Murdock and the old Indian made their way to the nearby riverbank and found a comfortable spot to sit while they continued their conversation.
“I could sit here all day just watching the river,” Murdock said.
“I’ve done that before, much to my wife’s chagrin,” the Indian joked. “Course I had a fishing pole in my hand at the time.”
Murdock laughed and said, “I hope to follow in your footsteps, plus take advantage of all that this river has to offer. Although, this spot is so peaceful I think I could sit here all day just doing nothing. There’s something about this river that is mesmerizing.”
“That there is,” the old man said. “In fact, I’ve felt that way about the Penobscot since I don’t know when.”
The meandering Penobscot, Maine’s largest and most famous waterway—known mostly for bountiful schools of spawning Atlantic Salmon; for large black bears and enormous moose that frequent its banks; and for graceful American Bald Eagles that soar high above it—begins its journey more than two-hundred miles north of Bangor, and then, only twenty miles south of that city, empties peacefully into the thirty-mile-long Penobscot Bay, a tiny portion of the vast Atlantic which sports some of the most inspiring coastal scenes in America, or, as Mainers like to think, in any other part of the world.
Along the way, the Penobscot passes quietly through many towns, large and small, before making its way to Bangor. In Bangor the peaceful Penobscot momentarily digresses from its mostly southward journey to flow southwest along the edge of the city, separating Murdock’s new hometown from Brewer: its twin city on the east. Beyond Bangor the river continues its journey southward to the Penobscot Bay, which in those days was well known for having numerous commercial shipping ports and as being the home of tiny coastal shipbuilding towns like Belfast and Searsport.
In the mid-1800s to early-1900s the Penobscot River was often filled with ships and barges of all sizes used to carry mainly wood or wood-related products to the aforementioned ports; to numerous other New England ports for eventual shipment to the rest of the continental United States; and, indeed, even to foreign ports throughout the rest of the industrialized world. As fate would have it, Murdock Haley was destined to be one of the many men who labored on the banks of the Penobscot, loading products onto those ships and barges, and onto the many freight trains and wagons that also visited the station where he would soon work.
Many of those products were manufactured in the thriving city of Bangor: a city that at that time was known as ‘the Lumber Capital of the World’, and one that was thought to be well on its way to becoming as vital to the growth of the still young United States as any city within its borders, thanks in large part to the industrious lumberjacks who were seen as the vital first cog in the wood trade.
—1—
As a kid, Murdock had read fantastic stories of legendary lumberjack Paul Bunyan, and heard from Canadians returning from the yearly log drives that Bunyan was indeed as real as real could be and that he was born and raised in Bangor. Not knowing if they were being truthful or were just pulling his leg—he suspected the latter—Murdock quizzed the old Indian about that.
“Tell me what you know about Paul Bunyan,” he said. “Was he real or just a figment of some writer’s imagination?”
“Oh, he was real all right,” the Indian replied. “The things they wrote about him may have been a mite exaggerated, but according to my father they didn’t need to be. He was an impressive man in his own right.”
“Your father knew him?” Murdock queried.
“Oh yes, he told me manys-ah-story about ole Paul. He was a giant of a man who could do the work of three lumberjacks. My father said he never knew anyone who could put away the food that ole Paul could. He was over 250 pounds and stood six-foot-and-ah-half. My grandfather knew his parents, and they told him Paul was twelve pounds and over twenty inches at birth, with huge hands and feet. He headed out west when the lumberjack trade slowed down here—to Michigan and Minnesota, I believe.
“They say he didn’t want to leave Maine, but when push came to shove ole Paul had no choice if he wanted to keep making a living as a lumberjack.”
Murdock couldn’t believe that Paul Bunyan was actually real.
“What about his blue ox?” he joked.
“Well, he had an ox, but I doubt it was blue,” the Indian quipped. “Unless he painted it. I’ve heard tell of blue grass in Kentucky, but a blue ox in Maine is a little more than even I can swallow.”
Murdock and the old Indian laughed.
“It’s hard to imagine a man like him,” Murdock said.
“Sure is,” the Indian agreed. “Even so, as strong and as skilled as Paul was, the other lumberjacks and rivermen in this area are no slouches either. As far as I know, they’re unrivaled anywhere.”
—2—
Bangor’s illustrious reputation as ‘the Lumber Capital of the World’ was well-earned thanks to the many hard-working lumberjacks and daring rivermen who toiled along the Penobscot. For it was the former who, during the winter months, felled, trimmed and hauled large trees to the frozen river as logs; and, once there, it was the latter who drove and steered those logs downstream when the inevitable spring thaw permitted. Hence, their unique name: ‘river-drivers’. Though in reality the real log-driver was the Penobscot River, the fearless river-drivers were often required to give the mighty river just a little, albeit crucial assistance, especially during the first leg of the drive down the fast-moving river, when the giant logs were nothing but a massive free-floating mess that more often than not became jammed at its narrower parts, requiring the muscular river-drivers to skillfully break up the jam; although, skill often had to be thrown out the window in favor of brute force.
As a result of those jams, many courageous or some might even say foolhardy men died from accidental drowning, or from being crushed between massive logs when they fell into the water during the April-May drives, usually while trying to clear a jam, an everyday occurrence among the brave river-drivers. Consequently, their feats became legendary, and the locals often gave them names to reflect those feats. The best-of-the-best of those courageous rivermen were aptly called the “Bangor Tigers”, partly to acknowledge their base of operation, but mainly because of their aggressive nature when it came to driving logs down the sometimes-unforgiving river.
