Rachel MacKay interviewed by Richard Ade - February 23, 2001

• MacKay, Rachel

Richard Ade Interviews

THE DAY IS FEBRUARY 23, 2001. RACHEL MACKAY.

WHERE WERE YOU BORN?

Where or when?

AH, WHERE AND WHEN.

I was born May 30, 1931 and I was born in Denmark, Maine.

HOW MANY WERE IN YOUR FAMILY?

I had two brothers, a sister and myself.

WHAT WERE THE OCCPUPATIONS OF YOUR PARENTS?

Well, at the time I was born, my parents owned a farm…a very small farm that they got their living from. My father would go and work in the woods in the winter time and off season. When I was five, we moved here to Bethel.

WHAT WAS LIFE LIKE?

In Fryeburg?

YES.

Well, we were on a farm that was back on Route 302. That was the route that went from Fryeburg to Bridgetown. We were back about four miles off of that. At that time, there was no electricity, no indoor plumbing. Not even any indoor water. They got…no, they had indoor water but no way to heat it at all. Of course, no refrigeration. There was a pond in back and sometimes they would cut ice from that to have refrigeration in an ice box in the summer. But, no central heating system. They heated all with wood stoves. Some rooms were cold in the winter.

DO YOU HAVE ANY MEMORIES OF YOUR RELATIVES..YOUR GRANDPARENTS?

Oh yes. Well, I knew my grandparents. My Grandfather Richardson died when I was about five and I really don’t remember him much at all. My grandparents…My Brown grandparents, I knew them and they lived with us at one time for a little while.

WHAT WERE SOME OF YOUR EARLIEST MEMORIES?

I remember a number of things on the farm. We did leave there when I was five. One memory I remember very definitely from there…well, sometimes you don’t remember it but you remember being told about it, I think, but….a cow had a new calf and the calf was in the back yard and I was so excited that I ran out to see it. Well, at that time when you opened a can of baking powder, there is a raw edge. Well, I stepped on that raw edge and cut the arch of my foot in a long cut. It bled badly. I remember that. That was well before I was five.

WHAT WERE YOUR MOST EARLY INFLUENCES?

Probably, my brothers and sisters. I had a brother who was 16; one that was 14 and a sister that was 12 when I was born. So, they were like having another whole set of parents. They were always wonderful to me. They were my early influences.

WHERE DID YOU FIRST GO TO SCHOOL?

Right here in town at the Ethel Bisbee school that’s now the adult ed center…not adult ed…but continued education or something.

HOW LONG WERE YOU THERE?

That was primary through fourth grade. Then we went to grammar school which is now the empty lot by Gould where they are going to build the science building. Then I went from there to Gould Academy.

DID YOU GO TO COLLEGE?

No, I didn’t.

DESCRIBE YOUR SCHOOLS AND TEACHERS.

Well, as I said, I went to Ethel Bisbee and the first teacher was a Mrs. Bisbee. She taught sub-primary and first grade in one room. Then the second grade was Mrs. Clough at that time. When I was in the third grade the teachers all went to a teacher’s convention and they had a bad accident. The woman who was teaching third grade had to be replaced for the year, so I had a different teacher, Mrs. Howe. Then I has Ms. Ballard who taught here for years and years and years. Then, at grammar school, we rotated through the four grades at grammar school so you had all four teachers that were there. I had the same teacher for 7th and 8th grade. She did both grades.

WERE THERE ANY SPECIAL MEMORIES OF YOUR SCHOOLS?

Oh, a lot of good memories, actually, all the way through. Not bad memories at all. At that time you had 8th grade graduation which was a big event because you put on a play or something for the evening. That was a lot of work. We spent months on getting that ready before graduating in June. That was a lot of fun. This was war years, you see. We went to a farm, one time, which is on an island. The farm has a whole area that is an island here in the Adroscoggin. We picked milk weed pods and took all the fluff out of them, you know. Supposedly, they were sent to the army to fill Air Force jackets for insulation. Whether it ever happened or not, I don’t know. We got bags and bags and bags of that fluff that we took back and sent out. That was fun. We went on a truck high up off the water to cross the Adroscoggin onto the island. That was fun.

