My dad and mom purchased our camp on beautiful Meddybemps Lake Maine in 1946. They bought our camp (what cottages are called in downeast Maine) from "Donkey" Smith of Calais. There was just our camp and Tommy Denyer's cottage next to Reynolds Beach. Dad painted our place "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 camp out in his field just 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 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. 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. I enjoyed seeing Howard Allen there and I'd sometimes visit him at his nearby house. I hung around with Mark Ketchum, Jeff Orchard, Dale Sherrard, Johnny Hanson, Roger Holst , Jon Mahar and a few others. Sometimes, mom would have me run errands.
I'd sometimes go to the post office which was just a short walk from there 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 glimpse of his pretty daughters, Nancy and Frannie. Later the PO moved further down Route 191 and Lottie's store was closed. I can still remember all the baskets hanging there and the distinct smell of sweetgrass from those indian baskets. Palmeter, s store remains as a friendly part of past days on the lake. After my chores, I would head back to the dock right past the little white church, a bubbling brook and back to my boat. 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 Keneap had a hydroplace too but his was much faster than mine. Another one was owned by Ronnie Denyer.
Since we only had one car in those days, dad would bring bags of groceries that he purchased at Coulter's store in Woodland after work. 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 Todds Hardware but there was also a 5&10, W T Grants, Woolworth's, Fishman's, Bernadini's Peanuts (they had large hot peanuts and cashews that were greasy in the brown sack), Downeast TV and a few other places we liked to go. Those peanuts were so good, they rarely made it all the way back to camp. We ate them. Sometimes dad would take mom, me and my sisters to the St Croix Valley Drive-In Theatre. I can remember we always burnt a circular green smudge wick on the car dash. The were so many mosquitoes and black flies.
In those days, the speakers were on a pole. You put it in the window. This was before you could tune into a special frequency on the radio. 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. Ever since the state theatre burned down, Calais was without a movie house. The last movie played there was "A hot tin roof". How ironic. It was a good life when life was 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 tenants 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 every day. Those thunder and lightning storms at the lake were memorable. Bolts of lightning would hit the lake with load noise, white caps streamed down the lake. It was quite a sight. Once, I remember a bolt of lightning came in the window and bounced off the black kitchen stove. A few of the campers were scared but it was exciting just the same to me.
Meddybemps Lake attracted a lot of people from Maine and other eastern states. The lake is quite large being 8 miles long, 7 miles wide with fifty-two islands. Some had nick-named it Calendar lake for this reason.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 or two through the years and had to fix the outboard motor numerous 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 and measured the length of our catch. Dad liked to go fishing after work and we'd generally have a fish fry 2 or 3 nights a week. We'd fry, bake and barbecue them.
I had the honor of filleting and cleaning the perch, bass and pickerel on occasion. 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. They were good on cereal or in a large bowl with whipped cream. At the end of summer, this part of Maine had fields of blueberries to rake and be winnowed and then sent to Stewart's or Wyman's 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.
On Lake Meddybemps, we had the best sunsets too. We enjoyed many of them from our front screened porch.The sky was pitch black at night and you could see every star in the sky. Eventually I had a telescope on the porch but I must admit, it pointed at the beach on some occasions. We rode bikes on the camp road and had some baseball games in Reynold's field. Tommy Denyer each summer would get bunnies to raise from the rabbit man in Charlotte. Nelson Craig would let Tommy keep them in cages in his back camp yard and then take them back at the end of the summer. We children enjoyed those bunnies. They were all different colors. Grey, black, mixed and white.
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 pleasant 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 doesn't stand still. However, I still proposed to my wife on that beach under a starry 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.
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