One of FSM’s friends spent much of her childhood in Greenville, Maine as a young girl in the 1940s. Our friend was kind enough to share some stories with us. Here is an excerpt about a winter trip to Moosehead Lake.
Dear Mary,
I bet you’ll have an Easter egg hunt this Easter. I want to tell you about one I had when I was ten years old. It was not Easter, but April. I had been invited to spend a few days with a friend at their camp—just three of us girls. We rode to Lily Bay with the mailman, who also had a lot of food to take to a logging camp up that way. We met a logging truck on a curve just as we hit a patch of ice causing us to slide into a snow bank. The truck tipped onto its side, but we were not hurt, only shaken up. Walter, our driver, was able to open his door and help us climb out into the soft, deep snow. Everything had fallen out of the truck—big sides of beef, heads of cabbage, and 57 dozen eggs, as well as the mail enclosed in four large bags. The logging truck had not seen our mishap, so had gone on.
Walter told us we would have to help him. Somehow we got the truck back right side up. The old trucks were not heavy, so we could push and Walter was strong. He did tell us to be careful as we struggled with the large pieces of beef and veggies. The mail was okay in the bags, but the eggs? They had fallen out of the cartons and had to be found!
It was some hunt to find as many eggs as we could. The snow was soft and deep and we formed a line, moving together as we dug for eggs. Many were close together and unbroken, but others had been tossed about as the truck rolled onto its side. We found 30 dozen easily, but it was harder finding the next 27 dozen. We looked at each hole in the snow as we spread out hunting. It was not a cold day and we were dressed warmly. It was not a bad time for us girls, but Walter knew the loggers and the cook needed those eggs. We had their food for a week!
We spent quite a lot of time hunting and placing the eggs in unbroken cartons as we found them. Would you believe we found only a few broken eggs? We knew that from the shells and yellow snow. We had spent most of that morning looking, and no car had passed. Walter stopped at Lily Bay to let us out and then went on to meet a man with a sled and horse to take the food to their camp. We knew we had missed finding a little over a dozen eggs in all that snow! It was a great camping trip.
Read the rest of the story here.