DID YOU HAVE ANY SPORTS OR HOBBIES DURING THIS TIME?

Yes. I grew up living over a store. Our store was Brown’s Variety Store that was on Main Street right across from where the Victoria is. Right on the corner of Spring and Main Street. I lived…my family lived upstairs and we ran the store downstairs. So, anytime that I wasn’t doing other things, I was in the store. So, from the time I was very young, I started selling candy and things like that in the store. This was a good area to be in. Everything was right around you, you know. I could walk to school in all directions. That was a nice area to be. I did grow up in the store a lot, after school and so forth. I was very active in 4-H all through growing up. When I got into high school, I continued along..I did a great deal with home economic type of things and camera club. I did a lot in camera club. I was in the choruses for singing and stuff. I did not play an instrument or anything. We had a lot of gym and modern dance things and I was in those. At the time that I was going to high school, they had a lot of teas…and usually the home economic department was in charge of doing the teas and working with the headmaster’s wife and so forth to set the teas up and everything. When you had a tea at that time you dressed up in fancy clothes. You wore hats. You wore gloves. You wore bags that matched. I guess that was kind of different. I guess they’re getting back to trying to be a little more dressed up once in a while like that. But, there’s been a whole period when it wasn’t. That was a lot of fun. You went all dressed up.

WHAT DID YOU LIKE MOST ABOUT GROWING UP?

Well, there were a lot of good things. I made a lot of nice friends. At the time I was growing up, they had a community room. Where the fire station is now, there was a big building. It was a fire station and up over it and to one side there used to be a store. So, the town bought part of that and had a recreation place there for youths. As long as someone would go and sit and chaperone…some parent or somebody you knew, you could go there anytime. They had a couple of ping pong tables and a juke box that they rigged up so you didn’t have to put any money in it. We would go in and play the juke box. We had some parents that were just wonderful. They would come..the wife would come and just sit and knit so everybody could be there on certain nights. That was nice.

WHAT WAS THE LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT GROWING UP?

Well, my least favorite thing was a long time ago. I was slowly learning to read and I hated have to stand up and read in class when I was like in first or second grade. You know, you’d have to stand up and read in front of the class. I hated that. And, I guess no teacher realized how bad I hated it until I was about in sixth grade and by then, we were having spelling bees. Well, if you can’t read easily, you can’t spell easily, either. At least I couldn’t. So, this particular teacher was real sweet and she’d try to give me words that she figured I could spell…but that was something that was hard in school. I was good in math. Once I got to having math things, everything fell into place quite nicely then. But, spelling and reading were hard.

HOW MUCH DID YOU EARN WHEN YOU FIRST WENT TO WORK?

Well, when I first went to work, I worked for my folks, running a store, selling things. Then, I went to work…I sold popcorn and candy at the theater. We had a big theater here at that time. Then, what used to be the theater is now the Bethel House down here, you may know that. So, at that time, I wasn’t earning a lot. Then, I went to selling tickets for the theater. It was very minor when I first started working. Then, when I got out of school, I still continued working in the store…I can’t think of what I really did earn. It was not a very big amount, that’s for sure.

WHERE ELSE DID YOU WORK?

Well, when I got done working at Brown’s Variety Store, I was married and had started having children and I didn’t go back to work until..what is now the real estate agency right there, they had a gift shop in the front and a fabric shop in the back. I managed the fabric shop for about four or five years. Then I went to work at the IGA. I still work there one day a week now. I used to work regular hours there, but now I go in one day a week. I was bookkeeper the last number of years and when the woman took over for me, I still go back in one day a week and work so she has a day off. So, I still work a little, but not much.

HOW DID YOU LIKE THE VARIOUS JOBS YOU HAD?

I liked them very much. It’s the type of thing I like to do. I like to be with people. I like waiting and serving people. I like doing things for people, I guess is what I should say. So, I enjoy store work.

