April 9, 1975
Page 9645
THE NEW ENGLAND TOWN MEETING
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, each year at this time one of the Nation's oldest democratic traditions — the New England town meeting — is carried out in the majority of communities in my home State of Maine. As we approach America's 200th birthday, the town meetings still flourish, providing every citizen of voting age an opportunity to participate directly in the affairs of their local government. In many ways, the purpose and goals of this form of government are more relevant to the needs of our society today than they were when first established.
Last Sunday, the Washington Post carried two excellent articles by Mr. Haynes Johnson on the recent town meeting in Nobleboro, Maine. I commend them to my colleagues and ask unanimous consent that they be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the articles were ordered to be printed in the RECORD, follows:
[From the Washington Post, Apr. 6, 1975]
LAST STRONGHOLD OF DEMOCRACY
(By Haynes Johnson)
NOBLEBORO, MAINE.— Heading down east from Portland along old Route 1, through Brunswick and Bath, Wiscasset and Waldoboro, past the frozen ponds and shuttered summer cottages, the stores and homes with their "for sale" signs, one maddening rock song kept being repeated over the car radio:
America's calling, Harry Truman.
Harry, you’d know what to do
The world is turning round,
and losing lots of ground,
Oh, Harry, is there something we can do
to save the land we love?
The headlines in the local papers along the Maine coast reinforce the impression of national gloom.
VOTERS ARE TIRED OF HAVING THINGS CRAMMED DOWN THROAT
STORAGE OF OIL TANKERS OPPOSED IN CASCO BAY
DANGERS LISTED FOR DRILLING ON GEORGES BANK
In Bath, the City Council has been informed by a Boston engineering firm that at least $1.5 million more will be needed to enable a sewage system installed only four years ago to work properly. In Augusta, state mental health and corrections officials are warning that Maine institutions could revert back to a "19th Century level of custodial care" if proposed. budget cuts are carried out. And the Central Maine Power Co. is saying the state will need 6 per cent more electrical energy every year in spite of accelerated conservation efforts.
In Nobleboro, they were preparing for their annual town meeting. All of the citizens already had received their annual report from their town officers. The Selectmen, in their current assessment of the town's condition, stated: "Aside from the $7,000 remaining on the school addition ... and a modest balance on the Ice House lot, the Town of Nobleboro does not owe a cent to anyone. How do your state and federal governments compare with that?"
Nobleboro is not complacent about its situation, however. For days before the town meeting, citizens had been debating an issue that sharply divided the community. It was about their schools. A year ago, in a close vote, Nobleboro joined two other, towns, Damariscotta and Newcastle, in forming the Great Salt Bay Community School District.
Within 12 months, petitions were being circulated urging the town to pull out of the consolidation. Emotions ran high. The citizens of Nobleboro, like nearly all of the coastal communities, were angered first by action of their state legislature in Augusta. The legislature enacted a bill providing for all Maine communities to contribute a. certain fixed amount to the state to go for education. The state would then distribute the money across the board to towns regardless of their individual wealth. or poverty. The idea was to provide equal education facilities for all towns, whatever their local financial situation.
This action went against the grain of the traditionally frugal and independent Maine towns, where the Yankee concept of local control is still deeply embedded. Along the coast, protest meetings were held and groups formed. One, called "Freedom Fighters," was composed of officials opposed to growing state and federal control over small town affairs.
"We want to be good citizens," the chairman of that group told a special legislative meeting in Augusta the other day. "We want to obey the legislature and we want to obey the Constitution. But we do not want any bureaus of the State of Maine putting standards on us."
In Nobleboro the prospect of losing more local control to the state led many residents to question whether they really should involve themselves with the other two nearby towns in a consolidated school district. Nobleboro was in basically good financial situation; its schools were not overcrowded, at they were in Damariscotta and Newcastle; it had always handled its own affairs well enough by itself; it could still go it alone.
Only days before the town meeting a large contingent of Nobleboro citizens gathered to protest the school consolidation. Many wanted to pull out.
