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June, 2006
Finding Indian Pond
BY CHUCK HARRIS
Curator, Ambajejus Lake Boom House Museum
There was still an old crank-up phone on the wall of the railroad depot in Greenville Junction as we entered, a roll top desk and one bored looking clerk. The building still stands, last time I looked, same old spire on one corner, that's where Jim and I were told to go. A breeze blew through the office, which felt heavenly after forty odd miles from Chesuncook Boom House. There was nobody "coming down" from the village, for days; we had waited, sleeping in boats tied to the long wharf there, waiting, whittling, gazing at star-filled skies at night, waiting to hire on the drive. It was early June and hot, daisies were blooming along the roads we hitchhiked. Dusty, we had started out from the Delaware side of the New Jersey Bridge. Forty miles to Greenville was nothing, but the deer flies and the black flies were well and hungry, and so were we after the Chesuncook. I had worked the previous summer as a deckhand towing wood on Chesuncook, spending the summer working among the river drivers. The summer of 1970 I brought two friends along. Ed Jopson from the art school I attended in Baltimore, and boyhood chum Jim Kneisley, and, yes, "Ribs" the Appalachian Redbone Hound, who we had found starving in the North Carolina Mountains the previous spring on Easter Break while camping and looking for a fiddler's convention.
Eddy got tired of the waiting, tired of the flies I think and he headed out, spending the summer working on Martha's Vineyard. Jim and I did not know what awaited us for work, but THE Kennebec Log Drive sounded like the only game left in town. It was good to be out of the sun, there was an old-fashioned water cooler, we grabbed a couple of those pointed little white cups that hold enough to drown a mouse, and gulped those down while the clerk held up his finger for us to wait while he finished on the radio. Motorola radio, that's how the woods talked then, connected to various dams, woods camps, and pickup trucks. It squelched and crackled, skipped and popped. There was a smell of heavy creosote drifting in, the railroad yard was hot that day, and the ties were baking.
"Can I help you fellas?" The clerk seemed friendly enough, but the heat was getting to him as he wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist. "You guys look like you come a ways, not from around here anyways."
We said no, we were from far away and we were looking for the K.L.D. camp as we shook hands.
"This is the Kennebec Log Drive hiring office. I can put you through to Indian Pond from here."
Sounds good, we said, filling a few more cups of water. Finally we were getting somewhere close to work, maybe a bunk, and hopefully a square meal, the first in days.
"Greenville to Indian Pond, Bob Folsom…" snap, crackle, skip, silence.
"Indian Pond, go ahead…"
"Bob, got a couple young fellas here looking for work… Over"
"Are they Indians? Over."
The clerk eyeballed us, winked, and said, "No they aren't Indians. Over…"
"Well, send them on up. KGC 648. Out"
"You guys know how to get to East Outlet?"
We said no, we didn't know much about this side of Moosehead.
"Take this road straight on up along Moosehead, you'll come to a dam there. There's a crew there and bunks."
That's all we were to know. Back out on the hot asphalt, we stuck out our thumbs again. Trouble with hot days, there's never any traffic going the way you're headed, this is a way to make you pay, earn your road wings. I guess we were pretty well adjusted to the long waits along the roads, we had both hitchhiked for years, back then you could it seemed, safely trust fellow Americans with your life and wallet. Of course you had your odd drunk, and in those cases, we bailed. Our first ride was a young speedster, eager to impress us with his Ford Fairlane Super nothing. This guy was hitting speeds and steering with one hand, talking, laughing, nuts. We knew rides were scarce; do we bail or stick out this fruitcake until East Outlet?
We used plan 106 B2. That is, Jim tapped the driver on the shoulder, as the windows were down, and rushing 70 mph winds were blowing through the car, I heard him holler, "Hey buddy…"
"Yeah."
"She can really move can't she?"
"Yes, sure is a rocket."
"But my buddy here is a little scared of the speed we are going."
"Ha, hell this ain't fast."
He mashed down on the pedal, Jim looked at me, and I winked. Jim pulled himself forward on the seat, the centrifugal force was pulling at him, slowly he managed to whisper something in the crazy kid's ear, looking worried, hanging on, bouncing to the roof with each frost heave. Almost instantly, the driver let off the gas, we were reentering the atmosphere finally, both of us could relax now, it worked.
What Jim whispered was that the past spring, Chuck's mother and sister were killed in a head-on collision, he has had nightmares ever since, the speed is going to panic him, slow her down and he should be fine.
East Outlet was a ways up the road, the traffic was sparse, and we had a pleasant ride with this fellow the rest of the flight He apologized as he let us out by the lakeside. Still alive, we shouldered out packs. "Damn that was a trip," Jim said, looking over a field of weeds, alders and daisies and feeling better with the sweet breeze off Moosehead Lake, we shared a smoke. As we walked towards a few lonely tarpaper shacks next to the water, Jim asked, "Who is this Kenny Beck fellow anyway, is he on an ego trip, naming a log drive after himself?"
"No, no that's the name of this river where we're going: The Kennebec," I said grinning.
"Wherever it is, I'm starved."
The Katahdin was towing wood then, she was a ways out in the lake yet. We stood out on the head works of the dam, watching two Frenchmen work about in boats, preparing to receive the coming boom of pulp. The boom looked the whole state of Maine was towing behind, biggest raft of logs I'd ever seen. Jim had never seen a boom. There looked like about eight thousand cord on behind. I had learned a bit over on Chesuncook, booms there might be five or six thousand cord. After watching the boat with no exhaust muffler pull strings of boom logs around a bit, our ears were hurting, how did that operator stand the noise? Maybe he was deaf. We decided we had seen and definitely heard enough, it was time to find somebody in charge. To our luck, we found that all two men working out in front of the gates were French speaking only. It was a tough go at sign language and raised voices; something I've always noticed since then, men trying to talk to one another in unknown tongues always wave their hands and holler. Most times no one is deaf, so why yell? Anyway, we found a bunkhouse for about six men; it was unused, dusty, and there were rusty springs on creaky frame metal bunks. No fridge, no sink really, just a sheet metal trough. The windowpanes were broken and mice had made nests in the bedding, I didn't see a mattress or a pillow. Well now, we had found a lovely summer place to work. We couldn't speak French, I saw no mess hall, and weeds seemed to have taken all back to nature. What this was we did not know, but somehow we had to communicate with these two men working those boats, should we be here? Or somewhere else? Come to find out we would be transported the next morning by pickup, complete with a 33-foot bateaux on rickety roof racks, down through Hell's back woods road to the upper shores of Indian Pond. As we tried to sleep and figure out all this, after a small token meal shared with the two Frenchmen as they were "batching it," as they say, we fell asleep at least with a blanket, for the breeze off Moosehead grew cool by morning, and the mosquitos were not so troublesome. Those bare steel springs felt better than the four nights lying in flat bottom boats, rocking against Chesuncook wharf. Nothing bothers you when you are twenty years old anyway. We each unhooked a little triangular metal piece that held each row of springs together from our bunks, three holes in each piece. With a thong, we strung these around our necks; three holes meant K.L.D.
We figured these would be "good medicine" charms for what lay ahead.
To be continued…
Chuck Harris is Curator, Ambajejus Lake Boom House Museum, near Millinocket.
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