WHAT WERE SOME OF YOUR WORST WORK EXPERIENCES?

I got robbed one day …shoplifting. That was horrible. I was alone in this building down here and I was closing up when these three young men came in as I was getting ready to close. I should have just locked the door and said I was closed. But, I let them come in and pretty soon I realized that one of the men was filling up his ski jacket with stuff. And, what could I do about it? There were two other men there…there were three of them. I just had to let it go. After they left, I couldn’t even see the vehicle. I did get so upset about it that I probably couldn’t have read the number plate anyway, had I seen it. I was so upset. Then I had to go and call the authorities. They couldn’t do anything about it. There are so many finger prints on things in stores where everybody touches things…fingerprinting would not have done any good. There just wasn’t anything I could do about it. It was very upsetting.

WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER OF SOME OF THE GREAT EVENTS OF THE 20TH CENTURY?

Well, of course the war. Back when I was, well, actually, we saw on news reels and heard on the radio about them invading Poland and we saw on the news reel about all these bombs being dropped and children running and all this type of thing. And, my being that age, I was eight or nine, I was terrified of that. I remember distinctly what I was doing when Pearl Harbor was bombed and it came in over the radio. You remember those things when you are little, but you don’t ask or talk about them. At least we didn’t, at that age. You just get frightened about it. And so, that was very frightening and it was hard to have my brother go off in the service and a lot of men that I knew..young men that I knew were in the service. They were all a great deal older than me..but you still were very concerned about that. My mother was so upset with having another war going on that you feel bad about that. The war was a difficult thing, even on young people, even if we weren’t involved in it. You still felt bad for the people that were.

WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER ABOUT THE GREAT DEPRESSION?

I was not alive during that time. Well, I was born during the depression and I know that my oldest brother who was 17 had tied with another boy from Fryeburg for a scholarship from Fryeburg Academy. The other boy got it and my folks couldn’t send him. Course, he couldn’t imagine why my folks were going to have another baby when they couldn’t send him to college.

WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER ABOUT THE 1950’S?

Oh yes. The ‘50’s were good.

WHAT PRESIDENT DID YOU LIKE BEST?

Oh, that’s a hard one to say. I guess I felt pretty good about Truman. I liked Eisenhower in those times. I guess probably that would be what I would have to say.

WHO WAS YOUR LEAST FAVORITE PRESIDENT?

I’m not too fond of Clinton, with all the business he’s done. So, I guess I’ll put him on the least list. Can’t be too proud of him, I’m afraid.

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE MOST IMPORTANT CHANGES YOU HAVE NOTED IN YOUR LIFETIME?

There are so many. Everything has changed. We have gone from no electricity to electricity and from having very little refrigeration to refrigerators. I can remember the first frozen food that ever came out. I was in Boston when I saw the first t.v. Cars have improved. There are just so many things. Airplanes. Computers. All the things we now take for granted but everybody has to have. It’s all pretty new.

WHAT ARE SOME CHANGES THAT ARE MOST IMPORTANT TO YOU?

Well, my feeling is that we and our children are so much better off than my family was. So, I just feel that is a very important thing. We had a home much quicker than my parents had. Perhaps it’s a nicer home and so forth and so on. My children all went to college. These are the important things to me..that they’ve had this opportunity that maybe back along they would not have had.

WHAT DO YOU THINK WERE THE BEST CHANGES?

Certainly, electricity was a real good change. That did a lot of things in a lot of ways. Other things changed. Some of them were good and some of them were bad. Some improved a great deal of things but others make things kind of hectic, so. But, you’d hate to give up any of them probably now.

WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER THE MOST UNFORTUNATE CHANGE?

Well, the amount of weapons and capability for weapons is amazing. It’s the most awful change we have. That’s very bad.

DID YOU MARRY?

Yes, in 1952.

HOW DID YOU MEET YOUR HUSBAND?