Further downstream, on the next leg of the drive, the river-drivers had it much easier because the logs were of necessity separated according to an owner’s identification mark that was branded into each log—similar to the way cowboys of the Old West branded cattle—and then chained together as gigantic log rafts, to make it the rest of the way down to mills located a few miles upstream from Bangor: in towns like Old Town, Orono, and Veazie on the west side; or Milford, Bradley, and Eddington on the east side. After being processed at either pulp or saw mills, the wood products once again made their way to the Bangor Freight Station where they were loaded onto trains or ships, or occasionally onto a wagon, in the case of a short overland shipment.
—3—
In addition to the shipment of wood products, there were also shipments of complimentary items, such as saws, axes, splitters, woodstoves and furnaces; as well as other items like iceboxes and refrigerators, tin products, leather goods, bricks, and a multitude of other useful products. Given the vitality of the area, it was no wonder in those days that Bangor was a haven for daring entrepreneurs. There were businesses started almost daily to take advantage of the area’s ‘wood bonanza’; and Brewer, the rival city across the river from Bangor, had its share of good fortune too, with many companies—like shipbuilders and paper mills—likewise prospering. But wood wasn’t the only river related product that Bangor was known for, because ice that was chopped from the frozen parts of the Penobscot River and Kenduskeag Stream during the winter months, and then shipped to all parts of the globe, had the reputation of being the purist ice in the world, and thus was in high demand. And that reputation was likely one of the reasons the manufacture of iceboxes and refrigerators in the foundries of Bangor was also so lucrative.
With all the products to be shipped, at times the Penobscot was filled with so many ships that one could almost walk from Bangor to Brewer on their decks; and when the old Indian told that to Murdock, the Canadian had trouble believing it.
“That seems like a stretch,” he said.
“Maybe a little, but not much,” the Indian replied. “In fact, when I was a kid—maybe 11 or 12—I decided to test that theory, so I hopped on the ship closest to shore and made my way to the other side of it.
“One of the crew asked me what I thought I was doing, and I told him I heard you could get to Brewer by walking on the decks of visiting ships and that I planned to do it.
“Well, he laughed and yelled to the ships next to him that a young Indian lad wanted to walk across the ships in order to get to Brewer.
“‘I hope the lad has long legs,’ someone yelled back.
“Anyway, everyone thought my idea was hilarious and they wanted to see if it could be done, so they decided to help me. Some of the ships were close enough that I could leap from one to the other, but many were not, so the crew jury-rigged swing ropes or boardwalks for me. It took about a half-hour, but I actually did it.”
“Weren’t most of the boats moving?” Murdock asked.
“Oh yes,” the Indian said, “except the ones docked on the sides of the river; and the smaller ones temporarily docked to the docked boats. Even the ships that weren’t docked needed to navigate very slowly, so crossing them wasn’t that hard. Others agreed to slow up and some almost stopped to let me cross. Anyway, that’s why it took me a half-hour to cross over.”
“Well, I’ll be,” Murdock said. “I was quite daring as a youngster, but nowhere near that daring.”
—4—
As one might expect, because of the noted ‘wood bonanza’ there was no shortage of work in Bangor and surrounding areas; and there was no shortage of employment companies to help young men and women find that work. Many of them were located in the impressive three-story Exchange Building, which sat on the corner of State and Exchange. That was Murdock’s original destination on his first day in Bangor, but after spending over an hour talking to the amiable old Indian it was going on noon and he decided to get something to eat before heading there.
“Can you tell me where I can get a bite to eat?” he queried the old Indian. “Someplace within walking distance, and not too hard on the wallet.”
“I hear tell Judy’s restaurant is about as good as it gets on this side of town.”
“Thanks,” Murdock said. “Where might that be?”
“Well, if I were a wise-acre, I could tell you that it might be anywhere. But since my ma didn’t raise me that way, it’s on the corner of State and Essex Street.”
“How might I get there?” Murdock asked.
“Just cross Washington, take a right, and keep ah’goin’ until you run into Hancock. Turn left onto Hancock, and then take the first street on the right—that’s Essex Street. Take Essex past York, and you’ll come to State Street. Judy’s is this side of State, sitting to the left of Essex.”
“Sounds easy enough,” Murdock said, and then he thanked the old Indian for his hospitality before heading to Judy’s.
Murdock was already on the other side of Washington when it occurred to him that he didn’t catch the old Indian’s name. He turned to go back, but the old gent was nowhere to be seen.
“Didn’t take him long to hightail it,” he thought.
Just then he noticed an eagle flying up the river.
“Must be the eagle that tailed us all the way from Bar Harbor,” he speculated; and then he turned and headed to Judy’s once again, mindfully following the old man’s directions.
Within a few minutes the hungry Canadian was walking through the door of a small, nearly-full, family-style restaurant. After ordering a grilled cheese sandwich and a glass of milk, he spent over a half-hour eating, occasionally joking with his congenial waitress. Before leaving, he asked her help.
“Can you point me in the direction of Exchange Street, Sarah?”
“Sure thing, handsome. When you get outside just take a left and follow State Street past Pine ‘til you come to Oak and Broadway. Oak’s on the left and Broadway’s on the right. Exchange is at the bottom of a steep hill, just a block or two past those streets. Just what are you looking for, if I ain’t bein’ too nosy?”
“The Exchange Building,” Murdock replied.
“Oh, no problem then; even Mayor Chapin could find it,” she joked. “It’s right at the corner of State and Exchange, on this side of State and on this side of Exchange.”