"We've always helped ourselves," one citizen remarked. "Why should we help Damariscotta and Newcastle who have let their schools fall apart?"
"I mistrust the state," said another protester.
The issue involved more than state aid or the consolidated school district. It involved local pride and the conflict between outsiders, many of them young, who have moved into Nobleboro in recent years, and the old descendants of the original settlers. In a sense it was between past and present and over the direction of the future.
"They thought the state was going to build them a million-and-a-half building," said Hudson Vannah, 71, who is the fifth generation of Vannahs to live on the same farmland overlooking Damariscotta Pond from a point of land surrounded by woods. "All going to be done with state money. Well, after all, who's the state? Now they know.
"This school building here, we had the best. The best school facility. We had good lunch facilities there, which some other towns didn't have and they was anxious. We had a superintendent to help those towns at the expense of this town. So that's what happened. Now today I think they're kinda seein' the folly. The people worked hard. We had a civic club in this town. They had beano ["it's like bingo, only it’s different," one resident explained] every week and they equipped this building and it takes a lot to equip a building the way this one's equipped down to the lunch room. And It didn't cost the taxpayers anything. They kind of thought it would be good to give it away. They were innocent."
Typical of the other side was Judy Griffin, 38, a housewife who moved to Maine nine years ago. She is a college graduate with twin sons aged 9.
"Emotionally, this is a very strong issue for the people who are aware of what is really important in their children's education," she said. "I think that some people here are very content with what they have and I think that's fine for themselves. But I don't think that all children should be thrust into the category of their little realm of contentment.
"I really feel that a child's education should mostly center around excellent teachers. I think we should pay our teachers more and bring in those with more stimulating minds. I am in favor of trying the consolidation for a few years."
It is said, and the local historians vouch for it, that the first deed in New England was executed not far from Nobleboro in 1625 between an Indian named Samosett and a colonist named John Brown. It is also said, although there is some dispute about this, that the first Englishmen ever to set foot on American soil did so within the confines of Lincoln county, of which Nobleboro is a part. Before that there were Norsemen plying around the jagged coast and deep coves of this part of present-day Maine. So "they say" anyway.
Within this county, stretching from the coastline and back into the hills, lakes and ponds, are still to be found some of the oldest names in the history of New England.
On the small village square of Nobleboro there is a monument to Col. Arthur Noble, who came to America in 1720 and became one of the early heroes of Maine, when Maine still was a part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. To the west, in the lovely old town of Waldoboro, is another monument that evokes the past. It notes that Waldoboro was settled in 1749 by Germans who "emigrated to this place with the promise and expectation of finding a populous city, instead of which they found nothing but a wilderness. For the first years they suffered to a great extent by Indian wars and starvation. By perseverance and self-denial they succeeded in clearing land and erecting mills. At this time a large proportion of its inhabitants are descendants of the first settlers."
That monument was erected in 1855. Now, 120 years later, many of those same old family names are to be found scattered throughout this formidable and severe countryside.
Life was never easy. It is not so today. Maine has known poverty and hardship; it knows them now.
For decades these small towns, villages and cities remained insulated and clinging to their traditions. The cliches about Maine's self-reliance and independence are, like most cliches, essentially true — "with stretchers," as with the seasons — up in the summer, down in the winter. But within the last decade fundamental change has come to Maine, and now to Nobleboro. In the five-year period from 1965 to 1970 some 120,000 permanent residents moved into Maine, bringing with them new ways and new attitudes. They have also come into Nobleboro.
Hudson Vannah, whose first American ancestor came to Waldoboro six generations ago as one of the original German settlers (the name was then spelled "Werner") has seen more changes in Nobleboro in the last 10 years than he experienced in a lifetime here.
"There has been quite an increase in population," he said. "More so in the last five years. I probably wouldn't know 75 per cent of the people who come out for town meetings now, whereas seven, eight years ago when I was chairman, I knew practically everyone in town. Now I don't.
