Editor’s Note: These bits of Caribou history were compiled by Wendy Bossie, retired archive librarian at the Caribou Public Library.
As we celebrate the 150th birthday of Caribou, we are reminded of cold winter school days before the roads were plowed. Helen Richardson grew up in Caribou in the late 1920s. She lived in town but she tells about seeing the school teams in her booklet “Growing Up in Caribou, Maine.”
Contributed photo
School-age children who lived in the country traveled to their shcools by School Teams. Here, the ‘heated school buses’ are lined up in front of the Sincock School in 1928.
“The kids in town walked to school even in the winter when the thermometer dived below zero. Classmates from the surrounding farms were hauled to school by school teams consisting of two horses pulling a wooden structure on top of a pung. On the roof, a chimney emitted a short trail of white smoke, as the pung runners slid over the snowy roads. Inside the small moving building, young students sat on wooden benches beside an iron stove.”
Gwen Haley Harmon, in her book, “This I Remember.” wrote the following.
“One of our neighbors was hired to drive the school team. He would use his pair of mules in the winter to pull the sled. This caused many laughing comments as the mules were extremely moderate. We kids described them as being ‘slower than cold molasses running up hill in January.”
“Glen, the driver of the school team, constructed an enclosed vehicle on a smaller version of a long sled with a door in back and a window in front. An opening was made for the reins to pass through so the driver could be seated inside and enjoy the warmth of a kerosene stove with the children while guiding the mules along the snow-covered roads.”
“A thick layer of straw covered the floor with benches lining each side of the cozy enclosure to make the ride pleasant and comfortable.” Winter — Rolling the roads in winter
As we celebrate the 150th birthday of Caribou, we are reminded that the well-plowed roads we enjoy today were not always the norm.
During the winter years until the early 1930s the roads were not plowed so automobiles had to be stored for the winter. The roads were rolled and the snow kept hard and a track made in which the horse drawn sleds and sleighs traveled.
Ralph Hitchings describes how this was done. “The big town roller was a huge heavy wooden machine, made up of two rollers, end to end, about six feet in diameter and each about six feet long. Will Grey, the road commissioner, would hook up three and sometimes four teams in tandem, onto the big town roller and pull it over the roads to compact the snow. The big, heavy hardwood planks looked to be four inches thick and eight inches wide. It was a sight to behold; six horses pulling this big roller with Will Grey perched way up top in the center holding the reins.”
Plows were used in the spring when the snow began to melt. George Whitneck wrote, “ The roller was an improvement over the snowplow. It kept the roads smooth and hard. The snow drifted over the road and there weren’t any large banks of snow on each side of the road. The roller was wide. It packed the snow on each side of the road too. Now a team could turn out any place without getting a horse down belly-deep in the snow.”
Contributed photo
A driver leads a team of horses pulling the wooden rollers that were used to pack the snow down on winter roads. Although plows were used on the roads in the springtime, it wasn’t until the early 1930s that they were used during the winter months.
Busy time at the Caribou Trotting Park
A teacher and all her many young charges .