My husband came from northern Maine and he came here to work at the bowling alley. There was a bowling alley here at that time. I lived next door and that’s how we met.

DESCRIBE WHERE YOU LIVED AFTER YOU GOT MARRIED?

We lived in an apartment building that’s also torn down. All three of those buildings…the bowling alley burned down. Brown’s Variety Store burned down. But, before that, they had torn down what used to be a Grange Hall that was on Spring Street. It had six apartments in it. We lived on the third floor for the first five years we were married.

WHAT WAS THE OCCUPATION OF YOUR HUSBAND?

Well, at that time he was an electrician. He went to trade school in Boston to be an electrician.

DID HE HAVE ANY HOBBIES?

Well, a lot of work related hobbies. He’s a tinkerer. He tinkers with automobiles. Puts in plumbing. Puts in electricity. Builds anything he wants to build.

WHAT ARE SOME OF HIS LIKES?

Well, he loved to ice skate. Loves to swim. Loves kids. That’s a good thing.

ANY DISLIKES?

Well, yes, probably a lot of dislikes. You’re going to interview him next week. They’sve asked him to come to. Probably he dislikes people not knowing things. I think he likes to have people know what they are doing. A lot of people kind of annoy him maybe when they don’t know what they’re doing but pretend they do or do a lot of talking about the right way to do it and they don’t do it. That may be one thing he dislikes.

DO YOU HAVE ANY CHILDREN?

Yes, we have four children.

CAN YOU DESCRIBE THEM?

Well, our oldest daughter Susan is Mrs. Parker at Telstar. Do you know her? She’s our oldest daughter. Her husband Scott teaches there, too. Scott Parker. She went to college. She went two years to Orono and then she and Scott were married and they went to Germany for four years because he was in the military. Then, when they came back, he was assigned to the University of Southern Maine as an ROTC instructor, so she went back and finished her college there and got her B.S. there. While they were living in Texas at one time, she got her masters in psychology down there. They have two children. Two boys. Our next child is a son and he graduated from Telstar and went on to Williams College and he went for three years. He was very active in the competitive skiing and the cross country skiing. Then, from there, he volunteers for the National Labor Federation. He was first in California. Now he’s in New York City. He’s a volunteer. Then, there’s our next daughter, Sandra. She graduated from Telstar and the University of Maine and then went on to get her masters and is now working on her doctorate at …she got her masters at St. Rosa’s in New York State and has taught in New York State for a number of years and now has two sons and twin daughters who are three. She’s at home now. She recently moved to Wells, Maine. Her husband is an electrical engineer. A nuclear engineer with the shipyard down there. My youngest daughter Mary is married. She graduated from Telstar and went to Farmington and didn’t graduate. She has one year left to do in Connecticut. A branch of U Conn. She’s married and has two boys and she’s with Filenes Department Store as a trainee down there in Hartford.

HOW LONG HAVE YOU LIVED IN THE BETHEL AREA?

Ever since I was five.

WHAT DO YOU LIKE ABOUT THIS AREA?

Well, it’s home. If you’ve lived here all your life, why, that’s what you like about it. I never ceased loving to come down into town and look out at the mountains and so forth. I love the area. I love Mt. Washington. I guess it’s the mountains. And the people. We have good people.

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE DISADVANTAGES OF LIVING HERE?

Well, the disadvantages are being away from stuff. You have to drive somewhere to do much of anything. That’s a disadvantage.

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE CHANGED?

Hmmm. Well, I don’t know. I guess I can’t think of anything. I’ll think about that and see if I come up with anything.

WHAT WOULD YOU WANT TO HAVE REMAIN THE SAME?

Well, I guess if I can’t say to change too much then I guess I want things to remain about the same, I guess. It would be nice to have more things available for young people to do that didn’t cost a terrific amount. That has been a problem for Bethel forever. All the time my children were growing up, that was true. And, it is true right now, too. Anything you want to do will cost a lot of money most of the time, right? Yes.

WHO WAS THE MOST UNFORGETTABLE CHARACTER?