"The influx of these outsiders I would say in this town is predominantly young families, whereas the neighboring town of Damariscotta is more retirement. Today they all start out with new houses and a loan that'll take 'em the rest of their lives to pay off, if they're lucky. If they're real lucky they may not have to pay it off."
But for all the changes, Nobleboro retains a strong sense of place and strong ties of community. It is friendly and open, the kind of place where a stranger is immediately invited to lunch and to dinner; where you can meet old and new all in one day; where you can talk with the Willard Pinkhams and hear about the days of the old country store when butter was 30 cents a pound, eggs a quarter a dozen, and sugar and molasses were dispensed in barrels and hogsheads; where you can sit over coffee with two relatively new residents and get a vivid impression of life in Nobleboro as it is evolving.
"When we moved to Nobleboro in 1965 we were invited to this little community hall that we have up in North Nobleboro for what they call a 'free supper,' " said Nancy Hartford, whose husband, Leonard, is now Nobleboro's first selectman. "At that time they were giving public suppers every month to raise money for their community associations. We went and we thought nothing more of it. We were made to stand and receive all of these people, probably 50 or 60. At that time an envelope was handed to us. I thought it was a potholder or something, and I went home. It was filled with money. This was their way of welcoming us to the community.
"We were utterly amazed to think that anybody cared enough whether we even moved in. And a year or two later I became ill with a palsy type thing and required hospitalization and complete bed rest for about a month. All our meals were taken care of completely by the people themselves."
Evelyn Cross, who also came here a decade ago and now is the postmaster, had been listening to her friend. She nodded, and said:
"If anybody's in trouble in Nobleboro the community helps. There's somebody on your doorstep if you have a problem. They'll call me and say, 'So-and-so is having a problem: pass the word.' "
Yet there are tensions and hostilities in Nobleboro. As one person said, "We have our own little Peyton Places here. We have social problems and drugs and so forth." Older residents recall the days when no one locked his door here. Now they do. Occasional acts of vandalism are a concern.
But the most difficult problem is more subtle: how to balance the old and the new and yet retain the sense of community that gave the Nobleboros of New England their special flavor.
"You can rub people the wrong way here without being aware of it," one more recent citizen said. "You have to be very careful and not come on too strong. It can be an emotional problem. I think they have a tendency to ignore you. This may be from jealousy or it may be because they feel threatened or because they just really don't care that much about understanding you. You have to make a tremendous effort to understand them.
"A person living here, after a while you find out you have to be completely resourceful within yourself. You have a tendency in Maine to either like it very much or not at all. I don't think there's any middle ground. I like it very much.
"I've found that the basic structure of the town still remains the same. It's still a very tight-knit group. There are more people coming in but these people are more or less forced to stay on the outer fringes and watch the old-timers keep the local control. Newcomers here are accepted at arm's length. People make an effort to be outwardly friendly but they don't really want them running for the school board or trying to take over any of their businesses. Within another 10 years I think we'll have power in numbers at the polls, and it's going to be to our advantage. But until there are more newcomers like ourselves we're going to have to sit tight."
Then this citizen said:
"I feel that we have the last stronghold of democracy right here and it's something that New Englanders should be proud of. By the same token, whether we want to be or not, we're very much a part of a large, complex world around us. I think it's very much important that we try not to become alienated among ourselves, and not to keep control just within a small group.
"I think we're going to have to relate to this outside world if our children are going to compete in it. I think if the children growing up here have any one strike against them it's because they're non-aggressive in attitude. They're very complacent. It's important to expose our children to as many outside influences as possible."
On Saturday, the day of the town meeting, some 300 chairs had been set out in rows in the school basement. There were five candidates for the third selectman's post. That kind of opposition hadn't occurred in years. It bothered some of the older people.
Hudson Vannah, who is also Nobleboro's road commissioner, was sitting in a front row, remembering other times:
"Town meetin's not as good as it used to be for this reason: Today they have a budget or advisory committee and they meet with the selectmen and practically all the appropriations that are required have been talked over and, you might say, accepted. They bring'em out in the open today, you might say, to be rubber-stamped.
