue camp. Everyone now complained that they missed the red camp. I did add hot water and a shower which received approval never-the-less. We did get good use of that place growing up in a nearby town. We would view the foliage in the Fall. Dad would hunt there in Nov. His brothers and other hunters would stay right out there for a couple weeks every year. In the winter, we would drive out there to skate and play in the snow. Then, we've warm up by the wood stove and have lunch and drink hot chocolate. Spring would bring ice-out in late April. Sometimes, we were there when the ice disappeared and hopefully left the dock on the shore. Many a year, we had to repair or build new piers. In the mid eighties, my wife and I moved to Calais from Massachusetts, started a business, and hoped to enjoy the camp like in the old days and my son might have an experience like I had. Having a self employment business,unfortunately doesn't always provide enough free time. This was the case for me but my wife and son did get to enjoy Meddybemps for a few years. Nothing stays the same of course, so I cling to those happy memories of long ago.