Heather Spurling of the Islesford School interviewed her grandfather, longtime Islesford columnist Capt. Ted Spurling Sr., for a sixth-grade history project during the spring of 2003. Following is a portion of her interview.
Were there many people in school here when you were younger?
Not what you could call many, but more than there are now. The average in the whole school during my school years (1927-1936) would probably have been about 24 each year. The Coast Guard Station was active here then and that added more. And more folks lived here year-round.
What was there on Islesford when you were a kid that isn’t here now, or what is there here now that wasn’t here before?
There were five small farms in my youth with about twelve cows, one horse, lots of chickens and ducks and a few pigs total in all. Many folks had vegetable gardens too, of their own. Apple trees, rhubarb patches and fish flakes, where they dried salt fish. Fish and potatoes was a very popular dish then and baked beans every Saturday night. No “store boughten” bread at first so the ladies would bake biscuits every night. Some families owned wood lots. Soft wood was burned mostly and also coal. The coal vessel came about twice a year then. It came to the old coal wharf, now the restaurant dock. Arthur Fernald (grandfather to our Arthur of today) owned a sawing machine and he would saw your wood into chunks if you didn’t want to “bucksaw” it up yourself. There were two active stores in my youth – Morse’s and Dwelley’s. Morse’s was a large store and set just beyond Dwelley’s, a bit farther up the road (It burned down in the early 1950’s). Ray Dwelley had the little red store still in use today. The Post Office was there also, all during my youth. Not many gas vehicles on the island in those days. A few trucks and one tractor. Emerson Ham had the first big dump truck in 1931. There were three docks then. The old fish wharf, gone now; the old coal wharf and the steamboat wharf. All that is left of the latter are granite slabs. The old Bait Shed was nearby, where men baited trawl, built traps, plucked sea birds and spun yarns (while they played cards). No electricity here ’til 1928. The summer folk all had large wooden tanks set high up on stout structures. This way they could have running water with gravity feed. The lobster boats were all much smaller on average. Most just had a canvas spray hood. Much simpler engines, no hydraulic haulers, just a spinning winch head. No lobster dock at first. A man would come occasionally and stay all day in a big boat and buy the men’s lobsters.
How many times a week would you or anyone in your family go off-island?
We didn’t go off island as much then. Not many owned cars off island at that time. We went off occasionally during milder months for a change. We ordered a lot of supplies and groceries by phone to markets at Southwest Harbor and they would send it over by special boat or by Cliff Robbins, who brought our freight. Norman Stanley in his little black boat MEPHISTOPHELES ran a ferry to Seal Harbor during the summer and later Bert Spurling did so. Twenty-five cents one way. Pay telephones on island then and not many and mostly all were on party lines. Phone service to Islesford came nearly 20 years before electric power. We would go occasionally to Great Cranberry-town meeting days and their fair day. When I was a teenager I would use Dad’s dory on summer days and me an a bunch of friends would put a few bikes in the dory and row to Seal Harbor and ride the roads on Mount Desert Island.
Did any special people come out to teach music, art, or physical education?
No special people came out to teach these subjects then. Our grammar room teacher would sometimes teach a little art the last school hour on a Friday. We had no physical education in those days. No swings or schoolyard play equipment. Only a beat up old basketball someone had given us. And that wouldn’t even stay pumped up for any length of time …