"But in the old days, when I started going to town meetin's — as a kid I skipped school to go to town meetin's — it was interesting. There was no seats then, of course. Around the old town house they stood up. And when they come to a question that was pretty close they used to divide the house. The moderator would set up and there and say, 'All those in favor of this article take the north side of the house. All opposed, the south.' They divided the house. And I've seen 'em reach across the aisle and try to pull a guy over.
"It was fun to watch it And then, of course, perhaps it was a little more interesting, but not as fair, in the days before the secret ballot. I've seen 'em vote twice. I've seen 'em vote three times. We had a fellow that was first selectman here for a number of years. He was a good type, but he had his following! He'd say, 'Boys, it might be close today. Go 'round two or three times.' And he'd have somebody there and when those fellows would be making their second trip he'd have someone talking to the moderator. He'd be looking the other way. And sometimes they'd put in a whole handful. In other years, there'd be more votes cast than there was in the hall. That was interesting.
"It's still interesting. But as I say, it isn't like it used to be because so much of it already has been decided."
He was correct: It had been decided in advance. The selectmen, the town clerk, the leaders of the opposing camps — all had agreed that it would be best to table the vote on whether to pull out of the school district. They would defer action until April 30 to give time for the state legislature to clarify, hopefully, possible changes in the state educational funding act.
At least they thought it was all set.
The townspeople had turned out — men, women, children and babies. Others had to stand in rows against the walls. No apathy here.
A moderator banged his gavel four or five times to call the meeting to order. He had an announcement. Anyone who wanted to speak would have to do so loud and clear. They were without loudspeaker equipment, "which done quit."
It began quietly. On the town method of collecting taxes: no opposition. On fixing the compensation for labor on roads: no opposition. On accepting the scale of compensation for elected municipal officers: no opposition.
Article 7 on the agenda. brought the first stirrings of town discontent. It was over appropriating the amount of money necessary for basic town expenses: for police, fire, roads, lighting, the library and the Noble Monument grounds.
One man was disturbed over the state of the road repairs. The condition of Duck Puddle Road was terrible.
"I think certain maintenance should be performed that is long overdue," he said. "A lick and a promise every now and is a help, but I'd like to see more licks and less promises."
Bert Ricker, an older man in the back of the room, had spotted something else. "What is the Ice House lot?" he asked. "I can’t find anyone who knows anything about it."
The town had purchased the lot for a future recreation area site, the first selectman, Leonard
Hartford informed him. Until enough money was available for the recreation center, the town needed $360 a year to maintain the premises.
Bert Ricker wasn't satisfied. He asked for — and got — specific answers about the Ice House acreage and how it came to be purchased.
The meeting was already well into its first hour when the moderator interrupted. He had forgotten to ask the minister for the invocation.
They bowed their heads and listened as the minister asked thanks for the "privilege of self-government and freedom that we are enjoying today. We don’t have to look too far now to see that we haven’t done all that well on the national level."
The meeting continued.
Adult education came up. The citizens were asked to appropriate $1500 to support their adult education program.
Bert Ricker again was on his feet.
"We raise quite a lot of money for teaching our children but I don’t see why if an adult wants more education he shouldn’t pay for it himself. I’m not in favor of rasing money for adult education."
Evelyn Cross stood. "Mr. Ricker, if we don’t vote for adult education then no one in the town of Nobleboro will be able to participate in this program."
From the back of the hall came Ricker's reply: "So what."
More debate, more spirited now. Again, Ricker rose: "I don't see why I should pay taxes to send somebody else to school, ‘cept for the children."
Millie Ball was on her feet. She is a housekeeper; with a son who drills wells and a grandson about to become a lobsterman when he graduates from high school this spring. She is from original Yankee stock, her family first coming over on the ship "Fortune," and she was angry.
"There are a lot of people who don’t want any further education. Fine. They can stay in their barnyard. But I would like to have a chance to get a little more education and there are many other people in this town and that is the only way we can do it."
Again Ricker replied, "So what?"
More debate and finally a vote. Adult education was approved by more than 2 to 1.