Well, I’ve met a lot of unforgettable characters. I had a man that…my folks took in borders upstairs at the store where we had a very large apartment. So, at times, my folks or my sister took in borders. We had this man…Jack Matheson that lived off and on with us for a long time. He had come down…he was an alien. He was from Canada. He never did get naturalized. So, he never did go back to Canada. He was always afraid if he went back they would keep him. So, he came here and worked in the woods and stuff. He was quite an influence on my younger days. He was a very nice guy. A lot of people that I have had things to do with….my 4-H leader when I was young put in a lot of time with us. She was a lovely person. One of the ladies of the church was very nice to me and encouraged me to be her assistant teacher. That meant a lot to me at that age to be accepted and do something like that. There were a lot of people who were influential and unforgettable and so forth.

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR COMMUNITY SERVICE ACTIVITIES?

Well, I have been a Brownie Leader for a number of years. I was a 4-H leader for many years. I’ve done adult education. I have people that I take grocery shopping who are not able to get out of the house. I take people to the doctor’s office that have no transportation at all. One lady is 90. It’s rather necessary. That’s what I do now for most things. I don’t do as many things outside as much as I used to. I taught Sunday school for years and years and years.

HOW ARE YOU CONNECTED WITH THE BETHEL HISTORICAL SOCIETY?

I’m not very connected with the Bethel Historical Society. My husband has lately been helping with lining up the electrical part of this building. But, no I haven’t been very active in it.

WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER SOME OF YOUR MOST IMPORTANT DECISIONS?

I don’t know as I’m one that just makes decisions. The kinds of things I decide just come around, I guess. I don’t know. I can’t think of any. The fact that I got married was a very nice decision. Buying the house we now have and have had for a long time was a nice decision. But, I’m not sure I made it any more than my husband did.

WHAT ADVICE DO YOU THINK MOST IMPORTANT TO PROVIDE A YOUNG PERSON BASED ON YOUR EXPERIENCES?

Most important? Well, one thing I found when my children were going through high school, was that they felt very bad they didn’t know what they wanted to be for the rest of their life. You know, I’ve got to go to college. What am I going to study? I just said to them, and I feel it very strongly, that if you grow up in just one place, like they have, how can you chose? There are so many things to chose from, how do you know what you want to be? You’ve got to go ahead and try some things and see the outside world to see what you want to be. If you don’t have an inkling, why, that’s not a big deal. Try it out and you’ll find something you like. I think that is important. We lived very sheltered, compared to…

WHAT DO YOU THINK THE FUTURE OF THE 21ST CENTURY WILL BE LIKE?

Well, more electronic and more electronic, I guess. We will be very fortunate if we aren’t in more war than we are. It seems to me that the haves and the have nots have gotten farther apart. There seems to be people that have more money and people that have less money. It’s too bad. It’s too bad it can’t get equalled out a little bit.

DO YOU SEE A BRIGHT FUTURE FOR THE BETHEL AREA?

Better than it was at one time. We had a low period as far as I’m concerned, so I feel that we have lost a lot of our industry, that’s for sure. The recreation part of it has grown a lot. Gould has come back up from being low after it split up. I’m sorry we don’t have the town’s kids still going to Gould. But, that’s not anything that can be changed at all. I think Bethel is going to be alright.

DO YOU HAVE ANY HUMOUROUS STORIES?

You’re putting me on the spot here. I can’t think of any right now.

MOST MEMORABLE EXPERIENCE?

We took trip to Italy when Susan and her family were in Italy. We had a fabulous time. We were in Venice and Rome and Florence. We had a wonderful time. We have traveled more because of them being in the service, we traveled more than we would have if they hadn’t been. That was the high light. We’ve also been south a number of times because of them. Texas, Florida, Louisiana. The trip to Italy was definitely memorable.

DO YOU HAVE A WORST MEMORY?

Well, I’ve lost my mother, my father, two brothers. Those are all bad memories. Some real bad friends, of course. So, there are a few. I also had a still born baby. That’s a bad memory.