They were warming up now and ready for the school question. The town officials had not fully gauged the emotions of their fellow citizens. Debate was long and heated. By the time a vote was called, no one could accurately forecast the outcome. The citizens of Nobleboro cast their ballots, one by one, in paper peanut butter cartons.
When the ballots were counted, the motion to defer any action on the school issue had carried 119 to 96. "The way it looked, it might have gone the other way," said Bob Palmer, who runs the Nobleboro general store that he and his mother and father before him had operated and is also the town clerk.
Nothing had been resolved but the issue had clearly split the town. Nobleboro citizens will meet again on April 30 to decide what course they wish to take. Few in town today will make any predictions about the outcome.
Nobleboro’s most distinguished resident did not attend the town meeting. Elizabeth Coatesworth never has. She and her husband, Henry Beston, who died seven years ago, came here in 1932 and settled on Chimney Farm, an old home filled with plants and paintings and surrounded by woods and pond, birds and raccoons and squirrels. Each made a national reputation as writers of books about New England and the Maine character.
Even though she has lived there for 43 years, and loves the people and the countryside, she never went to the town meetings for a special reason — "I’m still an outsider," she said with a smile, "and I think they should decide what they want."
Outsiders or not, Elizabeth Coatesworth and Henry Beston each read the particular flavor of this part of America as well as anyone. Let them have the last word.
Henry Beston:
"To use a favorite word of the Maine vocabulary, its prizes were to be for the ‘rugged’; from the first it would have no headlong frontier scramble, disorderly and squalid; it demanded courage, character and endurance. To this day, the state grants its people the inestimable boon — inestimable in the twentieth century — of not having things both passive and easy. It makes demands."
And Elizabeth Coatesworth:
"If Americans are to become really at home in America, it must be through the devotion of many people to many small, deeply loved places ... People on this back road retain the independent, self-respecting Yankee tradition. While here and there, the blood has run out and families, like plants, have gone to seed, the men and women of our township are for the most part people of character and breeding, not cut out of any one pattern as by machinery, but whittled and showing the grain."
[From the Washington Post, Apr. 6, 1975]
EVERYTHING HAS COME AT ONCE
(By Haynes Johnson)
(Note.— For the last 43 years Elizabeth Coatsworth has been living at Chimney Farm at the end of a point of land overlooking Damariscotta Pond, surrounded by folds of unspoiled forest sloping down to Deep Cove, in Nobleboro, Maine. She became a distinguished writer of poetry, children's books and sketches of New England. Her husband, Henry Beston, who died in 1968, was the author of the nature classic "The Outermost House," and other works about New England and Maine. In the following conversation with. .Haynes Johnson, Elizabeth Coatsworth talks about her life at Chimney Farm, and the changes she has seen. She will be 83 in May.)
When Henry and I came here in 1932, we were among the very first outsiders. We were able to buy this farm very cheaply because the man who had it just cut woodlots and then sold farms and bought another one. What we wanted was the grass around us and the woods. We had two children that we were bringing up and we wanted a place to live that was beautifully located, and we found it.
When we came here every one of the houses on this road had a very small farm attached — four or five cows, a cornfield. They were all subsistence farmers, and they seemed very happy as such. It wasn't a bad life. It wasn't like being tenant farmers or such. Now all those who remain have gone into the towns as clerks or garage attendants or as one thing and another. They have become townspeople. In this immediate district there are only two people who farm any more: Irving Oliver, at the corner where you turned, and the big farm, Hudson Vannah's at the head of the road. By working 18 hours a day Hudson has kept that farm as his father left it to him — as a big prosperous-looking farm. Otherwise all the farms have turned into the houses of people who go to the Bath Iron Works or more likely to Damariscotta to work.
We are a scattered people, so scattered. that we hardly make a town. I think that we have about 2,000 residents, but they're lost in the woods and grasses. You'll find it very hard to locate 2,000 people in Nobleboro. Originally Nobleboro contained Damariscotta, but now Nobleboro is the parent that has shriveled.
People here talk first of all about gossip, but they do talk about important issues, about offshore drilling and contamination and what to do with the town dump. Of course money comes out of a Maine town very unwillingly, and putting in sewers and things of that kind are fought to a down.
You see, everything has come very much at once here. We are only one generation back from the time when many people didn't have bathrooms. In the early days there was a little station where you crossed the railroad track and we were able to put up our hand and stop a train and go to Boston. Trains ran several times a day and there was a very close connection with Boston.
And to me there is something romantic, which is what I always like, about the Hudson Vannah farm. If you take the first curve to the left you will see beside the house a graveyard with four elms around it. It is the grave of a ship's captain. Not many people from Nobleboro went to sea. Anyway, this man went to Waldoboro and went to sea and became a captain, as most of them did, when he was 19 or 20. He was coming back from China and his ship had been sighted. His young fiancee had been told that he would land the next day in Boston and a storm came up and his vessel was wrecked on, I think, the Peaked Hills Bar, off Cape Cod. My husband knew just where the wreck took place.
I remember one day the old woman, the aunt of the man who now owns the farm, told how as a child she remembered the rain slashing at the windows and a telegram coming for her father. Her brother’s body had come ashore on the Cape and her father was to go down and get it. And she remembered the bringing back of the body. It’s one of the few graves that I have seen around here that has a ship on it. It has a ship under full sail — of course it should be with all the sails down — but it is under full sail among the graves. Miss Vannah remembered it. She told us about that 20 or 25 years ago and she must have been about 70 and this took place in her childhood.
We are in Lincoln County. It was named for General Benjamin Lincoln. A member of the Lincoln family, that would have been a great-uncle or great-great-uncle of Abraham Lincoln, walked with the Indians from Cohaseet which is in Massachusetts on the south shore to the mill on the way to Bunker Hill here. He settled there when he was a boy. He was a carpenter and he built many of the houses in Damariscotta Mills.
The Lincoln family was interested in bog iron and they moved down to Pennsylvania and then followed it on down to Kentucky. Once Henry and I were down there and we saw the Lincoln home, which was open. There were pictures that had belonged to Abraham Lincoln. Let's see — his father was Thomas and his grandfather was killed in the field by an Indian. This was his great-grandfather and mother's house. It was quite a stately mansion. There was nothing poor white about it. Anyway, there were very early daguerreotypes of Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln. If she wasn't an Indian, I don't know what she was. It was Daniel Webster whose grandmother was supposed to have been an Indian, and I like to think that Abraham Lincoln and Webster got their power of expression from the Indian side of their family.
I was born in Buffalo. My father's family came to America from England, the county of Durham, a dale among the moors, perfectly beautiful. They had been tenant farmers there for hundreds of years. My mother's father was Adam Reid. When he was 21 he asked his Edinburgh father for a latchkey, and his father said, "Never," and he bought a ticket on the next boat and came over to Canada. Buffalo, of course, is a great pull for Canadians, or used to be, because the business prospects were so much better. He came on into Buffalo from Toronto, and that's how my mother and father met.
My father was always a Republican. I'm down as a Republican here — and I usually vote Democrat. In the old days one of our friends, Jake Day, an artist in Damariscotta, who was the man that my husband was visiting when he saw this place and fell in love with it, used to tell how he went to the Damariscotta Fair as a boy. (It was still running when we first came here; it was a charming thing.) And Jake's father used to point out a man as though he were pointing out a giraffe and he'd say, "That's a Democrat." Of course you know the state is largely Democratic now. That's one of the great changes.
I know more about politics now than I used to. I am primarily a poet and a writer for children. Such people live in a nutshell, in a small painted world. Only by accident do I look out the windows and see.
My daughters — one of them lives in southern California around Los Angeles and the other in Anchorage, Alaska — have four sons each. I think their children are going to have a very different life. They have grown up like amoeba. I think they will take the future changes no harder than I have taken my changes. I, too, have lived through two major wars and a depression and the rest and I'm sure that they will live through what is coming to them with probably no more shock than I have.